So im not a huge hip hop listener but I like quite a bit of the late 80s/90s stuff. But as Kendrick and Kanye aside I have listened to very little modern hip hop.
Is Danny Brown worth checking out? I liked a track I heard by The Roots love that live instrumentation thing.
A very brief list of stuff off the top of my head to tide you over till Shippers and the rest of the gang get here:
Little Brother - The Listening
Noname - Telefone
Isaiah Rashad - The Sun’s Tirade
Vince Staples - Summertime 06
Elzhi - The Preface
Blu & Exile - Below the Heavens
Killer Mike - Rap Music
A playlist of the best Black Hippy stuff (Schoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab Soul, Kendrick)
Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
Mos Def - The Ecstatic
Madvillainy
El-P - I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead
Earl Sweatshirt - Doris
A playlist of the best Black Milk stuff (if you like The Roots style live instrumentation give Album of the Year a go by him)
Pusha T - My Name is My Name
Tree - Sunday School II
Chester Watson - Past Cloaks
That is an enormous shout, I like it well enough but I want my Earl Sweatshirt output to be more about the flow and the internal rhymes etc, prefer him when he’s rapping for rapping’s sake.
Thats the problem the list I have is pretty bare in the past few years. Which is part of the reason why I decided to make this a wider thread about what people consider to be the best, or most important albums of the last 17 years.
But anyway in answer to your question:
Hip Hop artists I really like and are among my favorite of any genre:
Public Enemy
The Beastie Boys
M.I.A (Only her early stuff though could give or take her last few albums)
A Tribe Called Quest
Other Hip Hop Artists I like:
Kool Keith
K’naan (Okay maybe not musically the most interesting but I love the internationalist perspective. Fan of his first album and the following live one)
Wu-Tang-Clan
Prefuse 73
badbadnotgood
De La Soul
Noname
Death Grips
Some slightly cringey political uk hip-hop
Artists Ive listened to a fair bit but never really clicked:
Madvillain - Found it boring
Run The Jewels - The lyrics put me off
I think I like either relaxing music with interesting, conscious or story related lyrics. Or energetic empowering danceable stuff. I also like stuff that is a bit idiosyncratic.