Chains & Whips
Clipse's first album in 16 years centers on a Kendrick Lamar verse the duo's own label allegedly tried to kill — and the song survives the fight around it as the sharpest thing either rapper has put on record in years.
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Hip Hop
Costume Change
Doechii spends 'Costume Change' as four different performers in under three minutes -- a sneering trap verse, a lounge-singer bridge, a hardcore breakdown, and a gospel-choir outro -- and the seams barely show.
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Greatest of All Time!C.R.E.A.M.
The piano loop under Wu-Tang Clan's biggest chart hit came from a 1967 Charmels record, and according to Raekwon the famous phrase came not from Method Man or RZA but from a friend named Raider Ruckus.
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Denial Is a River
Doechii stages a full therapy session as a rap verse — funny, self-incriminating, and technically dazzling in the same breath — on the standout from her Grammy-winning Alligator Bites Never Heal.
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Greatest of All Time!Fight the Power
Throwback Thursday, 1989: a production crew that stopped treating a sample as one instrument and started stacking a dozen at once until none of them were recognizable alone.
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Greatest of All Time!Juicy
Throwback Thursday, 1994: every rags-to-riches rap song promises the same arc. This is the one that stuck, and the reason is nouns.
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Noid
Tyler, the Creator turns a 1977 Zambian rock sample and a genuine fear of his own fans into Chromakopia's most sonically aggressive statement, and its most nakedly anxious one.
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Greatest of All Time!Ruffneck
MC Lyte's 'Ruffneck' became the first Gold-certified single by a solo female rapper and earned her the first-ever Grammy nomination for one -- six years after she'd already become the first woman to release a solo rap album.
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Greatest of All Time!U.N.I.T.Y.
Queen Latifah's 'U.N.I.T.Y.' aimed at street harassment, domestic violence and the slurs hip-hop itself used against women, reached No. 23 on the Hot 100 and won a Grammy.
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Greatest of All Time!Walk This Way
Run-D.M.C. covered a fading rock band's decade-old album cut in 1986 and accidentally revived both careers at once -- 40 years later, it's still the template for hip-hop/rock crossover.
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