Ishmael "Butterfly"'s recent project Shabazz Palaces is absolutely fantastic though. Very much worth checking out.

Also, Brand Nubian "languid"? They were WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY more militant and confrontational around this time than folks like DP, so while they were political and socially conscious, they were pretty unapologetically radical and violent, both in sound and rhetoric (see the In God We Trust album….a classic, but…

What's good?

Ha, I just made some J5 edits in my post too since it seems the writer is trying to say that J5 were kickin' it alongside DP. Which is just WRONG.

Maybe Labcabin was more "mature," but it was hardly all that political or concerned with "social justice." Same with Jurassic 5. I can't tell if the article is trying to say Pharcyde and J5 were contemporaires of Digable Planets, because if so, they are WAAAAAY wrong on J5 whose first release was an obscure single in…

Blowout Comb is MILES ahead of Reachin' (which is still great). They truly arrived with that record. NOT TO BE MISSED.

I enjoy God Connections more than Stone Crazy (which is great). It doesn't touch Intoxicated Demons or Street Level, but it's still dope. Fash was also the best MC of the trio.

Best version is the Spirit Mix. I think they used it in some airings of the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watc…

Cuban Linx 2 was killer. I was shocked it was so front-to-back solid.

De La Soul Is Dead, Buhloone Mind State, Stakes Is High > Three Feet High & Rising

Least Essential goes to Eric B.'s solo album from the mid-90's, which definitively proves that he did NONE of the beats for those records with Rakim. It's beyond awful: http://www.amazon.com/gp/pr…

I still find The Love Movement to be front-to-back better than a lot of other hip-hop albums released around that time, even though it definitely is Tribe at its weakest (and you can sense the exhaustion). There's still nothing embarrassing on that album, and I find myself enjoying pretty much every song on some…

Dude, Al Tariq's solo album is VERY essential. Produced entirely by The Beatnuts plus a few beats from No I.D. and V.I.C. Circa 1996. I'm going to assume you've never heard, let alone heard of, this album if you're bashing it like this.

Speaking of Quest, I think enough time has passed that we can say that Beats, Rhymes & Life and The Love Movement have aged really well.

Lucien also appears here for the final verse: http://www.youtube.com/watc…

In the liner notes to the recent reissue of Al Tariq's (formerly known as Fashion of The Beatnuts) insanely underrated God Connections album, he mentions that Lucien is apparently in jail in France for an arson that he committed that ended up with someone dead. Yikes!

No way dude, the conceit works.

Yo Tip man, what's wrong with snails?

Some I can think of:

Reasonable Doubt is widely considered Jay's best album by many (some might choose The Blueprint, but if that's the case, Reasonable is still probably their second choice). I don't think anyone doesn't consider that one a classic.