I'm not doing a "we've done this before".......but yonks ago I asked a similar question about recommended rap tracks......

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/help-i-don-039-t-rap-music-am-i-mi...

I bought about a dozen from iTunes and by a mile I like Eminem best - "Cleaning out my closet" - amazing. Here's the others I bought. BTW - nothing better than Gil Scott Heron for wordplay though.

Imagine Snoop Dogg
On My Block Scarface
Devil's Pie (Raw) D'angelo
Still D.R.E. Dr. Dre 2001
Lose Yourself Eminem
Cleanin' Out My Closet Eminem
Brand Nubian Brand Nubian
By the Time I Get to Arizona Public Enemy
Jurass Finish First Jurassic 5
Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check (Amended Version)
Busta Rhymes Rhino Hi-Five: Busta Rhymes - EP
By the Time I Get to Arizona Public Enemy
White Lines (Don't Do It) Grandmaster Flash

I quite like the Peking Duck one, but it has become a wee bit ubiquitous.

I love modern rappers: there is actually an assurance to even the cheesiest ones that only a minority of even golden age of hip hop MCs could manage. As a soft, bourgoise, white, suburban male I am uncomfortable with but naturally excited by the violence, prejudice and acquisitiveness of the lyrics but when they combine perfectly with backing with real musicality there's not much better. The perfect example would be the last Pete Rock album New York's Finest which features new-schoolers like Jim Jones and Papoose (along with more established folks like Redman and Wu Tang's Raekwon) over the most amazing beats; because Rock's beats are SO musical and the songs SO structured it brings out precisely what sophisticated MUSICIANS today's rappers are.

Snoop too, more maybe than anyone else, is a musician. I have a great bootleg of Drop It Like It's Hot over a Meters instrumental that brings out how much of a funk *singer* Snoop Dee Oh Double Gee is.

Rakim is still my favourite, mind.

moron. Surely?