Try as I might, I can’t really listen to contemporary radio/video/top 40 hip hop. It sounds like the same two or three dudes doing guest appearances on each other’s tracks, and even with all of those guest appearances, it seems like something is missing.

Or I’m just an old man standing on his porch, shaking his fist at the kids.

In any case, here are ten tracks, each from a debut hip hop album that’s at least fifteen years old and is better than anything Drake will ever produce. Note* when I say “debut” I’m taking into account that some underground mixtape might exist that predates the album I’ve listed, but these albums produced first videos.

10. The Pharcyde – Bizzare Ride II ThePharcyde (1992)
Everybody knew this was different and was going to be a classic as soon as they heard it for the first time. We walked the halls of our high school reciting lines from it to each other. Then we’d go home and play NBA Jams on a Super Nintendo (look it up).

9. GZA the Genius – Liquid Swords (1995)
At this point in 1995, the Wu Tang Clan had come out with Enter the 36 and everybody was waiting for all of the promised side projects. Of all those early solo albums–Method Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard (R.I.P.), Raekwon, Ghostface, etc., I think the Gza’s was on a different level. I don’t think there’ll ever be another collection like the Wu Tang and the energy that they generated back in the early-mid 90s.

8. Nas – Illmatic (1994)
I listened to this four or five times through a few days ago. There isn’t one song that sounded dated to me. The two singles that got the most love in my neck of the woods were “The World is Yours” and this song, “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” I haven’t purchased anything from Nas since the second album, not because he fell off, but because my love of hip hop shifted.

7. Del the Funky Homosapien – I Wish My Brother George Was Here (1991)
Del wore Girbaud and talked about it on Yo! MTV Raps in the first interview I remember. There was some fascination with him because he was Ice Cube’s cousin (and made a very brief appearance on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted), but he was so different from what I was listening to at the time. This is a really good album.

6. NWA – Straight Outta Compton (1988)
The influence this album had on the people who came after it is nearly immeasurable, but it’s safe to say that it still reverberates to this day. It is no less influential than Nirvana’s Nevermind.

5. Boogiemonsters – Riders of the Storm: The Underwater Album (1994)
This is nearly impossible to find today. I have it on cassette and had to make some poor sounding MP3s of it. The religious leanings of the MCs are in full effect, but it is never corny. More people should know about this album than do and somebody should re-release it. This is, what the kids say, slept on.

4. Outkast – Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994)
The summer before I left for college this came on the tv. One of the things I respect about Outkast is the evolution they’ve shown from high school kids (here) to where they are now. I don’t buy the new records, but I’m happy for them as human beings. As a side note, I used to ride around in an ’86 Chevy Nova and when the line about “a junkie is a junkie 365″ was about to be delivered, I’d turn on my beeper to match the song. Oh, impressionable youth. The Nova is dead and gone.

3. Ras Kas – Soul on Ice (1996)
Ras was one of the most hyped MCs back when I first got on the internet and started reading about underground rappers in usenet groups. Because of Ras I learned about the Illuminati, Behold a Pale Horse and all kinds of other conspiracy stuff that didn’t come true. Yet. He’s also has a gift for delivering lines that make you rewind a song over and over because you can’t believe somebody came up with it.

2. Common Sense – Resurrection (1994)
I’m glad to see that Common Sense (now just Common, because of a lawsuit) has been as successful as he has been. This is such a classic album, and would be even if it was “I Used to Love H.E.R.” and forty minutes of thunderstorm noises. There are a lot of references in this song that wouldn’t mean anything if you didn’t know what/who was being talked about, but if you did, you sat back and had your mind blown even after four hundred listens when you understood something new that had been buried deep in the song.

1. Aceyalone – All Balls Don’t Bounce (1995)
Acey’s sophomore album, The Book of Human Language more than any other ruined my ability to really get into more hip-hop. It is in my top five albums of all-time regardless of genre. If life were fair, Aceyalone would live in a castle somewhere and every couple of years he’d come down from the mountains, all music would stop, and he’d put on whatever he’d just finished recording. (note* when I originally posted this, I used a song from The Book of Human Language, to be consistent with the rest of the titles listed, I moved back over to the debut album All Balls Don’t Bounce)