Hip-hop Albums for People Who Don’t Like Hip-hop

1. De La Soul Three Feet High & Rising (1989)

Everyone loves De La Soul, whether they know it yet or not.

“De La’s debut represented a new path for hip-hop, a reaction to conventions that had turned into clichés. It was friendly and playful enough to cross over to a pop audience (thanks to Prince Paul’s production, which found the funk hiding inside Steely Dan and ‘Schoolhouse Rock’), but complicated and tough enough to be hugely influential in the hip-hop world. Cryptic but ecstatic, and sometimes sexy (especially the ingenious double-entendre ‘Buddy’), Trugoy and Posdnuos’s lyrics invented a ‘new style of speak,’ dense with self-invented slang and metaphors. The hits, including ‘Say No Go’ and ‘Me Myself And I,’ are delightful, but the little sketches and sound-experiments between them make the whole disc flow effortlessly.”