#20: The Delfonics - Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics
Due to his prominence as the bandleader of the Roots,
Questlove is in the rare position where he can try to make a record with Bill
Withers and end up with Al Green as a consolation prize. With his work
revitalizing the Delfonics, Adrian Younge deserves to jump up to that level,
allowing him to work with some of the greatest and most prominent artists in
the history of soul. Younge absorbs old music with the ear of a great sampler,
flipping old film soundtracks and obscure break-filled R&B nuggets into his
own compositions. When this instinctive method is paired with an unfairly
forgotten soul legend like William Hart, the resulting album sounds like it was
made in a world where seventies soul and nineties hip-hop somehow developed
simultaneously. Adrian Younge Presents
the Delfonics sounds completely out of time, a record some future crate
digger will be mystified by.
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#19: Inspectah Deck and 7L & Esoteric - Czarface
Insepctah Deck’s verse on Gang Starr’s “Above the Clouds”
remains one of his career best. It was also a tantalizing view into what a
member of the Wu-Tang Clan could sound like over more traditionalist New York
boom bap as opposed to the groundbreaking RZA sound that the Wu generals mostly
stuck to during the group’s best years in the ‘90s. Czarface, Deck’s full length collaboration with 7L & Esoteric,
shows how great it could have been if any of the generals had made a more
straightforward boom bap record back then. Deck sounds revitalized here,
turning in the second best album of his career (for all its detractors and its
couple of weaker songs, his first album Uncontrolled
Substance remains the most underrated Wu album of the ‘90s). Esoteric
remains a very good emcee in spite of his general lack of personality, but the
stars here are Deck and 7L’s head-knocking beats. Czarface manages to be both an enticing alternate history and a
strong revitalization for one of the best rappers who never quite managed to
pull off a satisfying solo career.
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