92. Twista feat. Kanye West & Jamie Foxx – Slow Jamz (2003)

Twista is one of those virtuoso rappers whose flow is so torrential that they leave you razzled-dazzled. But here he pays homage to slow music, or to be more exact, to the slow sensual soul of the seventies, the music that makes your body melt in pleasure. Twista knows that fast-talk may be good for impressing a woman enough to get her back to your apartment, but once she's there, something else is needed to put her in the mood that would get her out of her clothes. So he employs the services of actor Jamie Foxx, who became a successful soul singer after he played Ray Charles and learned to channel his singing, and of Kanye West, who attends to the luscious production. Together they create a record that is at once a paean to those soul greats, to whom we owe so many orgasms, and a very sexy record in its own right.

89. Common feat. Kanye West & the Last Poets – The Corner (2005)

One of hip-hop's starting points were the black street poets, who emerged in the late sixties. Basically they were an offshoot of the merger that the beatniks formed between jazz and poetry, but their music relied heavily on the beat, and sometimes their only accompaniment was tom-toms. The singing was also completely rhythmic, kind of a precursor for rap, but with less flow and more pulsation, emphasizing every syllable. The content of their songs was highly political, and expressed the tumultuous spirit of the time. Contrary to what is claimed by some, hip-hop itself did not emerge out of this style, but from street dance parties, and drew more from reggae and funk. But hip-hop DJs did sometimes play the records of these street poets, and the rappers listened and internalized. When rap turned political at the end of the eighties, it became apparent how much they owe these pioneers.

Common is one of the rappers who came out of this political wave, and he's also very aware of black history, and believes that one of the roles of hip-hop is to educate the youth about it. Here he joins the Last Poets, the greatest street-poet band, to pay respect for the past. Together, they eulogize one of the most important places in the formation of black culture: the corner. The street corners of the ghettos were the places that gave host to the preachers, the street poets, the doo-wop singers, the break-dancers, the rappers and many other elements in this culture, which so affected the lives of all of us. Common's rap moves on several levels, the main one being just a description of the flow of sights and sounds that pass through the corner on any given day, but on other levels there are descriptions that paint the street-corner as a place where ideas meet, converge and go in other directions, and also descriptions that turn the corner into a modern version of the blues singers' fabled crossroads: a place where you must determine the direction your life will take from here on, your fate always riding on your choice. The Last Poets, on their part, focus more on the political significance of these meetings and choices, and remind us how they shaped and advanced black culture in the past. Thus, the record itself becomes a corner, a meeting between two generations of black music, and Kanye West mixes it all together to make sure it works, and even sounds like great pop.

Common - The Corner
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74. Kanye West – Through the Wire (2003)

We've talked about some of the great producers that worked in hip-hop in the beginning of the decade and infused it with power that conquered the world, but there is one more big name that I did not mention, and that's Kanye West, who shot to fame mainly due to his work with Jay-Z. His unique style, relying mainly on sped-up samples that create a hysterical sound effect, brought him great success, which made him think of a career as a front-man. But a serious car accident in 2002 left his face smashed and in need of reconstruction, and his jaw had to be reattached with wire. Kanye thought that his career was done and his life would never go back to what it was, but the traumatic event, eventually, turned out to be the incident responsible for the successful launching of his solo career, since it inspired this record, the record that instantly made him a star.

The production here is of course West's, and it is very typical, sampling Chaka Khan's 'Through the Fire' in double-speed. "Through the fire" means going through something that makes you stronger, and Kanye changes it to "through the wire", indicating the mouth-wires he has to sing through. But his accident was of course a "through the fire" experience as well, and Kanye dramatizes it is a way that is partly amusing, partly serious, partly scary. After such a strong opening, the horizons were opened, and in the lean years of the decade's second half, Kanye was one of the only rappers who continued to make hip-hop that was both commercial and substantial, and rightfully became a big star. Most of his records don't do it for me, but some of them were good, and this one is fantastic.