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The 100 Greatest Rap Albums of All Time: Staff List
Billboard counts down the best hip-hop albums of all time.
The track is not the strongest off In a Major Way, that honor belongs to the silky “Sprinkle Me” or “1-Luv,” a moving exploration of life behind bars, but it illustrates why E-40 has endured and grown from a local stalwart to a global hip-hop force: since the earliest days of his career, he’s been molding minds, inventing vocabulary and making music that made the Bay Area’s highly idiosyncratic style feel welcoming and inclusive, even for his own preschooler. The first of the Culture trilogy, the 13-track set is the most concise showcase of the group’s compelling sonic DNA: a rapid-fire triplet flow that revolutionized cadences in rap music; memorable ad-libs and slang terms that’ve entered the hip-hop lexicon; and classic ATL trap production courtesy of top producers like Zaytoven, DJ Durel and Murda Beatz. On what’s been touted as the first full album by a female rapper as a solo artist, the husky-voiced Lyte fearlessly tackled socially conscious and personal matters such as infidelity (“Paper Thin”), drug addiction (“I Cram to Understand U [Sam]”) and beat-stealing (“10% Dis”) — alongside the symbolic title track — through deft rhymes that still resonate.
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