Earlier this year, hip-hop celebrated its 50th anniversary, and in celebration of the vital milestone, SPIN magazine interviewed a selection of MCs to name a talk about their favourite albums, one of which was Joey Bada$$.
Joey Bada$$ is an often-overlooked emcee from Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York. The emcee (real name Jo-Vaughn Scott) first arose in the early 2010s and was one of the only young lyricists reviving the East Coast sound of the 1990s.
Working with the likes of Freddy Joachim and Statik Selektah, Scott brought a youthful dynamism to the sound and became a king on the underground. However, with many focused on trap music from the South, he didn’t get as much airplay as he deserved.
Irrespective of this, Scott continued to release exceptional material. With his J Dilla style instrumentals, he cultivated a cult following and stayed true to himself artistically on the underground in the shadow of prominent Southern trap artists such as Future, Young Thug and Lil Yachty.
In 2015, the Brooklyn act released his debut album, B4.Da.$$. The project saw contributions from classic hip-hop acts such as DJ Premier and The Roots and was a landmark body of work for the emcee. He continued to grow and, in 2017, released All-Amerikkan Bada$$ to critical acclaim.
The artist took a three-year hiatus and then returned in 2020 with The Light Pack and, in 2022, dropped his third full-length studio album, 2000. As an emcee and known lyricist from the birthplace of hip-hop, it is only fitting that earlier this year, Scott sat down with SPIN to open up about his favourite bodies of work.
Revealing that he was a fan of the 1990s, Scott unveiled “Illmatic, It Was Written, Reasonable Doubt, Me Against the World. Those albums perfectly defined who those artists were at the time. It was like a time capsule. It’s just, you know, their minds, thoughts and emotions. It’s classic.” You can listen to Nas’ Illmatic (one of Scott’s favourites) below.