The five best Rawkus Records albums of all time
As the slick, commercialised sound of the Diddy-inflected “Jiggy” era came to dominate the hip-hop scene of the late ’90s, a niche opened up in the other direction. There was a lack of serious, socially conscious material coming out around that time, but, eventually, this gap came to be filled by a new generation of smart, politically switched on artists with something to say. Rawkus Records was key to getting many of their names out there.
Rawkus was founded in 1995 by Brian Brater and Jarret Myer, but it was their partnership with an old school friend that proved so fruitful for the pair. In trying to get Rawkus off the ground, Brater and Myer relied on support from James Murdoch, the son of the infamous media baron and billionaire Rupert Murdoch. This is a man who, through his News Corp company, today owns major media outlets like The Sun, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News and Sky News, to name a mere few.
The Murdochs are a profoundly powerful family, and their media ventures have earned them criticisms for pushing a right-wing agenda, reporting in an overly sensationalist manner, and engaging in dubious editorial practices—all of which makes James Murdoch an especially unlikely candidate to help breathe new life into political hip-hop with a humanist, left-wing bent. But, he did. With his funding to help, Rawkus Records became legendary in the underground scene.
During the late ’90s into the early ’00s, Rawkus was arguably the leading alternative label in hip-hop. Some of the best figures to ever rap released records on the label, keeping hip-hop’s more radical tendencies alive at a time when much of the genre was succumbing to a more commercialised sensibility. Even as the Rawkus artists themselves became really popular, their music, by and large, remained true to their anti-establishment beliefs, and some classic records were released. Here are five.
The five best Rawkus Records albums of all time:
5. Big L – The Big Picture
With the release of his 1995 debut album Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous via Columbia Records, Harlem’s own Big L announced himself to the world as one of underground hip-hop’s truly great young voices. There was, therefore, a lot of buzz when it emerged in 1997 that he was working on a follow-up to that legendary record. Album number two, The Big Picture, was on the way, albeit on another label besides Columbia, which had dropped L following a dispute, and it was scheduled for release in 1999. But that didn’t happen.
In February of that year, L was murdered in a drive-by shooting. He was only 24. His incomplete second album was then delayed, naturally, but it was finally released in August 2000 by Rawkus Records and Big L’s own Flamboyant Entertainment. Rich King, L’s manager and business associate at Flamboyant, had helped to finish the record in L’s absence, with DJ Premier executive producing and many others helping to put it together. The Big Picture arguably has gone under the radar since its release, never gaining the same level of recognition as its predecessor, but it’s a great album.
4. Black Star – Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
Black Star, the duo composed of Mos Def and Talib Kweli, released their first album in 1998, at a point when both of them were trying to get their respective solo careers off the ground. They realised the fine chemistry they shared, though, and decided to do the Black Star project first, making an album together that set out their thoughtful, philosophical approach to hip-hop music that tackled themes such as racism and imperialism, hip-hop and its commercialisation, and the surge of violence within the Black community.
The duo’s name itself laid out their politics and approach as artists, as Talib explained in an interview on NPR in 2022. “Black Star,” he said, “we’re named for the honourable Marcus Garvey, famously a Jamaican immigrant who came to America and was trying to build ships, the Black Star Line, to get Americans back to Africa. [That] is the sort of beginning of Pan-Africanism and a push for reparations. So with Black Star, we’ve always been about hip-hop, about Pan-Africanism, spirituality, all these things that are necessary for the liberation of our people.”
3. Pharoahe Monch – Internal Affairs
Organized Konfusion, made up of the duo Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch, released three albums together between 1991 and ’97, finding critical acclaim without ever really managing to generate the sales they needed to make their project viable. They finally decided to call it a day following the release of their third album, The Equinox, and they went their separate ways. Pharoahe was picked up by Rawkus Records, who first trailed his presence on their books by including him as a guest on some other albums they were putting out during that period. There was healthy anticipation, then, when it came time for his first solo release.
Internal Affairs arrived in October 1999, with Monch demonstrating a harder approach than he ever had done with Organized Konfusion. The lead single, ‘Simon Says,’ became a minor hit, managing to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, but it soon landed Pharoahe in some trouble. The track had used an unlicensed sample of the theme song for the 1992 Japanese movie Godzilla vs Mothra, which led to the album’s distribution being halted. It eventually disappeared out of print altogether, and it was only in 2019 that it was reissued and made available digitally. A new generation of fans, at last, had an opportunity to hear it.
2. Talib Kweli – Quality
After the success of the first Black Star album in 1998, Talib Kweli was hot property, but he took his time when it came to releasing a solo album of his own. There were initially plans made for a second Black Star album, but Mos Def found himself tied up in the making of the movie The Italian Job, leaving Talib to concentrate on his own stuff. He initially contented himself with other collaborative works, most notably his Train of Thought album with Hi-Tek, but, by 2002, it was time for his own release. His first album as a solo artist, Quality, was put out via Rawkus.
Quality featured a range of producers, but its most commercially appealing track, ‘Get By,’ was handled by a young beatmaker named Kanye West. Talib spoke very highly about this up-and-coming producer in an interview with Rolling Stone following the album’s release, noting, “Kanye created a fire under me. He came into the sessions just to play some beats early and through the recording of the album, and he’s probably the producer I’m most likely to record with right now, cause he’s got a good energy.”
1. Mos Def – Black On Both Sides
Unlike Talib, Mos actually managed to release a solo album before the turn of the millennium. Black on Both Sides is considered to be a true classic now, the soulful instrumentation proving the perfect accompaniment to Mos Def’s adroit, political rapping. To help him achieve the ideal sound for his album, Mos recruited a dream team of East Side producers, including, among others, DJ Premier, Diamond D, Shaheed Muhammad and Psycho Les of The Beatnuts, who, 20 years after its release, spoke to Vice about Black On Both Sides and how forward-thinking Mos really was.
“When we was doing it back then, we didn’t imagine twenty years later, a classic,” Les admitted. “I can listen to it now, and Mos Def was super, super ahead of his time. Back then, we was just messing around, having fun. He’s always on-point with his stuff, always aware of stuff going on in the world. Just to see Mos Def going crazy over my production, I was like, ‘Wow.’ Mos Def just had the crazy flow. The way he put his words together was incredible.”