10 Rap Albums That Rock Fans Need To Check Out

10. Raising Hell - Run-DMC

No real genre exists in a vacuum. Even from the beginnings of classical music and jazz, every single genre has just been piggybacking off of the many generations of traditional music that has come before it. Run-DMC was no exception to the rule by laying the ground for hip hop...only with a Marshall stacks' worth of volume.

After leaving a strong impression with earlier singles like King of Rock and It's Like That, Raising Hell was the culmination of everything that Run-DMC were about, taking the streetwise mentality to the masses. Aside from the massive amount of chemistry between Run and DMC, the true mastermind behind this whole thing is Jam Master Jay, who turned every rock sample into pure gold, from sounds of AM radio hits to the hard hitting riffs of Led Zeppelin.

Even the lead single on here, Walk This Way, was incredibly innovative for the time, bringing together two distinctly different genres and managing to get the guys from Aerosmith to guest on it. Not only did this reignite Aerosmith's career going forward, but also turned rap into a household name, with the band soon graduating to arenas as opposed to the clubs they were filling at the time. Rap was no longer an urban thing anymore...things were definitely starting to feel a lot bigger around the block.