10 Rap Albums That Every Rock Fan Should Listen To
7. Madvillainy - Madvillain
The music community is never going to run short of rock and roll heroes. When you look at people like Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix from back in the day, these are the kind of gods among men that don't even seem human. If you have a world full of heroes though, you always need villains to even them out, and Madlib and MF Doom gave us the most diabolical tracks ever put to wax.
As Doom was entering one of his most prolific periods, bringing in Madlib on these cuts makes every second of this album feel absolutely frantic. While most of the samples on here might be coming from the world of jazz, the piano sounds behind these feel like they're ripped out of some crazed hip hop superhero cartoon, with Doom being the mad genius in the middle of everything.
If anything, the ethos behind this entire album feels a lot closer to the world of punk rock than actual hip hop. There wasn't really a lane for people like Doom, but he didn't care and decided to make an album with bars that would put the rest of the hip hop world to shame. Since rock and roll was going retro at the time, we had to make way for the real villain of music. Just remember all caps when you spell the man's name.