I recently picked up Dalek's Abandoned Language and I was a little disappointed, how does Deadverse Massive compare?

Although it has several weak tracks, I'm a fan of the W, so this is good news for me.

Go back to? I'm not an expert here, but early artists like Last Poets and Watts Prophets notwithstanding, the history of the music as hip hop has little to do with "actual bands" in the sense of a group of musicians on acoustic instruments. It was always about appropriation and reinterpretation of musical sources that didn't require a "live band".

Now, if we're talking going back to old-school DJ techniques and densely-layered sampled sound collage, then yes, "going back" would be a good thing, in my opinion.

I'm glad for the recommendations as well. I've been paying more attention to my hip hop section these days, although it still pales in comparison to my Jazz and Rock sections (( only about 90 albums )) I don't have any Wu-Tang.

36 Chambers is my, and many other people's, favorite hip hop album. Do yourself a favor and pick it up ASAP, you'll be able to get it cheap. They have some great solo and group records, but it all comes back to this one, the rest pale in comparison.

MC Jazzfromhell

Right now, its my favorite release by them. (I still have to check out From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots and Derbe Respect, Alder)

There's a couple tracks that would probably be labeled "electronic" way before "hiphop". There's also a couple with noise goin' on...

I love it.

I like eminems old stuff. before encore. which killed everything.

For people who think that rap is at some kind of impasse, consider that in an era when nobody buys records anymore, and T.I. and Kayne are moving a lot of product. If anything, rap today is the dominant paradigm, so saying that it has become irrelevant or lost touch with the streets or whatever the fuck, is like writing off the most meaningful style, as in what means the most to the most # of people. Hearts follow money.

And for the purists who feel that rap needs to go back to its headspins on the cardboard roots, that shit is the past. 'Turntablists' are the past. Saying 'the wheels of steel' is the past. Rakim, Nas, they're tight, but they don't represent a sustainable model, they represent the past. But if you are into skimpy beats and heavy verbage, prodigy and AZ are still going strong. The Roots are a hip-hop group, I don't think of them as primarily a rap group.

And if you're too stuck up to accept the fact that jibbs and white-tee shit is a little more fun to party to than socially conscious sermonizing over carefully layered stax beats, then at least recognize that today rap is like a million times bigger, more diverse and interesting than in the so-called golden age of rap, when it was basically just two monoliths: brooklyn and compton. Today you got so much more variety, that it's cronicles of ridic to say that rap fell off lately. Shit, its just growing, getting more nuances and whatnot. Just wait new Weezy f Baby and 'detox' drop, then say how much rap has fell off.

nice to see you around camilojoe