By Odeisel

There’s nothing like your first album. Years of pent up thoughts and emotions finally getting their release into the world. Ask Nas or Raekwon about the immense weight of a classic debut and they will tell you that as much as a blessing it’s an albatross, coloring your entire career no matter how high you reach.

With some artists, however, the second time was the charm, and while the first blew the doors off the hinges, the second one put the boot on our throats and cemented their status as legitimate legends. That’s often the case with groups, where albums like The Low End Theory, De La Soul Is Dead, The Infamous, and others seem to take their music to a next plateau.

But three of our greatest solo emcees managed to take their debut brilliance to vanishing point excellence while pushing the boundaries of their contemporary lyricism to never before seen levels. Arguably, the second albums of Big Daddy Kane, Kool G. Rap, and Rakim, while not as compact as their first salvos were more rangy, flexible and superior lyrically. They upped the ante delivery and flow wise, while flowing on more varied and sharpened production.

Kool G Rap was perhaps the least heralded of the trio, but perhaps the most aggressive, gritty and visceral as an urban storyteller. Wanted: Dead or Alive is his shining moment in the annals of Hip-Hop and tragically is probably his least heralded outside of the track “Talk Like Sex.” This album features artists like The Large Professor and Freddie Fox in some of their earliest appearances as well as Kane himself and the Diabolical Bizmarkie.

Wanted features an extremely fluid G. Rap weaving in and out of baselines immune to line structure hopping over drums and just relentlessly bodybagging every single beat on this album. Despite what he became known for, this album is all but devoid of the profanity that he began to lean on later in his career. A few listens to this album in the dark with no interference and you begin to question Jigga’s notion of being “G.Rap in his prime.” No one is G. Rap in his prime and this album is his true apex. From the opening “Streets of New York” to the acrobatic Elvis-like baseline driven “Jive Talk” through The aforementioned “Talk Like Sex” to the cautionary “Riker’s Island,” G.Rap is metaphorically and lyrically as fresh as any performer ever on this microphone.

Kool G Rap DJ Polo-Road To The Ritches Road To The Riches – Kool G Rap DJ Polo

It’s A Big Daddy Thing features a Kane truly at his height. Genuine in 89 and dripping with swagger, his overwhelming presence was such that he could have stood in the studio in the B-Boy stance while the record was playing and it would have still been monstrous. Then he opened his mouth and dropped the hammer and nothing was ever the same.

Big Daddy Thing was a departure from the all Marley production of the first album, with Kane rapping over faster, funkier, bouncier rhythms. If you thought that would trip him up though you are sadly mistaken. Kane proved even more agile with more musical obstacles and it created a starker contrast when he slowed it down for the classic slow boil banger “Smoothe Operator.” If Long Live the Kane was a coronation, then this album was his Manifest Destiny as he planted his flag on the landscape.

There’s more dimensions to Kane on this album with songs like “Young Gifted and Black,” “Calling Mr. Welfare,” and “Children R the Future” finding Kane taking a rest from destroying competitors and addressing social issues. His slick talking is still crisp and his Teddy Riley produced “I Get the Job Done” showed that Kane could indeed hang with the New Jack Swing. It’s a Big Daddy Thing wasn’t the precision package of its predecessor, but the skill to ill and make and break is omnipresent.

Big Daddy Kane- Smooth Operator Big Daddy Kane – Smooth Operator

Last but certainly not least is Rakim’s second album Follow the Leader. After forcing the entire genre to take lyricism more seriously and changing the music on his first album, what did Rakim do for an encore? He went further. Rich cosmic imagery on songs like the title track manage to take you on a journey without sounding spaced out:

While you thinking you a verse let’s travel at magnificent speeds around the universe/

What do you say as the earth gets further and further away planets get small as balls of clay

Lyrics like that conjure images of the Great Space Coaster or some grand journey and not something that should be on wax.

This album, like the others, is  longer than the debut, almost like releasing the beast from chains. It leaves the listeners standing at the line where the chain once held Rakim only to have us devoured by music that has gone past its initial boundaries. Rakim’s flow on this album is malleable, enveloping the beats with his stone hard voice and “anti-presence” leaving a black hole that sucks you in. Where Kane is Mr. Fantastic and G. Rap the Human Torch, Rakim was some unexplainable Thing. There was more than the lyrics but you couldn’t put your finger on it. What you could do however was Follow the Leader, and Rakim, whose second album came before the other two, was unafraid to lead.

Eric B & Rakim- Follow The Leader Eric B. & Rakim – Follow The Leader

We know it’s a difficult choice to pick between the three of these truly wonderful albums but we don’t care. Man up. LISTEN FIRST, and then give us a real answer with your vote. If rappers followed these leaders we’d all be left wanting more and this music would live forever.

Peace.

IT’S A BIG DADDY THING  LISTEN

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE LISTEN

FOLLOW THE LEADER LISTEN

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