Various Artists
A Rap Collection
(Giant Records)
Grade: D
While the mainstream media has hailed it as the future of American music for the past few years, hip-hop has been a vital and powerful force for more than two decades. From its earliest days on New York street corners to its current status as darling of the pop charts, hip-hop has produced 20 years' worth of songs and history. Now that hip-hop is big business, it's not surprising that labels and producers are trying to cash in on this legacy.
Although A Rap Collection looks like a "greatest hits" offering, those two little words do not appear anywhere on the CD's packaging. Thank goodness - the early '90s material that appears here is strictly bottom-of-the-barrel fare. Sure, a few ostensibly big names are slipped in among the unknowns - "Shug & Dap" anyone? - didn't think so, but even these contributions are dubious, capturing former greats at precisely the moment when their careers slumped into irrelevance.
Ice-T, for example, was a pioneer of gangsta' rap, but the track that appears here is a throwaway released just as the rapper was trading his street cred for an acting career.
Early L.A. gangsta' The D.O.C. makes an appearance, but the song is from his ill-fated comeback album, after a throat injury reduced his threatening bark to a Yoda-like crackle. Even poor MC Hammer is represented, with two songs from The Funky Headhunter, his embarrassing 1994 attempt to drop the MC and harem pants and go gangsta'.
Word to Giant Records - when a Hammer song is the best a collection can offer, why even bother? True fans of hip-hop should take their money elsewhere.
