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RockerZ East Coast JamZ Vol. 1

Thirty-two tracks with a very specific accent. This is East Coast rap in its imperial phase, when New York and New Jersey set the terms and everybody else adjusted.

The boom-bap capital

What defines East Coast rap of this period is not a single sound but a set of priorities: dense sampling drawn from jazz and soul records, drums that hit hard and dry, and above all an emphasis on lyricism as the point of the exercise. Where the West Coast built records around groove and the South would later build them around rhythm and repetition, New York built them around what the rapper was saying and how.

The mix covers the Native Tongues end, the Bad Boy end, the Def Squad end and the harder Queensbridge and Brooklyn material, which is a fair reflection of how varied the scene actually was.

What to listen for

A Tribe Called Quest's "Electric Relaxation" is the softest thing here and possibly the best — built on a Ronnie Foster sample, and one of the most beloved records in the genre.

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's "Take You There" is the connoisseur's pick. Pete Rock's horn-heavy production is a whole school of beat-making on its own.

The Roots' "What They Do" is the video that mocked every rap video cliche of its era, and "Sacrifice" with Nelly Furtado shows their range.

The Bad Boy contingent — "Mo Money Mo Problems," Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s "Get Money," Lil' Kim's "Crush on You" — is the commercial peak, and Foxy Brown's two entries with Blackstreet and Jay-Z show how completely rap and R&B had merged by then.

"Da Rockwilder" is two minutes of Method Man and Redman and is close to perfect. Nas's "Black Girl Lost" with JoJo Hailey is the deep cut worth chasing.

Busta Rhymes' "Woo Hah!!" is the most physically energetic record on the list.

Go deeper

Four albums that cover the era properly: A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders, Nas's Illmatic, The Notorious B.I.G.'s Ready to Die, and The Roots' Things Fall Apart.

For the producers: DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Q-Tip and The Hitmen. Following any one of them will take you through most of the decade.

And for the source material, this whole aesthetic rests on 1970s soul and jazz records — Roy Ayers, Bob James, Lonnie Liston Smith, the Blue Note catalogue. Chasing samples backwards is one of the great pleasures available to a listener.

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