De La Soul Is Dead is the second studio album by American hip-hop group De La Soul, released on May 14, 1991.[11] The album was produced by Prince Paul, whose work on 3 Feet High and Rising was highly praised by music critics. The album was one of the first to receive a five-mic rating in the Hip hop magazine The Source;[9] and the album was also selected as one of The Source's 100 Best Rap Albums in 1998.[12] The album's cover refers to the death of the "D.A.I.S.Y." (Da Inner Sound, Y'all) age, or a distancing from several cultures including hippies and mainstream hip-hop.[1]
The song "Oodles of O's" was featured on the soundtrack of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.
In 2020, Rolling Stone placed the album at number 228 on the reboot of their 'The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time' list.

Midnight Marauders is the third album by hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest, released November 9, 1993 on Jive Records. It was released two years after A Tribe Called Quest's second album, The Low End Theory, and reached #1 on the R&B/HipHop Charts and #8 on the Billboard 200 in 1993. Midnight Marauders is also seen by many fans and critics as a classic jazz rap album along with The Low End Theory.

Like Water for Chocolate is the fourth studio album by American hip hop rapper Common, released March 28, 2000 on MCA Records. It was a considerable critical and commercial breakthrough for Common, receiving generally favorable reviews from major magazine publications and selling 70,000 copies in its first week. The album was certified Gold on August 11, 2000 by the Recording Industry Association of America. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album has sold 748,000 copies by March 2005. The video for "The Light" was frequently shown on MTV, adding to Common's exposure. The album also formally marked the formation of the Soulquarians, a collective composed of ?uestlove (of The Roots), Jay Dee (formerly of Slum Village), keyboardist James Poyser, soul artist D'Angelo and bassist Pino Palladino, among numerous other collaborators. This group of musicians would also be featured on Common's next album, Electric Circus.
The album's cover photo, 1956 Alabama by Gordon Parks, is a photo of a young black woman in Alabama, dressed for church, and drinking from a "Colored Only" drinking fountain.

Urban album of the year / independent album of the year Dual 2006 aria award winner 2006 release. As a group that has been together for over a decade, Hilltop Hoods are no strangers to doing things the hard way with this album taking the listener on a lyrical journey through the good, the bad and the hard roads traveled that have brought them to where they are today. This much anticipated 15 track release caters to all tastes with a mix of narrative, party, posse and serious contemplative tracks. Hilltop Hoods re-arrange the English language to suit their tongue in cheek style and make listeners smile with their intelligent rhymes. Featuring infamous international guests, The Hard Road sees Omni from LA add his flavor to the jazz filled track Conversations From A Speakeasy, with UK Low Life Records masters Mystro and Braintax ripping it on Obese Lowlifes. Hilltop Hoods have also enlisted the services of fellow Oz Hip-Hop veterans Muph, Pegz, Funkoars, Mortar, Hau, Drapht, Vents and Robby Balboa on The Blue Blooded to create the freshest oz posse track to date. Obese. 2006.

The Score is the second and final studio album by the hip hop trio Fugees, released worldwide February 13, 1996 on Columbia Records. The album features a wide range of samples and instrumentation, with many aspects of alternative hip hop that would come to dominate the hip hop music scene in the mid-late 1990s.

Beats, Rhymes and Life is the fourth album of the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. Released in 1996, it followed three years after the highly regarded and successful Midnight Marauders. This album is a departure from the joyful, positive vibe of the earlier albums and is regarded as the group's darkest album in content. It reached number-one on the Billboard 200 and Top R&B Albums charts.

As longtime fans know, though, when you hear a PUTS record, all the work, from the beats to the rhymes to the scratching to the artwork (Fun comes with a comic book written by the rappers themselves), is almost inevitably done strictly by the duo themselves. Instead of cashing in on hot outside producers or of-the-moment emcees, the pair has always been fiercely independent, with barbecue guests the only collaborators on the 20-track album. The duo holed up in Thes's new home studio with no outside producers or engineers to work on Fun DMC. To achieve the sounds floating in their heads, Thes One designed and built a custom recording console to record and mix the album. (The console became so efficient that audio company Vintage King plans on selling versions of it console publicly.) Costing in excess of $50,000--"A lot of long talks with the wife," he says, laughing--credit lines were maxed out, but the end result is the pair's most intricate-sounding album to date.

作为一支融合Soul、Blues以及Hip Hop并深受Sly and the Family Stone影响的另类说唱团体，Arrested Development在1992年创造了Hip Hop在主流乐坛的又一个成功典范。团体成立于80年代晚期，组成团体的两名成员Speech与DJ Headliner，受到Public Enemy的影响而将Afrocentric的思想融入音乐风格之中。团体首张专辑的名字正是来自他们从组团到取得一纸专辑和约所用的时间--3年5个月零两天。其中的单曲“Tennessee”打入了排行帮的前十，专辑也在其激励下大卖400万张，并获得了莱美最佳说唱专辑奖，同时位列滚石杂志的年度最佳团体。但正当团体发表第二张专辑并被预言将主导整个未来Hip Hop发展之时，团体解散，团体的领袖Speech做个人发展，但再也未有影响力的作品问世。

专辑《3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of...》令团体在1992年间受到各界追捧，在它的影响下，听众与评论家都开始意识到了音乐性在Hip Hop中的重要，这似乎已经预示着另类饶舌风格新纪元的到来。虽然这个新纪元并未真正到来，而是Dr.Dre的匪帮风潮随着一张The Chronic的发表而走到鼎盛，而且现在回顾起来，《3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of...》也不再像刚一出现时那样给人充满革命性的印象，但它仍然是一张优秀，甚至可以成为Hip Hop历史上最出色的专辑之一：专辑中所传达的积极信息--寻求的黑人世界统一与团结思想与为平等而战的斗志--令那些即使是摇滚界评论家也不得不为之折服。团体领袖Speech的南方式饶舌风格，与乡村Blues，非洲手鼓，Funk以及旋律化的R&B，都在那首经典的“Tennessee”中得到了完美的融合与展示；从歌词上说，歌曲更是一次与众不同的宣言，令专辑成为90年代初的最坚实的一张经典作品，同时也为时代提供了应有的自觉意识。即使是Goodie Mob, OutKast, and Nappy Roots这些另类南方说唱大师，也不得不承认专辑对他们产生的影响。