80's Underground Rap: Can You Feel It?

Don't Believe the Hype, lifted from the Public Enemy song of the same name, is part of Rhino's '80s Underground Rap series, but underground doesn't quite describe some of the hip-hop standards on this collection. The inclusion of the aforementioned PE track, as well as tracks from artists such as De La Soul and Biz Markie make this volume feel like more of a greatest-hits collection than a secret rediscovery. There's nothing wrong with classics, though, and there are plenty here: the Juice Crew collective is represented three times, with MC Shan's Queensbridge anthem "The Bridge" as well as Biz Markie's "Make the Music with Your Mouth Biz" and one of the all-time great microphone relay races, "The Symphony" (Marley Marl orchestrates, while Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap, among others, provide the juice). Other lesser-known tracks may still feel familiar, if only because of the scores of samples generated from them, such as Uptown's "Dope on Plastic." --Todd Levin

"Here comes the rain, and thunder now
Nowhere to run, to run to now
I'll disappear, you'll wonder how
looking for me, I'm underground!"

noyz narcos mistero dell'inferno show @ kindergarten bologna

This huge, cartoonish Californian crew, helmed by concept-man Shock-G, seized on the ultra-bassy funk woob-woob of Parliament-Funkadelic as the platform for its ensemble tomfoolery. At its best, it's inspired, daffy give-and-take that you can shake your rump to, especially on the hits "Doowutchalike" and "The Humpty Dance" and the ridiculous aquatic hip-hop fantasia "Underwater Rimes." At times, though, an uncomfortable current of leering misogyny surfaces. The disc ends with a suite of tracks about an imaginary safe-sex drug, the "sex packets" of the title. The concept gets stretched pretty thin, but "Packet Man," a cunning dialogue between Shock G (as a dealer) and his Groucho-nosed alter ego Humpty Hump (as his customer), is outright adorable. --Douglas Wolk