I caught the above "360" on Instagram and it immediately caught my attention even before realizing that the rapper, Nasaan, is the son of the late, great Proof. In the song Nasaan runs through how the business actually works: the leverage labels hold, the gap between what gets promised in a meeting and what shows up in a contract, and the way artists get managed into irrelevance rather than developed into careers. To really drive the point home, Nasaan rips Mobb Deep's "Give Up The Goods" for the beat.

Nasaan is Detroit by birth and Atlanta by upbringing, and as mentioned he's the son of Proof from D12, a lineage he hasn't hidden but also hasn't built his entire personality around. He raps, produces, directs, edits, and engineers his own work. His debut album Error 404 came out on Assemble Sound/Atlantic with Big Sean, Icewear Vezzo, and BabyTron on it.

Here's one other song from him with fellow Detroiter Royce Da 5'9:

Brief note: This is a slightly updated version of an article I wrote for the site 17 (!) years ago. I updated a few of the references and added some stuff at the end to explain why exactly I'm revisiting it in 2026.

I was going to school up in Boston when Streets Is Watching came out (on VHS!) back in the spring of '98. Boston, at least back in the day, was not particularly well known for being plugged into hip-hop, so I spent about a month hitting up every back alley bootlegger around the way before I was able to track down a copy of Jay-Z's cinematic debut. My search took me to some rather interesting locales -- Boston's portrayal in Good Will Hunting and Gone, Baby, Gone might leave you with the impression that the roughest neighborhoods you're likely to encounter are filled with preppy-looking Irish kids, but there's far more to the city than what the Afflecks would have you believe -- until I eventually got my hands on the "official" version, the one with a relatively young Jay-Z pulling the triggers of imaginary twin glocks on the cover of the cassette box. The hunt for the movie was well worth the effort, as I spent the majority of the summer watching it with my friends on an almost weekly basis. It was so entertaining that I was even able to forgive Jay for his blatant attempt at crossing over on his previous release, In My Lifetime Vol. 1.

Looking back nearly thirty years after its original release it would be easy to dismiss the movie -- "movie" being used generously in this case, I suppose, as Streets Is Watching is little more than a collection of videos with one gratuitous, but rather well filmed, lesbian sex scene thrown in -- as a visual representation of everything that went wrong with hip-hop during its ballin' out phase of the late 90's, but my friends and I reacted to it as if it were a motivational video, finding inspiration in every act of Jay and Dame's conspicuous consumption displayed on screen. Filled with scenes of overflowing Cristal - that golden-foiled drink we had heard references to in song but never actually seen anyone drink before - and expensive cars, it depicted a lifestyle we all aspired to achieve upon graduating.

As hip-hop continues its current obsession with lifestyle branding and corporate partnerships, it's unlikely we'll see anything quite like this film again, with mainstream artists and executives risking their endorsement deals and streaming-friendly images by allowing themselves to be filmed in the type of scenes that could be found on Streets Is Watching. Among the highlights: Lyor Cohen smoking a cigar alongside Akinyele while watching a young woman demonstrate her impressive flexibility in the nude, Dame Dash gleefully participating in a project shoot out John Woo style, and Jay-Z himself snuffing out a snitch. The script and the "acting" in the movie are so poor that it's hard to take any of these scenes seriously, but can you imagine the current version of Jay-Z, with his carefully cultivated image and nine-figure business portfolio, participating in anything like this today?

There are a ton of other great little scenes and guest appearances throughout the movie that motivated me to recently watch it again for the first time in several years. There's Gano Grills - an actor from Law and Order and OZ who is perhaps best known as the creator of the original Wu-Tang logo - putting in one of his first on-screen performances as the aforementioned snitch. Biggie, Nas, and AZ show up briefly to play a game of Monopoly with real money (a feat my friends with marginally more disposable income than common sense once tried, only to discover that it only takes one bad trip around the board to lose an entire month's wages). Jay-Z drops the hilarious, though inaccurate, response to the question, "What's the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6?" -- "Like 30 to 40 grand, cocksucker," according to Jigga, though the reality at the time was closer to 5 grand. My favorite part of the movie, though, is the bonus section, which includes a handful of old videos from Jay and Dame's time before Roc-A-Fella records, featuring Jay rapping in double-time and using the entire budget for one of his videos to rent out a boat christened "Dir-T-Pan-T" and party out in the Caribbean Islands.

The most interesting side story to Streets Is Watching, however, concerns the life and times of one Steven 'Drac' Johnson. Johnson served as Jay's barber in the early days of his career and Jay, presumably more as a favor for services rendered than for any proficiency as an actor, cast Johnson in the role of a rival drug dealer. In the sparse plot of the movie, which reenacts in part the lyrics from Friend or Foe and Friend or Foe '98, Johnson's character rolls into town with a bag full of guns and money and proceeds to get robbed in his motel room by Hova and company. After failing to heed Jay's warning to leave town and never return, Johnson's character briefly develops a Jamaican accent ("A gun in your mouth and that's all you can come up with?") before finding himself on the wrong end of Jay's gun. End scene and, with it, Johnson's short-lived career as an actor.

(Steven Johnson comes in at the 1:13 mark)

Fast forward four years later to the fall of 2002, and we find the real life Steve Johnson fallen on hard times in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, unemployed and diagnosed with AIDS contracted from his recently deceased wife. Apparently nursing a long-held grudge against White America and determined to go out in a blaze of glory - before leaving his apartment, he told his son that he would "make them famous" and scribbled on his wall, "Tell the boys in blue I won't be easy" - Johnson headed into the East Village armed with "two semiautomatic handguns, a two-shot Derringer, a Samurai sword, dozens of plastic wrist cuffs, and a squirt bottle holding a full quart of kerosene." In addition, he hooked himself up to a catheter, anticipating a lengthy shootout that would leave little time for bathroom breaks.

On his way into the Village, "looking for 'happy people' and seeking to avenge the oppression of black people like him" (according to the NY Times), Johnson listened to a recording of himself saying:

"Get ready to pull your guns on these crackers, son... Don't have no pity, yo. Bang them in the head and let them bleed, son. Let them bleed. Let them cry. Let them scream."

Eventually arriving outside of Bar Veloce at 2 A.M., Johnson opened fire on one Jonah Brander, who retreated into the bar after being shot in the lung. Johnson followed Brander into the wine bar, shooting him in the back, and proceeded to take all 40 of the patrons hostage, dousing them with kerosene and threatening to light them on fire. When the police eventually arrived, Johnson began shooting at the squad cars. With his attention focused on the police outside the building, two women from the bar jumped on top of Johnson and managed to subdue him, though one woman caught a bullet to the shin for her efforts.

After five years of court proceedings, including one mistrial, Johnson was eventually sentenced to 240 years in jail in 2007.

One more thing worth adding, which is actually what prompted me to revisit all of this in the first place. The title track, "Streets Is Watching," produced by Ski Beatz, has always existed in a strange state of censorship that most people never knew about. British musician Labi Siffre's 1975 song "I Got The..." is sampled throughout the track, but Siffre, who had previously refused to clear his "I Got The..." sample for Eminem's "My Name Is" until Eminem agreed to change certain lyrics, wouldn't clear it for Jay-Z without the promise of censorship. As a result, the official versions of the song have always been censored, even on the explicit version. Producer Ski Beatz later said he never even noticed. The uncensored version has circulated informally for years, but a few weeks ago it was officially released to streaming for the first time, finally letting the track exist the way it was recorded.

It's also worth noting that "Streets Is Watching" was the last song Biggie Smalls ever heard. Jay-Z made him play the record thirty times, then just gave him the copy.

So yeah, Streets Is Watching: two thumbs up, twenty-eight years later.

You know 82-0.com, that basketball game where you draft a roster and see how it holds up? I spent more time playing it last week than is probably justified for something that is not much more than a polished up spreadsheet. But there is something particularly satisfying about the exercise of pairing up random names across eras and have a computer tell me how poorly I did it. So I built a rap version using the same framework. 

Here's the deal: four rounds. Each round we pull a random label (Death Row, Def Jam, Bad Boy, Wu-Tang, Cash Money, Griselda, twenty-some more) and you lock in one piece of the crew. A rapper, a hypeman, a DJ, and a producer. One pick per round, then the game certifies you Underground to Diamond.

The trick isn't always grabbing the biggest names, chemistry matters just as much. Same region, same era, a producer who actually made hits for your guy: that's where the numbers move. Stack two old rivals on one track, though, and you'll find that beef doesn't sell well when it's within the same group.

There's a daily puzzle, a global leaderboard, and a link so you can challenge your coworkers and impress them with your deep knowledge of 90's era rappers.

👉 Play: 33jones.com/crewbuilder.html (or just click the "Crew Builder Game" link at the top of the page)

Elon Musk is taking SpaceX public this week at a valuation of somewhere between $1.77 trillion and whatever number he told the last person he talked to, which means the largest IPO in history is happening for a company that lost $4.9 billion last year. The shares are priced at $135, trading starts June 12, and roughly just 4% of the company is being made available to the public which is the financial equivalent of selling someone a keychain to your house and telling them they now own real estate. The man who runs four companies simultaneously while occasionally moonlighting as a federal government employee is asking investors to pay 95 times trailing revenue for a rocket company that has yet to turn a profit, and the market is going to do it with a smile because the vesting condition for Musk's bonus shares requires SpaceX to establish a permanent colony on Mars with a million inhabitants, which works not only as a business metric but as a veiled threat to dissenters!

SpaceX's valuation is driven by a combination of current revenue, projected future revenue, asset value, brand equity, and the very specific premium the market places on things Elon Musk is associated with. The formula for an IPO valuation is not complicated: (Revenue multiple + asset base + growth trajectory - minus operating costs and liabilities).

A brief note on what an IPO actually is: A company sells a percentage of itself to the public in exchange for capital it can use to grow, pay down debt, or make its founders very wealthy. The valuation is what the market decides the whole company is worth based on what it's willing to pay per share. The standard formula for a music company leans on a revenue multiple, typically 3x to 8x annual revenue for an established label, pushed higher by catalog value, artist relationships, and growth potential. Catalog is the key asset: owned masters are recurring revenue that compounds over time, and the market values them like annuities. Operating costs, contract structures, and the ratio of owned versus licensed content all affect the margin and therefore the valuation.

If a hip-hop label filed an S-1 tomorrow here is how that conversation would go (with the numbers involved verified as best as I could, but I'm not the IRS so there is a healthy amount of speculation involved):

1. Interscope Records (1990-present) -- Peak Valuation: ~$2B-$3B

What they had: The best roster management in hip-hop history. Death Row's distribution. Aftermath. No Doubt. Nine Inch Nails. Marilyn Manson. Tupac's catalog through the Death Row agreement. Eminem through Aftermath. 50 Cent through Aftermath. Kendrick Lamar through Aftermath. Lady Gaga. The specific instinct of Jimmy Iovine, who has never signed an artist that didn't sell and has never publicly admitted to signing an artist that didn't sell, which are not the same thing but produce the same result.

The numbers: Interscope as a standalone entity before its absorption into Universal was doing hundreds of millions in annual revenue. The catalog value is incalculable because it includes masters across multiple genres across three decades.

The problem: Interscope was never going to go public independently because the major label consolidation of the late 1990s made that impossible. Jimmy Iovine sold to Universal in 1999 for a reported $350M, which was either a tremendous deal or highway robbery depending on whether you value the catalog at 1999 prices or 2024 prices. At 2024 prices it was highway robbery.

IPO window: 1997. Pre-Universal acquisition, post-Death Row distribution, the label has the deepest catalog and the best A&R operation in hip-hop. You price at $1B, which would have been the largest music IPO in history, and you have a company with a genuine claim to being the most commercially important label in American music. Instead Jimmy sold it to the Dutch and went on to run Apple Music for a decade and produce some movies.

2. Def Jam Recordings (1984-present) -- Peak Valuation: ~$1B-$1.5B (as standalone)

What they had: The foundational catalog of mainstream hip-hop. LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Run-DMC (via distributor), EPMD, Slick Rick, Jay-Z, DMX, Ja Rule, Kanye West, Rihanna, and a brand name that functions as a quality signal across five decades. Rick Rubin's production legacy embedded in the catalog. The institutional knowledge that comes from being the first label to figure out what this music was commercially worth.

The numbers: Def Jam was never truly independent long enough to have clean standalone financials, it was folded into PolyGram and then Universal over the course of the 1990s. But as a notional standalone entity at its peak, the catalog value alone that included the masters for the first wave of hip-hop's commercial expansion, would command a significant premium. The brand licensing value is separate from the catalog value and both are real.

The problem: The integration into Universal makes the standalone IPO hypothetical rather than actual. You can value Def Jam but you can't separate it from the machine that owns it. The window for a Def Jam IPO as an independent entity closed when Russell Simmons sold his stake in 1999, which is the transaction that made him wealthy enough to do whatever he did next, maybe Fresh will cover that in a future article.

IPO window: 1993-1994. Post-Chronic, pre-Death Row dominance, the label has a decade of catalog and the best brand in hip-hop. Russell and Rick raise $300M, Russell buys Phat Farm at scale, Rick produces six more albums no one talks about, and someone eventually sells it to Universal anyway. The outcome is probably the same, but the check would have been bigger.

3. Death Row Records (1993-1997) -- Peak Valuation: ~$750M-$1B

What they had: The entire G-Funk canon. Dr. Dre's production infrastructure. Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Tha Dogg Pound, and Warren G. A distribution deal with Interscope that gave them major-label reach without major-label overhead. Physical sales at their absolute peak, when a platinum album meant millions of actual units in actual stores.

The numbers: At its peak, Death Row was doing an estimated $100M+ annually in revenue between record sales, licensing, and merchandise. The catalog value of The Chronic, Doggystyle, and All Eyez on Me alone, at a standard 10x-15x earnings multiple, would put the asset base north of $500M.

The problem: Operating costs were catastrophic. Suge Knight's management style functionally precluded stable institutional investment as you cannot take a company public when the CEO's primary management tool is physical intimidation, and you cannot sustain a catalog when your core artists are leaving or dying. The window for a Death Row IPO was roughly eighteen months in 1993-1994, before the criminal and legal exposure made any prospectus a liability document rather than a growth story.

IPO window: Summer 1994. Six months after Doggystyle. Before the Tupac situation, before the federal investigation, before any of it. You raise $200M, Dre buys his freedom from the contract and leaves anyway, but the catalog stays and you're a public company. Suge Knight would have found a way to destroy it, but for a moment it would have been real.

4. Aftermath Entertainment (1996-present) -- Peak Valuation: ~$600M-$800M

What they had: Dr. Dre's production catalog and reputation as the best ear in hip-hop. Eminem, the best-selling rapper of all time. 50 Cent. Kendrick Lamar. The specific brand of West Coast excellence that Dre had built since Death Row, now controlled and owned in a way Death Row never was. A catalog that includes some of the best-selling rap albums of the 2000s and 2010s.

The numbers: Aftermath as a standalone entity within Interscope/Universal is difficult to value cleanly, but Dre's eventual sale of his catalog and masters to UMG and Shamrock Holdings for an estimated $200M gives you a floor. The active revenue at Aftermath's peak, during the Marshall Mathers LP and The Eminem Show era, was enormous -- Eminem was regularly outselling every other artist in any genre on the planet.

The problem: Dre's production pace was always the constraint. The label moved at the speed of Dre's interest, which was not a pace compatible with the quarterly reporting requirements of a public company. You cannot explain to an earnings call why the follow-up to 2001 is taking six years.

IPO window: 2002-2003. The Eminem Show just sold ten million units, 50 Cent is in the pipeline, and Kendrick is a teenager in Compton about to become a dominant force. You raise $250M, use it to build out the roster so the label doesn't depend entirely on Dre's schedule, and you have a generational music company.

5. Bad Boy Entertainment (1994-2001) -- Peak Valuation: ~$500M-$750M

What they had: The Notorious B.I.G. The Hitmen production team. A commercial instinct that was unmatched in the 1990s. Puff Daddy as a brand that operated independently of any individual artist, which is rare and valuable even if he was "dancin' all in your videos." A string of multi-platinum releases in a long-ago physical sales environment where a six-times-platinum album was a real thing that happened.

The numbers: Bad Boy was distributed by Arista and later Atlantic, which limited the revenue capture but also limited the risk. At peak, the label was generating estimated revenues of $75M-$100M annually in the late 1990s. The catalog value of the Biggie catalog alone, which has only appreciated since his death in 1997, would anchor any valuation.

The problem: The Biggie situation is the thing the prospectus cannot address. You cannot model the value of a company around one artist and then have that artist die at twenty-four. Post-1997 Bad Boy was a different and significantly less valuable company operating under the same name. The 112 and Total revenues were not carrying the weight that Biggie had been.

IPO window: Late 1996. Life After Death is in the can, Biggie is alive, the label has diversity across its roster and a legitimate argument for sustainable revenue. You file in October 1996, you price in January 1997, Biggie goes on promo runs, and you have a legitimate music company IPO. What actually happened in March 1997 makes the whole exercise academic.

6. Roc Nation (2008-present) -- Peak Valuation: ~$500M-$750M

What they had: Jay-Z as both founder and active artist. A sports management operation that became legitimate faster than anyone expected. A music publishing catalog that is separate from and in addition to the recording catalog. Rihanna's management at the peak of her commercial run. The specific premium the market places on anything with Jay-Z's name on it, which is real and quantifiable and has been consistent for twenty-five years.

The numbers: Roc Nation's diversification into sports, entertainment, and brand partnerships makes it more like an entertainment conglomerate than a pure music label, which actually makes the IPO story more interesting rather than less. The revenue base is more stable than a pure label because it's not dependent on album cycles.

The problem: Jay-Z's personal control of the company and his tendency to use it as an extension of his own creative and business instincts makes institutional investment structurally complicated. You are not buying a company, you are buying exposure to Jay-Z's judgment, and Jay-Z's judgment does not come with a board of directors or quarterly earnings calls.

IPO window: 2015-2016. The sports management operation is established, TIDAL has just launched as an artist-owned streaming platform that represents a genuine differentiated asset, Jay-Z has demonstrated the ability to build outside of music, and Rihanna is the most commercially potent artist on the planet. You raise $400M, you use it to build out the publishing catalog and the sports operation, and you have a legitimate entertainment company IPO. TIDAL getting sold to Square for $297M in 2021 ended that particular thread, but the core business is still there and still growing.

7. Roc-A-Fella Records (1996-2004) -- Peak Valuation: ~$400M-$600M

What they had: Jay-Z, the most consistently commercially successful rapper of his generation. Kanye West in his creative and commercial prime (musically speaking, we're not including his later deal with Adidas here). A production bench that included Just Blaze and Kanye before either of them cost serious money. A catalog that was built methodically across eight Jay-Z albums before the Def Jam acquisition formalized what was already implicit.

The numbers: Roc-A-Fella's distribution deal with Def Jam and later Island Def Jam meant the label captured a significant percentage of revenue on its releases. At peak the label was doing estimated $50M-$70M annually, but the multiple you put on a company with Jay-Z under contract and a functioning production pipeline is significantly higher than a straight revenue multiple suggests. The growth story was real and documented.

The problem: The three-headed structure between Jay-Z, Damon Dash, and Kareem Burke was a corporate governance nightmare waiting to happen. You cannot take a three-way equal partnership with active personal tensions public without resolving the ownership structure first, and resolving the ownership structure first would have required the partners to agree on something, which was already becoming difficult by 2002. The Def Jam acquisition in 2004 effectively did the exit for them at a reported $10M, which is almost certainly the worst price that catalog has ever been offered at.

IPO window: 2001-2002. The Blueprint has just come out, Kanye is producing everything, the label has demonstrated it can survive without Damon Dash's full attention, and the catalog is deep enough to anchor a prospectus. You raise $150M, you use it to buy out Dash, and you have a Jay-Z-controlled music company with real assets. Instead Dash spent the money on art and Pelle Pelle coats.

8. Cash Money Records (1991-2018) -- Peak Valuation: ~$400M-$500M

What they had: Lil Wayne, one of the most productive artists in hip-hop history, during the most prolific stretch of his career. Drake before Drake belonged to anyone else. Nicki Minaj. Birdman's manufacturing and distribution infrastructure, which was genuinely innovative for an independent label in the South. A Universal distribution deal that gave them reach without surrendering ownership.

The numbers: Cash Money was reportedly doing $100M+ annually at its peak in the early 2010s. The catalog is complicated because Wayne's ownership dispute with the label created lasting legal uncertainty around some of the most valuable masters, but the label's active revenue was substantial.

The problem: Birdman's contract structures were a time bomb. The 360 deal they put Wayne on which captured touring, merchandise, endorsements, and recording revenue simultaneously, was the kind of contract that looks like corporate genius until the artist has a lawyer who can read. The Wayne litigation effectively poisoned the label's ability to attract and retain talent at the level it needed to sustain the valuation, and the Drake departure (by omission rather than litigation) removed the most valuable future asset.

IPO window: 2012. Drake's Take Care has just gone diamond-pace, Wayne is three years removed from Tha Carter III, Nicki is global, and the label has a legitimate argument that it is the most commercially potent hip-hop operation in the country. You go public at $400M, use the capital to buy Wayne out of his contract cleanly, and you have a label without a ticking clock. Instead Birdman paid Wayne in cash advances and hoped he wouldn't count.

9. No Limit Records (1991-2003) -- Peak Valuation: ~$300M-$400M

What they had: Master P's manufacturing and distribution operation, which was genuinely the most efficient production machine in hip-hop history at its peak. Tens of millions of units sold through nontraditional retail channels. C-Murder, Mystikal, Snoop (briefly), Silkk the Shocker, and a roster that operated more like an assembly line than a label. The tank logo as a brand that moved product in markets that major labels couldn't reach.

The numbers: At its absolute peak in 1997-1998, No Limit was reportedly moving millions of units monthly through Walmart and nontraditional retail. Master P's claim of $700M in revenue during the label's peak years has never been independently verified but the anecdotal evidence of what those albums were doing at retail suggests the real number was significant even if the claimed number was inflated.

The problem: The quality control was the business model. No Limit released albums every two weeks because the cost of production was low enough that the volume more than compensated for the individual margins. That model does not survive the transition to streaming, where volume without quality is invisible. The IPO story for No Limit is also the story of a label built on physical retail dominance in a period when physical retail was about to collapse, which means any prospectus written after 1999 is a document about a declining asset.

IPO window: Early 1998. The label has just had its most productive year, the distribution infrastructure is proven, and Master P is the most financially efficient operator in hip-hop. You raise $150M, you use it to build a proper A&R operation to improve the quality without sacrificing the volume, and you have something sustainable. Instead Master P spent it on gold plated everything and the window closed.

10. Ruff Ryders / Ruff Ryders Entertainment (1999-2007) -- Peak Valuation: ~$200M-$300M

What they had: DMX at the peak of his commercial dominance, an artist who had the top two albums on the Billboard chart simultaneously, which had never happened in rap before. Add in Eve, the LOX, and Swizz Beatz as an in-house producer whose sound defined the era. A street credibility that translated directly into commercial success in a way that few labels have managed before or since.

The numbers: Ruff Ryders was distributed through Interscope, which limited standalone revenue capture. But DMX's first two albums sold a combined fifteen million units in a two-year window, and the label's total revenue at peak was substantial.

The problem: The label's commercial fortunes were almost entirely correlated with DMX's personal stability, which was not something you could model on a spreadsheet. When DMX was focused, Ruff Ryders was the most commercially potent label in hip-hop. When DMX was not focused, which became more frequent after 2003, the label had no second option that came close.

IPO window: Late 1999. Both DMX albums are out, Eve's Let There Be Eve is platinum, the label has demonstrated it can sell across demographics. You raise $100M, you use it to build a proper artist development infrastructure so the label can survive DMX's eventual personal difficulties, and you have a viable public company.

None of these labels were going to go public, and most of them were too busy making money to think about it. The ones that could have probably shouldn't have, because the quarterly reporting requirements of a public company and the creative and personal chaos that produces great hip-hop music are structurally incompatible. You cannot explain on an earnings call why your best artist hasn't released an album in four years. You cannot disclose in an S-1 that your CEO resolves contract disputes with his hands. You cannot model the revenue trajectory of a label whose most valuable asset is one person's creative output, which is not forecastable and is not a growth metric and is not anything a Goldman Sachs analyst has a spreadsheet for.

Huge shoutout to Stoxxer for dropping the financial knowledge on us. If you want to read more from him and his crew, check out his article on the real SpaceX IPO. He's a little more sensible with his investments, if you ask me get in on the IPO at all costs, then flip it into the Anthropic IPO shortly after. I take no responsibility if you go broke though, this is not financial advice!

The week long discussions about Complex's Top 50 NY Rappers list (and the subsequent mix I put together built off of that list) inspired me to consider a companion list of the Top 50 NY Producers. Building a list like this is an exercise in deciding what "best" actually means before you start, because the answer shapes every single decision after it. 

The first question is whether you're ranking producers who defined a sound or an era versus producers who had broad influence across multiple artists. The second is catalog depth versus the singular moment, and this is where it gets genuinely interesting: Ron Browz made this list over producers with far more extensive track records because "Ether" is so perfectly embedded in the culture that one placement outweighs twenty solid ones. 

Geography was the other variable and was significantly more difficult than you'd think it would be given "NY" is the key piece of this thing. The working rule was five boroughs plus Long Island. DJ Premier gets a full NY-pass because even though he was born in Houston, he moved to Brooklyn in his early twenties, built everything there, and is so completely identified with the New York sound that leaving him off would have weakened this list considerably. Scott Storch was born on Long Island but left early and is much more associated with Philadelphia and Dr. Dre's world than New York's, so he's out. The Heatmakerz were born in Jamaica but were in the Bronx by age four and never left sonically, so they're in. Eddie F and Pete Rock made the cut even though they're on the other side of the city border in (Money Earnin') Mount Vernon. Every case got its own argument.

A few names worth acknowledging that didn't make the final cut. Paul C is an honorary member of this list in spirit: his career was cut short in 1989 and every producer and artist who worked with him will tell you he was on his way to superstardom, so the absence isn't a judgment. Larry Smith arguably had a similar level of influence on early New York rap as Rick Rubin, and in hindsight he probably deserves a spot here, but a top 50 list eventually runs out of room and that's on us. Danger Mouse and Lovebug Starski are both massively important and both born in New York, but their primary work was in other genres. DJ Mark the 45 King and Just Blaze felt more appropriate for a best of New Jersey list. Some great producers like ELUCID were left off because they're primarily known as rappers first. Ka was the exception there because his sound occupies a space nothing else on this list touches and there was no other way to represent it.

1. DJ Premier  -- born Houston, TX; built entirely in Brooklyn

Born in Houston and raised in Prairie View, Texas, Premier moved to Brooklyn in the late 1980s and the pass is not a close call. There's a direct line from his production, the scratched-in vocal samples, the grimey drums, the jazz loops flipped until they became something new, to what New York rap has sounded like for thirty years. "Supa Star" by Group Home is on the playlist because it is Premier at his most architectural: the drums hit like a door closing, Lil Dap and Melachi the Nutcracker get the best of themselves out on record, and the whole thing sounds like Brownsville in winter. Group Home never got the shine they deserved, and a lot of that comes down to the fact that Premier was making them sound better than they would have with anyone else.

2. RZA -- Brownsville, Brooklyn / Staten Island

Born in Brownsville and raised on Staten Island, RZA grew up absorbing the borough's outsider relationship to the rest of New York's rap world and turned that into an aesthetic. He built an entire cinematic universe out of dusty loops, kung fu dialogue, and minor-key menace, and the Wu-Tang sound is so distinctive that it remains immediately identifiable three decades later, which almost no production style can claim. "C.R.E.A.M." is on the playlist because it is the clearest single distillation of what RZA was building: the piano loop, the bass, the space, and nine MCs making the most of it.

3. Pete Rock -- Mount Vernon, NY

Pete Rock grew up in Mount Vernon, just over the Bronx border in Westchester, and gets the pass without much argument since his entire career, his sample sources, his collaborators, and his sound are all inseparably New York. His soulful horn chops and warm low end set a standard for emotionally resonant hip-hop production that producers are still trying to match. "They Reminisce Over You" is on the playlist because it remains genuinely moving on an emotional level, and the sample choice, the arrangement, and CL Smooth's verse are pretty close to perfect

4. Marley Marl -- Queensbridge, Queens

Marley Marl grew up in the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City and turned that address into a creative headquarters. He invented the drum machine sample flip, the foundational technical innovation of modern hip-hop production, and the Juice Crew he assembled and produced for included Big Daddy Kane, Roxanne Shanté, MC Shan, Masta Ace, and Kool G Rap, a roster that would define New York rap for a decade. "Jinglin' Baby" is on the playlist because it is Marley Marl and LL Cool J at peak commercial confidence, and sounds incredible coming out of any system.

5. Havoc -- Queensbridge, Queens

Havoc grew up in the Queensbridge Houses, the same projects that produced Marley Marl and Nas, and brought a paranoia and darkness to his production that reflected that environment with uncomfortable precision. The Infamous is one of the great rap albums and Havoc produced most of it himself, creating a sonic world so complete and specific that it still sounds like no one else. "Shook Ones Pt. II" is on the playlist because it is the center of gravity for everything the Queensbridge sound meant in the 1990s, and the piano loop, the drums, and Prodigy's opening verse make up one of the most perfectly constructed three minutes in the genre.

6. Q-Tip -- Manhattan

Jonathan Davis grew up in East Elmhurst, Queens and in Harlem, absorbing jazz from his father's record collection and Afrocentric thought from his community, and brought both into A Tribe Called Quest with results that felt genuinely new. The Native Tongues production aesthetic he helped define, jazz abstraction, warm bass, space where other producers would have filled, opened up a lane in New York hip-hop that had never existed before. "Scenario" is on the playlist because it is ATCQ at their most energetic and collaborative, and Busta Rhymes' closing verse is one of the great single verses in 1990s rap.

7. Bomb Squad -- Long Island / Queens

Hank Shocklee, Eric Sadler, Keith Shocklee, and Chuck D grew up on Long Island and in Queens and built the most sonically ambitious production approach in the history of hip-hop: dense, confrontational, built from hundreds of samples layered until they became something new, a wall of sound that had no precedent. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet are two of the most important albums ever made and the production is the reason, since nobody before or since has used the studio as a political instrument with quite that level of precision. "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" is on the playlist because it is the Bomb Squad at their most focused and most devastating, a record that builds and builds and never releases the pressure.

8. Rick Rubin -- Long Beach, Long Island

Frederick Jay Rubin grew up in Lido Beach and Long Beach on Long Island and co-founded Def Jam Records as a New York University student in 1984, producing the records that brought hip-hop to audiences that had never heard it while maintaining the rawness that made it worth hearing. Without Rick Rubin there is no mainstream hip-hop as we know it, the Run-DMC and LL Cool J records he produced at Def Jam established the commercial template, and the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration he orchestrated changed what popular music was allowed to be. "Walk This Way" is on the playlist because it is the record that broke hip-hop into mainstream white America and Rubin's instinct to bring two sounds together that had no business being in the same room turned out to be exactly right. 

9. Swizz Beatz -- Bronx

Kasseem Dean grew up in the Bronx and started making beats on a Casio keyboard as a child, developing a style that prized energy and momentum over subtlety, which turned out to be exactly what the Ruff Ryders era needed. At his peak he was the defining mainstream New York rap producer, turning out hits for DMX, Jay-Z, Eve, and the entire Ruff Ryders roster with a productivity and commercial impact that is hard to argue with. "Ruff Ryders' Anthem" is on the playlist because it is the record that announced what Swizz Beatz was: a producer who could make a beat that sounded like a physical event.

10. Trackmasters -- Harlem, Manhattan

Tone and Poke grew up in Harlem and built the Trackmasters brand into one of the most commercially successful production operations in New York rap history. They had the specific skill of bridging underground credibility and radio accessibility at a moment when those two things were pulling hard in opposite directions, and their production for Nas, Jay-Z, and LL Cool J represents the sound of New York rap in the mid-to-late 1990s on a commercial level. "If I Ruled the World" is on the playlist because it is Nas and Lauryn Hill combining perfectly in a combo that was pretty unexpected at the time, and the Trackmasters production gives both of them exactly the space they need.

11. Erick Sermon -- Brentwood, Long Island

Eric Sermon grew up in Brentwood on Long Island, formed EPMD with Parrish Smith in high school, and developed a production style rooted in slow, rolling funk samples that became the template for what Long Island would contribute to New York rap. The EPMD catalog and the extended Def Squad universe he produced are foundational documents, and he was doing sample-based production at a level of sophistication that most of his peers weren't reaching. "Crossover" is on the playlist because it captures the specific EPMD sensibility, self-aware, funky, deliberate, at a moment of genuine commercial peak.

12. Alchemist  -- born Beverly Hills; built in the New York underground

Alan Maman was born in Beverly Hills and grew up in Los Angeles, which should have disqualified him, but he moved into the New York underground orbit as a teenager and never left. His sensibility, his crate-digging methodology, and his decades of work with Mobb Deep, Prodigy, Ghostface, and more recently Boldy James and Benny the Butcher are so completely identified with New York underground rap that leaving him off would be the wrong call. "Kijani" is on the playlist because it happens to be one of my favorite songs to come out of the post-Pandemic era, though I'm sure there are tons of other songs that come to mind first when thinking of Alchemist.

13. Salaam Remi -- Queens

Salaam Remi grew up in Queens in a musical household and developed a production style that was rooted in hip-hop but moved fluidly into soul, reggae, and R&B. His work across Nas, the Fugees, Amy Winehouse, and Miguel demonstrates a range and longevity that most producers never approach, and his New York credentials are unimpeachable. "Made You Look" is on the playlist because it is one of the great New York rap records of the 2000s, the Incredible Bongo Band sample, the drums, and Nas in peak rhetorical form.

14. The Beatnuts -- Queens

JuJu and Psycho Les grew up in the Corona and Jackson Heights sections of Queens, children of Caribbean immigrants who brought reggae and Latin music into the house alongside whatever was coming out of the New York rap scene. The Beatnuts sound, hard drums, dusty samples, a manic energy that always sounds like it might tip over into chaos but never quite does, is one of the most distinctive production signatures the borough has ever produced. "Off the Books" is on the playlist because it is the Beatnuts at their most unhinged and most themselves, a record that goes harder than almost anything else in their catalog.

15. Da Beatminerz -- Brownsville, Brooklyn

DJ Evil Dee and Mr. Walt grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and brought that environment's weight and darkness into their production for Black Moon, Smif-N-Wessun, and the rest of the Boot Camp Clik. Their work repositioned Brooklyn hip-hop at a moment when the West Coast was dominating, providing an answer to Dr. Dre's G-Funk that was entirely New York in its DNA. "How Many MCs" is on the playlist because Black Moon's Enta Da Stage is one of the essential Brooklyn rap albums, and this track captures what Da Beatminerz could do, menacing without being empty, musical without being soft.

16. Large Professor -- East Elmhurst, Queens

William Paul Mitchell grew up in East Elmhurst, Queens and started making beats as a teenager, coming up through the Main Source collective and developing a production style that was soulful and intricate in ways that most of his peers weren't attempting. The Illmatic demos he produced are the foundation on which one of the greatest albums ever made was built, and his own catalog across Main Source and his solo work represents some of the most sophisticated sample-based production of the 1990s. "One Time 4 Your Mind" is on the playlist because it is Large Professor producing Nas at the very beginning, in what would develop into arguably the greatest album of all time.

17. Prince Paul -- Amityville, Long Island

Paul Huston grew up in Amityville on Long Island and came up as the in-house producer for Stetsasonic before building one of the most playful and inventive bodies of work in the history of hip-hop production. 3 Feet High and Rising essentially created the template for sample-collage production, and A Prince Among Thieves demonstrated a narrative ambition that nobody else in the genre had attempted at that point. "Talking All That Jazz" is on the playlist because it is Stetsasonic defending hip-hop against its critics using hip-hop's own tools, an argument made in the form of the thing being argued for.

18. MF DOOM -- raised Freeport, Long Island

Daniel Dumile was born in London to Trinidadian parents, grew up in Freeport, Long Island, and came up in the New York underground as Zev Love X before the death of his brother DJ Subroc changed everything about what he was doing and who he was doing it as. His production, maximalist, sampler-heavy, built from cartoons and soul records and film scores and whatever else was in the crate, is among the most distinctive and influential in the history of the genre. "Doomsday" would've been on here but I used it on the previous Top 50 NY Rappers list, so I went with a Masta Ace collab that has an equally incredible sample.

19. Lord Finesse -- Bronx

Robert Hall grew up in the Bronx and came up as both an MC and a producer, becoming a central figure in the D.I.T.C. collective while developing one of the most technically accomplished lyrical styles in the underground. His production work, particularly the No Gimmicks Remix series, represents a specific approach to the beat, stripped-down, sample-forward, drums that hit without showing off, that influenced producers for years after. "Brainstorm/PSK" with KRS-One and OC is on the playlist because putting three of the Bronx's most technically proficient MCs over a Lord Finesse beat sounds great in any mix, regardless of the focus of that mix.

20. Diamond D -- Bronx

Joseph Kirkland grew up in the Bronx and came up through the Diggin' in the Crates crew alongside Lord Finesse, Showbiz, Buckwild, and Big L, developing a production style rooted in deep crate knowledge and an ear for the unexpected sample. Stunts Blunts & Hip Hop is one of the great overlooked albums of the early 1990s and his contributions to the D.I.T.C. catalog represent the Bronx underground at its most sophisticated. "Day One" is on the playlist because it is D.I.T.C. as a collective statement, Diamond D, Big L, A.G., and Lord Finesse on the same record, and it documents a scene that never got the mainstream recognition it deserved at the level of craft it was operating at.

21. Easy Mo Bee -- Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Osten Harvey Jr. grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and developed a production style that was rooted in jazz and soul samples but flexible enough to serve artists as different as Miles Davis and the Notorious B.I.G. His work on Ready to Die, particularly "Gimme the Loot" and "Machine Gun Funk," helped define the sonic landscape of one of the most important albums ever made, and his jazz production instincts gave him a range that most of his peers couldn't match. "Jeeps, Lex Coupes, Bimas & Benz" is on the playlist because this mix was at risk of becoming a Nas/Bad Boy tape, and adding in the Lost Boyz created some diversity.

22. The Hitmen -- South Bronx

Cheating a bit here since the Hitmen are 4 individual producers (3 of which are from NY), but to keep it under the 50 cap I combined them all and picked 3 of their best tracks. "All About the Benjamins," "Who Shot Ya," and "Mo Money Mo Problems" are all on the playlist because together they tell the story of what the Hitmen were doing across the Bad Boy catalog: the street-level confidence of the Benjamins record, the menace of Who Shot Ya, and the commercial peak of Mo Money Mo Problems.

23. DJ Scott La Rock -- South Bronx

Scott Sterling grew up in the South Bronx and formed Boogie Down Productions with KRS-One while working as a counselor at a homeless shelter, producing the records that launched the career of one of rap's most important figures before being shot and killed in 1987 at age twenty-five. Criminal Minded and the early BDP recordings established a South Bronx sound that was harder and more confrontational than what the rest of New York was doing, and his ear for production was more sophisticated than the raw recordings suggest. "South Bronx" is on the playlist because it is the founding document of the BDP mythology, the borough, the beef with Marley Marl and MC Shan, the claim staked, and Scott La Rock's production is doing exactly what it needs to do.

24. El-P -- Brooklyn

Jaime Meline grew up in Brooklyn and came up through the underground rap collective Company Flow, developing a production style that was claustrophobic, futurist, and completely unconcerned with what was commercially viable. Funcrusher Plus and Fantastic Damage represent the avant-garde of New York underground rap production in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the Def Jux label he built created infrastructure for a generation of artists who had nowhere else to go. "Run the Jewels" is on the playlist because it represents El-P's second creative peak, older and more confident but no less precise, and because the Run the Jewels project demonstrated that his instincts for production had only gotten sharper with time.

25. Showbiz -- Harlem, Manhattan

Roderick Eli Price grew up in Harlem and built his career alongside AG, producing one of the most consistent catalogs in the New York underground while remaining largely outside the mainstream spotlight. The Showbiz and AG records are essential documents of Harlem hip-hop in the early 1990s, and his production style, soulful, patient, built for MCs who have something to say, represents a kind of craft that commercial pressure rarely allowed to survive long in that era. "Soul Clap" is on the playlist because it is probably their most famous track, and hopefully it inspires one or two of you to go dig into their often overlooked catalog.

26. Kurtis Mantronik -- born Spanish Town, Jamaica; raised New York City

Graham Curtis el Khaleel was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, moved to Canada as a child, and arrived in New York City as a teenager, going to work as an in-store DJ at Downtown Records in Manhattan where he met MC Tee and formed Mantronix. His work in the mid-1980s, the drum programming, the 808 bass, the electro-funk synthesis, was genuinely ahead of everything else that was happening, and the argument has been made convincingly that he laid the foundation for Miami bass and trap music long before either genre existed as a named thing. "King of the Beats" is on the playlist because the title is accurate and the record holds up as a statement of what was possible when someone approached hip-hop production with both technical ambition and genuine feel.

27. Buckwild -- Bronx

Anthony Best grew up in the Bronx and established himself as one of D.I.T.C.'s most reliable and distinctive production voices, with a style that valued precision and groove over flash. His fingerprints are on some of the essential New York rap recordings of the 1990s, the Notorious B.I.G.'s "I Got a Story to Tell," Black Rob's "Whoa!," and deep cuts for Big L, Fat Joe, and O.C. that hold up as well as anything from the era. "Represent" is on the playlist for no other reason than it is my favorite track on Illmatic.

28. D-Nice -- Harlem / Bronx

Derrick Jones grew up in Harlem and the Bronx, came up as a member of Boogie Down Productions after Scott La Rock's death, and produced some of the most important records in BDP's catalog while developing simultaneously as an MC. His production on By All Means Necessary and "Self Destruction" kept BDP moving after a devastating loss and demonstrated real range, from the hard political material to the more musically experimental moments on the album. "My Name is D-Nice" is on the playlist because it is D-Nice stepping out from behind the boards and introducing himself on his own terms, and because it documents a moment when someone from the South Bronx underground was figuring out what he was capable of decades before he would become one of the surprise celebrities of the Covid lockdown.

29. Teddy Riley -- Harlem, Manhattan

Edward Theodore Riley grew up in Harlem and invented new jack swing, which is the clearest single line between 1980s R&B and the hip-hop-inflected sound that would dominate the early 1990s. His influence on the sonic landscape of New York music extends far beyond hip-hop, touching Guy, BLACKstreet, Wreckx-N-Effect, and Michael Jackson's Dangerous, but his roots in and contribution to the culture that produced hip-hop are foundational. "It Takes Two" is on the playlist because it is the record that proved Riley's instincts worked as well for hip-hop as they did for R&B, and Rob Base and E-Z Rock on a Teddy Riley production is a meeting of two specific New York energies that produced one of the most purely fun records the city ever made.

(As a side note, go read up on the Teddy Riley/Q-Tip/Hot Sex on a Platter incident if you aren't already familiar with the story.)

30. Hurby Azor -- St. Albans, Queens

Hurby Luv Bug Azor grew up in St. Albans, Queens and built his early career managing and producing Salt-N-Pepa, turning a group he assembled almost by accident into one of the most commercially successful acts in hip-hop history. He made the list because "Push It" is one of the genre-defining records of the late 1980s and because Salt-N-Pepa's success opened lanes in hip-hop for women artists that did not exist before they arrived. "Push It" is on the playlist because it is a New York rap record that the entire world knows, a song that communicates the energy of what New York rap was doing in that moment to people who were not paying attention to anything else.

31. DJ Clark Kent -- Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Rodolfo Franklin grew up in Crown Heights and became one of the most connected figures in New York rap, the man who discovered Jay-Z, who mentored Biggie before Bad Boy, who produced records across two decades for artists ranging from Aaliyah to 50 Cent. His influence on New York rap operates at a level that record credits don't fully capture since he was in the room for too many important moments to be a coincidence, and the records he did produce demonstrate genuine craft. "Guess Who's Back" is on the playlist because it is Rakim reconnecting with his New York origins over a Clark Kent beat, a pairing that represents two of Brooklyn's most important figures in the same conversation. 

DJ Clark Kent passed away in October 2024.

32. Eddie F -- Mount Vernon, NY

Eddie Ferrell grew up in Mount Vernon and built his career as one half of Heavy D & The Boyz's production team, developing a sound that was warm and groove-forward in ways that made Heavy D's elastic delivery sound better than it had any right to. Mount Vernon is technically outside the five boroughs and Long Island but Eddie F makes the cut because his work is so completely identified with the New York rap sound of the late 1980s and early 1990s that the geography argument feels pedantic. "More Bounce" is on the playlist because it is Eddie F doing exactly what the best producers of his era did: making a beat that serves the artist completely while still being immediately recognizable as his own work.

33. Tony Touch -- Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Tony Hernandez grew up in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn and built his reputation as one of the great DJ-producers of the late 1990s and 2000s, with a mixing style and beat selection that reflected the Latin and hip-hop dual heritage of his neighborhood. His Piece Maker albums are essential documents of the New York DJ-as-producer tradition, and his ability to convene artists across the underground spectrum on a single record is a skill that few producers have ever matched. "What's That (Que Eso)" with De La Soul and Mos Def is on the playlist because it is Tony Touch creating the kind of meeting that only a certain kind of New York DJ can create, the right artists, the right beat, and a result that sounds completely effortless while being anything but.

34. Ayatollah -- Queens

Lamont Dorrell grew up in Queens and developed a production style that is soulful and warm in a way that suggests deep familiarity with the records he was pulling from. "Ms. Fat Booty" is one of the great New York rap singles of the Rawkus era, and his subsequent work for Cormega, Styles P, and others demonstrated that the Fat Booty success was the leading edge of a consistent sensibility. 

35. Rockwilder -- Hollis, Queens

Dana Stinson grew up in Hollis, Queens and built his career through a sustained creative partnership with Redman that produced some of the most energetic and technically accomplished rap records of the late 1990s. His range, from the Redman catalog to Method Man, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson, and the Grammy-winning "Lady Marmalade," demonstrates an adaptability that most producers identified with a specific sound never achieve. "Oh No" is on the playlist because Mos Def, Pharoahe Monch, and Nate Dogg over a Rockwilder beat is a Rawkus-era meeting of the right artists at the right moment, and the record sounds like pure New York underground hip-hop even with a hook sung by a West Coast icon.

36. Dame Grease -- Bronx

Dame Grease grew up in the Bronx and built his career as the primary in-house producer for the Ruff Ryders roster, developing a production style that was hard and minimalist in ways that matched DMX's energy perfectly. The Ruff Ryders era was a genuine New York rap moment, commercially massive and street-credible simultaneously, and Dame Grease's production was the sonic architecture that made that moment possible. "Get at Me Dog" is on the playlist because it is Dame Grease producing DMX at the beginning of everything, the track that introduced the world to what that partnership was capable of, and it sounds like the Bronx in 1998 in the most specific and complimentary sense of that description.

37. Scram Jones -- Bronx

Scram Jones grew up in the Bronx and built his career as one of the more reliable underground producers of the Dipset era and after, with a style that was hard and sample-driven in the tradition his borough established. His production for Cam'ron, Jim Jones, Jadakiss, and Ghostface Killah represents a consistent body of work that kept New York street rap sounding like itself during a period when plenty of producers were chasing sounds from elsewhere. "Rap Kingpin" is on the playlist because the list needed some more representation from the Wu.

38. Heatmakerz -- Bronx by way of Jamaica

The Dipset sound, Cam'ron, Juelz Santana, Jim Jones, the entire Diplomat Records roster at their early 2000s peak, runs through Heatmakerz production, and that sound was as distinctive and influential as anything New York rap produced in that decade. "Dipset Anthem" is on the playlist because it is the Heatmakerz at the center of the movement they helped create, a record that sounds like a specific time and place in New York hip-hop.

39. Chyskillz -- Staten Island

Chyskillz grew up on Staten Island and built his reputation through his work with Onyx and the Def Jam roster, developing a production style that was as aggressive and confrontational as the artists he was working with. The Onyx records represent a specific moment in New York rap, the shaved heads, the mosh pit energy, the explicit rejection of everything polished and comfortable, and Chyskillz's production was doing the heavy lifting to make that aesthetic work as music rather than just as attitude. "Slam" is on the playlist because it is the record that defined what Chyskillz and Onyx were trying to do, a track built for maximum physical impact that never sacrifices the craft required to sustain it.

40. DJ Scratch -- Brooklyn

George Spivey grew up in Brooklyn and came up as EPMD's official tour DJ before developing into a producer who worked across the New York rap landscape for three decades. His production for Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J, Talib Kweli, DMX, and A Tribe Called Quest demonstrates both technical range and a consistent commitment to the New York tradition, and the turntablist credibility he brought from his EPMD years never left his production aesthetic. "Gimme Some More" is on the playlist because it is Busta Rhymes and DJ Scratch making the most aggressive and most purely physical record in either of their catalogs, a track that leaves very little room for anything except full commitment.

41. Ron Browz -- Harlem

Rondell Turner grew up in Harlem and came up working with Big L before producing a beat that ended up changing the direction of one of hip-hop's most famous feuds. He made the list primarily on the strength of one record, which is the point, and which is exactly what this list is trying to acknowledge: "Ether" is so perfectly suited to what Nas was trying to do that it elevated the diss track into something the culture treated as a verdict. 

42. Knobody -- Bronx

Knobody grew up in the Bronx and built a body of work in the underground that is more influential than his public profile suggests, with production credits that include some of the most important records in the New York underground tradition. His "Can't Knock the Hustle" placement represents a specific kind of underground-to-mainstream moment, a Bronx producer providing the sonic foundation for the opening track of the album that announced Jay-Z as a generational talent. 

43. Domingo -- East New York, Brooklyn

Domingo Padilla grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn and came up under the mentorship of Marley Marl, developing a production style that is deeply rooted in the New York boom bap tradition while incorporating Latin and Caribbean influences that reflected his own background. His work with Big L, Kool G Rap, and Rakim represents some of the most lyrically demanding production of the 1990s, beats built for MCs who had a lot to say and needed room to say it. "Hustlers & Hardcore" is on the playlist because it is a document of a specific moment in New York underground rap production, and gives a glimpse into how the NY sound had a bit of an influence on a young Detroit emcee that would soon become a global phenomenon.

44. Sha Money XL -- South Jamaica, Queens

Sha Money XL grew up in South Jamaica, Queens and built his career as part of the G-Unit infrastructure, producing some of the most commercially successful rap records of the early 2000s with a style that was hard and direct in ways that matched the moment perfectly. The G-Unit era represented a specific kind of Queens confidence about what New York rap was supposed to sound like, and Sha Money XL's production was at the center of that sound. "Magic Stick" is on the playlist because largely because it is Sha's most commercially successful release.

45. Ka -- Brownsville, Brooklyn

Kaseem Ryan grew up in the Brownsville Houses in Brooklyn and spent decades as a New York City firefighter while building one of the most distinctive and uncompromising catalogs in underground rap, producing all of his own music on a laptop between shifts, releasing it independently, and maintaining complete creative control throughout. His production aesthetic, minimal, spacious, built from samples chosen for their emotional resonance rather than their physical impact, is entirely his own and entirely correct for what he was trying to do. "Just" is on the playlist because it is Ka doing exactly what made him irreplaceable, the sample, the space, the verse, and it is offered here also as a tribute to a man who passed in 2024 and whose work deserved more attention than it received while he was alive.

46. V Don -- Queensbridge, Queens

V Don grew up in Queensbridge, the same housing project that produced Marley Marl, Nas, Mobb Deep, and Cormega, and developed a production style that is deeply rooted in that specific tradition, boom bap that takes the legacy seriously without being precious about it. His catalog of work with Queensbridge artists, particularly Cormega and the extended Queensbridge network, represents a continuity of craft that the borough has always valued above

Click here to read the rest of the article and download the track(s).

]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1515 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Wed, 3 Jun 26 12:52:49 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1515#comments

In 2009, 33jones interviewed Lara Lavi, the newly installed CEO of Death Row Records, after her company WIDEawake Entertainment Group purchased the label's catalog for $18 million in a Los Angeles bankruptcy auction. The interview raised some concerns about the lack of hip-hop industry experience, about plans to remaster a near-perfect album, about the general stability of the whole operation. Here's what happened next.

In January 2009, a Toronto-based company called WIDEawake Entertainment Group paid $18 million at a Los Angeles bankruptcy auction for the Death Row Records catalog including masters for The Chronic, Doggystyle, All Eyez on Me, and thousands of other recordings. The company's CEO was Lara Lavi, a self-described "Jewish soccer mom" and singer-songwriter who had no prior experience running a hip-hop label. She talked about remastering The Chronic, rebuilding relationships with Dre and Snoop, and making good on the royalties that Suge Knight had never paid. The optimism was genuine, but the infrastructure behind it was not.

Lara Lavi did not last the year. By November 2009, she had been removed from WIDEawake and Robert Thomson of New Solutions Financial Corporation had taken over day-to-day operations. Lavi then did what people do when they get pushed out of a company they thought they were running: she sued her former company WIDEawake, along with New Solutions and Thomson in New York County Court on November 19, 2009. Court-filed affidavits from former employees described a chaotic internal environment, with one stating that Lavi was "so out of control and vindictive that she will attempt to destroy them if they don't do her bidding." The label managed to get exactly two albums and a box-set collection to market during the entire WIDEawake period.

The deeper problem was the financing. The acquisition of Death Row was always intended to be part of a workout that started in 2005, when New Solutions Financial Corporation, a Canadian lender charging interest rates and fees between 23% and 25%, took control of a defaulted label called Sextant Records and eventually transformed it into WIDEawake Entertainment, placing Lavi, who had provided legal representation to a Sextant musician, in charge. In other words, the company that bought Death Row was itself the creation of a high-interest lender operating a distressed asset and that lender's business model had a ceiling. New Solutions Financial Corporation was eventually exposed as a Ponzi scheme.

In 2012, the company went bankrupt and sold the label and catalog to a publicly held company called Entertainment One for $6 million, a third of what WIDEawake had paid three years earlier. The Death Row catalog, which includes the masters for The Chronic and All Eyez on Me, had gone from $18 million to $6 million in three years, laundered through a Ponzi scheme and a management coup along the way.

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From eOne to Hasbro to Blackstone

Entertainment One ("eOne") was a Canadian-based entertainment company that had built its business around family content and independent film distribution, which made it roughly as logical an owner of Death Row Records as WIDEawake had been. They were, however, marginally more stable. On August 23, 2019, American toy company Hasbro announced a $4 billion purchase of eOne, meaning that for a period, the label that released Doggystyle and All Eyez on Me was technically owned by the company that makes Monopoly and My Little Pony.

Hasbro subsequently sold eOne Music to the Blackstone Group in April 2021, which rebranded the music division as MNRK Music Group and Death Row was part of that portfolio. The catalog had now passed through a soccer mom CEO, a Ponzi scheme, a bankruptcy, a family entertainment conglomerate, a toy company, and a private equity firm all within just over a decade of Suge Knight's original bankruptcy filing.

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Snoop Brings It Home

In February 2022, Snoop Dogg announced he had acquired the Death Row Records brand from MNRK Music Group. Terms were not disclosed. The announcement came four days before Snoop performed at the Super Bowl halftime show alongside Dr. Dre, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar, a piece of timing that was either very good planning or a remarkable coincidence, and almost certainly the former.

What Snoop acquired was complicated. He purchased the Death Row brand, but not necessarily all of the music rights as the catalog situation was more nuanced than the headline suggested. Notably, The Chronic had already been reunited with Interscope Records following Dr. Dre's sale of his music assets to UMG and Shamrock Holdings for an estimated $200 million, meaning the most famous album in the Death Row catalog was no longer technically part of what Snoop bought.

Immediately after the acquisition Snoop pulled the legendary catalog off streaming services, telling REVOLT it was because "those platforms don't pay," and announced plans to operate Death Row as an "NFT label" with its own app to host the music. The NFT label concept did not materialize in any meaningful form. The catalog did eventually return to streaming. In December 2022, Snoop quietly sold a stake in the label's catalog to Gamma, a new full-service music company led by former Apple Music executive Larry Jackson.

Since then, Death Row has entered a 2023 collaboration with TikTok and SoundOn, secured a publishing agreement with Reservoir Media in September 2024 covering the extensive music library, and launched TryDeathRow.com in June 2025, expanding into direct-to-consumer cannabis products. The label that introduced the world to gangsta rap is now, among other things, a weed delivery brand. This is either a betrayal of the musical legacy or its most logical endpoint depending on your perspective.

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On The Chronic Remaster

The concern raised in the 2009 interview about remastering The Chronic turned out to be at least partially warranted. The Chronic Re-Lit was released on September 1, 2009, with original Death Row sound engineer John Payne overseeing the audio. The remaster landed with a thud among audiophiles and serious listeners, with complaints about exactly what had been predicted: loudness normalization and dynamic range compression that flattened the sonic depth of the original. The plans to add new verses from "the public" did not materialize, with Dre's team of lawyers making clear that was not going to happen.

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The Full Ledger

Starting from Suge Knight's 2006 bankruptcy filing, the Death Row catalog passed through the following hands in the following order: a Los Angeles bankruptcy court, WIDEawake Entertainment Group (a company created by a Canadian Ponzi scheme lender), a management coup that removed the CEO within ten months, a second bankruptcy in 2012, Entertainment One for $6 million, Hasbro as part of a $4 billion acquisition, Blackstone Group, MNRK Music Group, and finally Snoop Dogg in 2022 who promptly pulled it from streaming and tried to make it an NFT label before pivoting to cannabis.

Lara Lavi was not, in retrospect, the problem. She was just the first of many symptoms.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1514 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Tue, 2 Jun 26 10:05:01 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1514#comments

Christopher Reid aka Kid from Kid 'n Play, the guy with the sickest high top fade of all time, dropped a new remix this week and it deserves your attention. A quick recap if you missed the news: in 2025 Reid was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, rushed to Cedars-Sinai, placed on the transplant list under urgent status, and eight days later received a donor heart. He went on Good Morning America in February 2026 to talk about it publicly, partly because he's doing well and partly because he wanted to spread awareness about the fact that a lot of people, particularly Black men, are walking around unknowingly with heart disease because they don't go to the doctor. "We don't go for a lot of reasons," he told Michael Strahan. "Sometimes we don't have insurance." The man got a second chance and immediately tried to make it useful.

The "Tin Man" remix is the musical version of that same impulse. The title is exactly what you think it is with the Wizard of Oz reference, the man looking for a heart, applied to someone who literally needed one. The song sits with mortality and with the specific experience of being a hip-hop figure from a certain era watching too many of your contemporaries and post-contemporaries end up on memorial lists rather than new release schedules. The remix is a significant upgrade over the original with a faster tempo, heavier drums, and Reid's delivery matching the urgency of the subject matter.  I think this song offers up a worthwhile path for the elder statesmen of the genre to follow if they are looking to put out new music: lean into the experiences of your life, rather than trying to imitate the younger generation.

To close this out, I have to post my favorite Kid 'N Play track:

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1513 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Tue, 2 Jun 26 09:01:01 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1513#comments

Between 2005 and 2009, a specific constellation of independent artists kept showing up in the inbox, and over time their music stopped feeling like submissions and started feeling like a scene. This mix is an attempt to document that, a collection of tracks from the artists who, collectively and without any grand plan, defined what 33jones actually sounded like during those years. Zilla Rocca, Small Professor, Curly Castro, Has-Lo, Alex Ludovico, Mally, Bless1, Griff, both Nico B's, Chachi, He's Hers, and a couple of others pop up on here. 

Some I've had a chance to meet in person over the years, some I interact with on the internets, some, to put it charitably, we've had some distance though I still have a ton of love for what they contributed. There's also at least one song on here that, having gone back and listened a few times after putting this together, I'm starting to think references a business arrangement that did not end well for everyone involved. The song is still dope, though, and brings up feelings more of what could have been rather than anything approaching animosity.

There are several other important contributors that aren't on here (Black Son, 810, Rich Port, Mydus, etc.) primarily because I started mixing and recording this without any specific tracklist in mind. I fully intend to do at least one more of these mixes, so I'll catch the rest of y'all on the next one!

Tracklist:

• Zilla Rocca: Sunbathing Bitches f/ Mally From the 612 (prod by Zilla Rocca)
• Zilla Rocca: Pepsi With Ice (prod by Alex Wood)
• Beat Garden Freestyle
• Alex Ludovico: Donuts.intro
• Small Professor: The Broken Language Homage Makers (feat. Curly Castro, Has-Lo, and Zilla Rocca
• He's Hers 33Jones Freestyle
• Chachi: CV in America
• Alex Ludovico x My Man Shafe x Zilla Rocca: New Wu freestyle
• Mally: My People
• Bless1: Bag's in my Hand
• Clean Guns: Criminology Freestyle
• Zilla Rocca: Get That Gun (Floodwatch Remix)
• Nico B: Spanglish
• Zilla Rocca: Nada (DJ Apt One Remix)
• He's Hers: Vanity Press
• Mally: Everybody's Got A Song
• Nico the Beast: A Millie Freestyle
• Mally: The Passion
• The Package: Look Out Below
• Chachi: Perde
• Alex Ludovico: d.o.a.
• Bless 1: Like
• Nico The Beast: Nights on Broad Street (prod by Noochman)
• Alex Ludovico: Don't Bother To Knock

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1512 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Mon, 1 Jun 26 00:45:01 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1512#comments

As I have slowly emerged from my social media cave over the past month and rejoined the cesspool that is xTwitter, one of the prominent themes on my timeline has been the significant amount of hate that Lizzo gets. The specifics of that hate shift week to week: this past week was accusations about her promotional strategy, before that it was something about Taylor Swift, controversies over ozempic, and on and on. In a December 2025 Substack essay she wrote about what it feels like to be on the wrong end of a personalized algorithm full of hate, describing a sense of paralysis where every mistake feels catastrophic, and that cropped up again on a series of tweets from her over the weekend.

For the record, I think Lizzo is a genuinely talented rapper who got a lot less interesting (but a lot more successful) when she went full-on pop, but I don't dismiss her musical abilities. The flak she catches is disproportionate to anything she has actually done.

But here is the thing about the current era of artist-fan hostility online: It's mostly people being cruel behind keyboards, comment sections and coordinated pile-ons, and in some cases emotionally damaging to real human beings. It is not, however, up (or down) to the level of the old school message board era, when fan interaction with underground hip-hop artists had a documented and recurring tendency to leave people in the hospital. Which had me reminiscing about one specific incident from back in the day:

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Will High vs. Vordul Mega from Cannibal Ox, Fight Card Pre-Announced on Philaflava

The Philaflava forum was one of the more contentious corners of underground hip-hop's internet, a place where people who cared intensely about rap argued about it with a directness that made Twitter look restrained and modest. One of those posters was Will High, described by The Martorialist as a "verbose steroid addict," which captures the energy of his posting style whether or not it is a legally defensible description.

Will High had a sustained antagonistic relationship with the Def Jux roster, which at the time included Cannibal Ox, El-P, Aesop Rock, and others. The specific mechanics of what happened are documented on Philaflava if you search for it, and summarized in The Martorialist's 2009 account. [Sidenote: I am borrowing heavily from The Martorialist account. I remember it happening in real time on the forums, but that blog has a great account of it that is worth reading in its own right and was much closer in time to when it happened so its accuracy is likely much higher than mine.] Will High had been escalating things for a bit and at some point he made clear, in writing, online, that something was going to happen at an upcoming Def Jux show. 

He turned up, conflict ensued, and Vordul Mega ended up in a hospital bed with his jaw wired shut.

Will High's subsequent fate is its own chapter, leading to a bid on Rikers Island on the assault charge. The Def Jux crew's decision to involve law enforcement became its own controversy on the boards, with factions forming around whether El-P had done the right thing or whether disputes of this kind were supposed to stay internal (this was around the time of the Stop Snitching movement, shout out to Melo). The answer to that question becomes clearer when you factor in that Vordul's jaw required surgical intervention, but the boards debated it anyway, because the boards debated everything.

Vordul eventually recovered from the jaw surgery and continued recording, releasing Megagraphitti through Backwoodz Studioz in 2008 before eventually retiring from music. Vast Aire carried Cannibal Ox forward.

Will High, for his part, has not entirely disappeared from hip-hop's online ecosystem. In recent years he has surfaced in threads on Reddit's hiphopheads forum, a little more restrained from the handful of times I've seen him pop up (assuming it truly is him and not someone just claiming his handle).

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If you want another example of this phenomenon, The Martorialist documented a separate incident involving Immortal Technique and a poster known as Filipino Frank that is worth reading in full.

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The difference between what Lizzo is experiencing on X and what Vordul Mega experienced on Philaflava is not just one of degree, it's structural. The current platforms are built around distance between the person typing and the person they're targeting, between the statement and its consequences. The old boards had a specific and recurring problem with collapsing that distance entirely, partly because the underground hip-hop world was small enough that everyone involved knew where everyone else was going to be, and partly because the culture those boards grew out of placed a premium on following through on what you said.

The boards are gone, Philaflava is mostly quiet, UGHH.com is dead. What replaced them is larger, louder, and in some ways crueler at scale. It has also, to date, produced considerably fewer hospital admissions.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1511 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Mon, 1 Jun 26 11:00:03 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1511#comments

Douala Central Prison, known locally as New Bell after the neighborhood it sits in, has been described as hell on earth, and the description is not hyperbole. Built to house a fraction of its current population, the prison operates at roughly 380 percent capacity. Inside, it has organized itself into unofficial neighborhoods that mirror the geography of Douala itself: Akwa, named after the city's commercial district; the Latin Quarter, where the young inmates run things; the Muslim Zone with its mosque and shoemakers; and Texas ("That's the Far West," as one inmate described it to Pan African Music in December 2025). "That's where the big bandits are." There is also a Death Sentence Quarter, though Cameroon has not carried out an execution since 1997.

Into this environment, in 2017, came Dione Roach, an Italian-American artist, filmmaker, and teacher who had come to Cameroon as a volunteer for the NGO Centro Orientamento Educativo, delivering creative workshops inside New Bell. She had been running dance and painting classes. She started thinking about music.

In 2018 she met Steve Happi, an inmate. Happi had grown up in Douala as a self-described weirdo, a teenager listening to European electro music, producing tracks inspired by house at 16, DJing across Morocco and the Mediterranean, co-founding a local festival and a record label called God Made before his career was interrupted by the circumstances that put him in New Bell. He and Roach built the studio together, becoming the first recording studio inside an African prison.

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The studio opened in 2018. Since then hundreds of songs have been recorded inside New Bell, spanning hip-hop, Afrobeat, drill, trap, gospel, and traditional Cameroonian music. The artists are current and former inmates. Some of them came in with music backgrounds. Others picked up an instrument for the first time inside. The studio gives the days structure and the inmates something that the official prison system doesn't offer: a goal, a creative outlet, and a version of the future worth imagining.

In 2022 the label released Jail Time Vol. 1, a 22-track compilation that documented the scope of what had been built. It was reviewed seriously, distributed to streaming platforms, and treated as the debut of a real label operating under unusual circumstances rather than a charity project in musical form. The same year, Jail Time opened a second studio outside the prison walls in Douala, a reinsertion space where ex-inmates can continue recording after release, with Roach and Happi available as a support structure during the period when the outside is hardest to navigate.

The operation has since expanded to a second Cameroonian prison in Ngoma and a third studio in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

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I was inspired to look into the label after hearing of a new documentary coming out, also named "Jailtime Records." The documentary is described as a "documentary musical" that follows the inmates-turned-artists of Jail Time Records inside the crammed alleyways of Douala Central Prison. Roach and Happi are directing, Taika Waititi and Rita Ora executive produced. There's no release date yet, but Waititi posted it on his IG over the weekend so I assume it is coming fairly soon.

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The label is on Instagram at @jail_time_records. The music is worth your time before the film arrives.

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]]> http://33jones.com/blogentry.asp?EID=1510 mrjones@33jones.com (Fresh) Sun, 31 May 26 09:01:01 GMT http://33jones.com/blogentrymobile.asp?EID=1510#comments