Recently in Hip-Hop's 100 Non-Essential Tracks Category

(Hip-Hop's 100 Non-Essential Tracks is a regular feature highlighting the genre's greatest overlooked and/or forgotten tracks. Click here for all entries.)

The toilet. In Duchamp’s hands, it transformed the art world, forever muddling the relationship between sign and signifier. The King of Rock 'n' Roll found it a suitable final resting place, a gateway between Graceland and the pearly gates. But for perpetually stoned H-Town rapper Devin the Dude, the bathroom represents a small, smelly fortress of solitude, an escape from the daily drudgery of life: the expectations of chatter-happy baby mamas, the high volume of straining masculinity and the half-baked plots of felonious friends. As Devin’s sluggish flow relaxes over the slow, spidery Southern soul like a cat in sunlight, he informs a too-cluttered world, “When you finish crowing, or whatever the f*ck it is you’re doing, holla at me, I’ll be in the bathroom -- boo boo'n.”

Play "Boo Boo'n'"

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Old Dirty Bastard upon his release from prison in 2003.

(Hip-Hop's 100 Non-Essential Tracks is a regular feature highlighting the genre's greatest overlooked and/or forgotten tracks. Click here for all entries. )

Have you ever found yourself in a public place, say a supermarket, and suddenly you're struck with the urge to shriek out something completely, unforgivably repulsive, but rather than blurt some non sequitur about midgets and water balloons you take a deep breath, put the carrots in the cart and keep it moving? For most ordinary people, ignoring these urges is essential. But Ol' Dirty Bastard isn't ordinary. The Wu Tang Clan emcee made a career out of channeling his inner-crazy, and listening to the Wu-Tang's finest is like playing a game of Russian roulette: you never know when he's going to pop off and lose it. This is true of almost any of his songs, but "I Can't Wait" is perhaps the point where the signal-to-crazy ratio really tips the scales. In the first 30 seconds, he christens himself "Big Baby Jesus" and threatens to bring on Armageddon while mysteriously alluding to the "ThighMaster." Later, he chides fellow emcees for using the word "napkin," launches into a screed about healthcare and asks an unidentified female to take off her shoes. He ends the song with an extended shout out to, among others, the "Eskimos," the "munchkins," Suge Knight and "the army, air force, navy and marines/ know what I'm saying?" Not really, Dirt, but we'll always love you.

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With its apocalyptic overtures and hints of 3 A.M., dead-drunk dread, “Dinosauria, We” (the spoken-word bit that opens up MF DOOM’s “Cellz”) is prototypical Charles Bukowski. “Radiated robot men” roam the streets where the “sun is masked.” “Mrs. Death laughs” and “the chosen watch from space platforms.” Rivers vanish. Bodies rot. The rain stops. And, somewhere, the poet’s lines dissolve into spurts of syllables: “Castrated/ Debauched/ Disinherited/ Because of this/ Fooled by this/ Used by this/ Pissed on by this/ Made crazy and sick by this/ Made violent/ Made inhuman.”

It’s prophecy mired in hallucinogenic pop-culture references -- dime-store, sci-fi nihilism doubled over by bare-knuckle linguistic stunts. It’s pure Bukowski, but it's also pure DOOM. “Revelations in Braille” reveal realms of “smelly gel fume.” Nations fail, and blazing swords praise the lord as our masked supervillain can be found “Sittin' in the kitchen/ Pissin'/ Twitchin'/ Kissin' steel lead.” DOOM has always positioned his low-cult kitsch as dramatic divination, despite his hemorrhage of stray images that warps meaning for sound. But somehow, a message emerges: DOOM is back. Hide the women and children. 

Play "Cellz"