50. Boogie Down Production, Criminal Minded
The only BDP album that featured DJ Scott La Rock, the art on the Criminal Minded cover was meant to convey what the new incarnation of 1960s freedom fighters would look like as 1987 Hip-Hoppers. It was a stark contrast to what the street rappers were talking about back then … KRS1 explained to MTV in 2010, “The idea was revolutionaries. If you look at the cover of Criminal Minded, that’s what we were saying modern-day Black Panthers are. I had the gun belt going over the shoulder, grenades. That wasn’t hood. It wasn’t like [we] had guns on the table like we were drug dealers — we had grenades.” Scott La Rock with the blammy and with a steely-eyed Parker, fans should have known from the start that Boogie Down Production was going to transform rap music into a space where the streets, consciousness, and lyricism collided. And we are all the better for that.