Hip-Hop Albums that Shaped My Identity

A classic example of how Art helps us to better see ourselves and our calling in life.

Great art helps us to see ourselves clearly by challenging the notions of who and what we THINK we can be. Hip-hop has enhanced the quality of my life in ways that I could have not have foreseen when I heard my first rap song which was “AJ Scratch” by Curtis Blow.

I want to shine a light on my most meaningful experiences with hip-hop music. I think you will definitely see yourself within some of my thoughts and experience. Hopefully, you will also learn some new things.

X-Clan: To the East Blackwards

Although my passion for all things Kemetic has waned in recent years, I have always been fascinated with the Nile Valley.

I remember sitting with my dad watching TV one day and a commercial for the Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston aired. I might have been 7-years-old. When I saw Yul Brynner in the pharonic headress I remember yelling “I WANNA SEE THAT!!!” The quick shot in the commercial had my little heart racing because the ancient Egyptian imagery was foreign to me, yet familiar to my soul.

I still remember trying to build the Sphinx in my Kindergarten sandbox. When I was 12-years-old my mom gave me her copy of Black Man of the Nile by Dr. Yosef Ben Yochannon which I still own. I remember being a child reading about “Egyptian Mystery Schools” in that book and feeling excited by the thought that my childhood world of comic books and super heroes may have been based on something REAL that I knew from a distant lifetime.

Professor X and Brother J of X-Clan captured that reality for me in such a profound way. Their music gave me a soundtrack for this ancient alien world I felt in my soul. What 12-year-old is asking there mother for books on ancient Egypt? I was trying to understand something about myself that my mother and the world immediately around me couldn’t teach me.

My family was Jamaican, so I didn’t grow up hearing Parliament Funkadelic in my home. When I first heard those beats through EPMD, X-Clan and Ice Cube I fell in love with Blackness again, because I felt like I discovered a new dimension of Blackness.

I grew up on the music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs, and Burning Spear which instilled a sense of Black pride in me when I was a toddler. But by the time I was nine those reggae songs had become so common to me. At that time, there was nowhere else for my imagination to go beyond visions of Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie, and wise Rastamen in nature. Now a big part of that stasis was based on the limits in my own imagination which took another leap during puberty.

With X-Clan I was imagining Black extraterrestrials (“Let’s take a trip through space without no suit; I’m an Afronaut. I’m the original traveler, and unraveler, of all mysteries. I touch the Earth like a child plays tag. Speak the code then depart upon raft.” - Brother J on “Earthbound.”), Pyramids, Talking Sphinxes and time traveling.

The Parliament Funkadelic music that X-Clan was sampling was other worldly and had me thinking about other dimensions and parallel universes long before I was able to intellectually comprehend and articulate these concepts with any coherency. I could see it in my mind’s eye and feel it in my soul. X-Clan stimulated my personal connection to the spiritual planes and even the cover of the album was suggestive of a a transcendent realm where wise and powerful souls of the deceased watched over Black people from the Crossroads.

Earthbound is one of the most important songs I’ve ever heard in my life. If you enjoy my work, that particular song is a major influence on me and my penchant for poetic prose through writing. Listen to Professor X’s monologue right after Brother J’s first verse on that song. Can you hear it?

Wu-Tang Clan: Wu-Tang Forever

Everyone loves Enter the 36 Chambers. So do I, but THIS is the main album from the group catalogue that I always come back to. This album reawakened the Moorish legacy that lives within my soul. This is the album where RZA became the Black Mozart.

The song “Triumph” continued where X-Clan left off for me. “Reunited” “Heaven’s Sake” and “Heaterz” set the sonic groundwork for me to consciously reconnect with the energy of the Moorish renaissance man. When this album dropped I became more introspective, as I did after first hearing X-Clan. This time was different though. With X-Clan, I was 12. When Wu-Tang Forever dropped I was 18.

I was growing bored with the ethos of money, hoes, clothes, and basketball that was normal for the era of my late teens. It was a tough time for me, because socially, I didn’t know what to do with what I was starting to think and feel. I knew that I didn’t feel like going to the Tunnel nightclub with my peers. I started to feel like the gross materialism pushed to young Black men was empty and pointless. This was in 1997 when Puff Daddy was at the height of his powers and could do no wrong in the eyes of Black America.

I felt like I should be in some kind of religious temple, although I wasn’t in search of a religion. I didn’t fit in with the world anymore, although I looked like I did based on my appearance. I was still well dressed, well groomed, handsome and could hold a conversation.

Bookstores and the central public library began to sound like worthy destinations. I rejoiced in being a nerd priest. Hermetic and Rosicrucian philosphy resonated with me early in my studies. I felt like I was reading about things that I knew, but had forgotten. Soon I started reading about the Illuminati and the New World Order which were referenced on this Wu album.

While I was reading about that I started watching wrestling heavy again after getting away from it for maybe 4 years because I thought it was really corny. Then WCW had the different New World Order factions and it was like a theater dramatization of the geo-political climate I was reading about in Behold A Pale Horse and Illuminati 666.

Funny enough, I begged my mother to buy me Illuminati 666 when I was 12 (the summer of 1991), but the book store owner at Headstart Bookstore on Flatbush in Brooklyn told me and my mom that I wouldn’t understand it because I was too young. I pulled back. While I felt the clerk was wrong, the right call was made, because the demonization of ancient Egypt and other African religions in that pro-Christian book would have confused me and thrown a lot of things off track at THAT time. That may have severely compromised my destiny. Studying the right thing out of proper sequence can really fuck your life up.

I honestly didn’t know what I was looking for when I actively started searching for obscure esoteric information (it was obscure at that time). I just knew that in the summer of 1997 I was far from who I came to planet Earth to be, and I needed to get on that path and figure things out as I went.

The archetype of the Moorish renaisance man felt familiar to me. I FELT like I was one of those Black men in medeival Europe that I was reading about in Golden Age of the Moor edited by Ivan Van Sertima. In 2023, I KNOW that it’s becuse I WAS one of those men.

The symphonic production style behind Wu-Tang Forever in combination with the high-minded lyricism helped to open that chamber in my mind.

Ghostface Killah: Supreme Clientele

Supreme Clientele era Ghostace (1998 - 2001) was a gift to hip-hop. More importantly, he was a gift to ME.

After 1997 I really cut down on listening to rap music. Most of it didn’t align with my new mindset where I was trying to connect with the spiritual concepts I was reading about. Big Pun, DMX, The Lox, Ma$e and No Limit Records had nothing to do with the new worlds I was exploring in my head.

I would often study ancient Kemet and a lot of new age stuff on the internet. I was immersed in a world of magic and there wasn’t much magical about hip-hop for me in the late 90s. Then I read a beautifully written album review for Ghost’s Supreme Clientele album in the beginning of 2000 and something told me that I needed to buy the album. So I did. I bought the cassette the week it came out and I was amazed. Ever since then, Ghost has been my favorite rapper.

The left hemisphre of my brain didn’t know what the fuck Ghost was saying, but the right hemisphere was very clear, and that was the genius of his lyricism! His rhymes created this stream of random, but powerful, images in my head accompanied by beats that gave these dream visions a deeper context. His style was perfect for the mechanics behind my own imagination even though he wasn’t talking about mysticism and esoterics. However his RHYME STYLE embodied ALL of that. The bath robes, Versace medallion, and eagle bracelet looked like neo Moorish attire.

I’m left handed and Ghost came through with the crazy right hemisphere of the brain bars. After I bought Supreme Clientele, I learned in Spin Magazine that Ghostface spent months in Benin around Vodun priests who were treating him for his diabetes. When he came back from Benin he was spitting like an extraterrestrial. Iron Man is a dope album, but Iron Man to Supreme Clientele is a HUGE leap in skill. Ghost with his abstract delivery, and Raekwon with his Hermetic word play, inspired me to write poetry for fun. I always tell people this.

With Supreme Clientele I felt a strong urge to explore writing as a creative endeavor, not just as a way to express what I was thinking about the world, which was the only thing driving me to write up until that album came out.

The new dimensions that opened within me enhanced my journalistic capabilities and you can see that fully on display in my books, especially in The Treasures of Darkness. Much love to the Vivid Lazer Eye Guy, Ghostdini for inspiring my pen.

Christopher Magneto: 32

Multiple hip-hop artists have asked me to consult them on their albums, but this is the first one where I was asked to come on board as an executive producer.

When I was editor-in-chief of an entertainment magazine my office was at the recording studio of an internationally renowned recording artist. I felt like my role as editor was very similar to what a record producer does, because I had been interviewing famous producers and learning about their processes.

In addition to being part owner of my own magazine I was a contributing writer to the greatest hip-hop magazine that ever existed: Scratch Magazine. It was totally dedicated to the art and technology of the music, not beef and gossip.

I expressed an interest in getting into music production, but nothing ever came out of it because I didn’t campaign hard enough for it. Anyway, I’ve always known that I had a good musical ear and felt that I could be a forbiddable producer if I knew how to use the equipment. I’ve had some great sounds in my head, but I didn’t know how to materialize it through the technology.

As we enter 2024, I still do know. However I know a great artist who has access to studios and was eager to listen to my suggestions concerning music production, album sequencing, album cover art, vocal recording, and promotion. That resulted in the album 32 that was highly slept on.

I can’t think of five rap albums released in 2023 that were better as complete bodies of work. Few singles were as rich and soulful as GTR-33.

Working on the album with Chris was fun. It was truly among the highlights of my year because we both gave ourselves to conceptualizing the art of it all. We both wanted to create an album with positive messages for the world that were also enjoyable to listen to and we accomplished that.

I look forward to more work with music.

Killah Priest: The Psychic World of Walter Reed

I ran into Killah Priest the day before Indigenous People’s Awareness Day (Thanksgiving) last month. I said “What up priest!” I walked over to him to give him dap, and he greeted me warmly like he knew who I was. Good spirit.

This 2013 album is one of the best pieces of audible art that I’ve heard in the last decade. The reason I list it is because it came out at a time when I was beginning to really refine my writing skills on my old Third Eye Max blog. The flows, the similies, the bar structures, and the imagery that Priest was able to conjure from his encyclopedic mind was what I needed to hear to really go there in my own work.

When I was writing Treasures of Darkness this double album—along with the Weeknd’s Trilogy—was heavy in my listening rotation. That book release marked my second birthing as a writer. I’m grateful I had musical inspiration to guide my pen.