Boogie Down Productions

This album opens with a sly little JB guitar sig, a quick turntable scratch and KRS-One declaring, "Class is in session." And though KRS would become hip-hop's self-anointed teacher, the lesson here is murky and violent. KRS threatens Marly Marl's Juice Crew on "South Bronx," "bucks down a crack dealer named Peter" on "9 MM Goes Bang" and concludes that "the girlies are free 'cuz the crack cost money" on "P is Free Remix." Shortly after the release of this album, Scott La Rock was shot down in the Bronx, a tragedy that would forever transform both KRS and hip-hop.

Though one's moralistic quibbles do recede as history demonstrates how much worse things can get and how little music has to do with it, KRS-One's talk of f*cking virgins and blowing brains out will never make him my B-boy of the first resort. I could do without the turf war, too--from the Lower East Side, not to mention Kingston or Kinshasa (or Podunk), Queens and the South Bronx are both def enough. But his mind is complex and exemplary--he's sharp and articulate, his idealism more than a gang-code and his confusion profound. And Scott LaRock was a genius. Sampling blues metal as well as James Brown, spinning grooves to toast by, blind-siding the beat with grunts and telephones and dim backtalk, he was spare and rich simultaneously. Music will miss him more than Jaco Pastorius and Will Shatter put together. (Grade - B+)