If you don't have this, you need it. It's the rare convergence of audio and visual quality that elevates street product into art. The tracklist SWOLE with super-high ratio of classics? Check. Quotables upon quotables on top of drum machine brilliance? Top 5 bootleg gear / outfit coordination / art direction (don't even get us started on DOOKIE ROPE)? Check check and more check. Yeah, this is like your library card into hip-hop nerdom. You're not allowed to mouth along to "Shook Ones" in the club if you can't recite the first verse of "Eric B. Is President." Many producers have sat under the stars and pondered the beautiful moment when Dennis Edwards' bassline was injected into Ashley's Roachclip (the fifth single on the album!). Yeah, we can't even get mad at "Chinese Arithmetic," there's some reverence in those cuts. Or what about Eric B. having the balls to stick the DJ cut as the second track on the album... wait rewind to that first track... the best 808 bass kick intro on album ever? Official 2018 reissue comes on double LP with replica pic sleeve and 4th & B'way labels. Recommended.

• music label: Island / 4th & Broadway 2018

reviewed by the mgmnt 07/2018