No. 20: Redman

I was never a huge, huge EPMD fan, so I got hyped up for Redman's solo career through word of mouth. When Whut? Thee Album dropped in 1992, I was sold immediately.

Reggie Noble's debut starts off on a perfect note — there aren't too many songs out there that get you hyped up as easily as "Time 4 Sum Aksion" — and keeps the bar set high throughout. Red even gets a little educational on that ass with "How To Roll A Blunt."

Press rewind if I haven't blown your mind...

When the follow-up, Dare Iz A Darkside, dropped in 1994, my roommate and I set a new record for beating the shit out of a single tape (excluding the accidental drop down 4 flights of stairs that it magically survived). "Can't Wait" remains one of my favorite hip-hop songs ever.

Few emcees can claim a better three-album run than Whut?, Dare and Muddy Waters (which many critics consider his best work). By 1996, Redman was on track to put together a top-10 career, and his rumored project with a still-hot (at the time) Method Man had fans foaming at the mouth.

Unfortunately, Blackout!, was repeatedly delayed, not coming out until fall of 1999...and in the meantime, Redman's career took a hit when his fourth solo LP, Doc's Da Name 2000, proved to be a massive disappointment. When Blackout! finally did drop, it also failed to live up to the considerable hype, and any hope that Red had of making the short list of elite emcees was essentially gone.

In recent years, he's probably been more well-known for his movie work, but Reggie has gotten back to making records after a six-year hiatus between full-length projects (2001 to 2007). He hasn't come close to replicating his early success commercially or critically, so the mid-1990s is pretty much all that he has to brag about.

That's still plenty.