So why is Cappadonna’s The Yin and the Yang on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
“Love Is the Message” – credited to Cappadonna and Raekwon and leveraging a magical, funky, and percolating sample from MFSB – is one of my favorite underground hip hop tracks of all time.
It’s the perfect combination of raw and polished, gritty and groovy, and overall it’s catchy in the kind of way that I could just put this thing on repeat and I’m set for the entirety of the party’s duration.
And I love the way the chorus swings into strings playing over that funky little bass beat.
Cappadonna is a member of the sprawling Wu-Tang Clan Connected Universe that I came to appreciate relatively late, and he’s grown on me evermore over the years.
When I eventually latched onto The Pillage (#212 of best 1,000 albums ever), I knew that I was truly onto something special. And it was tracks like “Slang Editorial” and “Milk the Cow” that put me into the mode of throwing on Cappadonna tracks on repeat – when you’ve got something going that good, why mess with it by changing up songs at all sometimes, right? What, I’m the crazy one? Just because I’m asking rhetorical questions of myself amidst the 868th full-blown article I’ve written about 1,000 albums that I ranked in order?
“Super Model,” featuring Ghostface Killah, throws a bluesy hip hop screwball into the mix, but maintains a bouncy groove that always gets my head bobbing.
The production on “Shake Dat,” meanwhile, featuring Jammie Sommers, is just bonkers in a way that I am all about. And Jammie brings in a weirdo intense energy that is simply wild.
“War Rats” is lusher and more laid back while maintaining a gritty NYC and Wu-Tang sensibility.
Some stats & info about Cappadonna – The Yin and the Yang
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rap, Hip Hop, East Coast Rap, Underground Hip Hop, Hardcore Rap
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 2.5 out of 5 stars (!?)
- When was The Yin and the Yang released? 2001
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #133 out of 1,000
Cappadonna’s The Yin and the Yang on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Cappadonna’s The Yin and the Yang that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Dart clapper, ran like a snapper, watch out for Cappa.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.