3 Feet High and Rising

de la's debut represented a new path for hip-hop, a reaction to conventions that had turned into cliches. it was friendly and playful enough to cross over to a pop audience (thanks to prince paul's production, which found the funk hiding inside steely dan and "schoolhouse rock"), but complicated and tough enough to be hugely influential in the hip-hop world. cryptic but ecstatic, and sometimes sexy (especially the ingenious double-entendre "buddy"), trugoy and posdnuos's lyrics invented a "new style of speak," dense with self-invented slang and metaphors. the hits, including "say no go" and "me myself and i," are delightful, but the little sketches and sound-experiments between them make the whole disc flow effortlessly. this version has an extra cd of 14 tracks.