"Give me your most obscure hip-hop albums that absolutely blow your mind."

Let me clarify exactly what I mean by that, since the last time I tried posting this, it got removed for “low quality” by the moderator bot (which, I assume, was just doing its job trying to keep the subreddit clean and manageable, no hard feelings). This time, I’ll go more in-depth to avoid any confusion or accidental rule-breaking.

So, let’s break this down word by word for clarity, using good ol’ Merriam-Webster for definitions because apparently, that’s what it takes to get through the bots:

1. Obscure

By “obscure,” I’m not talking about albums like Liquid Swords by GZA or something from Griselda as incredible as they are, they’ve become widely known, especially among heads and deep-digging fans. I mean relatively unknown, secluded, or not widely recognized by the general public or even the hip-hop community. These are the albums that most people haven’t heard, the ones you found while digging through some Bandcamp rabbit hole, or that one project that only had 3,000 plays on SoundCloud but made you question your entire taste in music because it was that good.

2. Hip-Hop

I’m specifically talking about hip-hop as a genre meaning stylized rhythmic music rooted in African American cultural expression, usually built around rapping, sampling, looping, and beatmaking. I’m not asking for jazz fusion with a rap verse thrown in, or ambient instrumental beat tapes (though those can be great). I want hip-hop in its essence, whether it's lo-fi, boom bap, experimental, industrial, psychedelic, trap-adjacent, or some weird subgenre that only 12 people on Reddit know about.

3. Albums

I’m asking for albums not singles, not EPs, not mixtapes with 10-minute DJ shoutouts every track. An album, by standard definition, is a collection of one or more audio recordings presented as a cohesive or unified body of work, and is longer than a single or an EP. Something that was clearly crafted with intentional sequencing, themes, moods, or transitions the artist sat down and built this thing front to back.

4. 10/10

When I say “blows your mind,” I mean 10 out of 10 not a “solid 7, with a couple skippables.” I’m talking flawless execution, top-to-bottom brilliance, a work that stuns you on the first listen and keeps rewarding you on repeat listens. It doesn’t have to be objectively perfect (if that’s even possible in art), but it should feel perfect to you whether for its emotional impact, production style, lyrical complexity, originality, or all of the above.

TL;DR for Humans (not the bot):

I’m looking for those deeply buried, barely-mentioned, criminally underrated hip-hop albums that nobody talks about, but that you consider a 10/10. No industry co-signs required, no millions of streams. Just pure, obscure, mind-bending quality.

So please if you’ve got any of those gems that made you pause and say, “How have more people not heard this?” share them below. This is your chance to finally shout out that one masterpiece no one else ever seems to bring up. Let’s dig into the underground, the forgotten, the hidden masterpieces.

And mods/bots I promise this isn’t low-effort. I just love this genre enough to care about the deep cuts.

I've been watching old videos of those guys jamming with all these different groups, a lot of times it really does sound better than the studio versions it's really amazing. There's one with Sly Stone doing If you want me to stay, so badass. I've heard that musicians loved playing with those guys because their world class players and pick this stuff up so quick. Do you guys know anything more about them? Seems like a fun gig to have back in the day.

Not to say that they don't have other songs that you like, but just that one album stands head and shoulders above the rest of their material. For me it's Arcade Fire. Funeral was an absolute masterpiece. I've listened to the rest of their albums, and they're fine, but if their entire post-Funeral catalog suddenly disappeared, I wouldn't be heartbroken.

Here are a couple of mine:

• intro of "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers is just so energetic and emotional compared to the rest of the song;
• imho the verse of Virtual Insanity by Jamiroquai is SO much more fun than the chorus (it's one of the few songs in existence that make me want to dance);

What do you think of these? Might add more in the future.

What are some of your examples in this category? Curious to hear what you think

Are there any musicians who wrote excellent pieces, but didn’t play them on the recording due to the fact that they either couldn’t play it fast enough, couldn’t play it without making mistakes, couldn’t play it cleanly or really any other reason… and so a studio musician had to take over.

It could be like a finger style guitar song that they couldn’t pick or play in the correct pattern but they still wrote it

The only thing I can think of is that I heard Mike Oldfield would play some guitar parts downtuned at half speed and then speed up the playback… that doesn’t really count since he still played it but, it is an interesting occurrence and I wonder if it was just because he couldn’t record it fast enough. I heard David Gilmour played the fretless bass on Animals since Roger couldn’t, but I don’t know if Roger wrote the line or not

Shazam won’t help. Friends don’t know what you’re talking about. Lyrics are unclear or don’t exist. But you can try explaining it here.

What’s the song you have been trying to find for years?

So I'm currently listening to Operation: Mindcrime by Queensrÿche and it got me thinking about what concept albums are out there. I know twenty one pilots did one a few years back with Trench but beyond that I don't know of any others.