Naturally our readers may, and likely will, disagree – and we are okay with that. In the end, I think we managed to do it all justice and cover the most pertinent ground. So we tried to concoct a panoramic overview which is rooted in our common interests but also represents the diversity of our opinions and the passion driving our individual points of view. Albums and songs significant to some meant nothing to others, and matters of personal taste on what even constitutes good rap music sometimes varied wildly.
With five contributors, all of a similar age and with similar passion for rap, we each experienced the ‘backpacker’ phenomenon from different locales and perspectives. Major label releases were nixed right off the bat (ironically, this eliminated a few items that were canonical for underground fans at the time.) We then had to decide what actually constitutes backpacker rap – do abstract lyrical miracles take precedence over intelligent thugs? Do instrumental albums count? Where are the cut-off dates? Do we put precedence on certain labels and locales over others? What about records that were popular and significant at the time but didn’t age well? And so on.Īfter some strong, and frankly still ongoing arguments, we realized there is no single definitive guideline to follow. We all had a pretty solid idea of what ‘backpacker’ entails, but when it came time to actually make the list we faced an amorphous and very loosely defined pool of candidates. When John Twells sent up the Bat-Signal to do this ‘best backpacker records’ list, we assembled a cracker jack squad of late ’90s and early ’00s underground rap heads and at first it all seemed straightforward. Skip to: #50 / #20, and stream the full list on Rdio, Spotify or YouTube.
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