In middle school, my best friend's brother listened to Three 6 Mafia religiously... so for a long time that's really all I was exposed to. Can't complain, really.

The first hip hop album I remember blindly buying and really getting into was ODB - Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version. I'm pretty sure I had that before I got the actual 36 Chambers album. :laughing:

De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising for me.

Nice place to start! :)

I was very much in the 'rap is just about guns and hoes' state of thought so rapping about flowers definitely appealed to me :D

It's so weird how the "guns and hoes" image of hip-hop so completely took over the public perception in the 90s. When I was growing up I think NWA was literally the only gangsta type band that was well known, other than that hip-hop was mostly seen as party music with a smattering of political groups like Public Enemy.

Swollen Members- Bad Dreams was the first hip hop album I bought and thoroughly enjoyed

coolio-gangsta pardise was the first rap song i heard along with Snoop dogg and Trip hop songs from Prodigy

Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP was one of my first rap albums

"Can i kick it" by A Tribe Called Quest was the first hip hop song that i really got into when i was like 13 years old. Then when i was 14 Lucy Ford came out by Atmosphere... that changed my life.

Marshall Mathers LP