Explore the best hip-hop concept albums of 2011 featuring standout releases with unique themes and narratives. Covering everything from personal stories and fictional worlds to cultural commentary and deeper explorations of society, these are the albums that stood out among the year's conceptual releases.
Oneirology is defined as the study of dreams. The album by CunninLynguists is very much interested in the same, backed by phenomenal dreamy production by Kno. The loose storyline for the album, in a nutshell, is that the three rappers fall asleep, dream, wake up, go back to sleep, dream again, and then fully awaken. More than that, the album can also be taken as relating also to the American Dream, and its dissection of the American Dream as a fundamental trap and concealed bait and switch.
Undun has a reverse-chronological narrative that discusses the short, tragic life of Redford Stevens, set in urban poverty. It isn’t a sprawling, rise-and-fall crime story, not a condemnation or a veneration of a man living outside the law, not explicit details of soldiers getting cut down. It’s a character study of a man whose existential crisis ends only with his death—a death went largely unspecified, the glamour and tragedy washed over with a doomed resignation.
Section.80 by Kendrick Lamar is a concept album that involves the lives of Tammy and Keisha as it explains the personal hardships in their lives. It revolves around two girls cheating on their boyfriends after discovering they were unfaithful, and eventually sleeping with each other because they can’t trust men.
With Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, Beastie Boys basically decided to split the difference between sampling and playing live instruments by recording hours and hours and hours of songs, then going back and sampling little snippets of those songs like they would any other song. Basically, they played a few albums’ worth of material just to provide sampling material, then they sampled themselves. When the album came out, the liner notes were filled with fake sample credits. They created fake bands, fake songs, fake record labels, and even fake cover art. The entire album was actually dozens of albums – like Paul’s Boutique except every sample was Beastie Boys.
The Alexander Green Project takes the familiar and reappropriates it into your own formula. It is no straightforward task, but the soul-infused production on display with this project proves that in the right hands, even the most recognizable of sources can be built into a fresh and engaging aesthetic. Kev Brown has those hands. Snippets of vocals punctuate sumptuous beats that are laced with chopped-up strings, horn stabs, and intricate guitar licks to form a collection unified by source but ranging from the breezy to the bangin’ in terms of vibe. Kaimbr adds the final piece to this musical puzzle by combining a relaxed yet confident delivery with intricate rhyme schemes that nestle themselves assuredly into the beat. Presented like a radio program sampling Al Green songs and flipping them.
The Volume in the Ground by Adeem is a concept album that takes place in the 1930’s, about a gravedigger who can hear the stories about people as he’s burying them. All the songs are different stories. A couple are about him and the rest are about the ghosts that he’s seeing and that he’s burying.
? On The Family Sign, Slug uses the mic to lead us through his world as a father, bruv and pa. It’s about your family, your time and the time you have with them. It’s about living and dying. It’s the truth about family that it comes from loyalty as much as biology. It’s about breaking down your perceptions of family and really appreciating the people who’ve made you who you are and continue to do so.
The fifteen tracks on Cinemetropolis bear names of actors, producers, and directors, making cryptic allusions to what lies within, a “mashup of life and cinema.”
Coathanga Strangla is the second installment in the The Coathanga Strangla Trilogy, about a normal person by day, who transforms into a serial killer at night. He murders rappers and anyone else who bothers him.
The Dreamer / The Believer starts off with Common expressing dreams of his past and present. Then transitions into songs about what’s real and what he believes in and how some of his dreams came true, and some didn’t. It sheds light on the thin line between dreaming and believing, which is consciousness. Dope album.
East Coast Avengers Present Avengers Airwaves is the first album from DJ/producer DC The MIDI Alien, a member of the rap group East Coast Avengers (together with MCs Esoteric and Trademarc). The story is built around skits in which the group breaks into a radio station and bounds a Rush Limbaugh-like character and hijacks his broadcast, and features a massive roster of angry underground favorites. The album is described as theme music for the revolution comrades.
The title comes from his real name, David Blake. As such, there is a personal and autobiographical concept throughout the album as DJ Quik raps about more personal things than ever before.
The Jungle is loosely based on the 1967 documentary of the same name. With its raw fusion of documentary and fiction, it shows a unique view into Philly street life through the lens of gang members themselves.
? Are You Gonna Eat That? is about Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary, who is the subject of this concept album for Aesop Rock’s side project with Rob Sonic and DJ Big Wiz. Mary Mallon (also known as Typhoid Mary), is said to be the first person (on record) in the US to be identified as a healthy carrier of the typhoid virus. What’s more, Mary Mallon was a cook by vocation, and depending upon who tells the story, you’ll hear any number of casualties/infections which resulted from Ms. Mallon’s unfortunate dedication to her profession. So no, they aren’t spreading a deadly disease, but they are, with futuristic sounds and postmodern word play, spreading an infectious alternative to the degenerating world of what we call “hip-hop.”
Ice Warriors is a self-titled sci-fi concept album about warriors from Mars who plot to make the Earth’s atmosphere inhospitable to humans but viable for the Ice Warriors to invade. They plant “seeds of death” to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere to make a morbid winter. The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and Doctor Who’s theme song is even sampled on the track Seeds of Death.
This is music created during late night shifts and therefore bares all the trademarks of the night. It is often dark in nature and packs a dreamlike and introspective tone, often built around deep basslines.
This album’s concept TV station runs one show only: the comic-drama, reality-musical called Nittyville, featuring Frank, MED, Oh No, Madlib, and a supporting cast of extras.
LABOR sees Lo cleverly using a theme of animals and occupations to metaphorically convey an assortment of issues, storylines, and displays of lyricism. “I call it the pangs of Labor, lol. I kept writing and recording and working with the band. That’s really where the whole labor concept came from. I knew that I was going to have to work even harder to put this baby out.” – One Be Lo
On W.A.R. (We Are Renegades), Monch has supposedly been sent back in time from the year 2023 by “Lieutenant Gaviston,” who is attempting to change history for the better with a massive WikiLeaks-esque dump of information. This is heady stuff but Monch is assisted on this urgent mission by a specially selected squadron of guest rappers and producers that are on his level.
Raekwon explained that the song and album title of Shaolin vs. Wu Tang are an inspiration from a 1981 Gordon Liu film, Shaolin and Wu Tang. The group (see above) uses Shaolin Island as a substitute reference for their (mostly) hometown, Staten Island. “It’s not nothing derogatory towards Wu. It’s just that Shaolin is the place, Wu-Tang is the crew that came from that place. It’s like me just going back to my history of being an emcee first, before I actually became part of Wu-Tang. I always give RZA that support as far as saying he brought Wu-Tang to the table. It was his philosophy. He picked certain dudes to be part of this group, and he said, ‘This is what it’s going to be called’. Before that, I was on the block. I was living in Shaolin. So this album just shows the street side of me, challenging the great side of Wu-Tang. Which is almost like how T.I. did T.I. vs. T.I.P..”
Perfect 天 is a both a love letter to Japan and an homage to Capcom’s classic fighting game “Street Fighter II” which celebrated it’s 20th year anniversary the year of this album’s release. The album details the journey of the protagonist and alias of the emcee/producer, Ryu Black, through the Street Fighter universe.
Saigon is out to tell the untold stories of the black community, as the story unfolds from the radio in Saigon’s jail cell, with different radio DJs showing Saigon their support. The album is ultimately a dream of Saigon being locked up and imagining that every track on the radio, as he skipped through stations, was a song of his.
One of the major themes of Black Up, evident in its conscious hip-hop roots and just the title of the album itself, is its African American theme, which is prevalent throughout the album, in which the group takes pride in being black, and they really take time to appreciate both the culture and the music attributed to it.
Welcome to Strangeland has Tech taking us on a journey through Strangeland, presented as mix between Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard Of Oz, all the while introducing us to his various labelmates along the way.
There’s a Situation on the Homefront is #3 in the Kenny Dennis Saga. This album serves as the origin story of Serengeti’s Chicago character Kenny Dennis. While cleaning his older brother’s garage, Dennis’s younger brother, Tanya, finds a cassette labeled “TASOTH.” The cassette, as it turns out, is Tha Grimm Teachaz’s lost Jive Records debut, There’s A Situation On The Homefront. As the story goes on, the group’s path to success went awry at the ‘92 Jive Records Showcase in Philadelphia, where Tha Teachaz were opening for Shaq, rap group the Fu-Schnickens, and R&B singer Tevin Campbell. Shaq insults Kenny’s mustache. The group implodes and Dennis is inconsolable. Jive drops the group from its label and the Teachaz album is shelved. Dennis returns to Chicago, works the beer trucks, and plays adult league softball on the weekends. Tha Grimm Teachaz formed in 1991 when Fresh Greg, neighborhood hero, saw something extremely distinct yet comparable in Lamont Toussaint (THE PMDF, Prince Midnight Dark Force), owner of Kauz n Effectz community center and Kenny (KDz, Kenny Dennis, Killa Deacon), dock worker. To complete his vision he paired the two with long time friend and mysterious and seldom seen producer DJ Koufi, four months later There’s a Situation on the Homefront was completed. Despite some interest from Jive, the album was never released. Only a few cassette copies made their way around, but I Getz appeared on several mixtapes in late ’93, earning Tha Teachaz a few opening slots at rap concerts around the country. In between light touring, the group managed to complete another album entitled Da End iz Near, which was also produced by Koufi. The group disbanded shortly after their biggest show, opening for Fu Schnickens with Shaq Fu and Tevin Campbell, at a Jive showcase in Philadelphia. Subsequently, Da End iz Near was shelved and and the group parted ways. But both Kenny and Lamont went on to other projects; Lamont dabbled in rave-rap and had a r&b band named TILT. while KDz completed his solo effort F.I.L.A.S., but no project would live up to the cohesiveness of Situation….
L.A. Riot is a concept album that is all about the LA riots from 1992, and the events surrounding it 20 years after the Rodney King incident. “Rodney King” discusses every detail from the night of the beating including the statistics of the basketball game King was watching, the alcohol consumption, the marijuana, the make and model of car he was driving; the chase through highways and residential areas through Lake View Terrace interspersed with King’s parole worries; the brutality captured on video by a plumber named George Holliday. He released the second single “Los Angeles” on April 29 to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that took place during the course of six days (April 29-May 4, 1992) in Los Angeles’ South Central community. He has said that these socio-economic and political uprisings as well as the recent North Africa protests serve as the backdrop behind this concept album.
Moving At Breakneck Speed is a concept album by Ugly Duckling about a band on the run from a shady, hilarious cast of misfits who want to curtail their adventures. It is an exciting and musically exotic adventure story that has our desperate heroes circling the globe to outrun an evil gang of super-criminals determined to put an end to UD once and for all. “We’ve been a group since 1993, and we’ve always felt that touring and doing shows was the most important thing for us. As well as making records, we knew we had to have a great live show in order to be able to put out music, because the live groups that started around the same time that we did fell off after about three or four years because their performance lacked.” “We were a little bit ahead of the game, or ahead of the curve, because we knew that one day, technology was gonna catch up, music was gonna be free, and it was all gonna come back to how punk rock started: you’re gonna have to get on the road and tour, shake hands with fans. Being that we’ve been on tour forever, it feels like we’re running, trying to catch up with something constantly. So that’s the name of the album, and that’s the concept behind it. We started talking about having bad guys, and naturally, you have to have Germans! We started thinking, what kind of villains are traditionally in Western pop movies. So we had the Latin guy, and we had the sultry villainess, the incapable Germans… one guy has a little Igor henchman… it’s an ensemble cast. We wanted all that silliness.” – Ugly Duckling
Wise Intelligent has become Djezuz Djonez, and he views himself as the Jesus of the ghetto, carrying the weight of the ghetto on his back and ready to bring the people to enlightenment and a better life
On The Earn, yU is “out to earn” and raps about the dedication required to earn what he needs: peace of mind, the price of sticking to his beliefs, support from and for his family etc. Staying true to yourself and working your way up are themes that crop up throughout. The Earn is a timely meditation on the struggle to advance.
