The Best Hip-Hop Concept Albums of 2009
Explore the best hip-hop concept albums of 2009 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.
A lonely guy sits in his room and dreams of success. He uses drugs to calm his fears and fend off night terrors. He eventually gets recognized as the star he always knew he was, and lives the superstar life… or maybe he’s still dreaming about that stage of his life, and we’re just witnessing what his dreams sound like.
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II is the sequel to 1995’s rap mafioso gangster movie. Here, we see Raekwon has seemingly embraced this life, even though in the first album he tried to leave the criminal life behind. The narrative has these older characters taking a look back at their pitfalls and spoils as they have finally risen to the top.
Stereotype is meant to make it easier for people to start to rethink certain stereotypes.
Well Isn’t This Awkward features an introduction by the character “Connor Harrington”, who introduces a lost classic film by “Charles Hamilton”, a love story in which a guy from the streets, a “street rat,” ends up with the rich lady in the penthouse, and no one knows who the leading actress was… In reality, this is an album seemingly dedicated to Hamilton’s crush on Rihanna.
Strange Journey Volume One is a concept mixtape featuring many of CL’s friends and centered on touring and travel.
Strange Journey Volume Two is a sequel concept mixtape, but this time CL turns in their broken-down van for a ’73 Imperial and continues the loose theme of touring and travelling with their friends
In the narrative of Saving Seamus Ryan, Seamus Ryan has just put his sick dog down and is about to propose to his girlfriend, but on his way home, he is robbed and shot. This sends his life out of control – he can no longer focus on his music which is not paying the bills enough to keep him afloat (or to afford to replace the ring), and he is fighting with his girlfriend, so he goes gunning after the robbers.
On his debut release, Boy Meets World, Fashawn is literally introduced to the world, and the themes are about growing up and finding your voice in the world.
Gift of Gab keeps the celestial theme going with his follow-up to 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up. Escape 2 Mars is loosely based around the concept of how humans have destroyed the earth with pollution, wars, and all other ills that we bring upon the environment, and thus the remaining humans must escape to Mars.
Over fifteen tracks, An Unwelcome Guest tells the story of one man moving from east to west in the wake of a man-made disaster and his own personal tragedy. Also, there are zombies. The album relates social and political issues like immigration, conspiracy, and violence in a zombie apocalypse narrative.
Madlib’s 5 & 6th volumes of Beat Konducta are his & J.Rocc’s tribute to J Dilla.
Attention Deficit is wholly inspired by our culture’s reliance on television, from it being used as a babysitter, to how it distorts your perception of reality, or how it pushes unrealistic expectations of beauty and acceptance. It also reflects Wale’s newfound attention that fame brings and our celebrity culture.
Ace One riffs with an imaginary audience and introduces his fictional live band, The Lonely Ones, that pays homage to black music genres of the past by merging them stylistically with hip hop.
Named after two characters from the same 70s flick which inspired their 1996 single “Coolie High”, Suede and Cheeba stick to their ivory-handled guns throughout Stone And Rob, painting vivid, slang-heavy pictures over nickel-slick soundscapes which have a slightly more updated feel in places this time around.
Self Explanatory hosts Classified’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, which are different songs all of which connect with the theme of paving your own way in order to succeed in life. An adventurous concept album, Self Explanatory encourages the listener to pick the record’s sequence of events. Heads were instructed to skip ahead to different tracks dependent upon their mood.
The Apartment is a narrative concept album involving the shady friend of Dynas who’s watching his apartment for him while he’s out on tour and is taking advantage of the situation. “This album was constructed during and due to the ups and downs I’ve had living by myself in my apartment. It is a coming of age manifesto of sorts. For many young people, their first taste of freedom of expression and adulthood develops in an apartment. I left the nest and found both heaven and hell at the same time out on my own in my apartment. I developed a sense of self while dealing with the opposite sex in my apartment. I have survived and overcome struggles while living in my apartment. I have worshiped, gone to war and made love in my apartment. It was my cocoon now my spirit flies through sound waves.” -Dynas
The title of Type I: The Kardashev Scale originated from the work of Nikolai Kardashev, a Russian scientist. Upon examining the cosmos, Kardashev realized that other galactic civilizations could be perhaps millions or even billions of years ahead of us technologically, so he created the Kardashev scale, a metric that determines the technological abilities of a society based on their ability to harness energy. Within The Kardashev Scale, Greydon employs creative samples from respected astrophysicists like Michio Kaku and Carl Sagan
The 2 AM Tape is an instrumental concept album revolving around all of the common characters, events, and thoughts that take place in the middle of the night…2 AM. The album provides a soundtrack to these events, and takes the listener on a journey through the goings on of 2 AM.
Billed as a mere appetizer before what would become No Love Lost, Escape Route has a Mood Muzik-feel, Budden’s own “release therapy” session and an apt escape route as Joe Budden maps out his way to daylight and his own salvation.
1969 is named after the year of Myka 9’s birth, and some of his lyrics channel the creative spirit of the era, relating his own childhood memories and the world events of those years.
“I really wanted to document the up and down process of trying to grow, by capturing it through song. That’s how the concept of the Rise and Fall of River Nelson came to be.” – River Nelson
No More Heroes is the second entry in The Listener’s Trilogy by Solillaquists of Sound. The album follows a narrative that sees the rise and fall of the archetypal hero. By the end of the album the heroes all die. Hence the title: No More Heroes.
A picaresque crime adventure, Turn up the Smooth details Stoopz N Breeze’s migration to Dade County and Miami. Full of vice, cocaine, violence, smooth beats, and strong characters, everything about this album is old school mixed with a production that rivals the Yacht Rock smoothness of the 1980s.
Indonesia is inspired by the titular country as well as Asia in general. Lots of the samples feature Asian instrumentation like the Suling flute and the Angklung. Lyrics also further reinforce this concept as the Super Chron Flight Brothers rap about traveling, different locations in general, imperialism, and of course, smoking and selling weed.
Tanya Morgan is Von Pea and Donwill, and together they create their own world. This world is named Brooklynati, and it is fake and real all at the same time. It is what you might get if Brooklyn and Cincinnati were joined. It is what you get when a producer from Brooklyn and two emcees from Cincinnati decide to keep as real as real can get and do their own thing. The whole concept of BrooklyNati makes sense; These guys are making music so unlike the Hip-Hop of today that they needed to create an alternate universe for people to even comprehend the greatness of their music. Anyone fed up with the current state of wackness in Hip-Hop should take a trip here as everything is lovely in BrooklyNati! It is based on the creation of a fictitious city combining elements from both Cincinnati, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York. The album contains a mixture of hip hop songs, and spoken interludes which tell stories relating to the fictional city of Brooklynati. These interludes feature both fictional characters from the city, such as DJ Jurx, the proprietor of Brooklynati’s only record store, as well as real radio personalities, such as Miss Info of New York’s Hot 97, who add a smattering of radio chatter on the more mundane aspects of life in Brooklynati