The Best Hip-Hop Concept Albums of 2013
Explore the best hip-hop concept albums of 2013 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.
No Poison, No Paradise revolves around “Sonny Jr.” and his survival on the rough streets of Detroit. The album functions as a series of dreams inside the head of Sonny Jr. He’s in a dream state. He’s seeing these different things from his younger years and his adult life. He’s seeing all these moments in his dream state. That’s why the art design for the project feels dreamy and psychedelic. That’s the state of mind he was in.
Because the Internet is the story of rapper Rick Ross’s nameless (to us, at least) son. Gambino calls this character The Boy, and we follow him on a Great Gatsby-esque adventure around Los Angeles and Sweden as he keeps up his Twitter fame by retweeting celebrities’ goofy comments, taking video of somebody getting shot up outside a club, selling weed, and falling in love (sort of).
CL took to the sky in their Imperial at the end of the Strange Journey Vol 2. The third entry in the series sees CL flying their Imperial in space, and the group is sent on a mission to verify intelligent, empathetic life.
“We called it CZARFACE because a czar is someone who is pretty much idolized by certain people no matter what he does or what he’s done. At the same time, he’s looked at like some type of martyr,” said Inspectah Deck. “Czarface is a vigilante. He’s an anti-hero character who serves as the face of the project, and his focus is on annihilating the Hip-Hop media darlings the mainstream caters to.” – Esoteric
Event 2 is ultimately about human nature in trying and desperate times. A sequel to Deltron 3030, Event 2 takes place a hundred years later with Big Brother being in control of everything, and pretty soon you won’t have any sort of privacy or personal say in your life ’cause the government is all up in your life. “That was the idea — to get people to think for themselves.” – Del
Twelve Reasons to Die is set in 1960s Italy. Tony Starks is an enforcer for the DeLuca crime family, who is murdered by his former employers after striking out on his own and falling in love with the kingpin’s daughter. His remains are melted and pressed into 12 vinyl records, one for each member of the family, which, when played, resurrect him as the Ghostface Killah, and allow him to take his revenge from beyond the grave.
Peter Pan Syndrome is about J-Zone’s apprehension to grow up. He’s trying to act his age and fit into society at large. All his friends have “grown up” and moved on, while all J-Zone knows is rap. He’s told to “grow up,” and instead J-Zone buys a drum set and doubles down.
Tangible Dream is a concept album by Oddisee dedicated to the deconstruction of our traditional ideas of success and shedding light on the possibility of a sustainable rap life. “I live in a gentrified part of Brooklyn, I eat out several times a week, I travel the world sampling the best that cities across the globe have to offer. Do I live in a penthouse loft? Am I dinning in five stars restaurants? Can you only find me in the most exclusive areas? Do I own a jet? The answer to all the above is most certainly no. I’m just a regular man from Prince George’s county, Maryland that figured shit out. I discovered that I can make a career in an arena dominated by artists that sell false dreams. I realized that although the masses may not know of my body of work, it doesn’t take the whole world to have the world I want. Tangible Dream is a mix-tape dedicated to the deconstruction of our traditional ideas of success & shedding light on the possibility of a sustainable rap life. These rhymes were written in economy class seats, these beats were produced on long bus trips & these songs were recorded in airbnb apartments. All I want to do is make music for a living so that I can live to make music. The only dreams I’m interested in are the ones I can grasp. It just so happens that anything you want bad enough can be obtained. Perhaps the world may never know of my accomplishments but accomplishments they are nonetheless.”
“The Beauty In All is about the flaws & mistakes that give life its character and worth – how even ignorance can give light to knowledge. For me, not knowing how to do something & still trying is a process that helped my production style evolve. If everything we are is out in perfect tutorials, we might never deviate from the teacher. This record is dedicated to imperfection and the sense of pride & accomplishment we get from our struggles. Hopefully, you listen to this record, reflect on the ups & downs of life, and see the beauty in all.” – Oddisee
Run The Jewels is a hip-hop collaboration between Killer Mike and El-P after a friendship and business relationship blossomed after El-P produced Mike’s phenomenal 2012 akum R.A.P. Music. The term Running the Jewels stems from LL Cool J’s “Cheesy Rat Blues: “Just throw your hands in the air And wave ‘em like you just don’t care Keep ’em there Yo, run the jewels, run the jewels, run the jewels” Killer Mike and El-P inhabit more aggressive, braggadocious versions of themselves, Running the Jewels by stealing from the rich, stunting on fools, and shit talking all the rappers beneath them. Mike and Jamie both go H.A.M. over El-P-produced bangers, with stories of robbery, cannibalism, shots towards a few of rap’s greats and crawling out of the water and into sanity. For Mike and El, the song Sea Legs works as a metaphor for being rebelliously out of touch with an oppressive reality. El-P talks about the pitfalls of the urban jungle and a corrupt self-serving elite but rises above it by realizing that true wealth and power are in self-awareness and positive energy. Killer Mike talks about staying true to himself and never going soft or superficial with his music or his life—always keeping it real despite the twisted forces that pervade the government (AmeriKKKa) and the music industry, with a shout out at the end to other artists doing the same.
Each song in The Blue Collar Recital is supposed to represent a moment in the day in the life of a blue-collar American worker, from “It’s 5am Smell The Roses,” to “Traffic Jammin.” Working hard for not enough pay, and hustlin’ through an unfair world, the relatability through lyrics is the foundation of The Blue Collar Recital.
The Antihero Project is a dark social parody driven by Orwellian imagery and inspired by present-day oppressive forces of all kinds.
Mannibalector is the conclusion to Brotha Lynch Hung’s 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. Mannibalector reveals the rise and the bloody fall of the Coathanga Strangla as the mask finally slips and he starts to go insane, ultimately ending with his supposed suicide.
Perfect Hair revolves around the inequality found at the heart of the rich, with the classic idiom us vs. them used as a rallying cry for the record’s foundation. The expansion of this concept clearly alluded to Driver himself, a reflective piece where perfect hair was used as a scapegoat, a thing he wasn’t and didn’t wish to aspire to What would Gravity’s Rainbow sound like as a rap album? Here is an album which, if we may, reminds the listener of their whispered allegiances to fundamental realities. The brushstrokes are delicate, stabbing, pointed. The overwhelming crescendo they whirl towards may be one of bitterness, and rightfully so. There is also lightness. A black man is giggling and pointing at you. It may have everything and nothing to do with rap and one’s place in it. Humiliation, no longer a threat—but a reality, has been exhausted. Perfect Hair is what remains.
A dark, depressing concept album about all things cult and occult. Nine tracks of millennial anxiety and fever visions, black noise and white phosphorus, this is For Madmen Only.
The overarching themes of philosophy, religion, science, and pop culture interplay throughout the whole album and deal with common doubts and motifs found in many divine texts.
On Old, Brown tells a story in one long concept-album arc. But there’s a twist here: Brown’s childhood and his drug-dealing past were so fucked up and squalid and desensitizing that they linger with him and haunt him; the trauma doesn’t go away just because he’s making money rapping. And anyway, he’s using that money to try and forget about the terrible things he’s seen, obliterating his brain on every drug he can find, and it’s not working. He’s able to find little moments of exhilarated escape, but he’s losing control chasing those moments, and he never really gets a chance to step back and appreciate the better parts of his life because that life is still whirling too fast. – (via Stereogum)
Jimmy’s Back is a concept album based on the book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, and that the U.S. criminal justice system is being used as a contemporary system of racial control even as it adheres to the principle of colorblindness. “Mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow.”
“Sometimes there’s a record,” says Duke Buzzy. “I won’t say a great record, cuz what’s a great record? But sometimes there’s a record, and well… That’s the record for its time and place. It fits right in there,” And that’s Dude Nukem: The Duke Abides, a concept album inspired by and sampling the film The Big Lebowski.
Sometimes you have to leave home, and what you are familiar with, to actually find out who you are. In HIGH NOON, EARLY finds himself on that journey when he decides to leave the DMV, and embark on a trip to Hollywood. From the cinematic beginning feel of the self-titled track, EARLY quickly lets you know that you’re in for a chaotic ride as the album confronts his biggest fears and conquers them. You can either become the sum of your past or let the past make you stronger.
Level Up is a narrative-based project following Elite through the first year of his life after moving from Byram, CT, to Brooklyn, NY. The story starts with a Prologue introducing the supporting character (She), which is the only non-linear section of the story. “She” is reintroduced in the song “Devil In a Red Dress,” but until then, we follow Elite through his newly found loco life, exploring being single and free. The second half of the project focuses on a relationship that seemed doomed from the start but took some complex twists and turns before crumbling during the climax of “Game 7”. The title track “Level Up” signifies Elite’s ascension to new heights of understanding and success, but only after experiencing pain. We must tear the muscle in order for it to grow back stronger.
Woke Up Alone is a necromancing play told in five scenes. It starts with the grieving protagonist struggling to grasp the grim reality of waking up to find out his wife has died in the night and proceeds through the Five Stages of Grief. Four lush and mournful instrumental interludes woven throughout and bookending Woke Up Alone capture the emotions of the widower as he speaks with his wife’s ghost, a false prophet, a doctor, a psychiatrist, a medicine man, his own conscience and the devil.
Monster has a pretty tangible theme about embracing the uglier sides of yourself and surrendering to your inner monster. “Monster” and “Wesley Presley” both show that in the womanizing sense and “throw away” and “Codeine Crazy” both show the more destructive sides of it.
The Galactic Brethren are a time-traveling sonic force consisting of Moemaw Naedon, Brother Seamus, and their mischievous sidekick, TJ. One afternoon in Naedon’s lab, Brother Seamus and Naedon were checking out their recent digs from a local record shop when, let’s just say, things went in an unexpected direction. What follows is a twisted cosmic tale they were able to harness and bring to you on their album. The Fall of Zidor is a sci-fi concept album which includes tales of: record digging, the apocalypse, a mutant regime spearheaded by a tyrant named Zidor, explorations into the Buddhist theory of unnattachement, and extreme use of a drug/substance called timedust.
Cilvia Demo sums up Isaiah Rashad’s emotional struggle, from his teenage to adolescent years. The project is characterized by its personal themes, such as substance abuse, fatherhood, coming of age, and police brutality.
“Squid” is a concept album from Atlanta based producer/artist Izzy Jone$. The album follows the story of a king who is betrayed on many levels by people close to him… An allusion to the music industry and how aspiring artists are constantly taken advantage of by their label and sometimes even their team. “the squid king fell in love with a Leo. He was a Gemini and his best friend was a Scorpio. Her killer was an Aries.”
The Night’s Gambit is a chess-themed concept album that parallels the cerebral game with the gang life selling drugs on the street, from the perspective of a “smart ass pawn.”
Structured like a series of movie scenes, Yeezus follows the progression of this hyperbolic and fictional version of Kanye West. Yeezus is the journey of an anti-hero from supreme arrogance to vulnerable weakness to becoming a cautious romantic.
“I wanted to record this and stick to the concept and make sure that everything I wanted to do was in this. I wanted people to know who Walter Reed from the Planet of a Million Years was.” – KP
In The City Under the City, a collaboration between producer L’Orange and rapper Stik Figa, you turn down a dark alley, seeking refuge from the sweltering heat of the factories that line the city streets. As you wind through a maze of alleyways, darkness falls and the sky glows a toxic orange. You hear music coming from behind a door at the end of a dark and narrow tunnel. You know that once you open the door and descend into a world beneath the concrete, you will never be the same. There’s a world under the concrete. The question is – can you see it? L’Orange claims: “You know that once you open the door and descend into a world beneath the concrete, you will never be the same” – claiming it represents a grim secret word underneath our normal one.
When cases of a deadly disease start to show up across the globe, a team of scientists is sent out to find its origin in hopes of developing a cure. They get more than they bargained for when their plane crash-lands on a mysterious island in the South Pacific. Meanwhile, the disease continues to spread worldwide until no more havens exist and the unimaginable becomes the inevitable.
Mac Miller had mentioned in interviews that he often watched movies with the sound turned off while making music. It allowed him to focus on the visual storytelling and use the imagery as inspiration. With Watching Movies With the Sound Off, Mac stuck to a theme of watching movies with no sound, looking at an image or a sequence of events just as they are, with no script or bias. The concept is elaborated in the lyrics metaphorically as Mac observes life without external noise—his struggles with fame, identity, and mental health, “very introspective and very personal so it’s kind of throwing it all out there and seeing what happens.” – Mac Miller
Mad Dukez describes Gettin’ Gatsby as paying homage to the roaring twenties. Horns and brass on nearly every track, the party jams reflect an American dream, not of freedom and liberty, but the dream of amassing a hoard of wealth. Living a life of luxury is “getting Gatsby.”
Continuing the theme of the series of showing different stages of Vietnam, The Golden Triangle focuses on heroin. Most of the world’s heroin came from the Golden Triangle, but they are also saying that music is a drug and that’s their drug. This time, samples from the film American Gangster reinforce the theme.
The album title and concept was based on the 1903 essay of the same name by W.E.B. Du Bois. Talented 10th is not just a picture of Christian salvation but also focuses on education, relationships and social change – all filtered through a biblical worldview. “I’ve always loved W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, and I started reading books about them and the struggle of slavery, post-slavery and the African American plight,” Sho Baraka said. “Then I stumbled upon Du Bois’ Talented 10th, the book he wrote, and it spoke exactly to where I am. Where you have a group of people who are struggling, who are in pain, whether it be economic, physical or spiritual, but you have people around who have answers, resources, gifts, talents who can help those individuals.” And so the whole concept of the album is, based on the book, is kind of like people who have time, talent and treasure using those gifts to the benefit of other folks. Not just teaching men to be carpenters, but teaching carpenters to be men.
THE DOOM BROTHERZ, AKA THE MAN IN THE MASK & Solomon Strange are criminals trapped in a vast prison discovered by Citadelian scientists, where they are able to see and hear all destruction since the beginning of time within the universe; prisoners of The Zone have been known to escape and bring Earth’s heroes against them. THE MAN IN THE MASK comes from a planet in an alternative reality, where he became mad with destruction. His home planet is a hot planet with reptilian-type beings, who are sinister, cunning, and untrustworthy. He was tormented for his weak, kind nature as a youth by everyone, even his own parents and family. This drove him mad to the point of insanity. He believes everyone in The Universe, and even alternate dimensions, are like this, so he has [taken it upon himself to cleanse it.
The Guild project was inspired by the Cartoon Network series Venture Brothers, which runs on Adult Swim. The Guild specifically references The Guild of Calamitous Intent, the consortium of evil villains from the show. The show cleared all of the samples and gave their official blessing to this concept project. This album is a commentary on hate. It exists on a continuum spanning from the comical to the satirical to the serious
In Wolf, Tyler is sent to Camp Flog Gnaw to deal with the loss of his grandmother and his inability to contact his father suggesting that Camp Flog Gnaw may be a misnomer for the therapy and asylum sessions set out on BASTARD and GOBLIN, respectively. Tyler gets into it with multiple characters at camp, falls in and out of love, and goes to war. The album ends with Tyler getting sent to Dr. TC for getting caught masturbating.
Ugly Heroes is a concept album that covers everything from class structure to human emotion. An Ugly Hero is considered a myth. Growing up, the heroes we saw in cartoons and movies were perfectly chiseled, intelligent, and had senses none of us possess. An UGLY HERO is the everyday blue collar individual that makes the world go ’round. These are the heroes that work hard all day, everyday to help ensure that the lives around them are taken care of, and do it all without recognition. They wear themselves into the ground and sacrifice vanity for family.
The Slow Twilight is a concept project comprised of MC Zilla Rocca and producer Douglas Martin, and is loosely based off the NYC Noir Flick A Blast of Silence which is about a hired killer from Cleveland who returns to NYC and has a job to do on a second-string mob boss in New York, but a special girl from his past and a fat gun dealer with pet rats get in his way. Stitched together with clips from the New York City noir flick, there’s something crepuscular about The Slow Twilight—a record haunted by a grueling paranoia that only makes sense after the sun sets. Zilla Rocca catalogues “the worst year of [his] life,” without wallowing in soft-headed indulgence, balancing a nuanced introspection with that essential element of good hip-hop: if you crank it up, it knocks.