Explore the best hip-hop concept albums of 2017 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.
Perestroika translates to “Restructuring,” and a major theme of the album is how the world needs change. That things are fucked up right now, and its not okay. Perestroika transports you to Cold War, Soviet Russia. From the Kremlin, to small villages affected by the economically devastating times of Perestroika, this album is a salute to the underdog and all those who are able to survive the coldest winters. Apathy (Demigodz, Army of the Pharaohs) and O.C. (D.I.T.C. – Diggin’ In The Crates) combine forces to form this supergroup inspired by the Cold War being waged on the rap industry. Anti-mainstream propaganda has become a bit of a cliché, so instead of speaking out against the unflattering direction that today’s hip hop music has gone in, Apathy and O.C. have taken action by building a pillar in the ruins of what’s left of true school hip hop.
4eva Is a Mighty Long Time is a concept album of two halves that unfurls as a unified, cohesive whole despite featuring multiple producers, the first disc is a hard-hitting, braggadocious expose of K.R.I.T.’s public alter ego, while its noticeably more contemplative and subdued companion second disc finds him reconnecting with his off-stage identity as Justin Scott.
To counter a fearful, cynical and divisive culture, embracing love and beauty is the way forward. This record is a soundtrack for that mission. “Every word and note of this album is intended to either reflect beauty, or expose the ugliness that blocks us from living lives of meaning.” – Brother Ali
Rose Azura Njano tells the story of a woman named Rose, who is afflicted by chromesthesia and personifies “Black music in America and its history in pain, loss, hardships, and socio-political movements.”
In The Iceberg, everything is not what it seems. The album stresses the importance of digging deeper and seeing what lies under the surface. This comes at a time where it’s too easy to listen to others and not think for ourselves, with Oddisee advocating critical thinking and encouraging listeners to focus more intently on the subject matter.
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is a searingly political record for systolic political times. It chronicles the life cycle of the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on the South side of Chicago that was demolished completely years ago. Families that had lived under the same roof for three generations were forced to scatter, condemned by bureaucrats and faceless cranes and public indifference. Mike Eagle brings the Robert Taylor Homes back to life–literally, with arms and eyes and a head like the dome of a stadium–and fights until the last brick is made to crumble. In case there was any ambiguity about the political and cultural forces that lead to the Robert Taylor Homes’ eventual destruction, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream ends with perhaps the most powerful song of Mike Eagle’s catalog to date. “my auntie’s building” is a tour de force. “They say America fights fair,” he raps. “But they won’t demolish your timeshare.” This is the point: the decay and eventual destruction of public housing–and of the physical lives of Black Americans generally–has been normalized in a way that should be grotesquely absurd. “They blew up my auntie’s building / Put out her great-grandchildren / Who else in America deserves to have that feeling? / Where else in America will they blow up your village?
Flower Boy is a journey to self-discovery and confronting the parts of yourself you typically avoid confronting. We aren’t always who we were yesterday, and certainly most of us aren’t who we were at age 17. Tyler uses driving as a metaphor for his journey through life-he raps about driving away from his problems and fears, almost crashing, switching gears, and touches on what owning a car means to him outside of, you know, getting somewhere.
In Mars, Vol. 2, the album expands the world of Mars through surreal vignettes, metaphysical musings, and experimental soundscapes. More like a psychedelic orbit around the themes first introduced in Mars
Bedwetter is an alias for Lil Ugly Mane. The album’s concept centers around a therapy session, culminating in the maddening ‘Golden.’ To outsiders, those not living within the confined walls of the album’s cover, which is presumed to be a therapy room in a mental hospital, Bedwetter’s dark past and hopeless future is a sight to behold.
A dystopia is the entire opposite of utopia (paradise), which is ultimately post-apocalyptic despair. The entire series accounts for the current state of America and its rapid downfall towards becoming a dystopian landscape. The series begins with Paradiso, which is Latin for paradise. “The album showcases a happier, lighter emotion as it accounts for the naive way of coping and complacency that we currently hide ourselves behind amongst all of the problems we currently face,” Chuuwee said. “The album talks about the importance of education, the increase of police brutality, the dismal state of what we call our government, our future president, many of the problems we face as of right now, and the blindness we portray toward them.” The underlying narrative of the “Paradiso” album is that Chuuwee is on his way to dystopia, portrayed as a symbol of Sacramento, CA. While in the Uber, Chuuwee and his driver are discussing the various believes of why mankind exists and the values and depths of good vs. evil. Each track on the album serves as a reference to an example of each topic spoken on during the car ride.
Damu The Fudgemunk has never been afraid to be different, and on his latest album, Vignettes, Damu experiments with the core elements of hip hop itself, creating a unique concept album that blends genres and pushes boundaries. True to its name, “Vignettes” features a series of wildly different tracks, which pull inspiration from a variety of genres, ranging from electronica to gospel and everything in between. “Vignettes” means, a short descriptive literary sketch/brief incident or scene (as in a play or movie). The album’s concept is built around extended compositions—each track is essentially a multi-part suite, shifting through different moods and textures like a collection of short musical stories or “vignettes.” The album is aptly titled and mostly instrumental, where 15 musical scenes, each with their unique settings, are stitched harmoniously together to provide a universal message to the audience in which they use the gift of their own interpretation. At just over 2 hours long, the listener is given an unfiltered front row performance into the heart, mind and soul of the the artist.
Black Boy Meets World is a confessional, reflective, autobiographical look into Danny’s teenage years. It’s a clear and concise concept album that encapsulates some of the life-changing moments he experienced as a youth.
The Local Cafe is an anthology of gripping short stories that brings Florida’s oft-forgotten towns like Delray Beach to life. A self-described coffee addict, Eric serves as the metaphorical barista who knows the orders, triumphs, and pitfalls of all of the customers, weaving their stories together in his signature style of country-fried slang and bass-heavy production.
Rooted in Universal Science, Game of Death takes dead aim at mediocre, dumbed-down, manufactured rap while treating Music as the weapon it is. This is cultural warfare bridging the gap from Roxanne & Biz Markie to Jay Electronica & Erykah Badu. Bending time & space, Gensu & Wise take listeners through history with amazingly wide-eyed clarity.
The Never Story is a concept album about JID’s life, and about him trying to succeed but never thinking he could actually “make it.” JID reflects on difficult times in his life in which he did not amount to anything and had very little to his name. Despite his hardships, however, he never felt sorry for himself and always worked hard to achieve what he desired.
The Ordinary Man chronicles the narrative of a magician who discovered late in life that his peers weren’t actually pulling rabbits from hats. Crestfallen and disillusioned, he digs deeper to push his own show into uncharted territory, demonstrating ostensibly impossible feats for crowds too terrified to ask for the reveal. As the audience gradually realizes that his practice of the dark arts isn’t fraudulent, people from all around the world flock to him. Unfortunately, this loyalty to what he was rather than what he did becomes patronizing and dull, engendering a bitterness and disenchantment that leads him to finally disappear in front of millions of stunned onlookers.
The monetary desperation we’ve all felt at some point is the overarching message of this project, lojii says DUE RENT “is a score to being a broke nxgga in AmeriKKKa (emphasis on the KKK) – full of dreams and hustlin’ to make ’em happen, but dealing with the everyday pressures of making ends meet. A.K.A trying to pay rent.”
M-Dot paints a lucid world that navigates vivid storyline landscapes & morbid fantasies evoking an undertone that embodies the parallels between pride & fear. The 17 track excursion showcases a genuine tour de force of a conceptually mapped-out dream realm trapped in self-reflection.
“It’s a symbol for people in general. Everybody is trying to get paid,” said Medslaus. “In rap, and in music in general, there’s a lot of materialism, for lack of a better word. Poorboy is a poetic tribute to growing up and making it on your own terms.
MeRCY returns as Tony Montana on Montana Lives Forever: The Lost Keys, wreaking havoc with meaning and narrator reliability, flitting from gangster-film intrigue to grimly prosaic reality. The Lost Keys is basically a continuation from Montana Lives Forever EP. As usual, the iLLustrious’ sonic auteur, Solidified, provides awesomely dark and eccentric backdrops for the Broward County MC’s dark maneuvers, mixing retro samples with horror-film keyboards. The Lost Keys delivers something cleverly predictable and vital-sounding while keeping Montana’s legacy alive.
Culture is a reflection on the cultural experience of black Americans growing up in urban enviroments where they are exposed to lifestyle of drugs, sex, and high living, gang banging to make money, and their own experience growing up in Atlanta. Culture’s thematic focus is on representing and celebrating the culture of hip-hop, the lifestyle of the artists, and their impact on the music industry. In this sense, it can be viewed as a concept album that explores various facets of contemporary rap culture.
Transported to a Dark Moon and hunted by aliens, how will Dante and the other survivors stay alive on Dark Moon? The result is Teleported, a classic hip-hop album that fuses a number of science fiction and story concepts, including the Dark Moon story, with the music, to take the reader on a journey. Some of the tracks, such as “Transported” and “This Dark Moon”, for example, are solidly based on the Dark Moon motion comic universe, while other tracks are hints at other possible stories that are part of alternate universes related to Dark Moon. Still, other tracks are about normal earthbound subjects, so the result is a diverse collection of tracks, while still keeping the worlds of science fiction and comics at its core.
The album is named after the philosophical concept of Hegelian dialectic. It is an argument process explaining the progress of history as being the conflict of ideas, where the interactions between thesis and antithesis create synthesis. It’s a philosophical explanation often used to describe government behavior, in this case, the US government. An example of this would be doing nothing about obesity, because it means more profits for the healthcare industry
For Journey to the West, producer T. Perk sources his samples from cassettes of folk songs he rescued from various traditional Chinese markets, and surrounds them with thick, head-banging drums, while Touch weaves a slick narrative that continues from one song to the next. His re-telling of Chinese folk hero Sun Wukong’s tortured life—substituting Wukon’s mission to find the Sutra with a mission to find true hip hop through self discovery—eventually culminates in an end battle and a surprise conclusion that rewards those with enough patience to take in this hip hop audio book from front to back.
Throughout the album, Wiki raps about everything from witnessing the beauty of New York City’s skyscrapers, to celebrating the city’s queer culture, to ordering sandwiches at a bodega. No Mountains In Manhattan is a vivid snapshot of NYC set to music.
