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Nas - Illmatic (the quintessential mid 90's NYC hip hop record)
Common - Resurrection
Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt
Drake - So Far Gone
Mayer Hawthorne - A Strange Arrangement
The first 3 are classic hip hop LPs that people who don't normally get down with the genre should appreciate.
The last 2 are from 2009- and I know it's kinda lame to put current faves on a list like this, but I am positive that these albums are desert island discs for me, and I'll be listening to them in 40 years.
Drake's mixtape is available for free, and has incredible replay value due to its eclectic mix of R&B, cross-genre production, and straight up hip hop.
The Mayer Hawthorne album is simply awesome. He's a late 20's white kid from Detroit who sounds like he was time warped here from the mid 70's- his sound is old-school Motown with a little Dilla hip hop influence. One of the best soul albums of the last 20 years. It's the "most frequently played" album on my iPod already, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
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