Kool G Rap, meanwhile, is interested in the flux state of the gangster life, or perhaps all of life itself. This places Wanted in stark contrast to later classics like Illmatic (1994) and Reasonable Doubt (1996), both fantastic but siphoning their prestige from a sensibility that moves in only one direction. Kool G Rap exists as the converse to such a process: he's an “everything” rapper, a lyrical kaleidoscope of influences and desires, of both sermonizing (“Streets of New York”) and seduction (“Talk Like Sex”). This seems to me indicative of a shift in rappers’s creative faculties around the early ‘90s, wherein a sort of division of labor gave rise to a newly specialized rap. Wanted: Dead or Alive is one of the very best “Golden Age” hip-hop albums, a vivid prophecy of just about everything the genre could represent. #94: Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, Wanted: Dead or Alive (1990)
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