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Chapter 260: Started From The Bottom

00s and 10s hip-hop

There’s great power in deliberately ugly music. A clear disinterest in making clashing pieces work together signals that the artist isn’t cleaning their message up for an imagined audience, they’re telling it to you straight. This is why Kanye can get away with blasphemously sampling “Strange Fruit” alongside rude TNGHT horns, in a song about doing molly with his ex; he’s an asshole, but he’s being real. Tracks from Dizzee Rascal’s distorted staging of a poisonous relationship to Meek Mill’s dialed-to-11 origin story offer us rare glimpses of unvarnished truth.
1. Drake

Started From the Bottom

2. Gucci Mane

Lemonade

3. Chance The Rapper

Chain Smoker

4. The Streets

Has It Come To This?

5. Dizzee Rascal

I Luv U

6. 50 Cent

In Da Club

7. Freeway

What We Do (ft. Jay Z and Beanie Sigel)

8. Jay Z

99 Problems

9. Kanye West

Blood On the Leaves

10. Meek Mill

Dreams and Nightmares