Eddie Huang’s Top 5 Hip-Hop Albums

I can't even explain it — this album is just my a-alike. From the first time I heard it, I never stopped listening to it, every week. It doesn't even speak to me as literally as it does subconsciously. I've listened to this album over and over, but I think the flow on the tracks just taps into my idle mind. A lot of the lyrics are nonsensical, but Cheeba and... Geechi just sound like two kids in high school, talkin' shit, and it transports me back to childhood.

Lyrically, this is my favorite album of all time (this and Illmatic). It's hard to say anything about B.I.G. that hasn't already been said. I related a lot to his story about coming up by any means, owning how he was a fat ass and still having more game than any pretty mofucker out there. "Heartthrob? Never! Black and ugly as ever! However, I stay Coogi down to the socks." I... mean, peep the rhyme scheme, the swag, and the Coogi.

"Put your two arms up/ Touchdown." The Ramones ran downtown NY in the '80s from Forest Hills; Diplomats ran it in the '00s all the way from uptown.

I was never as proud to be Chinese as I was the day I heard Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). I was always a hip-hop head, but a lot of people tried to tell me I couldn't be part of the culture. When these brothers from Shaolin took over the game — with inspiration from Shaw Brothers Films — we felt like we belonged. THANK YOU, RZA.

People know OutKast post-Stankonia, for the most part, but down South we were bumpin' Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and ATLiens. Outkast was the defining group from the Field that repped for flip-flops and socks and sweatpants. This was the perfect album to smoke to, listening to André and Daddy Fat Sax drop knowledge about Jazzy Belles and Elevators.