Music To Hate Republicans To: Oakland Agit-Rapper's First Four Albums

By Jon Caramanica, Blender

Get Paris's diet right: “The only motherfuckin’ pig I eat is police.” Always a degree or two more incendiary than other early-’90s "literate" rappers, Paris achieved the most notoriety for one of his clunkiest songs, "Bush Killa," in which he envisioned taking out Dubya's dad with a semiautomatic. Below the bluster, though, Paris was one of hip-hop's deeper thinkers. Boosted by chaotic, urgent production influenced by Public Enemy's Bomb Squad, 1990's Devil and 1993's Enemy championed anti-authoritarianism and Afrocentric pride. Even when Paris traded cacophony for sleeker grooves on 1994's Guerrilla Funk and 1998's Unleashed (working, oddly, as an investment banker in between), he didn't tone down his politics: On "One Time fo' Ya Mind," he swears he’ll smear “shit stains on your flag till I’m through.” Better get the Shout Wipes!