Tracks 8, 9, 10 and 11 from Back In Black (1986)

Tracks 12 and 13 from Open Sesame (1987)

Track 14 from A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (Music From The New Line Cinema Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1989)

The Brooklyn trio of Jalil Hutchens, Ecstasy, and their DJ, Grandmaster Dee were a major part of hip hop's commercial explosion in the mid-'80s, releasing their debut 6 months before Run-DMC and The Fat Boys and with all three groups achieving some of the first gold plaques for rap albums around the same time (rest in peace to Prince Markie Dee of The Fat Boys, who passed away this week). Whodini faded from prominence a little more quickly than Run-DMC and were ultimately a little less influential than their Queens rivals and the burgeoning Def Jam roster, but they still loomed large over '80s rap. But after Larry Smith's success on Run-DMC's early singles, Whodini hired him to produce Escape and Back In Black, and he helped develop their own more electronic signature sound, purposely avoiding the guitar-driven sound of "Rock Box" most of the time (aside from "Fugitive"). 

Whodini had a foot in the R&B and pop worlds from the very beginning -- Thomas Dolby, fresh off "She Blinded Me With Science," produced two tracks on their debut, the single "Magic's Wand" and the track that preceded it on the album, "It's All In Mr. Magic's Wand," both of which were tributes to the Juice Crew's John "Mr. Magic" Rivas (it sounds like that might be Dolby playing the goofy British guy on "Underground," but he's not officially credited so I'm not sure). Roy Carter, guitarist of the disco band Heatwave, produced "Underground," and "Yours For A Night" is pretty much a full-blown R&B song with Tashan, a singer who later released an album on Def Jam in 1986, where the rap verse feels like a guest spot, anticipating the shape so much popular music would take within the next couple decades. 

I also included Whodini's track from the soundtrack for the 5th A Nightmare On Elm Street movie, which was notable in that the first half of the album was hard rock and the second half was hip hop, sort of foreshadowing the rock/rap hybrid soundtracks that would begin a few years later with Judgment Night. "Any Way I Gotta Swing It" was actually co-written by Kool G Rap and is one of Whodini's best attempts at modernizing their sound after their mid-'80s peak. But I also enjoy some of the Jermaine Dupri-produced stuff on their final album, Six. 

Escape was Whodini's biggest album with the most hits, but it doesn't have a whole lot of music on it beyond the singles -- even "Featuring Grand Master Dee" is basically a remix of the more famous "Five Minutes Of Funk," which is probably my favorite Whodini track. But the follow-up Back In Black, though its singles aren't as famous, features some of Whodini's most influential and widely sampled music. The distinctive pinging riff on "I'm A Ho" was sampled by Dr. Dre on Eazy E's debut single "Boyz-N-The-Hood," which itself has been sampled hundreds of times now. Yo Gotti also sampled the "I'm A Ho" hook on his single "H.O.E." last year. "Fugitive" opens with a goofy little vocal ad lib that was repeatedly sampled on the hook to Public Enemy's "Don't Believe The Hype," and until I heard the Whodini track I always assumed that voice was Flava Flav. "Echo Scratch" featured the line "that's Dom Perignon, it's supposed to bubble," which became the hook of the UGK classic "It's Supposed To Bubble." And even one of their less popular '90s albums featured a deep cut, "The Party Don't Start," that was quoted by Ke$ha on her hit "TikTok."