Deep Album Cuts Vol. 388: MC Lyte
I've had this playlist in the works for a long time, and finished it a few days and planned to post it today, not even realizing it would be the morning after the BET Awards, for which MC Lyte has been doing voiceover announcements for years, maybe decades at this point. It's kind of funny that that's what a whole generation or two of people know her for, but I'm just glad they know her, she's a legend. I actually met her last year when she was hosting an event in D.C., I only exchanged a few words with her but it was still pretty exciting to be face to face with a hip hop legend.
2. Kickin' 4 Brooklyn
3. Lyte Thee MC
4. Shut The Eff Up! (Hoe)
5. Throwin' Words At U
6. Survival of the Fittest (Remix)
7. Slave 2 The Rhythm
8. Kamikaze
9. Like A Virgin
10. Search 4 The Lyte
11. Fuck That Motherfucking Bullshit featuring Big V
12. Can I Get Some Dap
13. Steady Fucking featuring KRS-One
14. Two Seater
15. One On One
16. Druglord Superstar featuring Da Brat
17. Keep On Pushin' with Bahamadia, Nonchalant, and Yo-Yo
18. Want What I Got featuring Missy Elliott and Mocha
19. Propa featuring Beenie Man
20. Closer featuring Space Nine
Tracks 1, 2, and 3 from Lyte As A Rock (1988)
Tracks 4, 5, 6, and 7 from Eyes On This (1989)
Tracks 8, 9, and 10 from Act Like You Know (1991)
Tracks 11, 12, and 13 from Ain't No Other (1993)
Tracks 14, 15, and 16 from Bad As I Wanna B (1996)
Track 17 from Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Dangerous Ground (1997)
Tracks 18, 19, and 20 from Seven & Seven (1998)
Track 8 from The Very Best of MC Lyte (2001)
Track 9 from Da Underground Heat Vol. 1 (2003)
Track 10 from Legend (2015)
Track 11 from The Best of Vintage Hip-Hop: The Lost Tapes Series, Vol. 1 (2019)
Track 11 from 1 of 1 (2024)
MC Lyte's latest album 1 Of 1 made my best of 2024 list. But since the availability of her post-'90s catalog is spotty on streaming services, I decided to just focus on the first decade of her career for this playlist. She was the first solo female MC to release a solo album or be nominated for a Grammy ("Ruffneck" was my jam when I was 11). And I think still has one of the best catalogs of them all, even now -- and easily the best of the generation before Missy and Lil Kim, both of whom were very heavily influenced by Lyte and have spit a lot of lyrics. For one reason or another, a lot of the most famous female rappers have pretty small catalogs of only 3-6 albums, but Lyte has 9, and most of them are excellent.
Lyte was kind of a pioneer in sampling herself -- the biggest hit from her second album, "Cha Cha Cha," sampled part of its hook ("Kick this one here for me and my DJ") from a deep cut from her debut, "Kickin' 4 Brooklyn." "Shut The Eff Up! (Hoe)" was sampled on a whole bunch of songs by the Lox, Common, TLC, Digital Underground and others. That Audio Two beat with the Meters sample sounds so awesome. Annoyingly, almost half the songs on Eyes On This are unplayable on Spotify, so that limited what I could use from arguably her best album, but I still got a few great tracks from that.
"Slave 2 The Rhythm" is an Antoinette diss. And after Roxanne Shante dissed Lyte and a bunch of other artists (Queen Latifah, Monie Love, Yo-Yo, Salt-N-Pepa) on "Big Mama," Lyte replied with "Steady Fucking" and that's a great super disrespectful diss track. This playlist has great production from Prince Paul ("MC Lyte Likes Swingin'"), Parrish from EPMD ("Slave 2 The Rhythm"), The 45 King ("Kamikaze" and "Like A Virgin"), The Neptunes ("Closer"), and Audio Two (a bunch of tracks).
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