Essential Hip Hop 1 / Various ESSENTIAL HIP HOP 1 / VARIOUS

Liner Note Authors: Nelson George; Jeff Chang.Photographer: Martha Cooper.An ambitious, admirable, and necessary undertaking, Tommy Boy rolled out a dozen-volume series focusing on rap's early years, treating "Rapper's Delight" as ground zero and cutting off at 1991. If the first four volumes -- released before the following eight -- are an accurate representation, the series will slant heavily toward the late '80s, when the rap industry really gathered steam, and regularly mix politically charged tracks with party jams and classics with novelties (the difference between the distinctions, of course, wasn't always clear). Some listeners will be displeased with the decision to go with edited versions when necessary. Then again, we're not talking about a period of rap history when tracks required rhyme-to-rhyme profanity to be taken seriously (ask Skee-Lo or Paperboy), so it's really not that much a factor. Apart from automatic picks, like the 14-minute version of Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper