5 modern classic albums to soundtrack Black History Month

In honour of Black History Month and the first-ever National Album Day this weekend (Saturday 13 October), 1Xtra has been championing seminal albums from iconic artists, with MistaJam picking out four modern classics and Trevor Nelson paying tribute to an influential album celebrating its 20th anniversary.

On his 1Xtra show this week, MistaJam singled out albums by Drake, Lil Wayne, JAY-Z and 50 Cent, playing music and speaking to fans about what they love about the records.

Meanwhile, from 4pm on Sunday 14 October, Trevor Nelson will mark 20 years of Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill with a special show featuring artists and tracks influenced by the star as well as an interview and performance from 1999.

But what makes these albums such essential listens? We spoke to Jam and Trevor about the lasting legacies of the releases.

Despite only being released in 2013, Drake’s third studio album Nothing Was the Same is already being considered as something of a modern classic. "I think it’s stood the test of time, even though it’s only been five years," MistaJam says, explaining that it’s a record that made Drake the star he is today. "It was a record that really stamped Drake in popular culture," Jam explains. "Before this album, you could say he was a hip hop artist, or a RnB artist, but this album turned Drake into a superstar."

Drake often references his versatile nature by saying that his songs are "Drake featuring Drake," and similarly, Nothing Was the Same honed in on Drizzy's strengths as a well-rounded performer who can do it all. "It showed all the different sides of Drake," Jam says. "There’s the emo-RnB that Drake is sometimes more known for, but there’s also straight-up rap tracks and some really great pop records too."

"It ushered in a new era of hip hop where stars could make unashamedly pop records but with a rap edge, yet still be accepted by both the pop world and the hip hop community. He showed that you didn’t have to be just one thing. There’s been a lot of albums after this that followed Drake’s formula."

While providing something for everyone, Drake also showed that you could make it even if you were a bit of an outsider or underdog - a sentiment famously expressed in his track Started From the Bottom. "Drake was the first massive rap artist that wasn’t American," Jam points out. "He’s Canadian and used to be a child actor, you’d think in hip hop culture that this would work against you, but he was able to turn them into wins."

Living up to its title, after this record nothing was the same for Drake again, with the artist going from strength to strength and repeatedly breaking chart records with each and every album that followed. Despite that, Nothing But the Same perhaps remains his strongest record from start to finish.

Hear MistaJam pay tribute to Drake's Nothing Was the Same below:

50 Cent's Get Rich Or Die Tryin' celebrates its 15th birthday this year, but these days Curtis Jackson is more prolific as an actor than as a recording artist (he's starred in seven films since his last album, 2014's Animal Ambition). "There's a whole generation of people that know him for being Kanan Stark in Power rather than him being 50 Cent," MistaJam remarks.

But 2003 debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is where it all started for 50 Cent. And what an introduction too, with Fiddy pretty much dominating hip hop in the early part of the millennium. "Out of all the albums from that era of hip hop, this was a record that sonically stood above everything else that was going on," Jam states. "Obviously, you had Dr. Dre's production, but 50 Cent was a superb lyricist too. He managed to have such huge hit records that also included great lyrical content."

50 Cent is often pigeonholed with the gangsta rap tag, but Jam says he was so much more than that. "The thing people tend to forget about 50 Cent is the humour. Nowadays, you get his humour via his trolling social media posts, but back then, it was right in his lyrics."

Since Get Rich Or Die Tryin', 50 Cent hasn't quite managed to reach the heights he achieved on this album (In da Club remains his most commercially successful single), but perhaps the extent of his talent has been overlooked. MistaJam thinks so: "At the time, Eminem was such a global dominant figure in rap - and music as a whole - that he could have cosigned any artist and they would have been a success. The difference is that he cosigned 50 Cent, who remains a success 15 years later. Some of the others cosigned at the time, not so much..."

Hear MistaJam pay tribute to 50 Cent's Get Rich Or Die Tryin' below:

It's been 20 years since The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (the record celebrated its two-decade milestone in August), and the former Fugees star is yet to follow it up with another studio release. It's a record strong enough, however, to have kept us tide over this entire time.

"When the album came out, I thought we were going to have five albums of that standard," Trevor Nelson says. "At first, I was more disappointed than anybody that we didn’t get another album. But now, I don’t even care if she doesn’t make another record, this one is that good."

Nelson describes the album as a "bolt out of the blue" and a record that "hugely went against the grain in terms of its instrumentation, songwriting, the way she would change the direction of a song in a heartbeat". It was a record that "immediately stood out as an instant classic," Nelson argues, crediting Hill's "unique voice" as what first stuck him about the star.

She may have enjoyed prior success with the Fugees, but The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill can be seen as where she really proved herself as a once-in-a-generation artist. "It’s just beautifully crafted with such attention to detail, great musicianship," Nelson says. "An artist at the peak of her powers. The rapping, the singing… Everything that shouldn’t work works and that’s what I loved about the album."

The album’s lasting impression, Nelson asserts, is the influence it has had on fellow artists over the years. It has inspired not only other American vocalists, but rappers and UK musicians too. You can even trace her legacy all the way to Adele and Amy Winehouse. "Her legacy is showing you can have substance in your music and still be successful," Trevor says. "She showed you could be uncompromising."

"Some great artists release 20 albums and only achieve one classic. Lauryn made one solo album and it’s a classic. I would put this record up there with the all-time great albums, next to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley. It could come out today and still have the same impact, and that’s the definition of a timeless piece of work."

• Trevor Nelson celebrates Black History Month with a tribute to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on Sunday 14 October from 4pm.

Lil Wayne recently released the long-awaited fifth edition of his Tha Carter album series, but it's 2008's Tha Carter III that remains his most loved and widely respected record. "What was so great about Tha Carter III was that it brought together all different flavours of hip hop in the US: Southern rap, East Coast, West Coast," MistaJam explains.

Its predecessor, 2005's Tha Carter II, may have showed Wayne to be one of the strongest - and strangest - lyricists in the game, but its follow-up is where things were taken to the next level - not only for Wayne himself, but for rap music as a whole. "It’s an album that featured some of Wayne’s biggest hits and introduced a lot of people to Lil Wayne," Jam says. "A lot of young people reference the record as being their entry point into hip hop too."

While artists like Lil Wayne brought underground and club-born hip hop to a wider audience, contributing to rap being the culturally dominant force that it is today, Tha Carter III has also had a marked impact on hip hop itself. MistaJam points out how you can draw a lineage from what Lil Wayne was doing on the album to the mumble rappers of today. "There’s a definite direct influence of Lil Wayne on Young Thug and Lil Uzi Vert," he says. "If you listen to interviews with any rapper coming through today, chances are that they’ll cite Wayne as an influence."

But it's not just some of the hottest new stars that we might have been without if it wasn't for this seminal release, we could have missed out on some huge names too. "Without the success of Tha Carter III, we wouldn’t have Young Money and without that label we wouldn’t have Nicki Minaj or Drake," MistaJam claims. "If that album hadn’t have happened, we might not have got such great artists like this."

Hear MistaJam pay tribute to Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III below:

JAY-Z has many classic albums to his name. There's 2001's The Blueprint, 1996's Reasonable Doubt, 2003's The Black Album - three records that Hov himself labelled as "classics" when he ranked his own releases back in 2013 - while his latest album 4:44 is also up there among his best. There was another "classic" album that Jay named in his list though, and one that often gets overlooked: 1998's Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life.

"It’s JAY-Z’s most commercially successful album to date," MistaJam says. To quote Jay himself: "Men lie, women lie, numbers don't". And perhaps it's the sheer success of this record that attracts such detractors, or maybe it's the more pop-leaning sound. "The Annie sample from Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) catapulted Jay onto pop radio," Jam says. "He sampled something that nobody in their right mind would have touched. It was bold but it worked."

"These days we tend to forget that before Vol. 2... dropped and prior to Hard Knock Life becoming such a hit, Jay wasn’t the massive deal that he is now," Jam adds. "This album was a big turning point for Jay’s career. Without it and that level of success that he had from it, there might have been no Rihanna or J Cole. Things really turned on this record, not just for Jay and hip hop but for music. It’s been 20 years since the album came out and we’re now living in a JAY-Z world."

Hear MistaJam pay tribute to JAY-Z's Vol.2… Hard Knock Life below:

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