Thanks to its low-gloss boom-bap and blinkered, stream-of-consciousness flows, ornery rap nerds will inevitably compare Random Axe to hip-hop's "golden age"—"if this came out in '95, it'd be a classic!" But that's a reductionist view: Axe was released in 2011, and it's a clinic in meticulously penned rappin' ass rap. Sean Price, Black Milk, and Guilty Simpson, each an underground veteran in his own right, join forces to trade darkly humorous anti-pop bars over Black's dizzying loops. Imagine a Men of a Certain Age rap album: "Sean Price with an aped up rage, no Myspace, Twitter, or Facebook page," the 39-year-old grunts on "Japhy Joe." Simpson delivers just as sharply: "My ego's big, crazy, I could do Cee Lo's gigs." Of course, they never would.

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“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."