8. KMD - Black Bastards (2001)

Black Bastards finds Zev Love X, DOOM's first pseudonym, angrier and more confrontational than on KMD's debut. KMD (Kausing Much Damage) was DOOM's first rap group, which featured his brother Subroc and Rodan (later of Monsta Island Czars). They fell into a major confrontation with Elektra Records, whose executives disapproved of Black Bastards' cover art, boasting a lynched Sambo figure, and lyrics, which forwarded Afrocentrism and Five Percenter ideology (that is, a modernized African-American core of Islamic reformism).

Many bootlegged Black Bastards, and it eventually saw official release in 2001, via Sub Verse. The album swings with the best '90s jazz-rappers from Brooklyn and Harlem, but borrows from drum-heavier experiments happening on the West Coast, at times nearly assuming the sneer of gangsta rap.