The 42nd installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums and songs, comes from Matt Halverson, who runs Banter Management and Media, home to City Light, producer Scott Solter, The Traditionist and more. Banter released a City Light/Her Space Holiday split EP on April 7.

Matt digs into six of his favorite hip-hop songs (and I give him my fullest backing on No. 4).

1. Public Enemy – Contract on the World Love Jam (1990)
In 1990, I was 11 and was a heavy metal kid with the exception of some 2 Live Crew, NWA and Too Short. I had not yet been exposed to any form of hip-hop that stood for anything other than money, girls and violence. I was handed Fear of a Black Planet by an older kid in the neighborhood and it completely floored my thought process. From the opening track, Contract on the World Love Jam, I knew I had just been turned onto something different. It’s an instrumental, but I had never heard anything like it. The scratching by Terminator X mixed with samples from what sounded like Civil Rights speeches.This entire album is extremely important, but I chose the intro track simply because from the second I hit play on my Walkman I knew my taste in music would be different for the rest of my life. I listened to this record daily for at least 5 years.

• Public Enemy | Contract on the World Love Jam

2. BDP – Love’s Gonna Get’cha (Material Love) (1990)
So with my new-found love for conscious rap, my cousin Pat and I soon discovered what would become an obsession with a song rather than an album. The video for Loves Gonna Get’cha by Boogie Down Productions terrified and inspired us at the same time. This track was a departure from the complex/compacted lyrics of Public Enemy. Instead, it was a simple, easy-to-follow story about making some very bad decisions. I saw KRS-One perform a couple weeks ago and he is still as animated as as he was 20 years ago.

3. Kool Moe Dee feat. Chuck D and KRS-One – Rise ‘N’ Shine (1991)
I was familiar with Kool Moe Dee by this point, but not a huge fan. Wild Wild West was a bit silly for me, but thanks to the legendary video channel THE BOX I started seeing his video for Rise ‘N’ Shine featuring Chuck D and KRS-One. I dug the way Kool Moe Dee combined a little funkiness blended in with his message, and it did not hurt that I was completely obsessed with Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions. We ran around the neighborhood screaming “Ring a ding ding ding ding ding this is KRS-One with a different something” all summer.

4. A Tribe Called Quest – God Lives Through (1993)
Freshman year of high school was not the most exciting year of my life. No car. Nerdy. Most of my friends at a different high school. But then a kid on the basketball team named Jeremy gave me Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest and yet a new chapter of hip-hop opened for me. I was familiar with Tribe … Scenario and Can I Kick It were classics, but I never owned an album, and had not really sunken my teeth into that style of jazzy hip-hop. God Lives Through still makes it onto to most hip-hop mix tapes I make for people. Probably my favorite hip-hop record of all time.

• A Tribe Called Quest | God Lives Through

5. Wu-Tang Clan – Protect Ya Neck (1993)
Around the same time, a taller, funnier man named Brandon Diegle gave me a tape of Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), and the cover alone freaked me out a bit. I was already heavily into Kung Fu and karate flicks, so when this 11-member crew of grimy ninja-influenced MC’s started screaming out of my tape deck, I knew instantly this would lead to a worldwide phenomenon. I was right. I spent the next five or six years buying every single Wu-Tang Clan side project.

• Wu-Tang Clan | Protect Ya Neck

6. Black Star – Respiration (1998)
High school was over and I was off to college in Santa Barbara. Then began my three-year conquest of everything Rawkus Records put out. Lyricist Lounge, Pharoahe Monch, Soundbombing and my second favorite hip-hop album of all time, Black Star. I had never heard Mos Def or Talib Kweli up to this point, and I surely never heard a duo with such distinct delivery styles. Mos Def’s baritone street-conscious style coupled with Talib’s quick broken speech delivery made for an excellent team. I am not a big fan of choruses, but Respiration, which featured Common Sense (now Common), has one of the best hip-hop choruses of all time.

The 41st installment of I Used to Love H.E.R., a series in which artists/bloggers/writers discuss their most essential or favorite hip-hop albums and songs, comes from Vito Roccoforte, drummer for New York-based dance-punk group The Rapture. Roccorforte recently was in town for a DJ set at Shake!, and we talked about two of my favorite topics: baseball and hip-hop. His California roots show here with a great selection of an overlooked gem.

• The Rapture | Pieces of the People We Love

Casual
Fear Itself (Jive, 1994)

I moved to the Bay Area in the summer of 94. I was starting to listen to a lot of hip-hop, and before I moved, one of my friends gave me list of essential Bay Area Hip-Hop Albums that he cut out of some magazine. I took the list folded it up and put it in my wallet and when I got to the Bay Area I went to some of the record stores on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. I bought some of albums on the list that day and by the end of the summer, I had bought everything on that list and much more. There were some amazing albums that came out of the Bay Area around that time. Some of my favorite albums came from members of the Hieroglyphics crew who included Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, who released No Need for Alarm in 93, and Souls of Mischief, who released 93 til Infinity in, you guessed it, 93. One of my favorite and lesser-known albums to come out of the of the time was from another Hiero member, Casual, who put out an album called Fear Itself in 94.

My favorite thing about Fear Itself is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not just a collection of great songs but a great album. From the very first track, “Intro,” it’s got a strong flow and line that keeps building throughout. Casual’s got a great voice and is a strong lyricist and there are also many strong guest appearances by Del, Saafir and others. Also what really got me into hip-hop in the beginning was the production, and on a purely instrumental level this album is a classic. The production was super tight, the instrumental tracks for “Chained Minds” and “I Didn’t Mean To” are still a couple of my all time favorites. The beat for “Me-O-Mi-O” rules, and listening to the album again I realized how much it really seeped into my subconscious. The sequencing of the album in the way songs cut into one another and are ordered is also superb and by the time it hits the last four songs from “Lose in the End” to “Be Thousand” I want to hear the album all over again.

• Casual | Me-O-Mi-O
• Casual | Chained Minds

Video for Me-O-Mi-O: