With all of the “best of the 2000’s” lists that have been going around these days, I find it hard to believe how few have mentioned Cannibal Ox’s 2001 classic, The Cold Vein. I am not at all interested in attempting the absurd task of listing my favorites, there were so many… but the more I think about it, The Cold Vein stands out as one that affected me more than any others I can think of.

El-P’s dusty, dystopian production, leveraged dissonance and discord in a way that I hadn’t really ever heard… it was loose and wild, but still maintained the controlled precision that a Hip-Hop beat needs. With eclectic samples from artists like early Philip Glass and Giorgio Moroder, the beats set the stage for a dark, Post-Apocolyptic scene like something from Blade Runner.

The album pushed envelopes lyrically as well. Vordul Megallah’s, Raekwon-esq, stream-of-conciousness verses, were like rapid-fire, atonal, rhythmic assaults - you can hear this clearly on his two minute verse at the end of “Pigeon”, or the second verse of album opener, “Iron Galaxy”. On the flip side of the album opener, Vast Aire delivered clever puns with a cool, calm flow:

“(and if there’s Crack in the basement), Crackheads stand adjacent. Anger displacement from food stamp arrangements. You were a stillborn baby, Mother didn’t want you, but you were still born. Boy meets world, of course his Pops is gone. What you figure, that chalky outline on the ground is a father figure?”

I’m not at all saying that this is the best album of the decade, or necessarily my favorite, but if I had to pick one, I think it may be the record that sticks the most for me. I honestly can’t think of any album that came out in the past ten years, that changed my point of view, or opened up my mind more that The Cold Vein.

 
Cannibal Ox - Iron Galaxy

 
Cannibal Ox - A B-Boy’s Alpha

 
Cannibal Ox - F-Word

 
Cannibal Ox - Pigeon

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