Various: Hip-Hop: The Collection

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)

What makes a hip-hop classic? If you were to compile a 38-track double CD of them, who would be included? And where would be the balance between that period often referred to as "back in the day" and the era known as "last week's chart drop-outs"?

That's what is attempted by this Mai FM-backed but all-American (apart from the mystifying inclusion of Brit Mark Morrison) compilation. Its first disc is the contemporary collection combining hits from the likes of Eminem, Nelly, Outkast, Jay Z with a

few inclusions like those of Ashanti and Eve leaning towards R&B. The second goes back as far as the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight and Grandmaster Flash's The Message with other classic offerings from Run DMC, Public Enemy, N. W. A, Eric B & Rakim, Tupac Shakur among others along the way.

Useful enough, but it's neither quite up to the minute or definitive enough to make it indispensable.

Label: Universal