The LOX

The Yonkers, NY, rap trio the Lox signed with Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records in the mid-'90s, when Biggie Smalls was still a small-time hustler making good and bling hadn't yet been invented. On their debut, they dutifully tried their best to keep it real with songs such as the title track. But thug bravado aside, the group became best known for "If You Think I'm Jiggy" (word to Rod Stewart) and for rocking improbably shiny suits in the video for Puff's "It's All About the Benjamins." The streets rebelled, culminating in a "Let the Lox Go" T-shirt campaign that swept New York in 1999. By 2000, the Lox had signed with their fellow Yonkers residents the Ruff Ryders, who allowed the group the freedom to revisit where they came from, resulting in fiery street anthems such as "Wild Out" and the title track, and also punishingly igno-rant skits such as "Rape'N U Records," on We Are the Streets. The street, it appeared, was two-way.

By 2001, the three MCs were beginning to spread their solo wings and, to their credit, find their own distinct voices, something that wasn't always possible in the Lox groupthink. Jadakiss was first out of the gate with Kiss tha Game Goodbye, an eclectic affair (guests included Snoop Dogg, Nas, Eightball, and Fiend) that showed he had previously untapped dimensionality. "None of Y'All Betta" is one of the great Lox group efforts, as Jadakiss, Styles, and Sheek breathe true fire, but just as compelling is "Knock Yourself Out," a shimmery Neptunes production that marks Jada-kiss' first attempt at wooing the ladies. On Kiss of Death, Jadakiss again asserted himself as a master of fine lyrical detail, bringing the same clinical precision to crime sagas ("Air It Out") and pickup lines ("Hot Sauce to Go" featuring Pharrell) alike.

Of the Lox three, Styles was always the grimiest, the most unreconstructed among thugs. His solo debut, A Gangster and a Gentleman, certainly didn't disappoint the hardcore. Indeed, it's one of the great rap albums of the post-Biggie era, laserlike in focus and unrelenting in dark mood. Even his jokes are dark: "Don't you ask me what I'm robbing you for/'Cause you was talking big money, and I'm a little broke/And I'm a firm believer in equality, dog." Most of the time, though, smiling's not an option, as on "My Brother," which bemoans the loss of his young sibling, and on the nihilistic "My Niggas" and "Black Magic." Out of a morass of mean mugging, Styles became one of the great poets of the downtrodden, though one senses there's no joy in the task for him.