Keen to re-establish the album in the age of the playlist, artists are peppering their work with voice notes and sketches – to profound and annoying ends
De La Soul played a gameshow on 3 Feet High and Rising, kids discussed love on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Eminem faced his irate manager on The Marshall Mathers LP, Outkast parodied themselves at a record store on Aquemini, Biggie Smalls actually received fellatio on Ready to Die, and Eazy-E probably didn’t actually receive fellatio on Just Don’t Bite It.
There was once a time where skits like these, particularly in the age of tapes and CDs, were a staple of hip-hop. Interspersed between songs, these comedy sketches or spoken-word interludes aimed to bring you deeper into the album, with records such as the Fugees’ The Score showing how poignant this could be (a child being shot at the end of Cowboys) or how puerile (the Chinese restaurant at the end of The Beast). Such interludes were not solely the preserve of rap, though: Meat Loaf’s You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth opened with an attempted seduction on that hot summer night, Destiny’s Child recited lines from the Bible on the outro track to Survivor, and Britney had an ill-fated exchange with an earnest astronaut on Oops! … I Did It Again.