XXL Raps Volume 1 (Razor & Tie)

XXL Raps is the rare release that's as noteworthy for what it is as for what it represents. What it is is a gully hip-hop version of the chart-topping NOW! pop compilations. Bringing together 18 hot tracks-19 if you're lucky enough to cop the Best Buy version with the Saigon bonus track-from heavyweights like Eminem, 50 Cent, T.I., and Lil Jon, the album serves as a primer on what's good in mainstream hip-hop.

But what it represents is much more than the sum of its parts. XXL magazine is on top right now. The book has recently been named the best-selling music magazine in America, and has replaced the shady, lawsuit-plagued Source as the bible of hip-hop music and culture. Its debut disc is both a celebration of that success and a glimpse into how it was achieved. XXL editor-in-chief Elliott Wilson is known for blockbuster covers and for anticipating the next shit to blow in urban music. (Industry observers will remember that he was the first to champion 50 Cent.)

He's most famous, though, for his combative, no-holds-barred editorials. And this tendency to stir shit up is present throughout XXL Raps, from the decision to go with an indie label instead of a major ("We got a fourth-quarter CD in stores, you industry whores, that's males and females," he wrote in the magazine recently. "I hate you ass-kissing fucks, in case y'all forgot"), right down to the sequencing-the album jumps off with joints from Em, 50, and G-Unit, a deliberate dig at critics who charge that Wilson is on Interscope Records' jock. ("Can't fuck with my sequence game, lame! One Interscope record after another. Live with it.")

Even the promotion of the project-which saw Wilson turn to the cranky blogsphere to generate buzz-proved unorthodox and confrontational. The next couple of years of hip-hop journalism should be highly entertaining. Now that Wilson has the top spot in the game, it's going to be interesting to see what he plans to do with it.