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It's appropriate for the man most consider the best rapper ever to open his first album in a decade with "How to Emcee." And it's no surprise that Rakim Allah proceeds to hold a clinic on lyricism throughout The Seventh Seal.

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Five years after his solo debut, 4th Dimensional Rocketships Going Up, Gift of Gab returns to space…sort of. The Bay Area MC imagines playing intergalactic hooky, but admits on "Lightyears" that it's "just a dream, just a surface." Meanwhile, Earth is plagued with "Electric Waterfalls," and he despairingly observes "Richman, Poorman" games.

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Anti-Pop Consortium's obsession with sound, be it analog, digital, or vocal, makes them unique among hip-hop artists; they're like a postmillennial Public Enemy, minus the political oratory. The MC trio rhyme with distinct cadences tuned like instruments, while engineer Earl Blaize compiles keyboards, drums, and software blips into an Afro-surrealist space opera.

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With two decades of graffiti writing, drug consumption, and alt-rap classics under their belts, Del and Tame One have much to reminisce about.

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Bronx iconoclast KRS-One and Brooklyn hard case Buckshot hold a hip-hop revival meeting on their debut duo album, inviting Mary J. Blige, Talib Kweli, and K'naan to help protect the world from Auto-Tunin' "Robots." The beats by producers Black Milk, 9th Wonder, and Havoc are strictly no-frills, but just hot enough to keep these cranky yet lovable old MCs' joints from stiffening up.