Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the just-released memoir The Beautiful Struggle, has been called the “James Joyce of the hip-hop generation” by Walter Mosley—here are eight hip-hop gems that inspired his flow.

1. “Children’s Story”—Slick Rick: Among hip-hop heads in Baltimore, Slick Rick was God. He had this cool, slightly feminine, laid-back approach, and he seemed incapable of jumping off beat. “Children’s Story” always struck me as subversive. Rick’s lilting British accent and fairy tale intro (“Once upon a time not long ago / When people wore pajamas and lived life slow”) gave it a light feel. In fact, it’s a dark comedy, an allegory of my generation—young black kids, raised in the inner-city during the Crack Age, many of us tempted by the fast life. The first chapter of my book was pulled from Rick’s line, “There lived a little boy who was misled / By another little boy and here’s what he said.” I always loved that because it’s such an understated introduction to what ultimately plays out.

2. “Follow the Leader”—Eric B. And Rakim: Now, while Slick Rick was “a God” to hip-hop heads, Rakim was “The God”. I mean, people eventually literally took to calling him, simply, The God. I believe he’s referenced in my book as such also. The thing about Rakim—and to a lesser extent all the MCs of this era—is I learned from him the incredible beauty of words. In hip-hop, words—optimally—work on two levels. They function percussively, so that certain syllables arranged correctly on the beat basically accent the drums. Then they work as just words in the sense of meaning and connotation. From hip-hop, I came to believe that words really should be beautiful on both levels. They should sound good, and when unpacked, they should also mean something beautiful too. Some people learn this in the classroom. I learned it on the street, and that fact has always made me a believer in the great democracy of words—that in many cases (and I’ve had this confirmed in my career as a journalist), the man who stands on the corner can organize his thoughts just as beautifully as the decorated professor. In his time, no one better demonstrated the democracy of words than Rakim.

3. “Stop the Violence”—Boogie Down Productions: Around 1988, rappers became, as we called it then, “conscious.” I always thought there was something beautifully simplistic about describing the state of mind in which you are politically aware and concerned with race in this country as being conscious. See how many words it took me to sum up the meaning? Anyway one of the chief converts was KRS-ONE, an originator of gangsta rap, whose best friend and partner in the group Boogie Down Productions, Scott La Rock, was murdered while trying to settle a dispute. Scott was not a gangster, in fact he was a social worker, but his death really crystallized the insanity of the violence at that point.

Anyway, when KRS-ONE returned, he was conscious. And “Stop the Violence” is really the first song where he lays out his new concerns and world view, “It’s just the presidents and all the money they spend\All the things they invent / And how the house is so immaculate / They create missiles, while families eat gristle / Then they get upset when the press blows the whistle.” Of course, as MCs like KRS-ONE became more conscious, it influenced me and pushed the lessons of my father, the big one being that words are never politically neutral.

4. “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”—Public Enemy: Pure genius. A lot of people will tell you that Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the greatest hip-hop album ever. I certainly thought so for many years. What is clear is that, perhaps better than any other act in any era, PE really tapped into hip-hop’s potential. Sonically the album is a mad scramble of samples, an incredible collage of soul riffs, scratches, and drum breakdowns. Content-wise, every song is pushing a sort of leftish, black-nationalist political ideology. But more importantly, it’s expressing a politics that has an origin in the anger that black kids everywhere felt at that point. But most importantly, It Takes a Nation is just great poetry.

“Black Steel” is one of the rawer cuts on the album. The song posits Chuck D as a political prisoner who insights a prison break. I remember this song for its lyrics, but also for its video. Imprisoned along with Chuck were a bunch of hip-hop acts who were absolutely beloved at the time—Stetsasonic, EPMD, Eric B., etc. The video gave this sense that hip-hop was an oppositional force. And not simply a mindless, violent force, but one that actually tried to analyze and disrupt the forces that were, allegedly, allied against us.

5. “The D.O.C. & The Doctor”—The D.O.C.: Hmm, sometimes it’s best not to overintellectualize things. This is what I’ll say: The D.O.C.’s debut, No One Can Do It Better, is an incredibly slept-on album. It suffers from being released in the wake of N.W.A.’s ode to sensationalism, Straight Outta Compton. But No One Can Do It Better is a much more subtle and consistent effort, and also bears none of the cartoonish vulgarity which characterized N.W.A. The cut I chose, “The D.O.C. & The Doctor,” as I said, should not be intellectualized too much. Just sit back and enjoy Dre’s pounding drums and The D.O.C.’s ode to Run-D.M.C.

6. “Evil That Men Do”—Queen Latifah: Queen Latifah was the first female MC who really amazed me. It’s funny to see her gone Hollywood now, but in her time she was as agile an MC as there was. “Evil That Men Do” is sort of quasifeminist cut. Of course I didn’t recognize it as such at the time. I was more infatuated with the pounding drums and Latifah’s aggressive flow. Whenever I hear this song I think of ninth grade, and sitting on the #33 bus with my walkman, lost in my own little world.

7. “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”—Geto Boys: This is the Geto Boys biggest hit. I like to think it was the surrealism of Scarface (“Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned”) that accounted for its success. But more likely it was the sweet guitar riff that the group sampled from Isaac Hayes. It’s almost unfair to use this song as an example, because Scarface—easily the Geto Boys most talented MC—did so much great work before and after this.

8. “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)”—Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth: If the book was a movie (cross your fingers folks) “T.R.O.Y.” would play in the last scene and into the credits. I always loved this song for the incredible beat crafted by the immortal Pete Rock. But there’s also the scattered narrative of the black family offered up by C.L. Smooth. His portrait is beautifully executed—you get his teenage mother struggling with a no-good man, his grandfather stepping in as a surrogate, the tragic death of “Trouble” T-Roy, along with the various ambitions of his aunts and uncles. When I started The Beautiful Struggle, I had “T.R.O.Y.” in my head all the way. I wanted to do in literature what Pete and C.L. so beautifully did in song.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle.

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