HIEROGLYPHICS Vinyl & CDs

Review: Often cited as the sort of album that took hip hop in credible new directions and opened it up to a broader audience who had previously been put off by rap and all its streetwise slang and urban references, Hieroglyphics' "3rd Eye Vision" landed in 1998. It has been cited as one of the best indie hop hip albums of all time thanks to its lavish instrumentation and stellar production from Domino, with contributions from A-Plus, Opio, Del and Casual. Each of the 20 tracks tell their own stories but mesh them together and it's a coherent album overall that proves going your own way, away from the majors can be a scary but rewarding move.