Play With Toys by Basehead

Play with Toys was Basehead's debut, released on Imago, and it's one of the strangest, most likable records to come out of the rap-meets-rock collision: Michael Ivey's homemade project, cut at his place with a cast of hired studio players. Don't come looking for hard beats and sampled breaks. Ivey built it mostly on live instruments, sliding rock, blues, funk, hip-hop, pop, psychedelia and reggae together into something one critic dubbed "slacker rap". Ivey himself warned that hardcore hip-hop heads might walk away disappointed.

Over those loose, stoned grooves he muses on drinking, weed, depression, philosophy, politics and busted romances, poking holes in rock and gangsta-rap posturing alike. "Not Over You" is the song from it that made the countdowns. It became a cult favorite: Q put it in its top 50 albums of 1992 and NME ranked it 43rd. Ivey later put together a touring band, and they helped make the follow-up, Not in Kansas Anymore.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.