Criminal Minded is released

Why it matters

Criminal Minded came out March 3, 1987, on B-Boy Records, credited to Boogie Down Productions (KRS-One and Scott La Rock). The cover is the two of them in their kitchen, KRS holding an Uzi and a grenade launcher, Scott holding a handgun. It is one of the first rap album covers to put weapons in the frame, and it is a real cover, not a put-on. KRS would later note that the weapons were Scott's, that Scott was a corrections officer, and that they were legal. It still hits differently, especially given what happens next. The album is one of the most influential debuts in rap. "South Bronx," "The Bridge Is Over," "9mm Goes Bang," "Poetry," "Criminal Minded" itself. Scott La Rock produced almost all of it on a four-track in a Bronx apartment. The production is harder, more bottom-heavy, more menacing than anything Marley Marl was doing on the other side of the river. The lyrics introduced a level of street specificity nobody had committed to wax before. Five months after the album dropped, Scott La Rock was shot and killed at twenty-five. KRS has spent the next forty years finishing the record they started together. You can hear him still doing it.