Between its birth in 1973 and the release of “Rapper’s Delight” in 1979, hip-hop was exclusively a live concern. However, until the internet age, this period was mostly archived via tape-trading and bootlegs — so leave it to hip-hop historian KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions to not only provide the live era’s most vivid retelling (the 1986 single “South Bronx”), but also its most bombastic revamp with this groundbreaking 1991 album. Recorded in New York, Paris and London, KRS connects the dots between the spoken-word poetry of forebears like the Last Poets, the interjections of reggae toasters and, when “I’m Still #1” falls apart, the crowd-pleasing freestyles of rap’s earliest days. Christopher R. Weingarten