Def Jux: 16 albums from The Cold Vein to the record El-P finished for a friend

The label's first full-length, out May 15, 2001, and still the record the rest of this list gets measured against. Vast Aire and Vordul Mega were two kids from Harlem rapping about pigeons and project stairwells, and El-P built them a city out of synth hiss and echo.

They never made a second album for Def Jux, and the relationship fell apart. One was enough: "Iron Galaxy" and "Vein" are still the label's founding documents.

A concept album about work, released September 18, 2001, a week after the September 11 attacks, which Aesop Rock lived through in lower Manhattan. He and Blockhead made it on the same Roland VS-880 they'd used for Float, and the songs were bounced down to two tracks, which is why so few instrumentals exist.

Def Jux told him to quit his day job to tour it, which suits an album about what jobs do to people. If someone you know owns one Def Jux album, it is usually this one, and they picked well.

El-P's first solo album, out May 14, 2002, made over a year and a half, much of it in his Brooklyn bedroom after Company Flow broke up. The production model was Public Enemy's Bomb Squad, the reading list was Philip K. Dick and Orwell, and the mood was paranoid enough that people still file it as a 9/11 record, though most of it was written before.

"Deep Space 9mm" and "Stepfather Factory" are the songs, but the album works as one long squall. It peaked at No. 198 on the Billboard 200, which tells you nothing about how many rappers it ended up shaping.

The record that proved Def Jux wasn't one sound. RJD2 had been the DJ and producer in MHz, a Columbus group that also had Camu Tao in it, and Deadringer (July 23, 2002) is warm, sample-heavy instrumental hip-hop that sits nowhere near El-P's static.

"Ghostwriter" later sold lottery tickets in Washington State and turned up in a Wells Fargo ad and the film Wimbledon. Don't hold that against it. It is the best-sequenced instrumental album the indie-rap boom produced.

Boston's Mr. Lif made a concept album about a working man pushed to chase the American dream. It opens with a death and a resurrection and ends in nuclear holocaust. El-P produced most of it, with Insight, Fakts One, Nasa and Edan filling in.

It came out September 17, 2002, cut in the same sessions as the Emergency Rations EP. Nobody else on the label wrote narrative this tightly, and the closing run still lands like a short film.

Murs came from Los Angeles and the Living Legends crew, and his Def Jux debut (February 25, 2003) let some West Coast daylight into the catalog. The producer list runs from El-P and RJD2 to Shock G, who also turns up on "Risky Business".

AllMusic's John Bush called it "one of the most refreshing rap records in years." Fair. Murs raps about ordinary embarrassments with no armor on, and after a run of dense New York records that alone felt radical.

Camu Tao and Metro, both from Columbus, made exactly one album as S.A. Smash, released June 3, 2003. Metro has said the loose sessions started under the late producer DJ Przm, and Camu produced most of it himself, with El-P and Blockhead taking a track each.

It's the rowdiest record Def Jux ever pressed and the easiest one to undersell. Camu's ear for a hook is all over it, years before King of Hearts made that obvious.

Aesop produced most of this one himself (Blockhead has three tracks, El-P one), and it runs 70 minutes of clanging, crowded beats under his densest writing. AllMusic missed the samples of Labor Days, Pitchfork gave it an 8.2, and a decade later Danny Brown named it one of his 25 favorite albums.

Released September 23, 2003, it topped Billboard's Heatseekers chart and reached No. 112 on the 200. People still argue over whether it's a step down from Labor Days. It's the harder listen and, track for track, the stranger record, which on this label counts for something.

Ten songs and 35 minutes, every beat by 9th Wonder of Little Brother, with El-P only as executive producer. Released March 23, 2004, it's the most conventional record in the catalog and possibly the most replayed: Murs telling small, specific stories over warm, chopped soul.

Phonte drops in on "The Animal". Metacritic has it at 85, and it shows Def Jux wasn't scared of a pretty beat.

Mr. Lif and Akrobatik, with DJ Fakts One behind them, made Boston's answer to the Bush years. "Memorial Day" came out as a single in 2004 and the album followed on March 22, 2005, with Humpty Hump on "Career Finders" and Guru and Camu Tao on "Party Hard".

Rolling Stone put it at No. 36 of 2005. It is the one Def Jux album built mostly on two rappers trading verses like an old-school group, and it's the most fun political record in the catalog.

Cage had made his name on shock rap. Hell's Winter (September 20, 2005) is him pulling the costume off, with El-P, Blockhead, DJ Shadow and RJD2 on production and Jello Biafra on "Grand Ol' Party Crash".

Pitchfork's Tom Breihan described it as Cage telling his childhood "in fractured blips of vivid images," which is exactly right. It's the most personal album the label released, and the one most likely to change your mind about the person who made it.

The label boss's second album, March 20, 2007, and the place where Def Jux's guest list got strange: Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López of the Mars Volta on "Tasmanian Pain Coaster", Trent Reznor on "Flyentology", Cat Power closing the record on "Poisenville Kids No Wins". The bird on the cover comes from a drawing Alexander Calder made on a toy airplane for El-P when he was a kid.

It reached No. 78 on the Billboard 200 and sold about 11,000 copies in its first week. It's also his best solo album: the paranoia of Fantastic Damage, with songs that let you in.

Blockhead back in charge of most of the beats, a cover by Jeremy Fish, and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats shouting his way into the end of "Coffee". Released August 28, 2007, it debuted at No. 50 on the Billboard 200 with about 13,000 copies sold.

It's Aesop's most approachable Def Jux album without losing any of the vocabulary, and the title track is the closest thing the label ever had to a radio single that nobody played on the radio.

The oddest line in the catalog. Maths + English came out in the UK on XL in June 2007, and when it got a physical US release on April 29, 2008, it was on Definitive Jux. The American edition added "G.H.E.T.T.O." and "Driving", swapped in an El-P remix of the UGK collaboration "Where's da G's", and dropped "Pussyole (Old Skool)" over sample clearance.

An East London grime album on a Brooklyn backpack label sounds like a mismatch. It fits better than it should: "Sirens" and "Where's da G's" sit closer to El-P's paranoia than most American indie rap of 2008 did.

Cage's third album (July 7, 2009) swaps samples for guitar feedback and fuzz. Shia LaBeouf directed the video for "I Never Knew You". Spin's Thomas Golianopoulos called it "the most seamless, compelling union of hip-hop and modern rock since the two genres first collided," which is a big claim for a rap-rock record released in 2009.

Most Def Jux fans skip it. They shouldn't. It's late-period, raw and a little embarrassing in places, and it shows the label still taking chances while it was winding down.

Camu Tao died of lung cancer on May 25, 2008, at 30. He left demos and home recordings, and El-P spent the next two years shaping them into an album, released August 17, 2010, with Fat Possum. It was the label's last record.

Camu barely raps on it. The songs are distorted vocals over synths and guitar, closer to electro than anything else on the label, and El-P admitted it would have been a different album had his friend lived to finish it. It's uneven and sometimes hard to hear, and it is the right place for the Def Jux story to stop.