An honest-to-God best-of from the Tennessee rap duo 8Ball & MJG would work something like a pocket history of Southern rap. On 1993's , their national debut, they kicked exaggerated crime-life tall-tales for six or seven minutes at a time over homemade car-trunk beats, never bothering much with hooks or structure. But the highlights from their last two albums, for Diddy's Bad Boy label, were exemplary streamlined head-knock club-rap. (Those last two albums, in particular, are the reason best-of albums were invented: a few undeniable snarls surrounded by seas of halfhearted radio-targeted filler.) Their outlaw-duo chemistry was there from the beginning, but over the years since , the two cultivated a fascinatingly schizo approach, swinging haphazardly from visceral bone-chilling pimp-talk to warm, openhearted up-from-nothing inspirational tales. And iPods being what they are, it's not hard to construct that narrative for yourself, to watch these guys develop over the years. But that's not what does.