10 Essential Lloyd Banks Tracks

Lloyd Banks was 22 when he released his debut album The Hunger For More in 2004, one year after 50 Cent's monumental debut Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Banks had already forged a reputation as the Punchline King, and he was G-Unit's undisputed next-up. He felt like the next big thing in rap.

Banks is 34 now. He's coming off the release of All or Nothing: Live it Up, his second mixtape in three years. Though his career never reached the soaring heights of 50 Cent's, his place in the hip hop canon is, in some ways, more secure.

Click through the gallery to listen to 10 of Banks most essential tracks.

Banks was featured prominently on 50 Cent's incredible 2002 mixtape run. He gets his whole track on No Mercy, No Fear standout "Banks Victory," as 50 relegates himself to ad-lib duty and practically creams his pants the whole time as Banks fires off an unremitting salvo of punchlines for over two minutes. "Your advance is a grey Acura."

On "Bad News," Banks delivers a straight-forward 16 over a flip of Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" that still stands as one of the most memorable verses of his career. "Round here bitches walk around wit the hair that the horses had."

One year after 50 Cent released Get Rich or Die Tryin', it was Banks' turn to release his debut album, The Hunger For More. It was a commercial smash, with 433 thousand first-week sales. In the video for the album's second single "I'm So Fly," Banks becomes the first rapper to stunt in front of a Frank Gehry building.

Banks' highest-charting single (it peaked at #8), "On Fire" sounds like what it feels like to walk into a steamy, sweaty, pulsating nightclub where everything seems to move in slow motion and it is approximately 120 degrees.

It can be fun to date songs by the cultural signifiers they reference. In this instance, Banks describes shooting a guy wearing an NBA jacket, which were all the rage in the early- to mid-'00s. "If that's your man warn him / Cause there's enough bullets in here to hit every NBA patch on him."

On "Karma," Banks offers insight into his philosophy on women. He derives his "hit and split" mentality from his icy heart ("colder then your sandwich meat") and what he perceives to be many women's interest in playing games.

Home to rappers like Nicki Minaj, Pharoaohe Monch, and briefly Waka Flocka, South Jamaica, Queens yields one of the highest crime rates in the country. On "South Side Story," Banks enters storytelling mode to regale the listener with a pair of sordid tales from his childhood in the furthest reaches of New York City.

Banks has always possessed a dusty, blue-collar quality. More than most rappers he is in touch with the shittily existential aspect of life that everyone is forced to confront on a daily basis. "Til The End" poignantly encapsulates the ups and downs of everyday life in perilous Southside Queens: "Nobody dead knew they would die before they woke / They probably started off a beautiful day with weed smoke."

The most popular song off Banks' sophomore album Rotten Apple, "Hands Up" was ultimately upstaged by The Game, who co-opted the beat for his timeless G-Unit diss "100 Bars (The Funeral)."

"Call it momma's little boy, or 50's little bitch, the Rotten Apple or the protégé of a snitch" - The Game

"Beamer Benz, or Bentley" is Banks' only significant hit since The Hunger For More, but hits are not the name of Banks' game. He was the perfect partner for the sneering, beef-loving 50 Cent. The difference between the two fo them can be summarized by their respective Instagram feeds. While 50 Cent is either flaunting his cash, dissing Ciroc, or photoshopping Meek Mill memes, Lloyd Banks has only one mode: mean-mugging directly into the camera.