s it fair to publicly critique a stranger’s record collection? To tell others about what is decent or avoidable about that person’s pleasures, historical senses, childhood fingerprints? To declare those with good tastes as being culturally enlightened and to cast stones onto those who lack them? If pieces of that record collection are sold for $19.99 to prove their collectors’ street cred, absolutely.

UK b-boy label BBE releases two compilations that show what its feted curators believe are most royal or at least what moved them in funk and hip-hop. BBE already released the excellent and criminally underrated, rare groove Funk Spectrum series, which displayed how funk can evade kitsch and hit the gut with fewer chords than punk as the Soul Drifters’ “Funky” and Frankie Seay & the Soul Riders’ “Soul Food,” to name a few, prove. In those compilations, DJ Shadow, Pete Rock and London’s 45 King, Keb Darge amassed largely forgotten funk and soul artists from dusty wax—“broken dreams” as Shadow lamented while diving into canyons of used records underneath Sacramento’s K Records shop in the documentary Scratch. And in all honesty, getting know about an extremely obscure band and inflating your ego about it to your friends, lovers, enemies, and strangers on a bus are a part of the delight in such compilations.

The title of BBE’s The Kings of… series can pique the prejudice of the wise and cynical. Subjectivity defeats any credibility in that respect, reducing the title to a marketing ploy to catch a crate-digger’s eye—and, of course, the swank, human cartoons of a swingers’ ball and a weak-chinned blueblood at peace adorning the album covers.

More remarkable is how both two-disc compilations pair curators mainstream and underground; American and British. The Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA collects 10 joints on The Kings of Funk with Darge, while fellow ace, East Coast producer DJ Premier (Gang Starr, Nas, the Notorious B.I.G.) shares space with Mr. Thing (Scratch Perverts) on The Kings of Hip-Hop. While the Americans tend to dwell on nostalgia and the b-boy mined, the Englishmen mainly go straight for the rare and underappreciated.

RZA scores points for avoiding the Rhino Records or Time-Life route of slapping together the usual funk hits for his disc on The Kings of Funk. His tastes veer to the rather mellow and low-key, which is rather odd for someone who helped translate the sounds of busted boomboxes and funk samples taken from sun-melted flea market records sound into some of the nastiest hip-hop ever heard. The Ohio Players’ “Climax” struts in a groove that could sway buildings and cars to the beat of your feet, Booker T & the MGs’ classic, “Melting Pot” is an 8-minute, blue-lit trance, while Sly and the Family Stone’s “Small Talk” is a struggling lullaby for the pout of a baby. Some of the lesser-known artists who RZA picked have poignant moments, while others are forgettable. Ken Boothe’s “Is It Because I’m Black,” is a melancholic reggae ballad saddened by lines like “Something is holding me back / Is it because I’m black?” The Harlem Underground’s soulful sax-blown howlings at the moon in “Ain’t No Sunshine” is also striking, along with the JBs’-styled clap-along on Hank Ballard’s “From the Love Side.”

On the flipside, Darge curates a disc with no filler. The Scotsman first stabs the air with contemporary heavy-funk revivalists Sharon Jones and the Dap-kings smacking up womanizers upside the head in “Genuine,” followed by the mesmerizing Quantic FT Spanky Wilson’s “Don’t Joke with a Hungry Man.” Other shots of ecstasy include Brand New’s “Party Time,” Zebra’s “Simple Song,” and Anna Raye’s flowerbed soul on “Will You Love My Child.”

The Kings of Hip-Hop, on the other hand, is decent but hardly a primer of the genre. Like RZA, DJ Premier mainly kicks back to nod himself to sleep in the club with funk, R&B and soul tunes; contrasting with his usual heavyweight-champion beatology. There is very little hip-hop; instead, many of these song’s breaks were used as sample fodder. Opener, Grover Washington Jr.’s sleepwalking blues-funk of “Mister Magic” is best known to modern audiences as Salt N Pepa’s “My Mic Sounds Nice” and DJ Jazzy Jeff’s “A Touch of Jazz.” DJ Premier gently scratches to heighten the rhythms of the Ohio Players’ 100-pound groove in “Skin Tight,” while his fingerprints add amusement to the otherwise redundant & boring dreck of L.T.D.’s “Love Ballad.” Elsewhere, he throws in golden oldies like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You” and Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour,” both quite out of place on what purports to be a hip-hop compilation. Still, to end a set with Nina Simone’s haunting lullaby for the romantically conquered in “Don’t Explain,” doesn’t hurt.

It seems that Mr. Thing’s clench-fisted set would’ve been expected from the likes of RZA and DJ Premier. While his take on hip-hop’s kings is certainly dubious, he does give a good representation the genre both during and a little after its supposed “Golden Age” in the Bush I years. Featured are De la Soul, Big Daddy Kane, Brand Nubian, the Ultramagnetic MC’s, and Das EFX of all people. Main Source’s opening choir in “Fakin’ the Funk” still chills the spine, while Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy, Shimmy Ya” has a grit I never want to wash from my damn hands. Thing’s turntable work sometimes lards his set’s flow as he did to De La Soul and Common’s otherwise brilliant “Fakin Jazz.”

As for the payoff, Thing’s mix could’ve been stronger by giving a wider historical survey across decades. In fact, the same goes for Darge, RZA, and DJ Premier. But to be fair, who would listen to a DJ who stops the music after playing every joint to lecture everyone at the party about the historical importance of this and that? Nobody would even stay for the free booze.