Whodini would be notable even if their career were reduced to a list of milestones. The Brooklyn trio—Jalil Hutchins, John “Ecstasy” Fletcher and DJ Drew Carter (also known as Grandmaster Dee)—were the first hip-hop act to record a music video for one of their songs. They were also so early on the fusion of rap and R&B that they are seen as one of the key progenitors of new jack swing. But Whodini’s catalogue is one of the most sampled and picked-over in the history of hip-hop for a reason—the thick, apocalyptic funk from producer Larry Smith makes the trends and hardware of ’80s music production sound alternately more fun and more menacing than it does anywhere else, while Hutchins and Ecstasy consistently cut to the core of issues like alienation in adulthood (“Friends”) and the razor’s edge on which every nightlife scene hangs (“Freaks Come Out at Night”).