The first thing I thought of when I heard this album was the Beastie Boys. Their first album, Egg Raid on Mojo was light punk. Then they released, License to Ill which became an old school hip-hop classic.
As they matured in their songwriting, they found a way to blend those genres effectively which produced a sound that was uniquely theirs. Another band that comes to mind that did a similar thing was Rage Against The Machine. K-OS (pronounced chaos) does the same genre fusing in Atlantis.
