For Tommy Boy president Monica Lynch, the song on her label's forthcoming Greatest Beats collection which best represents her 17 years of work is "Planet Rock," the groundbreaking hip-hop single by Afrika Bambaataa & Sonic Soul Force.

She can vividly remember the night in March of 1981 when she drove with label founder Tom Silverman to the basement studios of WHBI-FM to deliver the album to hip-hop DJs Mr. Magic and Marly Marl, not really grasping that the song would help to launch a sonic revolution whose effects are still being felt today.

With Sugarhill being the only rap label with widespread acceptance at the time and other major rap players such as Jive and Priority just getting started, success was a gamble for the hip-hop entrepreneurs.

"Very soon after [dropping it off], we began hearing it pouring out of windows as Mr. Magic broke the record," Lynch recalled last week from the offices of WFMU-FM. "For a label that, at the time, was just two people, it was a very heavy experience. This was a period when rap itself was very young, very much like a cottage industry. We were just getting started, Profile was just getting started and Jive wasn't in the rap game yet."

To preserve those memories and the millions of others generated by songs from such Tommy Boy groups as De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Force M.D.'s and Digital Underground, Lynch and her co-workers have assembled a five-CD set entitled Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats, which is due in stores on Oct. 27. A 56-track history lesson presenting songs which shaped the sound of hip-hop and R&B from 1981 through 1996, it was assembled by a Tommy Boy team which Lynch said included "grizzled old veterans like myself and younger folks on the staff whose perspective on our records might be very different than mine."

Kicking off with a 12-inch version of "Planet Rock," the collection features hip-hop and R&B hits including Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P." and Force M.D.'s "Tender Love," and throws in rarities such as TKA's "Maria" and Pressure Drop's "Rock The House (You'll Never Be)." The set serves as a reminder that Tommy Boy has made inroads into the dance market, with celebrated drag queen RuPaul and '80s techno-dance group Information Society checking in with, respectively, "Supermodel (You Better Work)" and "What's On Your Mind." Sold as a set in a mini milk-crate and also available as individual CDs, Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats will also feature a still-in-the-works 12-track CD of remixes by such artists as techno remixer Jason Nevins (who takes on House of Pain's "Jump Around") and electronica artist Dimitri from Paris (who manipulates Stetsasonic's "Talking All That Jazz").

According to Lynch, Tommy Boy first kicked around the idea of a label retrospective in the early '90s, when the company was approaching its 10th anniversary. It was a conscious decision, Lynch said, to mix up the set -- presenting hits next to lesser-known songs and offering 12-inch versions and remixes that often made a bigger mark than the album versions.

As an example, Lynch cited the 12-inch version of De La Soul's "Buddy," a song which also included the Jungle Brothers, Q-Tip, Monie Love and Queen Latifah.

"Tommy Boy put out some of the greatest rap records back in the day," influential hip-hop DJ Funkmaster Flex (born Aston Taylor) said. "Songs like 'Planet Rock' and [De La Soul's] 'Me Myself and I' are classics."

Flex also said that the label was influential not only because of the music they put out, but also because of their business practices -- a fact touched upon by Rap Attack 2 author David Toop in the set's liner notes.

"Tommy Boy has been the foremost label in establishing the protocol and the way business is done today in the sample clearances," Lynch said. "It was not only through controversial lawsuits like the one with De La Soul and the Turtles [over the use of the Turtles' song 'You Showed Me' in the De La Soul song 'Transmitting Live from Mars'], but it also was through the lyrics. Stetsasonic's 'Talking All That Jazz' was the first rap record to address the issue of sampling."

Speaking on a more personal note, Lynch said she feels somewhat underwhelmed by much of what she hears in today's sampling and hopes that Tommy Boy's Greatest Beats will remind people how it can be used more creatively.

"I'm not too convinced that a lot of sampling today is as creative or as cleverly done as some that you hear in old-school records," Lynch explained. "Obviously, I'm older, but I think that samples are not used as artfully as they used to be.

"Frankly, I think there's [currently] a level of mediocrity that has become the norm. Assembling this collection has basically reinforced my beliefs."

A complete track listing for the set can be found at http://www.tommyboy.com starting Sept. 4.