First album I purchased with my own money was Dah Shinin. Gotta go with Tek N Steele. That album is in my top 10 personal favs.
As much as I loved The War Report back in the day, it's unlistenable as a whole to me nowadays, where as I can still listen to Dah Shinin and it sounds almost as refreshing as when I first heard it well over a decade ago.
Real talk too, I'd throw Steele up against anybody's favorite emcee. This might sound like The Rhyme King, but Steele is every bit as technical and complex with it on levels of P-Monche, or Slaughterhouse.