Hancock has so many distinct personalities, I know of few people who like all facets of his music/career. There's the hard electronic pop of Rocket. The "Headhunters" Fusion era. His stunning work with Miles Davis.

There is also the handful of records he did on Blue Note. This is a compilation from those records, released to capitalize (ahem) on the success of Us3, who sampled from (among others) Hancock's "Cantaloupe Island." Other reviewers have gone on at some length about the particular tracks on this compilation, so I won't rehash all that here.

A hard core Hancock fan would argue that you need all of the Blue Note discs. I'm not enough of a fan to comment on that level. I can say, however, that I had all those discs, and this compilation was the disc that got all the play.

If you are new to jazz, this is a great introduction to "traditional" jazz, with line ups ranging from quartet to septet (? seven members). In general, it swings, it jumps, it bops.