Uptown Saturday Night
1997
Named after a 1974 Sidney Poitier film. Luchini is built on a Dynasty record, and the pair's slang was obscure enough that listeners traded translations.
★ 3.3
The Albums canon
Sourced and spun.
Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
No One Can Do It Better
1989
He had written much of N.W.A's material, and a car crash months after this destroyed his voice permanently. He was twenty-one.
★ 3.3
Power
1988
The cover has his girlfriend in a swimsuit holding a shotgun, which got the record removed from a number of shops.
★ 3.6
Critical Beatdown
1988
Ced-Gee had already programmed half of Criminal Minded for Boogie Down Productions before making this, and Kool Keith raps like nobody else at all.
★ 4.0
The Diary
1994
Scarface came out of the Geto Boys and produced much of this himself. He talks over the beats as often as he raps.
★ 4.3
Thank Me Later
2010
Drake had been a teenage actor on a Canadian school drama, and made a record that raps and sings without marking where one stops.
★ 4.3
Strictly Business
1988
Both of them rap in the same flat monotone, over Zapp and Eric Clapton records, and somehow the lack of energy is the appeal.
★ 4.3
Regulate...G Funk Era
1994
The hit is built on a Michael McDonald song from 1982. Warren G is Dr. Dre's stepbrother and got nowhere near his budget.
★ 4.3
Section.80
2011
He put it out himself with no label, about the generation born under Reagan, a year before anyone outside Los Angeles knew his name.
★ 4.3
Deltron 3030
2000
Del plays a mech soldier in the year 3030 fighting a corporate empire with rap battles, and somehow it works.
★ 4.4
Cypress Hill
1991
B-Real pitched his voice up into that nasal whine on purpose, because he thought his normal one was too easy to ignore.
★ 4.4
Capital Punishment
1998
The first solo album by a Latino rapper to go platinum. Big Pun was dead of a heart attack two years later, at twenty-eight.
★ 4.5
Breaking Atoms
1991
Nas was seventeen and turns up for one verse near the end, which is where most people first heard him.
★ 4.5
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
1992
They started out as dancers, and it shows in how loose the record is. Their producer J-Swift built the beats out of jazz records.
★ 4.5
93 'til Infinity
1993
They were teenagers when they made it, rapping fast over a Billy Cobham loop about doing very little on a warm Oakland afternoon.
★ 4.5
What's the 411?
1992
Blige was discovered from a karaoke tape recorded in a shopping mall, and the title comes from the phrase for asking someone's business.
★ 4.8
Step In the Arena
1991
This is where DJ Premier worked out his method of chopping a record into single notes and rebuilding the melody from the pieces.
★ 4.9
Resurrection
1994
The famous song describes hip hop as a woman he has known since childhood. Ice Cube took it personally and started a feud.
★ 4.9
Ridin' Dirty
1996
There were no singles and no videos, and it sold on word of mouth across the South while nobody in New York noticed.
★ 4.9
Mama Said Knock You Out
1990
The title is what his grandmother told him when critics said he was finished. Marley Marl produced it and the comeback worked.
★ 5.0
Long Live the Kane
1988
Kane was already ghostwriting for half the Juice Crew when he made it, and Marley Marl gave him beats built from single drum hits.
★ 5.0
Daily Operation
1992
DJ Premier chopped the loops so short they barely repeat, and Guru delivers everything in the same flat voice, which somehow makes it land harder.
★ 5.1
Be
2005
Kanye West produced most of it and J Dilla the rest, and Common's father closes the record talking over the last track.
★ 5.1
Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life
1998
Jay-Z sampled children singing from the musical Annie for the title track, an idea nobody around him thought would work until it did.
★ 5.4
Criminal Minded
1987
Scott La Rock was shot dead a few months after it came out, which turned the guns on the sleeve into something else entirely.
★ 5.5
Death Certificate
1991
Cube split it into a death side and a life side. Several chains refused to stock it and Billboard ran an editorial against it.
★ 5.5
Watch the Throne
Jay-Z and Kanye West
2011
They recorded much of it in hotel suites around the world to stop it leaking, and the gold sleeve was designed by a Givenchy designer.
★ 5.6
Tha Carter III
2008
So much of it leaked in advance that he recorded a second album's worth. The A Milli beat is one chopped-up vocal repeated endlessly.
★ 5.7
Run the Jewels 2
2014
They gave it away free online, as they had the first one, and Killer Mike's verse about being stopped by police arrived weeks before Ferguson.
★ 5.7
Black on Both Sides
1999
Mos Def plays several of the instruments himself, and opens by pointing out that hip hop cannot be doing well if its people are not.
★ 5.7
The Score
1996
Recorded in a basement studio in New Jersey for about a hundred thousand dollars, and Killing Me Softly was a Roberta Flack hit from 1973.
★ 5.9
The Slim Shady LP
1999
Dr. Dre heard the demo through Jimmy Iovine and signed him within days. Eminem had been washing dishes in a Detroit restaurant.
★ 5.9
Raising Hell
1986
Aerosmith had not heard of Run-D.M.C. and were barely working when Rick Rubin got them into the studio to redo Walk This Way.
★ 5.9
Licensed to Ill
1986
Kerry King of Slayer plays the guitar solo. Rick Rubin built the beats out of Led Zeppelin and AC/DC drums played very loud.
★ 6.0
Check Your Head
1992
They picked their instruments back up and built a studio with a skate ramp in it, which is roughly how the record sounds.
★ 6.1
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
2003
50 Cent had been shot nine times two years earlier, and the bullet still in his jaw is part of why he sounds like that.
★ 6.4
The Infamous...
1995
Havoc and Prodigy were nineteen when they made it. Q-Tip helped with the production and is credited on the sleeve under a false name.
★ 6.6
Things Fall Apart
1999
Questlove and Black Thought began by busking on Philadelphia street corners, which is why a live band plays everything here rather than a sampler.
★ 6.7
The Eminem Show
2002
Eminem produced most of this himself rather than handing it to Dr. Dre, and it leaked so widely that the release was moved forward.
★ 6.7
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
1995
It came out on a purple cassette, and Ghostface Killah appears on so much of it that people argue whose album it really is.
★ 6.8
Me Against the World
1995
He was in prison when it reached number one, the first artist that had ever happened to. He recorded it before going in.
★ 6.8
Liquid Swords
1995
Dialogue from a dubbed samurai film runs between the tracks, spoken by a child, which is where the record gets its atmosphere.
★ 6.9
Late Registration
2005
Kanye brought in Jon Brion, a film composer who had never worked on a rap record, and put a string section behind everything.
★ 6.9
Graduation
2007
It came out the same day as a 50 Cent album, and the two turned it into a public sales contest. Kanye won by a distance.
★ 6.9
ATLiens
1996
André 3000 had stopped drinking and eating meat, and the change shows: the record is cooler and stranger than anything Atlanta had made before.
★ 7.1
All Eyez on Me
1996
Recorded in a hurry after Suge Knight bailed him out of prison, hip hop's first great double album. He was dead within the year.
★ 7.1
Paid in Full
1987
Rakim rhymes inside his lines rather than only at the ends of them, and delivers all of it without ever raising his voice.
★ 7.2
The Black Album
2003
Every track has a different producer, which he did on purpose. He announced his retirement, held a farewell concert, and came back three years later.
★ 7.4
Endtroducing.....
1996
Built entirely out of other people's records, on a single sampler, in the basement of a Sacramento record shop full of unsorted vinyl.
★ 7.6
2001
1999
Dre hired live musicians instead of sampling, and had Jay-Z write the words to Still D.R.E. for him. Eminem turns up throughout.
★ 7.7
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
1998
Hill recorded much of it in Bob Marley's old studio in Kingston, and the classroom scenes between songs use actual schoolchildren.
★ 7.9
Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
2003
It is really two solo albums in one box, and the two of them barely appear on each other's halves.
★ 8.0
Reasonable Doubt
1996
No label would sign him, so Jay-Z started his own with two friends and sold the CDs out of the trunk of a car.
★ 8.0
Midnight Marauders
1993
A synthesized voice introduces the tracks like a museum tour guide, and the cover is a grid of about seventy other rappers' faces.
★ 8.0
3 Feet High and Rising
1989
They sampled so freely that the Turtles sued them, and the case helped make sample clearance the expensive business it has been ever since.
★ 8.2
Fear of a Black Planet
1990
Their production team piled so many samples into each track that the record could not legally be made today. Nothing since sounds this crowded.
★ 8.3
Doggystyle
1993
Snoop was on trial for murder while promoting it. It was the first debut album in history to enter the chart at number one.
★ 8.3
The Marshall Mathers LP
2000
It sold nearly two million copies in a week. Elton John agreed to perform with him at the Grammys while the protests were loudest.
★ 8.4
The College Dropout
2004
Kanye recorded one of the songs with his jaw wired shut after a car crash, which is exactly what it sounds like.
★ 8.4
The Blueprint
2001
It was recorded in about two weeks and released on the eleventh of September 2001. Kanye West sped the soul samples up to chipmunk pitch.
★ 8.4
Straight Outta Compton
1988
The FBI wrote to their record label objecting to one of the songs, which did more for sales than any advertising could.
★ 8.5
Stankonia
2000
B.O.B. runs at a hundred and fifty-five beats a minute, which is drum and bass speed, with a gospel choir on top.
★ 8.5
Paul's Boutique
1989
It uses well over a hundred samples, which would be unaffordable to clear today, and it sold so badly the label gave up on them.
★ 8.5
Life After Death
1997
It came out sixteen days after Biggie was shot dead in Los Angeles, a double album he had finished and titled beforehand.
★ 8.6
good kid, m.A.A.d city
2012
Subtitled a short film, and the story runs in order across one day. The interludes are voicemails from his parents asking where the van is.
★ 8.6
Aquemini
1998
Rosa Parks sued them over the song named after her, and the case ran for a decade. The record itself goes everywhere at once.
★ 8.7
The Low End Theory
1991
Ron Carter, who played bass with Miles Davis, appears on one track and made them promise there would be no swearing on it.
★ 8.8
The Chronic
1992
Dre had session players replay the funk records rather than sample them, which sidestepped clearance and made everything sound warmer and slower.
★ 8.8
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
1993
RZA negotiated a deal letting every member sign solo elsewhere, then recorded the group in a basement on deliberately cheap, muddy equipment.
★ 8.9
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
1988
The producers used sirens, squeals and feedback as rhythm instruments, which is why it sounds less like music than like an emergency.
★ 9.0
Ready to Die
1994
The opening traces his life from the delivery room to prison in about three minutes. Puffy made him rewrite half of it for radio.
★ 9.1
Illmatic
1994
Ten tracks, under forty minutes, made by a twenty-year-old with the best producers in New York each giving him one beat.
★ 9.3