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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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