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
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1994
Showing 15 albums from 1994
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
Dummy
1994
They recorded their own samples, pressed them onto vinyl, and scratched the records up so the finished album would crackle like something older.
★ 8.1
Grace
1994
Buckley's voice covers about four octaves and he uses most of them. He drowned in the Mississippi three years later, aged thirty.
★ 7.6
Superunknown
1994
Singer Chris Cornell wrote Black Hole Sun in about fifteen minutes. Much of the rest is in time signatures that make nodding along hard.
★ 7.4
The Downward Spiral
1994
Trent Reznor made almost all of it alone. Johnny Cash covered Hurt nine years later and Reznor said the song no longer felt like his.
★ 7.4
Weezer (The Blue Album)
1994
Ric Ocasek of the Cars produced it, and Spike Jonze cut the Buddy Holly video into an old episode of Happy Days.
★ 6.7
Wildflowers
1994
Petty recorded far more than would fit and left around fifteen songs off, some of which stayed unreleased for another twenty-five years.
★ 5.8
CrazySexyCool
1994
Lisa Lopes burned down her boyfriend's house while they were making it. The album sold over twenty million and the group still went bankrupt.
★ 5.1
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
Vitalogy
1994
It came out on vinyl two weeks before the CD, and the sleeve reproduces an 1899 medical book the band found and liked.
★ 4.8
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
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
Monster
1994
They plugged back in on purpose after two quiet albums, and for years it was the record most often found in second-hand shops.
★ 3.6