Def Jam

THE 200 GREATEST HIP-HOP ALBUMS OF ALL TIME

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-hip-hop-albums-1323916/

Cam'ron, 'Purple Haze' (2004)

Harlem native Cam’ron is one of East Coast hip-hop’s great outliers — gangsta swagger cut with druggy surrealism. And for a while there, he was on his hustle like a true New Yorker, cranking out albums, singles, and features at astounding speed (not to mention getting the streets to wear pink and endorsing Sizzurp Liquer with his crew Dipset). Purple Haze was the peak of classic-era Cam, somehow shoring up his delivery and getting weirder for it. Check out the impossibly smooth “Killa Cam,” the classic early Kayne track “Down and Out,” the Hill Street Blues interpolation on “Harlem Streets” and, uh, a mangled Cyndi Lauper sample on “Girls.” —J.G.

The Roots, 'How I Got Over' (2010)

By 2010, Philly-based rap group the Roots were solidly at the top of rap’s underground, conscious wing. Their ninth album, How I Got Over, manages to burst through any stifling expectations with one of the group’s most adventurous offerings. The Roots’ signature live instrumentation is at its most resonant, and the album’s themes of societal degradation and struggle in the face of economic and political turmoil remain as potent as ever. —J.I.

LL Cool J, 'Radio' (1985)

James Todd Smith was just another clever, cocksure, and altogether hard-as-hell 17-year-old who was still living with his grandparents when he rechristened himself LL Cool J and released his debut album, Radio. His youthful spitfire still leaps from the concrete-vibrating speakers nearly 40 years later on “Rock the Bells,” “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” and his five-minute pickup line “I Can Give You More.” Then-NYU student Rick Rubin’s sparse, hard-hitting production (his credit was “Reduced by Rick Rubin”) played up Cool J’s lyrical dexterity on brags like “All you gonna-bes, wannabes, when will you learn/Wanna be like Cool J, you gotta wait your turn” on “Bells,” inspiring a new generation. —K.G.

 

Rick Ross, 'Teflon Don' (2010)

Rick Ross’ Teflon Don was instrumental in carving out his specific lane of “luxury rap.” “Young and radical, methods are mathematical/Let my convertible marinate on the avenue,” he rapped on the Kanye-produced track “Live Fast, Die Young,” showing hunger while highlighting how he’s translated success into a higher-than-high end lifestyle. With help from frequent producers trio J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Ross’ fourth studio album cemented his position in rap with features from Jay-Z to Gucci Mane. Teflon Don flew so that rappers like Freddie Gibbs and Benny the Butcher could walk. —D.G.

 

Ghostface Killah, 'Fishscale' (2006)

Nobody has had a run like Ghostface. In an industry where a career is over in two singles and a wack album, Ghost made banger after banger, never afraid to innovate but never losing sight of the sound and vibe that made him great. Released nearly 13 years after the Wu’sEnter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Ghost’s fifth solo album was the sound of a rap god who could’ve had a second career surrealist noir novelist. On Fishscale, his talent for detail is at a peak: “Throwin’ ketchup on my fries, hitting baseball spliffs/Back seat with my leg all stiff/Push the fuckin’ seat up, tartar sauce on my S Dot kicks.” And singles like the Pete Rock-produced “Be Easy” and the soul-inflected jam “Back Like That” (featuring Ne-Yo) reminded everyone that there is only one Ghostface Killah. —J.G.

Jay-Z, 'The Black Album' (2003)

Jay-Z stayed “retired” for about five minutes, but had The Black Album been his final bow, dude’s legend might actually be bigger than it is now. After the instant classic The Blueprint and the exhausting misfire The Blueprint 2, Shawn Carter assembled a murderer’s row of producers and cranked out another hall-of-famer. Based around an autobio theme and moving seamlessly from Rick Rubin’s earth-shaking “99 Problems” to Kanye’s “Lucifer” to Timbaland’s “Dirt Off Your Shoulder,” Jay reasserted his rap-game dominance overnight. Verse that surprised nobody: “I dumbed down for my audience to double my dollars.” —J.G.

Rapsody, 'Laila’s Wisdom' (2017)

Laila’s Wisdom marks a commercial breakthrough for a rapper who nurtured her indie career for nearly a decade. North Carolina’s Rapsody emphasizes B-girl panache and lyrical themes like self-doubt, striving to be more spiritual, and yearning to connect with others. But she takes pains to avoid pretension. “Don’t like all underground, I don’t hate on music that isn’t/I was just making it clap to Waka Flocka last Christmas,” she raps on “Nobody.” Plenty of guests gather to help, including Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes, Black Thought, and Anderson .Paak. The music is soulful and reflective, the sound of a woman seizing her moment while wondering what it all means. —M.R.

Pusha T, 'Daytona' (2018)

Clocking in at an impossibly tight 21 minutes over seven songs, Daytona is easily the best Pusha T solo record, nearly the equal of anything he did with his old crew the Clipse. Rapping over wall-to-wall top-shelf Kanye beats, songs like “If You Know You Know,” “Hard Piano,” and the spooky “Infrared” prove Pusha is the Hemingway, Shakespeare, and Pynchon of drug rap — within this one topic, he creates worlds. Points deducted for a tasteless (and wholly unnecessary) cover graphic, apparently Whitney Houston’s filthy bathroom. —J.G.

Young Jeezy, 'Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101' (2005)

“Now I’m ya favorite rapper’s favorite rapper/Now I’m ya favorite trapper’s favorite trapper,” Jeezy spits on “Standing Ovation” — and when you’re right, you’re right. The Atlanta talent’s debut established him as one of the premier artists of hip-hop’s in the mid-2000s. Over cheap-sounding keyboards, drum machine claps, and incessant digital hi-hats, Jeezy opined mostly about selling drugs and the money made therein (“stack it all up like Lego money/ Played with them blocks call it Tetris/ Real talk a hundred carats in my necklace”), creating one of the trap-era’s defining albums. —J.G.

Photo: album cover

Vince Staples, 'Summertime '06' (2015)

On Summertime ’06, Vince Staples’ always humorous persona comes through in every bar — delivered in a relentless pocket, like some rapidly composed fire tweet. Over the bass-heavy drone of “Lift Me Up,” he snaps, “Uber driver in the cockpit look like Jeffrey Dahmer/But he looking at me crazy when we pull up to the projects,” as if he’s got a weeklong residency in the Catskills. But there are also moments of poignant beauty here. Witness the dreamy “Summertime.” And “C.N.B.,” whose boastful hook plays counterpoint to the verses’ scathing social commentary, proves that sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying. —W.D.

Slick Rick, 'The Great Adventures of Slick Rick' (1988)

Dashing, irreverent, hysterical, wise, and bursting with charm, Slick Rick laced his classic debut with enough magisterial tall tales to keep a Victorian public house in stitches. “Children’s Story” is a parable so eternal annotators should publish its lyrics in red ink. On “Mona Lisa,” Rick spells out his name with a mock-heroic exit-stage-right affectation that’s so bloody cocksure it’s got self-deprecation to spare. (His “K,” as in “Kangol,” rises an octave, as if he’s exasperated at his unabashed navel-gazing.) And “The Moment I Feared” is a tragedy that feels like a farce. There’s not a greater storyteller in rap. —W.D.

Jay-Z and Kanye West, 'Watch the Throne' (2011)

Quoting Mr. West: “Why do you think the song ‘Niggas in Paris’ was called ‘Niggas in Paris’? Cuz niggas was in Paris!” To wit, this gilded flex on Eurocentric creative elites is fueled by the constant looting of, and barriers to, black excellence. Jay, Ye, and their A-list collaborators subsume all genres: a dubstep sample, a Bon Iver cameo, Nina Simone’s voice deftly Auto-Tuned, Frank Ocean’s croon placed over a riff by Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera. It’s a Ye-driven spectacle, but Jay’s lyrics reveal the alienation that’s always lurking. —C.A.

Public Enemy, 'Fear of a Black Planet' (1990)

Chuck D and Flavor Flav made Afro-pessimism as inescapable as pop music on their impeccable sophomore opus, Fear of a Black Planet. But there was nothing soft or compromising about these 20 songs. The D.A.R.E.-era manifesto “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” comes on like a dissonant dental drill fed through some jury-rigged amp. And “Fight the Power” gave voice to the fury in the Black community — sick and tired after 400-plus years of oppression. Full of righteous rage, timeless anthems, and protest-worthy fervor, Fear of a Black Planet captivated the nation and didn’t hold back. —W.D.

Beastie Boys, 'Licensed to Ill' (1986)

For younger listeners who believe that Paul’s Boutique and Ill Communication represent the Beasties’ best work, it may be hard to imagine the singular impact of Licensed to Ill. The trio and producer/co-conspirator Rick Rubin inspired a genuine Moral Majority panic with their frat-boy brew of Schoolly-D-inspired thuggishness, Run-DMC-styled superhero chants, and Original Concept-level jeep beats. The outrageous, Western-set story rap “Paul Revere” can still set off a party, and even Ice Cube admits to mimicking Mike D, King Ad Rock, and MCA’s nasally flows and punchy jokes. The fact that the three rappers are punk aesthetes who can’t seem to tell whether they’re in on the joke or being themselves is part of the fun. —M.R.

LL Cool J, 'Mama Said Knock You Out' (1990)

At this point in LL Cool J’s career, he released an album with one goal — to reign over hip-hop as its undisputed MC champ. After obliterating all comers on 1987’s exhilarating taunt Bigger and Deffer, he lost his title on its scattershot follow-up. Here, he got in the ring, literally, throwing haymaker punchlines in the video for the Grammy-winning title track. Crucially, production maestro Marley Marl returned, and his kinetic bang-zoom stoked LL’s joy at bending language to his will and flicking syllables like precise, stinging jabs. —C.A.

Kanye West, 'Late Registration' (2005)

There’s an entire population, currently in their 20s, who remember seeing the music video for “Gold Digger” for the first time when they were kids. The lead single from Kanye West’s sophomore album, 2005’s Late Registration, brought the poignant, sample-flipping virtuoso to the masses and set the stage for one of rap’s most undeniably brilliant runs. On Late Registration, Kanye’s hubris hadn’t yet calcified in his image. He was hungry because of how great he knew he was, and he was hell-bent on proving it. The result is a once-in-a-generation record that today’s millennials will be sharing with their grandchildren. —J.I.

Jay-Z, 'Reasonable Doubt' (1996)

There was a cultivated inevitability around Reasonable Doubt — Jay-Z’s rep as a freestyle MC with a hot demo, kingpin image, and discreetly funded label that he co-founded (Roc-A-Fella), industry connects (Big Daddy Kane cosign, A-list beats, Biggie, Mary J. Blige features), plus a single (“Ain’t No Nigga,” featuring Foxy Brown) already rockin’ New York clubs and radio. But this crisply refined record elevated Jay to an elite artistic, if not yet commercial, level. He had the ruthlessly lucid crime lore, subtle shifts in dialogue and point of view, you-conceited-bastard wordplay, and haughty C-suite vision. The result: Hooky, poignant champagne-soul, from a sage with well-earned scars. —C.A.

DMX, 'It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot' (1998)

Emerging from a childhood scarred by poverty, abuse, and incarceration, Earl “Dark Man X” Simmons came hungry and heartfelt on his five-times-platinum debut. In 1998, he was the undisputed hottest rapper in the game because of his technical ability on songs like single “Get at Me Dog,” but his debut LP revealed a multifaceted, emotionally rich tangle of contradictions and confessions. X was boastful (“Ruff Ryders’ Anthem”) and prone to grisly murder scenarios (“X-Is Coming”), but he takes a moment for an earnest, a cappella prayer to the heavens (“Prayer”). He raps as temptation (“Damien”) and as God (“The Convo”), airing his demons and aspirations, painting both the horror of his existence and the power of his triumph. —C.W.

Kanye West, 'Yeezus' (2013)

With its thick timbres, faster tempos, dissonant keyboards, dynamite drums, and violent mix of hip-hop and electronic music, Kanye’s sixth studio album remains Kanye West’s most radical statement. Nothing in mainstream rap had the hammering percussion of “Black Skinhead,” the glitchy design of “On Sight,” or the ballistic New Orleans bounce of “Blood on the Leaves.” By turning up the distortion, contorting the samples, and rhyming with a petulant recklessness that was over the top even by Kanye’s standards, he found a new way to shock the world. Croissant: earned. —Y.P.

Kanye West, 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' (2010)

Following the fallout from his infamous interruption of Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech, Kanye West was fighting to win back the public’s favor. That fueled him to do something he hadn’t done before and maybe never will do again: exactly what we wanted him to. MBDTF is an upgraded amalgamation of everything that made us love Kanye: luxurious production, fluid features, and dexterous rapping over themes of grandeur, drugs, sex, and love. It combines the heartfelt vulnerability of The College Dropout, the orchestral soundscapes of Late Registration, the upscaled arena-raps of Graduation, and touches of the Auto-Tuned crooning of 808’s & Heartbreak. Kanye may think differently, but this album is a masterpiece. —M.C.