Top 5s are a heavily debated thing in all aspects of competition. Whether it be sports, music, dancing, games etc. Today I’m going to present to you, my top 5 hip hop albums ever, let’s get into it.

#5: Reasonable Doubt- Jay Z

At the age of 26, Jay Z dropped his debut album with the likes of Biggie and Mary J Bilge donning as features. As a drug kingpin, it’d only be right to continue this theme on his first ever album.

The way Hov used his masterful lyricism yet broke down hustling and the streets in such a simple form where everyone could understand it was incredible. His ability to translate the street life into lyrics over a groovy hip hop beat was impeccable.

Most rappers start off really young when they don’t have much experience and it lasts them about an album or two before they need to take a break. Jigga experienced 26 years of his life before he dropped reasonable doubt.

The knowledge he possessed and dropped on his first album has never been seen before. This album had 2 of the best hip hop songs ever in D’Evils and Dead Presidents 2.

With other extremely strong tracks such as Brooklyn’s Finest, Politics As Usual, Can I Live & Friend Or Foe. The groovy yet hard production over Hov’s voice was a beautiful blend and it takes the cake as my 5th greatest hip hop album of all time.

#4: Illmatic- Nas

Illmatic is the opposite of Reasonable Doubt where Nas was only 20 years old when he dropped one of the best hip hop albums ever. With such iconic art pieces releasing in 1994, Lion King, Pulp Fiction, Shawshank Redemption and Ready To Die, Nas stole the show.

Halftime dropped as a little preview to Illmatic and he garnered comparisons to hip hop legend, Rakim. With legends such as Q-Tip, Pete Rock and DJ Premier producing a few tracks, Nas had an immense amount of pressure on him to deliver with this album.

While displaying his complex lyricism and elite storytelling over top tier beats, produced 3 of the greatest hip hop songs ever in New York State Of Mind, Life’s a Bitch and The World Is Yours. With the darker/more sinister style of NYSOM makes it my favourite track on Illmatic.

A wonderful complexion of his lyricism & storytelling over the amazingly produced beats, compressed into 10 extremely strong tracks makes it my 4th best album of all time.

#3: good kid, m.A.A.d city- Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick’s 2nd studio album provided us with a strengthening of his already established conceptual ability. His lyrical ability, storytelling, flows, hooks and great production is displayed throughout this project.

A track that stood out for me was backseat freestyle, a more obnoxious sort of track from Kendrick over a hard hitting beat which we don’t see much from Kenny.

This leads into The Art of Peer Pressure where Dot continues his out of character trend by smoking, drinking and eventually robbing a house. The elite storytelling mixed with one of Kendrick’s best produced songs, makes it a top tier track.

Kenny drops a top 5 hip hop song ever in my opinion with SAMIDOT. The softer beginning with his complex storytelling telling 3 different stories already makes this track strong by itself but then he leads us into the dying of thirst part which captures his thirst for holy water.

With some hard hitting tracks such as good kid and maad city, to add onto major hits like money trees and swimming pools, this album displays so much of Kendrick’s versatility which allows him to sit atop the rap game and makes this the third greatest hip hop album ever.

#2: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy- Kanye West

The greatest hip hop artist ever in my opinion with a stacked discography drops his magnum opus in MBDTF. Ye starts off with his greatest intro track ever in Dark Fantasy.

After interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV awards, Kanye was crucified by many and it also seemed to physically hurt him when asked about it. With so much hate and his back against the wall, West dropped an absolute masterpiece.

After Gorgeous, the 3 track run of Power, All Of The Lights and Monster was the most commercially successful run of this album. The incredible production was nothing new of Kanye’s but the production on this album just seemed stronger and more forceful.

Kanye West provided us with his best 3 track run ever:

So Appalled
Devil In A New Dress
Runaway

The gritty posse cut on so appalled with the catchy and always changing hook mixed with strong verses from Kanye, Jay and Push was executed in a great manor.

Rick Ross provided us with arguably one of the best feature verses ever on DIAND and to end off the run, we were provided with Ye’s best sounding track. Mixed with some more fun sounding tracks such as Blame Game and Hell of a Life, MBDTF takes 2nd for me.

#1 To Pimp A Butterfly- Kendrick Lamar

You might have seen this coming but TPAB is the greatest hip hop album ever in my opinion. The thing I loved the most about it was you didn’t have to be african american to understand the issues that Kendrick was talking about.

Even if you didn’t go through them, Kendrick did his absolute best of explaining them and combatting them. The 3 best tracks on this album includes Wesley’s Theory, Blacker The Berry and How Much A Dollar Cost. On the intro track, Dot provided us with his best produced track yet.

The complexion forged into one beautiful track over his strongest production was Kendrick at his best. Lamar retelling his story of a homeless man who was later revealed as god was fabricated wonderfully with some strong sampling and great production.

Blacker The Berry was Kendrick’s strongest fuck you as he found out that the power holders didn’t like him because of his skin colour. This album has absolutely no mid tracks and has even more great songs in u, alright, Momma, i and These Walls. TPAB is the greatest album ever.

Thank you for reading this thread! I hope you enjoyed it and please remember that this is all my opinion, have a wonderful day!