Top Ten Rap/ Hip Hop Albums (3-1)

3) Ready to Die: Biggie's debut album, no doubt this HAD to be on my top ten. Time magazine included it in its list of top 100 albums of all time, and its the highest ranking rap album on the top 500 list. No rap album that came after this one wasn't influenced by it. That simple. This album contained my radio friendly singles like "Big Poppa", "Juicy", and "Warning", plus it included some more explicit, hardcore rap hits such as "Ready to Die", and "Who Shot Ya?" Cold lyrics, funky beats and a light- hearted tone much different than that of this latter album, this one was a very, very big commercial success, dwarfing all other rap albums in the 1990s buy A LOT.


2) Illmatic: The most influential album of all time, really. It may not have been quite good enough to land itself the number one slot, but it helped rewrite modern day rap. It wasn't expected to be that great, even with promotions that the producers made for the album. But when it dropped, it was pretty evident that Nas was going to be a really big name in Hip Hop. It contained easily the best beats of any rap album, ever. His lyricism was unmatched, clever word play and hilarious anecdotes and subliminal messages made his songs very interesting, and still remain so. Like so many other classics though, it was only until much after its release did people realize its true value; it was dubbed a platinum record in 2001.


1) Life After Death: I didn't even need to think about this one, its automatic, the best rap album of all time. Its common practice to regard Ready to Die as Biggie's best album, but I disagree. While it was his debut album, and had quite an impact, as a rap album, Life After Death was better. Good artist, like Biggie, tend to get better as time goes on, which is exactly what happened. In the time between both albums, he gained LOTS of skill as a rapper. If you weren't too fond of the deeper, mafia- like style he adopted, then you had to give in to the lyrics. He blew up with the release of Ready to Die, but he perfected himself as a rapper in Life After Death. All of the minor mistakes that were found in his first album were gone: his beat varieties increased, his delivery became a lot better, and he had a much bigger variety of genre within the album. Comedy, dance, gangsta, stories, everything. No Comparison IMO...