Album Genius Users Top 50 Favorite Albums of All Time. Top 50 Favorite Rap Albums Of All Time Lyrics.  I made this list around the beginning of , so these were my FAVORITE 50 rap albums during this time of my life. Originally posted out on the forums and then made into its own list. PM if you want to talk more about this list. "Top 50 Favorite Rap Albums Of All Time" Track Info. Genius Users Top 50 Favorite Albums of All Time Genius Users. 1. Top 50 Favorite Rap Albums Of All Time. 2. Top 50 Favorite Albums of All Time. 3. Top 50 Favorite Albums of All Time (as of AM, 3/12/15). 4. Top 50 Favorite Albums of All Time (as of PM 3/12/15). 6. Top 50 Favorite Albums. 7. Origin. Debut albums from rappers like Nas, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and 50 Cent became events unto themselves. When Lil Wayne 's Tha Carter III sold over a million copies his first week it truly marked the moment of his arrival as a rap superstar. Even if numbers alone don't always tell the whole story, they do tell some sort of story. Here are the 50 Best Selling Rap Albums of All Time. [ Ed. Note—All sales listed are based on domestic sales in the US, not worldwide sales. ] Run-D.M.C. Raising Hell (). Raising Hell. For starters, it's a remarkable rap album in every way rap can be remarkable. It's a portrait of the jungle through the eyes of the prey. Despite a Grammy snub, it was well received by fans, critics, and peers.  Unlike most hip-hop albums of its era, "Enta Da Stage" eschewed confrontational raps and opted for a brooding, electrifying brand of hip-hop. of Providing valuable lessons in self-care for the self-professed headasses out there, Open Mike Eagle's Anime, Trauma and Divorce is equal parts confession and Best Rap Debut Albums Yu affirmation. By Nick Sligh on February 19, Aswell, no K. Biggie's ability to coolly captivate an audience with his storytelling chops, capture a difficult emotion e. Graduation — Kanye West 8.

And as great as the production and all the guests are, credit where it's due to Headie One, who knew exactly what to do with Fred Again's beats and delivered some of the most immediate rapping and singing of his career thus far.

Mach-Hommy has spent the last few years proving himself as one of the most reliable makers of psychedelic, left-of-center rap, and he's built up such a cult following that he can sell his physical releases for hundreds if not thousands of dollars a piece and actually sell out of them.

Bulletproof rhymes weave in and out of jazzy instrumentals, and Mach's lyrics nail a balance between vivid surrealism and unflinching realism. It's out in space yet down to earth all at once. As frontman of The Roots, Black Thought's been in the "best rappers alive" conversation for years, and with the solo career he's been focusing on since , he makes an even stronger case. Unlike a lot of the '90s-era vets who are still going, Black Thought is doing some of his best rapping right now.

As far as currently hot veteran rappers go, his competition is guys like Pusha T and Killer Mike, both of whom he invited to appear on "Good Morning" off the third volume of his Streams of Thought series. The song is like a three-way boxing match, and the winner is the audience, who get to hear three living legends at the top of their games on the same track.

That's just one of many standout moments on Black Thought - Streams of Thought Vol 3 , which is full of songs that toe the line between thrilling rhyme schemes, activist lyrics, and addictive hooks. It's an endlessly replayable album that finds Black Thought delivering powerful, career-best bars, and that's no small feat for an artist who's been doing it for three decades.

It's one of three albums he released in including one with Future , and it's not just his best but the best auto-tune pop-rap album of the year. Uzi went hard without losing the sing-songy appeal of his biggest hits, and he did it song after song after song. Coventry-via-Gambia rapper Pa Salieu is a young artist who's full of determination, raw talent, and fresh ideas, and that's overwhelmingly clear on his debut project Send Them To Coventry.

The album fuses together drill, grime, dancehall, afroswing, and more in a way that feels entirely natural, and even if you've heard other artists deliver similar concoctions, you probably haven't heard it done the way Pa does. Pa's an expert storyteller who uses these songs to talk about the violence he's witnessed and the trauma he's experienced in gripping detail, and he's got pop sensibilities too.

As much as these songs are loaded with intricacies -- both musically and lyrically -- they also never fail to be catchy and accessible. Shrines is the duo's latest album and one of their best. It favors hazy production and dizzying metaphors, but it makes as much of a point about the societal and political landscape as this year's more militant protest albums.

It's an album that takes several listens to reveal itself, and it just gets more rewarding each time. No matter what mood you're in, as soon as you hear "Flo Milli shit! She's got the charisma, confidence, uniqueness, and catchiness that you usually don't hear until an artist's second or third project, and she's already beating some of her forebears at their own game.

One of the biggest tragedies in rap this year was the murder of Pop Smoke at just 20 years old. Any young life being taken is awful, but Pop Smoke's death shook the rap world especially hard because he was one of the genre's most promising new stars. He was putting the Brooklyn drill scene on the map, thanks to a unique, undeniable sound that combined the innovative production of UK drill with the kind of booming delivery that has dominated New York rap since the late '80s.

Pop was distinctly New York without sounding like anyone who came before him, and he packed Meet The Woo 2 -- the last release of his lifetime -- with a barrage of songs that begged to be played again and again. As good as the album is, it sounds like an artist on the cusp of something even greater.

Another album, Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon , was completed and released after his death, but it's a little too overcrowded with guests and Pop didn't have the final say in it.

When he declared himself "the king of New York" on its single "Christopher Walking" in January, he already sounded believable. Conway's earlier releases proved he could rap, but FKTG proves he can craft an in-depth album that takes you on a journey with all kinds of thrilling, unexpected twists and turns.

Detroit rapper Boldy James released four albums in The Price of Tea In China is Boldy's third project with The Alchemist, and those two have a chemistry that clicked more than ever on this album.

The Alchemist had a landmark year, blessing Freddie Gibbs, members of Griselda who Boldy is now signed to and others with some of the finest smoky, jazzy production in his catalog, and The Price of Tea In China is no exception. It's hypnotizing from start to finish, and Boldy sounds calm but menacing as his voice casually cuts through the mix, making for a deadly counterpart to The Alchemist's beats.

Guest verses come from Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, Vince Staples, and Evidence, all of whom sound carefully curated into the mix. It's an album that was in the making for over a decade and includes an appearance by DeJ Loaf, recorded before her career took off that Sterling and Boldy kept going back to and kept tweaking.

It was worth all that work; not only is it nothing like any of the other albums Boldy released this year, it's really not much like any other rap album released this year. The instrumentation is genuinely breathtaking, and Boldy supplied Manger On McNichols with some of his most remarkable verses. While Benny the Butcher's Griselda groupmate Westside Gunn spent perfecting Griselda's unique take on '90s-style New York rap more on him in a minute , Benny jumped ahead a few years with his own rap revival.

His latest album Burden of Proof was entirely produced by Hit-Boy, who blesses Benny with the kind of rich, soulful production that you might've heard Jay-Z, Cam'ron or Jadakiss rap over in the early s.

The beats are less gritty than you're used to hearing Benny rap over, but he has not softened his blow one bit. He stuffs the album with hard-hitting come-up stories and knockout punchlines, and he's not only one of the most skilled MCs around but he's got the memorable songs to back it up. Burden of Proof has his catchiest hooks and biggest guest spots Lil Wayne, Big Sean, Rick Ross, etc yet, and if the added accessibility means this was the first Benny the Butcher album that a lot of people heard, that's not a bad thing at all.

It's both a victory lap and a fine introduction. Griselda were no oversight success. They had been grinding for years by the time they released their major label debut and first crew album WWCD in late , and that album proved to be a breakthrough and helped turn into their biggest year yet by a longshot. They began the year with a highly-publicized Fallon appearance, all three core members Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher went on to release landmark solo albums, they recruited crucial new members, and they now regularly collaborate with some of the biggest rappers and producers around.

The album Best Rap Debut Albums Rank that kickstarted their prolific output was Pray For Paris , the first of like a dozen Griselda-related releases in , first of three Westside Gunn albums in , and one of the best projects to ever come from the Griselda camp.

Westside Gunn is a visionary, and he mapped out this album expertly. For years, the Griselda team has been tapping into a sound that hearkens back to '90s NYC rap but feels totally new and fresh, and Pray For Paris took that sound to the next level. Run the Jewels feel like an institution at this point. Back in , when El-P and Killer Mike -- two respected veterans who were nonetheless still more or less underground figures -- linked up for Killer Mike's R.

Music , it seemed like a match made in heaven, and the creative synergy that fueled that masterpiece hasn't waned in the slightest. Each new RTJ joint reliably delivers raucous mayhem, tongue-in-cheek humor, righteous fury, and El-P's over-the-top, trunk-rattling cartoon-rap production that still doesn't sound remotely like anything else. RTJ4 dropped at a time when it felt like we really needed it, in the midst of the George Floyd protests that were gripping the nation, and as such it feels like a particularly potent entry in their catalog.

The bangers that make up the opening of this album--"Yankee and the Brave ep. And the second half, as is their custom, is where things get real, with Killer Mike's verses on "Walking in the Snow" hitting with particular force as he cooly diagnoses and then brutally excoriates the fucked-up totality of American life that leads to a tragedy like the George Floyd murder.

Like a lot of great protest art, Run the Jewels understand that anger and joy often go hand and hand, and RTJ4 delivers a cathartic truckload of both. She was involved in two of the year's biggest and best songs "WAP" with Cardi B, and her own "Savage" remix featuring Beyonce , and when she suffered a shot to the foot allegedly by Tory Lanez, who has been charged with the shooting , she turned the awful situation into a chance to speak out about protecting Black women, criticizing the Breonna Taylor case in the process.

Her whole whirlwind year is reflected in Good News which opens with a diss track against her shooter, displays the New York Times op-ed she wrote about Black women on the cover art, and houses the "Savage" remix alongside three other hits and a handful of songs that should be hits and still might be. Megan's story would've dominated this year no matter what Good News sounded like, but Megan released a collection of songs that back up how much of a celebrity she's become.

The world may be flatter than ever, but you simply don't encounter organic grooves featuring ouds, qanuns, violins and bass clarinets everyday. Add Muharam's voice to the mix and you have a truly distinct concoction. Though sometimes maddeningly brief, these episodes follow Muldrow through free-spirited and spontaneous-sounding explorations; listening from start to finish is like paging through the first-draft sketchbook of a visionary.

Ashley Ray is not a household name, but she's no newcomer: As a songwriter with a Grammy nomination under her belt, she's written for big acts Little Big Town's "The Daughters" and earned co-signs from industry veterans Lori McKenna. But on "Pauline," the opening track of her breakthrough album of the same name, the Kansas native defines herself not by what she's built, but by what she's been bequeathed: her grandmother's name.

Declared with force, it's a fitting statement of purpose for a deeply personal album that reckons with what we pass down and where we call home. In fact, that song and the 10 that follow it are works of stunning poetic economy and clarity.

The Oklahoma-based Choctaw singer-songwriter offers impossibly perceptive vignettes of shedding toxic friendship "Constructive Eviction" , the mutual embarrassment of high school reunions "Reunion" , the strangeness of receding memory "Joey" and the perverse valor of children trying to be what they think adults require "Tough For You".

That's all the more striking considering that Crain started the writing process during a pre-COVID period of profound disruption; a series of car accidents had aggravated a nerve injury and left her without use of her hands. Crain worked her way back to functionality and produced the album herself, arriving at beguiling arrangements, sculpted with woodwinds, horns, synthesizers, piano, pedal steel and tape loops, without ever allowing herself the easy out of a guitar solo.

During a year when everything seemed to go wrong, the gauzy layers of synths and guitars on Tame Impala's The Slow Rush swathed me like a comforting cocoon. The project is more pop-oriented than the sprawling, psychedelic rock that first brought singer-producer-bandleader Kevin Parker fame, and its light touch was needed amid 's constant grief. With its slow sway and airy falsetto, "On Track" became a mantra for being OK with doing your best given the circumstances, even if your best isn't perfect.

The funky backbeat of "Breathe Deeper" pulsed along with a reminder to accept and let go. And on the tense, blues rock-tinged ballad "Posthumous Forgiveness," Parker opens up about the complex process of grieving a father figure who wasn't there for him as a child. Throughout The Slow Rush , Parker delves into sometimes painful memories but leaves his listeners with inspiration to keep dreaming.

If it wasn't already clear from their numerous tennis court performances, Chloe x Halle mastered the art of innovation in Ungodly Hour , a cohesive sophomore album, sharply deviates from previous releases — a natural transition as they mature into young womanhood. It's commanding and honest, unafraid and vulnerable.

And it highlights the duo's ability and eagerness to animate themselves: talented musicians who are also producers, lovers, storytellers and healers. With Ungodly Hour , Chloe x Halle invite us into their lives and allow us to share their laughter, triumphs and lessons learned throughout a seamless, no-skip album.

This revival of William Dawson's Negro Folk Symphony came in June, just as American cities erupted in protest against ages-old racist violence. The piece is a musical declaration that Black lives matter, saturated with fragments of spirituals and West African rhythms that elegize what Dawson called the lives "of a people whose bodies were baked by the sun and lashed with the whip for two hundred and fifty years; whose lives were proscribed before they were born.

This was Dawson's first and only symphony; soon after its triumphant premiere, it was buried in the pile of "forgotten voices" where we find the music of many game-changing Black composers, including neoclassicist-with-a-twist Ulysses Kay, whose contrasting Fantasy Variations and Umbrian Scene complete this recording.

Timely, and a long time coming. Raquel Berrios and Luis Alfredo Del Valle are the husband-and-wife team behind Buscabulla, whose sweetly whirring, chilled-out electro-pop comes freighted with melancholy. The two left New York for their birthplace of Puerto Rico in , shortly after the territory was hit by a pair of devastating hurricanes; their journey is implied in the album's title.

The songs reflect on complex and shifting ideas of home, but the canvas on which their lyrics hang couldn't be breezier or more swoonily alluring, thanks in part to Berrios' soft, sweetly approachable vocals. Accessibility links Skip to main content Keyboard shortcuts for audio player.

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