Hip Hop
12 albums
Raising Hell
Walk This Way with Aerosmith smashed rap into rock radio and MTV, and the album became the first rap release certified p...
Straight Outta Compton
Six young men from Compton turned police harassment and street life into a record the FBI complained about. It brought g...
The Low End Theory
Q-Tip and Phife traded wisdom over Ron Carter upright bass and dusty jazz samples, mellow, musical and adult. The album ...
Enter the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers
Nine voices, kung fu samples and RZA lo-fi blade sharp production out of Staten Island. Protect Ya Neck and C.R.E.A.M. b...
The Chronic
G-funk was born here: Parliament samples rolling under sine whine and Snoop Dogg casual drawl debuting alongside Dre pre...
Illmatic
Nine songs deep with production from Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and L.E.S., the Queensbridge debut is th...
The Marshall Mathers LP
It sold 1.76 million copies in its first week, then a record for a solo artist, while stirring controversy over its viol...
The Blueprint
Released on September 11, 2001, its sped up soul samples, much of it from a young Kanye West, made struggle and triumph ...
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Assembled in a Hawaii compound with an all star guest list, it is maximalist production rap: Power, the nine minute Runa...
To Pimp a Butterfly
Live funk, jazz and a spoken word poem threaded across the tracklist made it a protest and self examination epic. Alrigh...
Ready to Die
The debut of Christopher Wallace on Sean Combs and his Bad Boy label traced a life from birth in Brooklyn to a bleak fin...
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Chuck D and Flavor Flav delivered radical politics over the dense sample collages of the Bomb Squad, layering sirens, fu...