The Best Hip-Hop Albums of the '90s
Twenty studio albums from 1990 to 1999, ranked by stature first and by consequence second. Vote the order into whatever shape you can defend. This is the decade rap stopped being a New York argument and became the center of American popular music. Sample clearance got expensive. Budgets got big and the writing got much denser. West Coast records have their own list, which is why there's no Death Row or G-funk here, and nothing from the Bay. Southern records do belong, because the Southern list doesn't start until 2000. Where a rap album turns into a singer's album I kept the rap record and left the rest to the R&B and neo-soul lists, which is why Lauryn Hill and The Roots are missing. Studio albums only: no compilations, soundtracks or live sets. Several artists here carry criminal convictions. I didn't exclude anyone on those grounds, and an editor can overrule that call.
Nas — Illmatic (1994) is #1 on “The Best Hip-Hop Albums of the '90s”.
- 1
Nas — Illmatic (1994)
Ten tracks, five producers: DJ Premier, Large Professor, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and L.E.S. Not one of them wastes a bar. N.Y. State of Mind keeps a false start in the mix, Nas admitting he doesn't know how to begin, then walking straight into the densest writing anyone managed all decade over Premier's piano stab. Thirty-nine minutes, and there is nothing on it you would cut.
Open in Spotify - 2
Wu-Tang Clan — Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
RZA produced every track and negotiated a Loud Records deal that let each member sign solo wherever he liked, which is why the next five years belong to them. C.R.E.A.M. runs on a two-bar piano loop from The Charmels' As Long As I've Got You, dusty enough to sound recorded through a wall. Spotify's plain edition keeps the original twelve-track sequence.
Open in Spotify - 3
The Notorious B.I.G. — Ready to Die (1994)
Bad Boy's first album, with Sean Combs executive producing and Poke of Trackmasters building Juicy on Mtume's Juicy Fruit almost untouched. The verse is a rags-to-riches inventory delivered so evenly it sounds bored, which is the whole trick. Spotify's 1994-dated edition runs the original seventeen tracks, though The What is the radio edit.
Open in Spotify - 4
A Tribe Called Quest — The Low End Theory (1991)
Ron Carter, a bassist with Blue Note sessions behind him, was talked into playing upright on Verses from the Abstract, which tells you what Q-Tip was after. Buggin' Out is where Phife Dawg arrives properly, five foot nothing and furious, over a bassline mixed so far forward that everything else sounds optional. Bob Power engineered it, and on this record the low end really is the theory.
Open in Spotify - 5
Mobb Deep — The Infamous (1995)
Havoc produced most of it himself, with Q-Tip brought in to co-produce and mix several tracks for a duo barely out of their teens. Shook Ones, Pt. II hangs on a shrill looped keyboard figure and a kick that lands a fraction late, and Prodigy delivers his opening threat like a man reading a weather report, which is why nothing else out of Queensbridge sounds this cold.
Open in Spotify - 6
Raekwon — Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... (1995)
Ghostface Killah is on so much of this that the sleeve bills him as co-star, and Nas turns up on Verbal Intercourse as the first rapper from outside the Clan to appear on a Wu-Tang album. RZA's beat there is barely a beat: a slow string figure over a kick, with a great deal of empty space around both. Three writers fill it with coded crime narration.
Open in Spotify - 7
OutKast — Aquemini (1998)
Southern records belong on this list because the Southern list does not begin until 2000, and this is the best of them. Rosa Parks breaks in half two-thirds through for a stomp-and-clap harmonica breakdown with no relation to the song around it. Rosa Parks herself sued over the title, and the case did not settle until 2005. The bass is live and the playing organic, with no G-funk anywhere near it.
Open in Spotify - 8
GZA — Liquid Swords (1995)
Dialogue from the 1980 samurai cut-up Shogun Assassin runs between the tracks, which is why the whole record feels narrated by a child. 4th Chamber opens with Ghostface Killah shouting over a bent guitar figure before RZA drops the floor out, and GZA closes it in a monotone that never once rises. Of the Wu solo albums this is the coldest sounding, and the best written.
Open in Spotify - 9
JAY-Z — Reasonable Doubt (1996)
Roc-A-Fella existed because no major would sign him, so Damon Dash, Kareem Burke and Jay-Z built a label and had Priority distribute it. Dead Presidents II floats DJ Premier's loop of Lonnie Liston Smith's A Garden of Peace under a chopped Nas vocal, the rapping fast, clipped and uninterested in a hook. Spotify prints the artist name as JAŸ-Z, with a diaeresis.
Open in Spotify - 10
A Tribe Called Quest — Midnight Marauders (1993)
A computerised tour guide introduces the tracks and reads out tempos in beats per minute, which was a peculiar thing to put on a rap record in 1993. Award Tour hands its hook to Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul over a Weldon Irvine keyboard lift, and Phife reels off cities like an itinerary. It is warmer and poppier than its predecessor, and that was the intention.
Open in Spotify - 11
The Notorious B.I.G. — Life After Death (1997)
Sixteen days after he was shot dead in Los Angeles, Bad Boy released his double album about surviving. Ten Crack Commandments is DJ Premier at his most severe, a numbered countdown lifted from Chuck D over a horn stab and not much else, while Biggie recites rules in the flat voice of a man reading a manual. Spotify's twenty-four-track Explicit Version is the complete original.
Open in Spotify - 12
UGK — Ridin' Dirty (1996)
Port Arthur, Texas, and the last time Jive left them alone. Pimp C produced most of it, played the keys and sang the hooks himself. One Day loops the Isley Brothers' Ain't I Been Good To You into something close to a funeral, with Bun B writing the tightest verse on the record. It went gold with no video and almost no radio.
Open in Spotify - 13
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth — Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992)
Written for Troy Dixon, the dancer known as Trouble T Roy who worked with Heavy D & The Boyz and died in a fall in 1990. Elektra put it out as a single nobody expected to outlive them all. They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) loops a Tom Scott saxophone phrase without ever resolving it, and the horns do the grieving that C.L. Smooth's verses keep at arm's length.
Open in Spotify - 14
Gang Starr — Moment of Truth (1998)
Every beat here is DJ Premier's, arriving in 1998 when most of their peers had moved on to shinier, more expensive production. You Know My Steez opens the record with a scratch hook assembled entirely out of other people's records, chopped tight enough to work as a melody. Guru's flat, unhurried delivery has no interest in being liked, and the album is better for it.
Open in Spotify - 15
Scarface — The Diary (1994)
Houston's Rap-A-Lot label, with Mike Dean and N.O. Joe helping build something played rather than sampled: live bass, real keys, and drums sitting low in the mix. I Seen a Man Die narrates a death from inside the dying man's head and refuses any moral at the end of it. It is a Southern record, eligible here only because the Southern list starts in 2000.
Open in Spotify - 16
OutKast — ATLiens (1996)
Big Boi and André took the boards over themselves for much of this, credited as Earthtone III rather than handing everything to Organized Noize. Elevators (Me & You) drags at a tempo nobody else would risk, just a hollow drum machine and a two-note bass, and André's closing verse answers the question of how they got rich by admitting they haven't. It is a border case on region, and I allowed it.
Open in Spotify - 17
Common — Resurrection (1994)
Chicago's strongest case for the decade, produced almost entirely by No I.D., who a few years later handed the same template to Kanye West. I Used To Love H.E.R. spends four verses on a metaphor about a woman who turns out to be hip-hop itself, over a soft loop that never changes. He was still billed as Common Sense in 1994.
Open in Spotify - 18
De La Soul — Buhloone Mindstate (1993)
Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley were hired to play horns on it, and Prince Paul produced with the group for the last full time. Ego Trippin' (Part Two) is three men refusing to be anybody's mascot, the drums loose and faintly drunk while Posdnuos picks apart the rappers who had started imitating them. It sold poorly and has aged better than almost everything around it.
Open in Spotify - 19
Goodie Mob — Soul Food (1995)
Organized Noize produced all of it for LaFace, and the phrase Dirty South enters general use through a track of that name here. Cell Therapy moves on a nursery-rhyme keyboard figure and a bassline that sits under the beat rather than on it, leaving Cee-Lo's paranoia to do the rest. It is the hardest record Atlanta made all decade, and the one least interested in charming you.
Open in Spotify - 20
Black Star — Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star (1998)
Rawkus put this out at the height of the major-label rap boom, and Hi-Tek produced most of it on a budget you can hear in the drums. Definition rebuilds Boogie Down Productions' The P Is Free into a warning about dead rappers, the pair trading half-lines fast enough that the seams vanish. They did not finish another album together until 2022.
Open in Spotify
How this list was ranked
Readers rank this list by voting items up and down. Items are ordered by reader votes.
