SEVEN things I have to say about the Pitchfork rap list

Hear me out

If you’re into rap music and read music blogs like this, you probably heard about Pitchfork’s “The 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time” list. Sweeping certain corners of the internet like a tornado, it’s been very controversial. I decided around the time it came out that I wanted to give my take on it here. After listening and procrastinating for long enough that the list wasn’t relevant enough to give us views anymore, I finally figured out what to say. In Pitchfork style, each of my points gets a rating, from best to worst.

Growth

My favorite thing about this list, by far, is how much it differs from the typical consensus. There is so much here that is not universally or even somewhat accepted as among the best that hip-hop has to offer. A new contender for the internet’s busiest music nerd created a list compiling 47 different major best rap album lists, and the results are largely predictable: Illmatic is #1, College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, MBDTF, GKMC, TPAB, DAMN, and 36 Chambers all make their mandatory appearances, etc. If you’ve read one of these lists, you’ve read them all. There’s nothing there I’d call bad - I love most of the consensus favorites, they’re there for a reason. But there is so much great rap music out there, and so little of it is represented by the traditional narrative. Hip-hop has been around for over fifty years. There’s no reason to focus solely on the same celebrated artists and albums as we have forever. It leads to new listeners getting narrower ideas for what good rap music is, with each generation narrowing further. Do we really want the narrative in 2040 to look like “I was born in the wrong generation - long live classic rock 🤘” discourse looked in 2010? Do we remember how embarrassing and limiting that was? That’s why my favorite thing this list did is boost the chances significantly that Gen Alpha kids (and beyond) will have a better chance of finding music that fits their taste, increasing passion and creating thousands of positive butterfly effects.

Taste

The next best thing about this list is that their picks were not only expansive compared to the norm, but they were almost entirely solid picks. I’ve gone through and listened to every project on this list at least once, and I had a great time. While I’d already heard most of them, there were still quite a few entries that I probably never would have gotten around to on my own, like 50 Cent Is The Future, On Top of the World, and Broken Silence. I was honestly surprised how quickly I got through the music here, given rap’s propensity for long, 70+ minute projects, but with the variety of decades and genres presented here, it all flew by. While I wouldn’t describe it as covering all aspects of the genre, this is still a great range, and not only that, but it’s a range that’s a blast to explore. You’ve got something for everyone here:

• Often overlooked¹ 80s innovators like J.J. Fad, Mantronix, and Whodini.

• Beloved but still underrated 90s projects like Rhythm-al-ism, In a Major Way and Prince Among Thieves.

• Important but oft-ignored 00’s trailblazers like The Jacka, Foxy Brown, and Boosie.

• Modern classics that have yet to be fully canonized: 808s & Dark Grapes II, YHLQMDLG, and Marcberg.

There are definitely some albums on here that I didn’t love, but it had a remarkable hit rate overall. I’ve listened through plenty of these kinds of lists before, and I can tell you with confidence that they are not normally this enjoyable.

Limitations

I don’t begrudge anyone for not wanting to produce more music writing than is strictly necessary in the 2020s - it’s a thankless, underpaid, disrespected job that many argue is already dead. It takes countless hours to find a consensus, gather a hundred blurbs, edit everything, and deal with the inevitable backlash. So when I say the following, it’s less of a critique or callout, and more of just a comment on the breadth of rap as an artform: 100 is simply not a big enough number. Hip-hop is the most significant, wildly inventive genre of the century, and I’d love to see a top 250. Some names who I think have full-length projects that might have fit (in no particular order): DJ Jazzy Jeff, MIKE, Eve, $ilkMoney, Lil Uzi Vert, DJ Playero, Biz Markie, Noname, Freddie Gibbs, Ivy Queen, Clams Casino, DJ Shadow, Girl Talk, SahBabii, TisaKorean, Vince Staples, Tierra Whack, Isaiah Rashad, Rae Sremmurd, Flying Lotus, 2 Chainz, Migos, MC Lyte, Lil Peep, Queen Latifah, Ty Dolla $ign, Daddy Yankee, Skepta, Common, Mach-Hommy, Kurtis Blow, ILoveMakonnen, Grandmaster Flash, YG, Blu, BennT RevivaL, Summrs, Big L, GoldLink, Megan Thee Stallion, Young Nudy, Meek Mill, Dave, Pink Siifu, Tego Calderón, Kalifa, Father, and many more. I know that’s an obnoxious wall of text, but if you’re familiar with at least some of these artists, hopefully it reminds you of the incredibly wide scope of excellent music that has evolved within this ever-mutating genre. For this reason, I wish we could see the runners up. There’s just no way to sum it all up that briefly, even though they did the best job any large platform has done so far.

Interference

This is less of a definitive fact, just speculation - it seems like there’s a decent chance the entries and/or ordering of this list was messed with beyond voting. I’m not one to immediately assume this of Pitchfork. I think most of the claims of top-level fiddling in service of specific narratives or political angles are unsubstantiated bullshit, typically imagined by people who find it easier to conceptualize a woke conspiracy than to accept that indie rock is no longer as culturally relevant as it was in 2008. And I do think most of this list shows no evidence of manipulation. Even putting Die Lit one spot above TPAB doesn’t seem too fishy to me (plenty of people, including real-deal lifelong rap fans, prefer the former), but placing Duwap Kaine’s Underdog at #99 and Doggystyle at #100 feels like more than just coincidence. I can definitely imagine the writers there preferring Underdog’s importance to the 2020s indie rap scene, but the obvious visual and title similarities makes the consecutive placement seem curated to specifically piss off traditionalists. It’s not a super big deal, and people are going to make these accusations regardless, so I can understand not caring any more, but come on, we can do better. I might just be naive, but I think integrity matters, even as demand for the written word gets eaten by demands for infinite growth.

Reactions

What’s worse than the possibility of manipulation? The absolute certainty of lists like this leading to embarrassing, out of touch, stubborn discourse by people with the most boring taste imaginable. Most of the complaints were along these lines:

TPAB is absurdly low. Tha Tour at #6 means this list is a joke. Opened it up, saw Doggystyle below Sexyy Red and/or music I haven’t heard, closed it immediately. Pitchfork is clearly ragebaiting, nobody actually thinks 400 Degreez is better than 36 Chambers. Not including MBDTF makes the list invalid and the writers lying, bandwagoning hypocrites because people writing for the same website 15 years ago thought it was perfect. No one listened to Broke With Expensive Taste, you just liked her twitter and “212,” I won’t have it.² How is XXX here and not Atrocity Exhibition, the clearly superior album? This list is satire / intentionally bad / etc. because [insert album from the South that isn’t by Outkast] is here and [insert album from NY on thirty other lists] isn’t.

You get the picture. If you read much of the discussion when it came out, you could have seen all this and more. There are plenty of individual issues (taking everything in bad faith, pervasive and unrecognized sexism, proud ignorance, a widespread misunderstanding of what art criticism even is), but the most common problem I saw is an absolute insistence on sticking to the traditional narrative. I’ll admit that individuated algorithms mean that the kinds of responses I saw were likely not universal, but in all my research and doomscrolling combined, the near-unanimous narrative was that the list strayed too far from the norm. Whether the reader was an oldhead pissed at the lack of L.L. Cool J or a zoomer aghast at Death Grips’ exclusion, almost everyone could agree that it would have been improved by looking more like that redditor’s list. Apparently if you’re not going to give the exact take that a reader happens to have, you should at least reiterate what everyone’s already said, so that all the arguments for and against you have already been made. It’s hard for me to imagine wanting that.

Men

There are, to my count, eight albums³ with women credited as lead artists on this list. I’m not going to pretend that compiling a list of favorite rap projects isn’t almost always going to have a bias towards men, or that there aren’t significantly more acclaimed and successful male rappers than there are female rappers. I have yet to find any overall list that doesn’t have this problem. I wouldn’t argue that Pitchfork should be making these lists in an effort to artificially balance gender gaps (no, we don’t need a list intentionally composed of 50 men, 49 women, and 1 non-binary person), and I understand that any voting-based list like this is going to reflect this, with the writers at Pitchfork typically trying significantly harder than most to remedy the issue. I imagine that the lack of women on this list likely has more to do with female rap albums having less consensus popularity than it does the voters not including women in their own votes. I’m just sad at how consistent this pattern is, throughout almost every list, even in casual conversation. I wonder how many years (decades, probably) it will be before women get even 25% of the acclaim men get.

Me

There’s only one thing worse than the neverending onslaught of sexism and predictably conservative internet discourse - my taste. Here’s how I would have ranked Pitchfork’s list. Sorry.

RANKING:

1. J Dilla: Donuts⁴

2. Earl Sweatshirt: Some Rap Songs

3. Nas: Illmatic

4. Kanye West: Yeezus⁵

5. Kendrick Lamar: good kid, m.A.A.d city

6. Main Attrakionz: 808s & Dark Grapes II

7. DJ Screw: 3 ‘n the Mornin’ (Part Two)

8. Mobb Deep: The Infamous

9. Redman: Dare Iz a Darkside

10. Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet

11. MF DOOM: Operation: Doomsday

12. The Notorious B.I.G.: Ready to Die

13. Outkast: Aquemini

14. Rich Gang: Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1

15. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly

16. UGK: Ridin’ Dirty

17. The Jacka: The Jack Artist

18. Juvenile: 400 Degreez

19. Three 6 Mafia: Underground Vol. 1: 1991-1994

20. Snoop Dogg: Doggystyle

21. Shabazz Palaces: Black Up

22. Gang Starr: Moment of Truth

23. Devin the Dude: Just Tryin’ ta Live

24. E-40: In a Major Way

25. Waka Flocka Flame: Flockaveli

26. De La Soul: Buhloone Mindstate

27. The Notorious B.I.G.: Life After Death

28. Madvillain: Madvillainy

29. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

30. Mac: Shell Shocked

31. The Diplomats: Diplomatic Immunity

32. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony: E. 1999 Eternal

33. Gucci Mane: Chicken Talk

34. Lil Wayne: Da Drought 3

35. Goodie Mob: Soul Food

36. Playboi Carti: Die Lit

37. Armand Hammer: Rome

38. Jeezy: Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101

39. Ghostface Killah: Supreme Clientele

40. B.G.: Chopper City in the Ghetto

41. Ka: Descendants of Cain

42. EPMD: Strictly Business

43. GZA: Liquid Swords

44. Azealia Banks: Broke With Expensive Taste

45. DJ Quik: Rhythm-al-ism

46. The Pharcyde: Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde

47. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory⁶

48. 2Pac: All Eyez on Me

49. Drake: Take Care

50. Lil’ Kim: Hard Core

51. Boosie: Bad Azz

52. Mac Mall: Illegal Business?

53. Dr. Dre: The Chronic

54. Jay-Z: The Blueprint

55. Scarface: The Diary

56. Duwap Kaine: Underdog

57. Lil B: 6 Kiss

58. Geto Boys: We Can’t Be Stopped

59. Mos Def: Black on Both Sides

60. Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

61. Jungle Brothers: Straight Out the Jungle

62. 50 Cent & G-Unit: 50 Cent Is the Future

63. Missy Elliott: Da Real World

64. Bad Bunny: YHLQMDLG

65. N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton

66. Roc Marciano: Marcberg

67. Pop Smoke: Meet the Woo

68. Whodini: Escape

69. 8Ball & MJG: On Top of the World

70. Kool G Rap: 4, 5, 6

71. Suga Free: Street Gospel

72. Danny Brown: XXX

73. Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…

74. Veeze: Ganger

75. Project Pat: Mista Don’t Play: Everythangs Workin

76. Beastie Boys: Paul’s Boutique

77. DMX: It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot

78. Slick Rick: The Great Adventures of Slick Rick

79. Future: DS2⁷

80. Wu-Tang Clan: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

81. Clipse: Hell Hath No Fury

82. Capone-N-Noreaga: The War Report

83. Sexyy Red: Hood Hottest Princess

84. Too $hort: Life Is…Too $hort

85. Foxy Brown: Broken Silence

86. Prince Paul: Prince Among Thieves

87. Keith LeBlanc: Major Malfunction

88. J. J. Fad: Supersonic

89. Chief Keef: Almighty So

90. Eric B. & Rakim: Paid in Full

91. Run-D.M.C.: Run-D.M.C.

92. Nicki Minaj: Beam Me Up Scotty⁸

93. Mantronix: The Album

94. Lupe Fiasco: Fahrenheit 1/15 Part II: Revenge of the Nerds⁹

95. Drakeo the Ruler: Cold Devil

96. Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP

97. Tyler the Creator: Bastard

98. Cannibal Ox: The Cold Vein

99. Boogie Down Productions: Criminal Minded

100. Aesop Rock: Labor Days¹⁰

1. At least in the modern era - I know any hardcore fan is aware, but these names are, in my experience, passed over by most post-2010 discourse.

2. Embarrassingly for the writer who I won’t name, this is almost an exact quote.

3. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Da Real World, Broke With Expensive Taste, Hard Core, Supersonic, Beam Me Up Scotty, Hood Hottest Princess, and Broken Silence.

4. It’s a bit embarrassing to crown an album with no rapping on the best rap albums list, but Donuts is perfect to me. It destroyed my idea that music needed to or was supposed to be structured a specific way.

5. I know Kanye this high in 2026 might (reasonably) be an unpopular choice, but this album feels like it was made for me. The entire team working on this are each some of my favorites ever, the style is minimal and dynamic in ways I’ve never heard replicated, and most importantly, there are ways you can listen to music without financially supporting the artist whatsoever.

6. One of my most annoying hot takes is that this is the worst Tribe album. People’s Instinctive Travels is way more fun, MM, BR&L, and TLM are groovier, and We Got It From Here… is more technically impressive.

7. If a better Future project was picked, it’d be way higher on this list for me - Honest, Monster, Beast Mode, Purple Reign, 56 Nights, Evol, FUTURE or HNDRXX, even Project E.T. For me, DS2 (while still a good project) feels like it focuses almost entirely on the worst aspects of his whole appeal.

8. She’s rapping extremely well here, but this is stale compared to her real peaks (Roman Reloaded: The Re-Up, in particular).

9. This is the first project on this list I would consider average or worse. Everything from Mantronix on up I’d say was good and worth a full listen, and I know many people absolutely adore the rest of these as well.

10. Full respect for what he was going for here, it just bored me as an album-length project. Even my least favorite album on this list was just something I mildly disliked.