The 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time

"Yet for as many 99-cent songs as were purchased in the 2000s, anyone who spent time on that era's file-sharing networks can verify that the LP was still the most important unit for music obsessives. And it has remained so-albums are the venue for the most niche and audacious creative projects; they remain the organizing principle for press cycles and stadium tours; no one has gold mp3s hanging on their studio walls."

"As hip-hop enters its second half-century, the genre is more splintered than ever. This is most obvious through the lenses of style and regionality. But the method of delivery is becoming more varied, less legible to the uninitiated. On one hand, digital streaming platforms, which have collapsed the window between finishing a record and distributing it, have fundamentally altered the way some artists build their discographies."

"Tempting as it is to view this as part of technology's long, linear creep, it actually resembles hip-hop's 1980s more than it does visions of the far future. Rap's early stars trafficked in singles, which would snake their way through radio mixshows, dubbed cassette tapes, and eventually commercial pressings; albums were padded out with instrumentals and alternate mixes, if they were issued at all."

Albums continue to function as the primary artistic and commercial unit in hip-hop, hosting niche and audacious creative projects while organizing press cycles and tours. Digital streaming and direct-distribution tools have collapsed the gap between finishing and releasing records, reshaping how artists build discographies. Mixtapes and emerging rap frequently circulate on platforms like YouTube or through independent distribution, bypassing traditional outlets. The contemporary landscape resembles the 1980s single-driven circulation, with singles, mixtapes, and LPs coexisting. Genre fragmentation by style and region complicates canonical lists, leaving many significant works outside conventional best-albums rankings.

Read at Pitchfork