Rolling Stone Ranks Greatest 200 Hip-Hop Albums, People React

Rolling Stone has published their ranking of the 200 greatest hip-hop albums of all time, and people have thoughts about it.

Today (June 7), Rolling Stone released their definitive list of the best hip-hop albums ever. In their intro to the ranking, they clarify that the list is secluded to only English hip-hop records. Also, they added that in cases of repeated albums from legendary catalogs such as OutKast or A Tribe Called Quest going up against an LP from a lesser-known but still important artist, they tended to go with the latter.

They claim their result covers “every important moment” in hip-hop’s evolution.

To start, they ranked Travis Scott’s Astroworld at No. 200. Expectedly, Travis fans were not happy with the placement.

“How tf is Astroworld only 200th on Rolling Stone‘s top 200 greatest hip-hop albums of all time,” a Twitter user wrote. The tweet has over 3,000 likes as of this article’s publication.

For the next order of criticism, a user pointed out that upon Rolling Stone publishing their list, their No. 176 ranking of Westside Gunn’s Flygod album contained the wrong cover art and year it was released. Flygod dropped in 2016.

Additionally, Playboi Carti’s highly polarizing album, Whole Lotta Red, was given a spot at No. 129.

Getting into the top 100, there are rightfully a treasure trove of classic hip-hop albums. It’s the ranking, however, that seems to have everyone up in arms.

First off, a user pointed out that Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap, ranked No. 36, is above Dr. Dre’s The Chronic. This also puts Acid Rap ahead of Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. (No. 60) and good kid, m.A.A.d city (No. 38), as well as Kanye West’s The College Dropout (No. 52) and Eminem’s The Slim Shady LP (No. 85).

What has been criticized the most from the list, however, is Rolling Stone‘s ranking of Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy album as the 16th greatest hip-hop album of all time. That puts it ahead of LPs such as Nas’ Illmatic (No. 24), Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt (No. 26), Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez On Me (No. 29) and Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle (No. 35), as well as the aforementioned releases from Eminem, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West.

You can see tweets commenting on Cardi’s ranking, one of which has received over 20,000 likes, below.

Officially, Rolling Stone ranked The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die as the greatest hip-hop album of all time. Rounding out the top five were OutKast’s Stankonia at No. 2, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint at No. 3, Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back at No. 4 and Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly at No. 5.

You can see the top 10 below and the full list here.