Over the past few months I have amounted a decent collection of records and I decided to make a post ranking them based on my personal enjoyment of each album.

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1. Section.80

Section.80 is undoubtedly my favorite album of all time. When I first listened to it I found myself constantly repeating the punchlines in my head during everyday activities, and I fell in love with the great production on all of the tracks. Then when I listened more and more I started appreciating the deeper aspects of the album, with the skits and characters that Kendrick uses to craft a very meaningful and story driven listening experience. This is the obvious choice for my favorite record, and I started looking for a physical copy almost immediately after I bought my first record.

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2. The Life of Pablo

…..The Life of Pablo comes in as a very strong second favorite album in my collection. A few months ago this album absolutely dominated my listening, always playing the full tracklist from start to finish. There was a while where I knew most of the song lyrics before I actually knew their names, which just goes to show how consistent this album is. The great production that helps the album achieve this feeling that each song is a part of one long track is what I enjoy most when listening. On top of that the extremely well crafted verses on songs like, “No More Parties In LA”, to the great melodic singing on tracks like, “FML” just cements this album as one of my all time favorites. Overall, this record is a great experience from start to finish, and uses excellent singing, production, and rapping to discuss many important issues in Kanye’s life.

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3. To Pimp a Butterfly

To Pimp a Butterfly is undoubtedly a great album, but I really have a hard time gauging my enjoyment of it. I love the experience of listening to this album, and really think that the lyrics and production carry Kendrick’s ideas to new heights with this entry in his career. However, I have a very hard time comparing it to Good Kid Maad City. I really enjoy this record’s style of jazz based beats and every once in a while find myself wanting to listen to “Mortal Man” again just to experience the Kendrick and Tupac outro. although I have a hard time comparing these two Kendrick albums, I think that it’s safe to say this is a slightly more developed experience than Good Kid Maad City.

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4. Good Kid Maad City

Good Kid Maad City, in my opinion is a very natural step in between Section.80 and TPAB. In my mind this is Kendrick’s first step away from small specific scenarios, like those outlined in Section.80, to larger issues, like those discussed in TPAB. The beats in this album are top tier, and Kendrick raps amazingly well over each one. From the hard and motivated bangers like “Maad City” to the laid back tracks like “The Recipe” Kendrick shows off his diversity extremely well with a variety of sounds and styles. This album is hard to judge against TPAB, but it has a very strong collection of beats with even better verses. Although I really enjoy this album, In my opinion TPAB is a slightly better record, so Good Kid Maad City takes a very close second (or fourth) place.

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5. Nasir

Nasir is an excellent combination of Kanye production and Nas verses. I first discovered this album when “Adam and Eve” was a recommended song for me on spotify. I loved the beat, the great hook, and Nas’ memorable bars. One line which caught my attention was “cold Jordan’s for the price on stock”, because I decided that Nas must be referring to the modern sneaker sale site StockX. This caused me to look into the album and find out that It was only released in 2018. I then listened to the full album and found many new favorites, from the very catchy “Simple Things” to the hard-hitting “Cops Shot The Kid”. This album is my personal favorite collection of songs from Nas because of the great production and penmanship, not taking into account the great impact and ingenuity of Illmatic.

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6. Tha Carter V

Tha Carter V is the album on this list that I’ve had in my rotation for the longest. Although I have probably put many more hours into the songs of Kanye or Kendrick, Wayne is undoubtedly a paved the way for many of hip hops modern stars, and represents the base of my appreciation for rap. For me this album is the summary of why I love Wayne, with great slower songs like “Dope New Gospel”, to tracks with extremely well crafted verses like “Mona Lisa”, and songs with hard hitting beats like “Uproar”. This album was my introduction to Wayne, and in turn most of other favorite artists, and although there are probably more classics in some of the other entries in the Tha Carter series, this is the one that I enjoy the most as a whole.

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7. No Sleep Til NYC

No Sleep Til NYC is another album that, like The Life of Pablo, I listened to non-stop for a very long period of time. I was reading comments on a post detailing someone’s Kendrick Lamar record collection and a few people were discussing which of Kendrick’s mixtapes have physical versions in the comments. One person commented that No Sleep Til NYC was a mixtape that had a physical copy, and I was instantly intrigued as I had never heard of the project before, and was curious how the title related to Kendrick and his fellow west-coast rapper Jay Rock. With the first few listens I came to discover that this album is a collection of excellent verses by Kendrick, Jay Rock, and occasionally Ab-Soul over some great classic east coast beats. It was really refreshing to hear these modern rappers over the older hip hop production, and the story telling and wordplay shows the seeds of talent that were in the stars’ art from the beginning.

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8. Jackboys

Jackboys is the first physical album that I purchased, but not very highly ranked. When this collaborative album first came out I took a day trip to NY with my cousins’ extended family, and for most of the trip me and my cousins all had headphones in playing this album. I really enjoyed most of the tracks on this album, mainly “Gang Gang” and “What To Do”. Some of these songs didn’t stand the test of time for me, like “Out West”, which I have simply heard too many times, but besides that I find that I still really enjoy the rest of the tracks, especially the parts from Travis and Don Toliver. Although I don’t have many negative things to say about this album, I have it ranked fairly low because I just don’t go back to it very often and it’s a much less cohesive listening experience than most of my other full-length albums.

9. Wash Us in the Blood

Wash Us in the Blood is the second single in my collection. I really enjoy this song, but can’t speak much on how much I play the record because I have not yet received the order. This song was the first Kanye track that I really waited to be released. I remember waiting for the live premier of the music video on YouTube, really excited to listen to the track. Then once the video premiered, I rarely payed attention to the music after seeing the powerful imagery. After I watched the video a few more times, and listened to the song on Spotify more I really began to love this song. and would love to have a whole Kanye album with this Yeezus-esque stripped down version of Kanye’s gospel music.

10. The Scotts

Finally, my least favorite record I own, The Scotts. I purchased this single the day after it came out, so I didn’t really absorb the whole song before I bought it. Over time I came to enjoy the production on this track, but honestly I thought that the rapping by Travis Scott and Kid Cudi was not very strong. It also didn’t help me that I heard this song everywhere and it was very well regarded by most. Overall, I don’t think this track is bad, but I have definitely heard better from both Travis and Cudi and believe it was overhyped as a result of the Travis Scott Fortnite concert.