So yeah, Pitchfork busted out not one but two lists of "The 100 Best Rap Albums of All-Time," one courtesy of the site, one courtesy of the site's readership. One is considerably more entertaining than the other.
Per the preamble, these are "the most essential and influential albums" of the genre. Words such as "essential" and "influential" suggest, to me anyway, a greatest list...y'know, those wreck-hards that maybe you really love, maybe you really don't, but they're important, and can't be ignored. Words such as "essential" and "influential" do not suggest, to me anyway, artistic excellence. The word "best," however, suggests nothing but.
Oh well!
Of the 100 choices on P-fork's official list, 59 of them belong. Among the 41 fakers are records released within the last five years (Ka's Descendants Of Cain), records that are just not good (Suga Free's Street Gospel) and records released within the last five years that are just not good (Sexxy Red's Hood Hottest Princess). The readers fare worse--a clean 50-50 split.
Pitchfork's Top 10 is solid, save for a wildly-overrated 400 Degreez and Rich Gang, the latter of which wins the coveted "We Don't Really Believe This, But It'll Get People Talking Online" slot (which I'd feared momentarily might go instead to an outside-the-top-10 Illmatic. Guess the PF offices go for that rotisserie chicken with minimal additives).
Terrible omissions from both lists: any MC Lyte, any Kool Keith, Funcrusher Plus (the single most influential independent hip-hop album ever), Big Pun's debut, any BDP/Krs-One, It Was Written, The Future Is Now. PF's readers had the common sense to include 3 Feet High and Rising and Midnight Marauders, as well as to rank the Wu debut over any subsequent member solos. Do not understand this as a blanket celebration of the non-professional opinion, however; readers put seven whole-ass Kanye albums in the top 100 and zero Redman.
Of course the official top 100 is receiving much more attention, as it should. Pitchfork has a rich creamery history of these "definitive" rankings painstakingly designed to send the average clicker on a roller coaster ride of emotions. In their eagerness to represent every region, era and sound, they've put together as inessential a list as possible.
