Tag: The College Dropout

4 Best Sounding Hip Hop Albums

If you want to be a hip hop producer, here are your reference materials. Add these five albums to your playlist, sit down and educate your ears.

The albums on this list were selected for their sonic qualities and not for the musical and/or lyrical content, how influential they were etc. – hence ‘best sounding hip hop albums’.

What I look for is clarity throughout the audio frequency spectrum:

  • good sound separation
  • balanced low end
  • clear midrange (present vocals sitting nicely along instrumentation)
  • not overly dull nor overly saturated top end.

Notes:

My listening setup is:

- Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 audio interface
- Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (80Ω version) headphones
- files are all 320kbps MP3s.

Not the best of setups, but not the worst either.

Here we go, in chronological order:

Nas – Illmatic (1994)

Pitchfork’s Hartley Goldstein called it “a meticulously crafted essence of everything that makes hip-hop music great; it’s practically a sonic strand of the genre’s DNA”. In his review of the reissue from 2012, Jeff Weiss writes:

The alembic of soul jazz samples, SP-1200s, broken nose breaks, and raw rap distilled the Henny, no chaser ideal of boom-bap.

Eminem – Slim Shady LP (1999)

LA Times says the “only thing hindering the album is a sometimes flat production that takes away from the power of Eminem’s verbal mayhem”, but that’s what I like about it. Sparse beats, arrangements that breathe.

Dr Dre – The Chronic 2001 (1999)

Not to be outdone by his protege, Dre released his sophomore record the same year as the Slim Shady LP dropped. While The Chronic from 1992 is often considered as one of the most influential hip hop albums, sonically The Chronic 2001 is far superior.

Dead Prez – Let’s Get Free (2000)

Heavy political messages neatly packaged into a smooth hip hop gem.

Honorable mentions:

Kanye West – The College Dropout (2004)

Pimp C – Pimpalation (2006)

Of course, this is only my opinion. Do you agree with my selection? Let me know in the comments below.

Cover photo by Scott Schiller, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.