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Which hip-hop artist has the best discography?
My friend Sunny brought an interesting question to my attention (which was posed by Asim Chaudhry on Romesh Ranganathan’s Hip-Hop Saved My Life podcast): which artist has the strongest discography…
We set ourselves some ground rules:
- Must have at least 3 full albums (no EPs)
- Doesn’t include any guest appearances or mix tapes
- Can include genuinely partnership albums e.g. Black Star counts towards Mos Def and Talib Kweli’s scores as truly joint, but GZA can’t count Wu Tang Clan’s albums
- Doesn’t include compilations or live albums
- The album had to sell ‘enough’ so someone actually heard it and there was a possibility of it being reviewed somewhere
I originally took the scoring from Metacritic, but their scores don’t go back further than 2001, which discounted a lot of stuff. I turned to Allmusic.com and used their scoring throughout (except a couple – they are the ones not rounded to tens). The 5-star ratings were converted to percentages.
Sunny guessed LL Cool J. I said The Roots (but I am biased).
The Results
I have changed how I collect data, and have moved to Google Data Studio visualisations. Please bear with me while I repopulate the data. You will notice some rankings change.
Pretty graph
Note, you can hover/click on the artist and it will highlight their performance over time.
Scores on the doors
Top 50
Ranking | Artist | No. albums | Mean ratings |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Beastie Boys | 8 | 88.8 |
2 | Kendrick Lamar | 5 | 88 |
2 | El-P | 5 | 88 |
4 | Pharoahe Monch | 7 | 85.7 |
5 | ATCQ | 6 | 85 |
5 | OutKast | 6 | 85 |
7 | Blackalicious | 4 | 84 |
7 | GZA | 5 | 84 |
9 | Black Moon | 3 | 83.3 |
9 | Missy Elliott | 6 | 83.3 |
11 | Jurassic 5 | 4 | 82.5 |
12 | Wu Tang | 7 | 82 |
13 | Dizzee Rascal | 6 | 81.7 |
14 | Rakim | 7 | 81.3 |
15 | Talib Kweli | 9 | 80.1 |
16 | The Roots | 11 | 80 |
16 | Jeru the Damaja | 4 | 80 |
16 | Masta Ace | 7 | 80 |
16 | NWA | 3 | 80 |
16 | J-Zone | 3 | 80 |
16 | DJ Shadow | 5 | 80 |
22 | KanYe | 8 | 78.8 |
22 | Eminem | 8 | 78.8 |
24 | EPMD | 7 | 78.6 |
25 | Aesop Rock | 6 | 78.3 |
25 | MOP | 6 | 78.3 |
27 | DJ Krush | 10 | 78 |
28 | J Cole | 4 | 77.5 |
28 | Roots Manuva | 8 | 77.5 |
28 | Inspectah Deck | 4 | 77.5 |
31 | Public Enemy | 14 | 77.1 |
32 | Jay-Z | 12 | 76.7 |
32 | Boogie Down Productions | 6 | 76.7 |
32 | Jungle Brothers | 6 | 76.7 |
32 | The High & Mighty | 3 | 76.7 |
36 | Common | 10 | 76 |
36 | Tha Alkaholiks | 5 | 76 |
38 | Del the Funkee Homosapien | 12 | 75.8 |
38 | Erick Sermon | 12 | 75.8 |
40 | Run DMC | 7 | 75.7 |
41 | Slick Rick | 4 | 75 |
41 | Ghostface Killah | 14 | 75 |
41 | Mr Lif | 4 | 75 |
41 | Future | 6 | 75 |
45 | Big Daddy Kane | 7 | 74.3 |
46 | Royce da 5’9 | 5 | 74 |
47 | De La Soul | 8 | 73.8 |
47 | Redman | 8 | 73.8 |
49 | dead prez | 3 | 73.3 |
49 | Gravediggaz | 3 | 73.3 |
49 | AZ | 6 | 73.3 |
49 | Naughty by Nature | 6 | 73.3 |
View entire results table (Opens Google Sheets)
Disclaimers
Okay, here we go
- Some great artists aren’t included (The Fugees)
- Working out which album counts towards the total was hard
- Working through the aliases was harder – looking at you Kool Keith
- All scoring is subjective – I disagree with some Allmusic.com scores, but I tried to keep it consistent
- Some scores are missing
- Why did some artists release ‘awful’ albums? C’mon Mos Def – True Magic??!?
- The results mean little – I still love The Roots
- This is the only time AZ gets props over Nas
Odd results and quirks
- Tupac (71.0) beats Biggie (70.0)
- AZ (73.3) beats Nas (72.7)
- Jay-Z (76.7) beats Nas (72.7) – but only on this (see ‘Ether‘)
- A lot peak in their first few albums, but then tail off
- There might be a correlation between wordiness and album ratings
- GZA is let down by the rest of the Wu-Tang Clan (see Wu mini-league below)
- There is a certain irony that ODB is #69 (giggles)
- The world lost out when Slick Rick was incarcerated
- The Roots are the only artists in the top-20 with ten or more albums
- MOP and Tha Alkaholiks are better than you’d think
Wu mini-league
Ranking | Artist | No. albums | Mean ratings |
---|---|---|---|
7 | GZA | 5 | 84 |
12 | Wu Tang | 7 | 82 |
28 | Inspectah Deck | 4 | 77.5 |
41 | Ghostface Killah | 14 | 75 |
53 | Raekwon | 8 | 72.9 |
65 | RZA | 9 | 71.1 |
69 | ODB | 3* | 70 |
89 | Method Man | 8 | 67.5 |
110 | Cappadonna | 5 | 58 |
* ODB’s third album, The Trials and Tribulations of Russell Jones, is included but it is widely regarded as scraped together by a label trying to cash on his incarceration.
Music and History
Music, History, and now Geography
I’d love to hear what you think, so drop me a line in comments.