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:

  1. Must have at least 3 full albums (no EPs)
  2. Doesn’t include any guest appearances or mix tapes
  3. 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
  4. Doesn’t include compilations or live albums
  5. 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

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

  1. Some great artists aren’t included (The Fugees)
  2. Working out which album counts towards the total was hard
  3. Working through the aliases was harder – looking at you Kool Keith
  4. All scoring is subjective – I disagree with some Allmusic.com scores, but I tried to keep it consistent
  5. Some scores are missing
  6. Why did some artists release ‘awful’ albums? C’mon Mos Def – True Magic??!?
  7. The results mean little – I still love The Roots
  8. 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.