Criteria For Being a Classic Rap Album

CRITERIA #1The album should have almost universal acclaim. For those who don’t know, acclaim is defined as “public approval and praise”. For something to be almost universally acclaimed, it should be looked upon positively by the vast majority of its listeners. Let’s face it…no matter how good an album is, there will always be somebody that doesn’t like it for some reason. However, when an album has positive reviews from both critics and fans, we can say it has “almost universal acclaim”. Example Freddie Gibbs recently released an album with Madlib called Pinata. Most people who listened to it that I know really enjoyed it. However, the album is not a classic, since it doesn’t meet the next criteria. CRITERIA #2 The album must have impacted the rap game as a whole Let’s face it…an album might be 10/10 to everybody, but it isn’t necessarily a classic if most of us forget about it a year after it was released. In order for an album to be a classic, it needs to impact the rap game in some manner. FOR EXAMPLE One could claim that *Souljaboytellem.com" meets this criteria…it has influenced artists such as Tyga who are very popular in the mainstream. However, it is obviously not a classic, since most of its listeners rated it very poorly. CONCLUSION Let’s face it: we will probably never agree on what the classics will be. However, I believe that these two criteria are about as close as we can get to determining what classics really are