What Makes a Classic Album? Complex Staffers Weigh In

Byhiphop

For as long as hip-hop has existed, it’s spawned arguments. For decades now, fans of rap have been staking out ground, hills to die on, each concerned with one question: Who is the best? And the debate for the GOAT has a long-running spinoff, one of the primary criteria for being the greatest of all time—has that rapper made a classic?

What a classic actually is, outside of just being a very good album, is up for debate. Which is partly why the argument is so fun to have—everyone is working from a different rubric. Some people are concerned with the quality of the rapping, others the popular response, others still need it to have shifted the culture significantly. On an episode of last week’s Everyday Struggle, Joe Budden, DJ Akademiks, and Nadeska Alexis brought up the ever-present debate: What makes a classic?

Complex staffers weighed in below, with their definitions of what makes for a classic and three picks for hip-hop classics made in the last decade. 

Source Complex

“I’m so far ahead of my time; I’m bout to start another life/ Look behind you, I’m bout to pass you twice.”- Jay Z

“Youngins ice grillin’ me, oh you not feeling me/Fine, it cost you nothing/Pay me no mind”

“I’d rather die enormous than live dormant”

“They giveth and they taketh life is cruel that way/But even a broken clock is right at least two times a day”

“A wise man told me don’t argue with fools, cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who.”

“Swear to everything, when I leave this Earth, it’s gon’ be on both feet, never knees in the dirt”

“No one said it would be easy, n**** livin’ is work”

“I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of not trying”

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