A Dreamer’s Perspective: The Top 10 Hip-Hop Albums of the 2000s

So we've made it to the end of the first decade of the new Millennium. It's almost unreal to think about. I can vividly remember it being 1999 like it was yesterday, about to turn to the year 2000. I remember Will Smith's "Willennium" album and video, I remember watching "The Box" as they did like a week of playing all 90s music, from early to present day. I even remember how on New Year's Eve how I was at this girl's house for my first...um...we can talk about that another time. LOL. Anyhow, like I said, it seemed like just yesterday. Now 10 years has already passed by and we are about to enter into the second decade of the 2000s. One thing I can say is that there was A LOT of changes that happened in hip hop since the clock struck 12AM on January 1, 2000. Today, I'm going to explore my personal opinion on what I think we the best hip hop albums of the decade.

let me reiterate. These are MY favorite albums of the decade. YES, there will be multiple works from the same artist in this list. I feel like if I'm going to be real with y'all, I'm going to keep it real. I've never been a fan of those lists who try and list every since pick as a different artist just for the sake of being diverse. As an artist myself, there are other specific artists and bodies of work that influenced me in this past decade to mold me to be who I am.

#10 - Cross Movement - "Holy Culture". My number 10 pick goes to the Christian Rap Group "Cross Movement" and their 2003 release of Holy Culture. I listen to a lot of sub-genres of rap, and Christian/Gospel rap is one of them. This album was one of my favorite and relevant to its sub-genre and hip hop as a whole because it basically set the tone and influence for some of the newer Christian rappers out now, such as Lecrae and Flame. The Philly crew also crossed boundaries by being able to convey Christian theology efficiently through the art form of hip hop through hard hitting productions and styles that were popular throughout the genre regionally. The album definitely received some great rotation from me at the beginning of my high school career.

#9 - Common - "Finding Forever". By the release of this album, I had only been a Common fan for a little while. (Yeah, I'm still kicking myself as well). I honestly didn't even know Common existed until he dropped "BE on 2005 (Which we'll come back to). After I essentially "caught up" on Lonnie Lynn Jr.'s catalogue between end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007, he had officially gained another true fan. I can't say that I've walked into the store and purchased many albums in my life time, but "Finding Forever" was certainly one of them. Just like "BE", Chicago native Kanye West returned to the bulk of the production, He referred to the production style as a homage to the late great J. Dilla. The album's soulful and socially conscious candor pushed it into the list of one of my most played albums in the later part of the decade.

#8 - Jay-Z - "The Black Album". The 2003 release of "The Black Album". A friend recently said a statement about Jay-Z albums. He said "Jay-Z albums are like wine...they get better over time". "The Black Album" certainly falls under that category. I didn't really get into the album until after "Kingdom Come" was released. I went back to see what I had had unappreciated and it turned out that I had missed a monumental album. Almost every track was hitting and I was almost pretty glad that I hadn't heard it before and had to live with a couple years of the shock of that being his LAST album.

#7 - Lupe Fiasco - "The Cool". Lupe Fiasco's ultimately became my favorite rapper when I first heard him lace "Touch The Sky" on Kanye West's 2005 sophomore album "Late Registration. After his critically acclaimed release of his debut album, his follow-up was highly anticipated. It came late 2007 after an array of other dope albums that year. It was a loosely based conceptual album and was easily the best release of the year. I'd admired Lupe's ability to make original sounding hip hop, stay left field and refreshing to the ear, as well as serving up quality lyricism that had recently been a rarity in modern hip hop at the time. I always felt he should have done a little more promo and dropped a couple more singles and what not, but I'm not complaining. I definitely hail this as one of the most relevant hip hop albums , at least to me, of the decade. I believe the extensive genre and topic bending throughout the album is going to be one of the blueprints to how hip hop will begin to develop into in the new decade. Intermixing genres is going to be the life support of the hip hop genre.

#6 - Kanye West - "Graduation". This album was definitely one of the most anticipated albums of the decade in my opinion. I know frankly for me, I was concerned about Kanye West. Have you ever experienced an artist who seems like he's way ahead of his time and already achieved great feats that you almost couldn't fathom topping? Kanye entered the game with the progressive sampling style of speeding up vocals from soul samples. After that method was heavily duplicated across the game, he moved on to Late Registration and incorporated extensive orchestration instrumentation, to the extent of which had never been seen in hip hop before. After doing that, I didn't know what the heck Mr. West would do to top that. Well, he surprised everyone when he moved towards a more European vibe, with a techno and dance influenced style. Though in America, and in hip hop especially, he was pretty much hailed at the top of the map, but "Graduation" sky-rocketed Kanye to an official worldwide pop star, arguably one of the biggest in the same boat as the likes of Bono, Madonna, Jay-Z and Michael Jackson. I know some of his original fans may have been turned off to it, but not me. I like the evolution of his style, and even though this certainly wasn't my favorite album from HIM, it was one of my favorite albums in the past 10 years.

#5 - Common - "BE". Like I mentioned above, I was late of becoming a Common fan, but this is the album that made me one. Since I had already been a fan of Kanye, and being able to hear Common on "My Way Home", I eventually checked out Common's 2005 "comeback" album around late 2006, early 2007. The time in my life was actually pretty enlightening. I was in a real interesting place. I was just starting college and I was really on a social activism tip. My favorite movie at the time was "Freedom Writers" (in which Common contributed to with the film's lead soundtrack single "I Have A Dream", sampling the famous speech by the same name, respectively. The soulful productions from Kanye West and the lyrical content served to be the perfect backdrop for the cold Minnesota winter commutes on the bus back and forth from home to school and work.

#4 - "The Blueprint". Arguably hailed as Jay-Z's best album period (I think the only competition people usually bring up is "Reasonable Doubt, and in my experience, that's usually brought up by a purist..lol.) his 2001 release of "The Blueprint" comes in the number 4 spot. Now, just like most of these albums, I didn't really get into "The Blueprint" until years later, around 6 years later to be exact. Kanye and Just Blaze's soulful production reign pretty much jump-started on this album and basically mapped out how the first half of the decade's hip hop music would sound like. It presented hard hitting bangers, soulful ballads and just that "I Run This" style that Jay-Z continues to have within the game now. This is back when a radio single didn't necessarily have to be a female joint. (H to the Izzo), but if it was, it was eclectic and not-cliché (Girls, Girls, Girls). In my opinion, the title (which was probably more of a prophecy instead of a coincidence or ironic event) lived up to exactly what it said it was, because without this album, I'm almost guaranteed that hip hop would have looked quite different in the 2000s.

#3 - Lupe Fiasco - "Food & Liquor". Now to be real, this album is really #1 on my list, but so are the #2 and #1 albums on my list, so for technical purposes, we will say it's #3. Making his mainstream debut on Kanye West's "Touch The Sky" joint, I kept looking out for some solo joints from him on through the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. One exciting night, I came across his mixtape "Fahrenheit 1/15: The Truth Is Here" and he instantly became my favorite rapper. I mean, I guess you'd have to be me to understand what I was feeling, but it was something authentic that I've only felt a few times in my life. In 2006, we were submerged in a "snap n' roll", "do it to it" era of hip hop where Atlanta Dance Music ran just about EVERYTHING in hip hop. Lupe stuck out like a sore thumb with his socially conscious and eclectic subject matter, laced with a candor of sincerity and truth. It was "real" music, if you will. This was one of the most relevant albums of the decade in my opinion because it served as a turning point for hip hop to start moving back into more substance based styles, where most of the new school acts and freshman in the hip hop, including me, were directly influenced by Lupe Fiasco in making it okay to be left-field and non-confrontational in rap, as well as bring hip hop back to the lyricism for a change.

#2 - Kanye West - "Late Registration". I've alluded to this album throughout this article. I will say that this album is what began my career as a rapper. It's kind of funny that I say that, because I've been rapping since I was 9, but after hearing "Late Registration", it really mapped out the type of artist I wanted to be and how I wanted to impact the world of music. He had good crossover joints (which I believe is the future of the longevity of the genre), including what I say is debatably the best hip hop collaboration of the decade "Heard 'Em Say (featuring Adam Levine of Maroon 5). He touched on socially important topics in the black community, in contrast with his personal reflections, dedication tracks and feel good joints like "We Major" and "Celebration". The reason this album was mostly important to this decade's hip hop lore was the musical process of it and how it went to lengths that no other hip hop album had went to, acquiring movie score director Jon Brion to create auditory movie scenes. Kanye brought in multi-piece orchestras to craft and compose songs in co-production with samples, in contrast to the sped-up sample methods of his debut album. Speaking of that debut album, my pick for my #1 favorite hip hop album of the decade (which also happens to also be my favorite period)...

#1 - Kanye West - "The College Dropout". When I first heard of Kanye as a solo artist, it was on the radio with a joint called "Slow Jams". I remember it distinctly in 2004. Then I heard him on the "Confessions" remix. All while "The College Dropout" was being pushed and promoted, I was AWARE of it and Kanye, but didn't end up really sitting down and listening to the album until a year later after I had really got into "Late Registration" and wanted to go back and see what tracks I missed from his debut. It then, along with Common's "BE" became the soundtrack for my public transportation commutes back and forth from home to school and work. I always chucked as how I was headed into college bumping "The College Dropout". The album stands the test of time and just relates to some many people. Now, it's not to say that hip hop was entirely ran by the "gangsta" and "street" scene, but that was the most dominant sub-style in mainstream hip hop at the time. What was funny though, is that if everyone in the world were goons like those who were or portraying so in their music, I believe our entire world would be a lot darker and closer to anarchy. There were more regular people in the world than thugs and Kanye West made the soundtrack for us. He reflected his struggle before music popped off for him of how he felt like school wasn't for him and he wanted to pursue his dreams. "Spaceship" is the only other record really competing with "Heard Em' Say" for my favorite hip hop songs of the decade. That's definitely STILL my soundtrack that I sung constantly when I was at my dead end job. The epitome of a classic.

I give a couple albums some honorable mentions, including Jay-Z's "Kingdom Come" which is doper than most people gave a chance to. I would say minus the horrible song that "Anything (featuring Usher)" was, and maybe "Dig A Hole", that album would have been a near-flawless classic. T.I's "Paper Trial" definitely is up there. I think that is one of T.I.'s best albums, hands down. Though "808s & Heartbreak" is my least favorite Kanye album, it's still pretty high on the album ranking list. Oh, and of course, I'll always have a special place in my heart (PAUSE) for the first hip hop album I ever personally owned, Nelly's "Country Grammar".

So, you've checked out my 10 favorite hip hop albums of the decade. What's yours?