SPIN's 50 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2015

SPIN's 50 Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2015

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50.

Drake & Future - What A Time To Be Alive
September 20, 2015
Critic Score
70
23 reviews

These are creative guys bouncing off a group of similar ideas and seeing where the muse takes them. It isn’t always pretty. It isn’t really innovative.

49.

Tech N9ne - Special Effects
May 4, 2015
Critic Score
73
3 reviews

48.

RM - RM
March 15, 2015

47.

Migos - Yung Rich Nation
July 31, 2015
Critic Score
66
10 reviews
For a group teetering on the verge — again — of being counted out, Migos have proved — again — that they have more than one trick up their sleeves.

46.

BeatKing - Houston 3 AM
July 1, 2015
Critic Score
70
1 review

45.

Paris - Pistol Politics
September 11, 2015
Critic Score
60
1 review

44.

Cavanaugh - Time & Materials
November 19, 2015
Critic Score
67
3 reviews

43.

DonMonique - Thirst Trap
July 21, 2015
Critic Score
68
1 review

42.

Dr. Dre - Compton
August 7, 2015
Critic Score
79
30 reviews

Compton earns a lot of credit simply by not being a disaster or an embarrassment, but there’s only so much a 50-year-old rapper can say to a generation following their favorite artists on Snapchat.

40.

Death Grips - The Powers That B
March 31, 2015
Critic Score
78
8 reviews

Their squashed dynamics leave the dissonances in the gutter, and except for maybe “I Break Mirrors,” it’s hard to differentiate the highlights from the chaff. 

39.

K Camp - Only Way Is Up
September 4, 2015
Critic Score
70
2 reviews

35.

Big Sean - Dark Sky Paradise
February 24, 2015
Critic Score
75
12 reviews
As a no-strings-attached Kanye, he's unlovable, but even with the above evidence he's hard to hate either.

34.

Mick Jenkins - Wave[s]
August 21, 2015
Critic Score
74
10 reviews

There’s a lot to unpack in just half an hour of Wave(s) and this rising talent doesn’t plan to make it any easier as he learns to hone hooks.

33.

Sicko Mobb - Super Saiyan Vol. 2
April 1, 2015
Critic Score
85
2 reviews

32.

Le1f - Riot Boi
November 13, 2015
Critic Score
73
11 reviews

31.

Cannibal Ox - Blade of the Ronin
March 3, 2015
Critic Score
69
14 reviews

Ronin is a very good album and a fun anachronism in 2015 between surprise Drake and Kanye releases.

30.

Tink - Winter's Diary 3
July 30, 2015
Critic Score
71
5 reviews

29.

Monster Rally & Jay Stone - Foreign Pedestrians
January 27, 2015
Critic Score
80
1 review

It’s not just the production, though — the record’s summery vibe has just as much to do with Stone, who skates over the beats with impressive nimbleness and rapid-fire wit. 

25.

D.R.A.M. - Gahdamn!
October 23, 2015
Critic Score
70
2 reviews

24.

Cousin Stizz - Suffolk County
June 1, 2015
Critic Score
70
1 review

23.

DJ Esco - 56 Nights
March 21, 2015
Critic Score
77
2 reviews

22.

DeJ Loaf - #AndSeeThat'sTheThing
July 24, 2015
Critic Score
68
3 reviews

21.

iLoveMakonnen - Drink More Water 5
March 31, 2015
Critic Score
67
4 reviews

It’s the fifth entry in his Drink More Water mixtape series that proves he’s got more melodic facility of anyone else in the bunch.

20.

Ty Dolla $ign - Free TC
November 13, 2015
Critic Score
73
15 reviews

17.

Lizzo - Big GRRRL Small World
December 11, 2015
Critic Score
75
12 reviews

Her second album, Big GRRRL Small World, is more of a strong sum-up than an explosive progression.

16.

A$AP Rocky - AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP
May 26, 2015
Critic Score
74
30 reviews

Brush those lowlights aside and what remains is a glossy, surprising album, albeit one without the obvious radio hits of 2013’s studio debut Long.Live.A$AP.

14.

Pusha T - King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude
December 18, 2015
Critic Score
80
25 reviews

We do know that Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude is a fabulous album, even though it’s merely a sample to whet our appetite for the real product, King Push, next spring.

13.

Rae Sremmurd - SremmLife
January 6, 2015
Critic Score
76
12 reviews

As a whole, SremmLife brims with potential; it's clear with each breath that Slim and Swae are hungry.

10.

Action Bronson - Mr. Wonderful
March 24, 2015
Critic Score
71
18 reviews
It's the rare rap album that actually rewards its mixtape following.

9.

Heems - Eat Pray Thug
March 10, 2015
Critic Score
69
14 reviews

In many ways, Eat Pray Thug is a prequel to Das Racist, filling in the biographical gaps of a seemingly inscrutable wiseass from when he had to cry before he could laugh.

8.

Young Thug - Barter 6
April 16, 2015
Critic Score
70
14 reviews
For the first time on a Young Thug release, you get the sense that he’s sitting around waiting to ascend to the next level of his sound, for inspiration to strike, though with such a laid-back, inscrutable flow, he might have to activate that change himself.

7.

Fetty Wap - Fetty Wap
September 25, 2015
Critic Score
63
13 reviews
He shows the consistency to scatter those songs throughout Fetty Wap‘s 17 tracks and to mostly stick to the limited formula that made them hit as hard as they did on the rest of the record.

6.

Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Surf
May 29, 2015
Critic Score
82
18 reviews
With its heavy sense of community, emotional uplift and quest for righteousness, the LP is far more appropriate for the chapel than it is for the club.

5.

Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside
March 23, 2015
Critic Score
76
28 reviews

His paranoia is as thick as Drake's on the similarly inward If You're Reading This It's Too Late, from earlier this year. However, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside is a much leaner, less showy effort (Drake is an actor, Earl decidedly is not), and Earl turns his pen on himself, too, not just everybody else.

4.

Drake - If You're Reading This It's Too Late
February 12, 2015
Critic Score
76
30 reviews
Sonically and thematically, this not-album is easily the harshest release of Drake's career, a brooding, unsettling listen with few respites offered from its sense of creeping dread.

3.

Future - DS2
July 17, 2015
Critic Score
78
19 reviews

Dirty Sprite 2 is a tremendous compendium of everything you want from a Future album in 2015.

2.

Vince Staples - Summertime '06
June 30, 2015
Critic Score
84
23 reviews

Staples’ wickedly backward upbringing is the focus of Summertime ’06, which could well be the fiercest, most ferociously focused street-oriented double rap album since UGK’s Underground Kingz.

1.

Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
March 15, 2015
Critic Score
95
45 reviews
This album is mandatory listening; serious rap fans who shun Mr. West due to his interfering personality (or Wayne, Drake, Nicki, Jay and Em) don't have that out here because Kendrick doesn't pretend to be Hova or Yeezus — just another young black man that Uncle Sam's ready to fuck up.
Original Source: http://www.spin.com/2015/12/the-50-best-hip-hop-albums-of-2015/
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