The Official 'Classic Album' Discussion Thread

[Inspect Her Deck]

influence - you have to make some kind of influence on the culture in SOME way
innovation
timeless
rhymes AND beats have to be on point (that doesn't mean super rapitty rap crazy multis and shyt just DOPE rhymes that work with the songs eg Snoop wasn't teh BEST technical rhymer ever but Doggystyle is an undeniable classic IMO)

i'ma bit tipsy right now but that's what i can come up with. there prob should be one or 2 more things i'm not thinking of right now but if you have an album that fits ALL these categories then you could pretty much say it's a straight up undeniable classic no matter what region or who you're talking to. when you want to break it down to regional classics then you can say maybe they need to have all those same stats but if say if the influence is on a regional level rather than a national/international level then maybe it's just a regional classic instead of a Chronic type classic influencing the entire genre.

just to show an easy comparison that most heads would understand -
Enta Da Stage = undeniable classic (started a lot of that RAH-RAH yelling, gettin buck type East Coast shyt)
Dah Shinin = regional classic (def is a classic but it didn't necessarily have influence beyond the East or even NY)

well I was talking about influence above with mobbinfms and how he said influence could be negative, so perhaps we should discard that factor.

anyway I like what you're saying. lemme ask you: is Liquid Swords a classic to you? If so, why?

Just wanna get a full understanding of your approach.

 

[Shield & Sword]

Aquemini turned my boy into a hip hop fan. That's what classics do, in my opinion, in the universal aspect of it.

My cousin asked me to recommend him hip hop to get into - he was a casual fan, liked Dark Twisted Fantasy, Stankonia... I gave him my Liquid Swords CD & said enjoy - it's his favourite album now

Albeit this is just one aspect of the classic debate, I believe classics are a "peak" and can be used to introduce one to a genre. I think of classics as genre-defining moments. It's still tricky though

 

[BurnSlow]

Aquemini turned my boy into a hip hop fan. That's what classics do, in my opinion, in the universal aspect of it.

My cousin asked me to recommend him hip hop to get into - he was a casual fan, liked Dark Twisted Fantasy, Stankonia... I gave him my Liquid Swords CD & said enjoy - it's his favourite album now

Albeit this is just one aspect of the classic debate, I believe classics are a "peak" and can be used to introduce one to a genre. I think of classics as genre-defining moments. It's still tricky though

Good definition of wtf a classic is here. In the spirit of this smart brother's insight, I'd say Me, Myself & I is a personal classic for me. That's what got me into hip-hop.

 

[mobbinfms]

I'm more than happy with this.

So what you're saying is that quality is first (consensus-based decision), and provided that is met, how does it stand the test of time both with regards to reference. I think that is better than what I initially came up with because as you pointed out before, influence can be negative and plus that doesn't reward albums like Liquid Swords, which may be relevant in the long run and celebrated but not necessarily influential on artists that followed.

You know what? If people don't object to your statement, I'll just run with it.

And cool. I'll make a separate thread and tag the people you tagged earlier. Starting with Jay-Z listing his albums and making a poll.

I just wanna ask two more things?:

- what year should we go up to? some people have proposed 2001 as we need at least 15 years to determine if something is classic. What say you?
- what should the acceptance % be of people calling an album 'classic' before I put it on an official list?

I think 10 years is fine. Through 2005.

So this could be a problem. If we do polls, I don't think you'll know the total number of votes. But then, at the very end you can go back and have a cut off point. Every album with 30 votes? We'll have to see how much participation we get.

 

[BlackMamba824]

I think 10 years is fine. Through 2005.

So this could be a problem. If we do polls, I don't think you'll know the total number of votes. But then, at the very end you can go back and have a cut off point. Every album with 30 votes? We'll have to see how much participation we get.

That's been my question right now as well...how much participation something like this could get. I'm not really sure if this is any indication for how active members would be, but I agree that polls might work better than simple responses in the thread itself.

 

[Inspect Her Deck]

I think 10 years is fine. Through 2005.

So this could be a problem. If we do polls, I don't think you'll know the total number of votes. But then, at the very end you can go back and have a cut off point. Every album with 30 votes? We'll have to see how much participation we get.

potentially depending on the slots I could do something like a poll option saying 'Reasonable Doubt yes' and 'Reasonable Doubt no' but idk how that would work. But in that way, I'd know how many people said yes and no for one album so I know how many total voted for that album, then work out the acceptance % as yes/total.

I think we have a max of 15 poll slots? so that's 7 albums pretty much if I went by that method. I'm just trying to think of Jay. He has 8 albums in that span so it wouldn't work.

Or as you said, maybe just get a feel for how large the participation is and maybe have a cut-off point?

Counting comments is real tiresome and can be confusing.

 

[Inspect Her Deck]

@mobbinfms then again with someone like Jay (more than 7 albums before 2005), I could remove an album that I know people won't call classic e.g. Blueprint 2.

 

[BlackMamba824]

potentially depending on the slots I could do something like a poll option saying 'Reasonable Doubt yes' and 'Reasonable Doubt no' but idk how that would work. But in that way, I'd know how many people said yes and no for one album so I know how many total voted for that album, then work out the acceptance % as yes/total.

I think we have a max of 15 poll slots? so that's 7 albums pretty much if I went by that method. I'm just trying to think of Jay. He has 8 albums in that span so it wouldn't work.

Or as you said, maybe just get a feel for how large the participation is and maybe have a cut-off point?

Counting comments is real tiresome and can be confusing.

I agree that counting comments could be tiresome but outside of artists with very large catalogs (Nas and Jay, etc) most artists don't have many enough albums to take up 15 slots let alone quality albums that are actually debatable. I'm not sure how other people feel but with Nas, for instance, I don't think there is a point in including albums like Nastradamus in a poll...same with Jay and others, which would help reduce he number of items included in the poll and the number of threads created.

 

[BlackMamba824]

@mobbinfms then again with someone like Jay (more than 7 albums before 2005), I could remove an album that I know people won't call classic e.g. Blueprint 2.

Exactly

 

[Inspect Her Deck]

I agree that counting comments could be tiresome but outside of artists with very large catalogs (Nas and Jay, etc) most artists don't have many enough albums to take up 15 slots let alone quality albums that are actually debatable. I'm not sure how other people feel but with Nas, for instance, I don't think there is a point in including albums like Nastradamus in a poll...same with Jay and others, which would help reduce he number of items included in the poll and the number of threads created.

IF I encounter a Jay situation, I'll remove an album, but otherwise will list them all so I run minimal risks. I think the yes/no method should work out, and will guarantee an acceptance % result

 

[mobbinfms]

@Inspect Her Deck @BlackMamba824
I think we got this figured out. Yes and No Options and we'll leave off the obvious weed plates if necessary. Besides, anyone arguing any one artist has more than three or four is probably a Stan anyways.

Make the Jay thread.

 

[Made Myself A Boss]

DMX- "DAHIH"

Changed the game.


I can still listen to.this album and sing every word 15 years later like it just came out

There's not many albums you can do to.

 

[CoriGunz11]

Ain't that complicated. If it influenced the genre, is cohesive and has classic unforgettable record singles and sells do
Matter in order for it to be a classic. Illmatic is the bible for hip hop lyricism. Yes rakim is the godfather of lyrical rap but Nas took it far and beyond with illmatic.

 

[arel]

I wonder if ppl confuse classics with the canon, tho perhaps this is an unimportant terminological distinction. I wonder if I can even satisfactorily (or correctly) differentiate.

A classic is by defeinition inextricably linked to a judgement of quality which is an inherently personal judgement. (Intrrstingly there is also no collective term for a plurality of classics, the implication being an no limitation by number.)

The canon is a collection of works to which ciltural capital is ascribed (influence and timelessness is a factor here). It provides a criterion/ context/ framework for your underlying sense of quality (tho I'm sure you'll appreciate how this is problematic)(e.g., masquerading as an objective metric). At this point you'll realise, as has been touched upon, that the question becomes canon of what? If canon is merely a list of essential context then it becomes a matter of how you ask the question. For example, in the context of hip hop generally how many Nas albums are essential? One? How many albums are essential in the context of Nas? Three? Four? But if we accept that Nas is a canonical artist for hip hop in general, how can you judge context without the context of Nas? Should Nas canon then becime hip hop canon? I don't know. The whole idea and debate is problematic.

I think of canon like an n-gon. U can divide it up into a set of pyramids representing local (regional, temporal?or is that oxymoronic?, canonical artists' canon) canon. The capstone of each forms a smaller n-gon representing the universal canon.

To be honest tho we don't need a unified understanding because its simple to infer the definition ppl r working with from what they say. E.g., "Jay has 1 classic" = hater (not worth paying attention too anyway) or working off universal canon (or both?) vs "Jay has 4-5 classics" = personal metric.

I don't know where I am.

 

[arel]

If ppl insist that classics must redirect hop hop then that has a huge natural bias towards early hip hop. It pretty much precludes any modern music.

Its also worth noting that the most influential music of recent years is produced from mixtape deluge (see wayne, gucci, lil b) rather than any single project so I think if influence is agreed upon requisite then the concept is outdated.