The Best Comeback Album Ever is.....

[Awesome Wells]

I actually this it's this.

Think about where puff was at the time after biggie's death. Suge has fired shots at his at the source awards. Pac dissing him. People accusing Puff of being involved in Big's death. And he pulled off on the most successful, classic albums in rap history. I'll Be Missing You came out of nowhere and destroyed the charts for like 6 months in a row. I remember watching all of this like

I don’t know if this was much of a "comeback".

Everything Puff dropped on his label before NWO was critically-acclaimed and hits.

Dude was killing sh*t for a good three years straight, by the time he dropped this album.

 

[Piff Perkins]

Facts.

Irv Gotti said the exact same thing. He said he told Jay not to diss Nas, but he felt Jay was doing it because Nas's sh*t was on life support. We all felt that way back then. It ended up backfiring on Jay. But he definitely saw that Nas was hurting and wanted to take advantage of the moment.

Crazy sh*t about the whole situation is, Swizz actually produced the OG "Ether". And he went to Jay and asked if it was okay to give Nas the beat. Jay was so confident in thinking he destroyed Nas, that he gave Swizz the green light to give Nas a beat to diss him. LOL!! That's when Nas said the sh*t about Aaliyah and "I'm sorry it was you in the plane crash, it should've been Jay-Z and Dame Dash". But that's how bad Nas was down. Jay was cool with his man producing a diss track aimed at him. Sh*t is crazy.

And this, ie reality, is a far better story (and feather in Nas' cap) than claiming Nas was never down, he was always winning, he never fell off, etc. Most fanbases celebrate a comeback story. For whatever reason Nas fans constantly want to act like public sentiments didn't happen or they only matter when Nas is winning. Just like nikkas celebrating Nas making tons of money and business success when back in the SOHH days the argument was "fukk business and money shyt, it's about music" when Jay was the one making moves while Nas was down.

Ether wouldn't even be as potent if Nas was as popping as people trying to claim lol. He was counted out, nobody but the stans thought he'd come back. And he did, with flying colors. Great diss, great album, went on a feature run...he was up. And then Lost Tapes and God's Son had him hot again. And then after that it was effectively over. If there was truly ever a time to drop a Premo album at the perfect time it would have been 2003, post battle and post-God's Son. That would have shut everyone up and altered a LOT of narratives that popped up.

 

[Awesome Wells]

And this, ie reality, is a far better story (and feather in Nas' cap) than claiming Nas was never down, he was always winning, he never fell off, etc. Most fanbases celebrate a comeback story. For whatever reason Nas fans constantly want to act like public sentiments didn't happen or they only matter when Nas is winning. Just like nikkas celebrating Nas making tons of money and business success when back in the SOHH days the argument was "fukk business and money shyt, it's about music" when Jay was the one making moves while Nas was down.

Ether wouldn't even be as potent if Nas was as popping as people trying to claim lol. He was counted out, nobody but the stans thought he'd come back. And he did, with flying colors. Great diss, great album, went on a feature run...he was up. And then Lost Tapes and God's Son had him hot again. And then after that it was effectively over. If there was truly ever a time to drop a Premo album at the perfect time it would have been 2003, post battle and post-God's Son. That would have shut everyone up and altered a LOT of narratives that popped up.

FACTS!

His own manager, Stoute, said "I thought Nas's career was over".

Bro said that after The Blueprint dropped, he was nervous for Nas, lol. He literally said he felt "Nas is done". Thing is, we were all feeling the same back then. We can't try to rewrite history decades later and act like Nas was rolling and still untouchable. It was bad for Esco during that two-year stretch.

 

[Controversy]

Nas career would've been over if Stillmatic flopped...it's the most impt album in his catalogue

 

[Mike the Executioner]

Rakim is my fam and there’s nothing that poster can tell u about Ra that he would know over me and he will basically say his business wasn’t right when he separated from Eric B. nikka took a whole 6 year hiatus from dropping an album it was absolutely a comeback album. nikkas tryna argue me down about Stillmatic vs I Am but wanna argue about Rakim who hadn’t dropped for like 6 years meanwhile his peers like KRS, G Rap and LL was dropping heat all thru the 90s. shyt funny as fukk to see the goalpost moved.

A while ago, I read a Source interview on A Tribe Called Quest around the time Midnight Marauders came out. The person who wrote it said something like "people are saying Run-D.M.C. is back and Rakim is wack." Rakim talked about it in his book. He was supposed to drop his solo album after Eric B. dropped his, then they were supposed to drop one last album together so it could fulfill their label deal (which was Eric B.'s idea). But Eric didn't sign off on releasing the budget for Rakim's album. There were producers he wanted to work with that he couldn't, and ideas he had that he couldn't use and Eric was MIA for a long time. He literally had to go to Eric's house to confront him over it.

Add to the fact that it had been five years and hip hop was completely different. There would have been pressure over him dropping a solo album in '94 or '95, so him coming out in '97 made him ancient by hip hop standards. He had to prove he still had it and could do it without Eric, and he did.

 

[MJ Truth]

It's hard to call a second album the "comeback" album, because for a lot of these people just thought of them or treated them as debuts (Infamous, Slim Shady EP/LP, etc) and ignored the original albums (Juvenile Hell, Infinite, etc).

 

[Donny]

It definitely is Mariah’s album but in a hip hop scale I think the Clipse probably dropped on the greatest comeback albums Rap has seen with Let God Sort Em Out also outside of rap D’Angelo came off a 14 year hiatus with Black Messiah and ain’t miss a beat

 

[raoulduke187]

it's fukk Dre all day everyday but 2001 is definitely in the discussion

that Presents...The Aftermath was a complete weedplate

Snoop was strugglin hard too

then they just exploded with 2001

album had two all time great singles, the sound was polished and new, it's not an understatement to say they put the west back on the map with that one

 

[L $ C]

hip hop? If we are talking COME BACK

its gotta be 2001, followed by Be followed by Stillmatic imo

 

[L $ C]

It's all about perception though. That's why Jay-z can consider Blueprint 2 his worst album and most Jay fans don't really mess with it, but The Black Album isn't considered a comeback album. A comeback album isn't just about rebounding from a bad album; it's about coming back when people counted you out.

this

 

[threattonature]

hip hop? If we are talking COME BACK

its gotta be 2001, followed by Be followed by Stillmatic imo

Damn good call on Common. Forgot Electric Circus was before Be. Add in how the hiatus he took and Be definitely reestablished him. May have to run that back soon.

 

[Devil Plisken…CMS]

This thread reeks of people who weren’t around in some of the eras in question