I like College Dropout more too but MBDTF is up there. The rap isn’t as good but the overall music/production is more advanced, probably Kanye at his peak as a total package
Straight Outta Compton is an NWA album. I'm not saying it doesn't count or anything, but it can't be given the same weight as a solo album, especially considering who else is on it. You'll have to define "bigger" for me. Kendrick has 3 albums (good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp a Butterfly, and DAMN.) that fall into the "all-time" category and are widely considered masterpieces. I don't think I'd agree that Straight Outta Compton or The Chronic are "way bigger" than any of them, but I'm open to hearing your thought process. Hell, I just read something a day or two ago about good kid, m.A.A.d city holding the record for hip hop album with the longest stay on the Billboard top 200 at 450 weeks. The album was released 10 years ago, for [uck fay]'s sake.
A schmuck like me that hasn't listened to much rap in 35 years knows about Straight Outta Compton. I have never heard of Kendrick before last night.
In all seriousness, there are probably a number of ways to measure and a lot of factors to consider. The most important piece is probably a comparison of the commercial and critical success of their solo studio albums.
How old were you when Straight Outta Compton came out (1988), and how old are you now? That probably explains most of it. It also doesn't hurt that Straight Outta Compton had a relatively successful movie with the same title in theaters somewhat recently.
a lot of us grew up rams fans and had to deal with the insult of frontieri moving the team, shitting on the LA fans on the way out and during her super bowl speech, and then winning the super bowl in st louis.
Straight Outta Compton and The Chronic were two albums which changed the rap game definitively. NWA brought gangsta rap to suburbia and then The Chronic brought the West Coast g-funk to the mainstream. The Chronic was the first album I heard played on top 40 radio. Again, I like Lamar. A lot, actually. Dude is fantastic and "Swimming Pools" is one of my favorite rap songs. But, his albums didn't change the landscape the way Dre's did. Hell, he hasn't even sold albums like Snoop did, either. It's hard to express the way about 6 rappers in the 90s and early 2000s were the pinnacle of the genre's influence when the genre was at its height. Actually, my friend and I were talking about this the other day and we noted how we'll never see phenomenons like The Beatles, Eminem, Michael Jackson, etc., etc. ever again based upon the way the music industry works now. It's too balkanized and people just don't buy and consume music in the same way as they did to lend to giant superstars of the past.
No love from anyone for Ice Cube is truly baffling for me. He wrote almost all of the lyrics for NWA and without him, who knows where any of this would be .
I'm dying at this being "news". It's just like you think you know someone and they turn out to be someone totally different. Why, Snoop? Why?!
Oh, I love me some Cube. I was soooooo hoping he came out last night and did "No Vaseline" just to watch my Facebook feed of folks over 50 losing their shit.
Along with: "Fish swims before dinner." "Bear eats salmon before hibernating." "NYY gives handjob before bed."