HipHopDX Readers Rank Most Insightful Albums:

[yoda you can call me]

Nas' "Illmatic" and Eminem's "The Marshall Mathers LP 2" battle for the #1 spot.

HipHopDX users were recently asked to rank the week's top charting Hip Hop albums based on insightful work.

The Ranker list, which HipHopDX uses to assess reader responses below, calculates the votes based on a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" system. It creates a list with the data users input. Ranker lists the albums from top to bottom, based on the total number of votes and regardless of how many thumbs up a particular album gets. The order of the albums featured on the lists fluctuates as votes are cast.

Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2 and Nas' Illmatic faced off for the #1 spot in this week's poll. Due to the Ranker system, while Nas' Illmatic earned 1,024 thumbs up, it came in at #2 due to the 217 thumbs down the effort generated. Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP received 948 thumbs up and 165 thumbs down. As a result, Eminem's project came up with the #1 placement.

Both albums were also referenced in comments by HipHopDX users. One reader, Tohid, said the following: "Marshal Mathers LP sold 1,760,000 copies in first week! Illmatic sold 1,686,000 copies after 20 years."

An anonymous user responded: "Illmatic had an underground sound to it. Illmatic didn't have a huge single that dominated the airwaves like MMLP ('The Real Slim Shady'). Illmatic wasn't filled with controversial shock lyrics. And also, not trying to turn this into a race thing, but Eminem had all the 'white rapper' hype surrounding him. That was pretty stupid to compare those two albums together. Paid In Full is also considered an influential and quintessential hip hop album, but that had the same factors as Illmatic and also took years for it to go platinum."

Elsewhere on the list, Pharrell's G I R L earned 157 thumbs up and 441 thumbs down. August Alsina's Testimony generated 101 thumbs up and 486 thumbs down. Jason Derulo's Talk Dirty, which came in last place, had 59 thumbs up and 528 thumbs down.

Readers can respond to this week's question by going to this week's Album Sales report.

The results for the "most insightful" question are as follows:



Nas lost

[Raul]

Eminem won. Pretty normal

[GladHeAteHer]

List is a joke, as usual with most things HipHopDX.

[EminemBase]

Why you talking about MMLP1 in the intro post fam?

They voted MMLP2?...

But in regards to MMLP1 since you mentioned it - Em's whiteness makes absolutely no difference to how genius that album is. If you wanna talk about sales then talk about them... but makes absolutely zero difference to the art. You can't use his skin colour to explain the groundbreaking artistry of that album. And it's significantly better, more intelligent, more original and more important than Illmatic. However, I'm not sure I would describe either album as 'insightful'. What an odd choice of a word to use.

[SliK]

Why you talking about MMLP1 in the intro post fam?

They voted MMLP2?...

But in regards to MMLP1 since you mentioned it - Em's whiteness makes absolutely no difference to how genius that album is. If you wanna talk about sales then talk about them... but makes absolutely zero difference to the art. You can't use his skin colour to explain the groundbreaking artistry of that album. And it's significantly better, more intelligent, more original and more important than Illmatic. However, I'm not sure I would describe either album as 'insightful'. What an odd choice of a word to use.

It was a dumbass HipHopDX poster that mentioned MMLP, not the OP.

[mdemaz]

lmao that's brilliant

[Mr Change]

MMLP2 the legacy already starting

[yoda you can call me]

HOW IS G I R L INSIGHTFUL

Lol. Hiphopdx are a law unto themselves. Sway couldn't even answer that one