Lucem Ferre

El-P and Aesop are both awesome, but they are both extremely predictable. My favorite discographies would be Kanye West's, Sadistik's and Kendrick Lamar's. Though, Sadistik is typically predictable too. But I think those artists have consistently provided me with albums that I will put on repeat while El-P and Aesop haven't.

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Maajo

Let's be a little objective for a moment.

Best Music and Albums of All Time - Metacritic

That's a list of the most acclaimed albums of all time according to Metacritic, a major review aggregate source. Honestly, El-P's most acclaimed albums are with Killer Mike as part of RTJ. Not saying his other albums aren't worthy, but to be fair he has only released three full length albums on his own, and I wouldn't say any of them are the best album of all time or anything.

While his discography is top tier for sure if you include collabs and production credits, I think you're doing a major disservice by writing every other mention in this topic off essentially and "giving" the thread to El. Kanye, Outkast and Kendrick Lamar all have more albums inside the Metacritic list, and all have been mentioned in this thread as well so I think it's fair to say all three are at least comparable. Wouldn't you agree?

Cuthbert

RZA is good but El-P is better.

Listen to Iron Galaxy or Pigeon immediately.

Thanks.

Akai

Absolutely.

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S p o t i f y

Frownland

Popularity doesn't mean that something is objectively good so no, I would not agree.

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Maajo

Metacritic is based off of major review sites, no user ratings although that is an option, and while those review sites do tend to favor mainstream performers and may not even review lesser known artists, El-P still makes appearances and it seems like others here agree that all three of those names and others at least deserve a discussionm I tend to agree with them at least for the sake of this not becoming an echo chamber.

Frownland

Popularity amongst critics is still popularity and valueless. It's fine to make your case for other artists, but let's not pretend like acclaim equals authority.

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Maajo

Yes and no.

I definitely disagree with the part about it being valueless. What has value then? I could understand if I made the case that sales is equal to being the best, but usually when you take the pulse of multiple sources that are all doing their independent review like Metacritic, it's less about popularity.

I DO agree that acclaim isn't the be-all-end-all, and that a lot of it is a matter of personal taste. Some of us here have a greater affinity for turntable scratches and samples like you'll find in MF DOOM. Goofle and others prefer the hard electronica based sound of El-P. Some people just like some good fast raps, so they like Twista or Tech N9ne or Busdriver, and all of them have vast catalogs of music worthy of discussion.

Goofle

It's about what sounds you like going into your ears, literally nothing else.

If we wanna discuss "What is a classic?", we can bring up other factors. But that isn't the discussion in this thread.

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Frownland

How is that not popularity? It's the combined opinion of multiple sources agreeing on something. It doesn't play into an artist's discography for me outside of trivia on the historical context of the artist.

When we're talking about best discographies, how many bad or mediocre albums can an artist drop? That's why I didn't add artists like Billy Woods since his early material is meh.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.