25 Best Rap Albums of 2023

Named after a trilogy of novels by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and opening with a reading of an excerpt from one of them, McKinley Dixon’s latest treks through sweeping orchestral arrangements, fiery jazz instrumentation, and uplifting funk/soul choruses that are as intricate as his lyricism.

NYC underground rap mainstay Navy Blue makes his Def Jam debut with an album that ranges from jazz-rap to chipmunk soul to reggae and plays to Navy Blue’s out-of-the-box strengths.

From Fatboi Sharif’s third-open-open bars to Steel Tipped Dove’s equally dizzying beats, Decay is one of 2023’s true hip hop head-trips.

Just about anything that comes from the eccentric mind of Open Mike Eagle is worth listening to and this short-but-sweet project is no exception.

Brooklyn-via-Oakland rapper Nappy Nina favors the far-out and futuristic on her most attention-grabbing album yet. The beats–which come from JWords, dane.zone, Nelson Bandela, Nina herself, and others–favor sputtering electronics and warped samples and rarely resemble the traditional boom bap of her earlier releases, and Nina tops it off with the most assertive bars of her career. She’s both introspective and abstract, with a stunning cast of likeminded guests including Moor Mother, Mavi, lojii, maassai, Stas Thee Boss, and more. It’s unique, off-kilter rap music that’s still full of pop appeal, and it’s always a treat to hear an artist toe that line as well as Nappy Nina does.

Veteran underground NYC rap producer (and longtime Aesop Rock collaborator) Blockhead teams with executive producer billy woods for what woods himself deservingly calls “an indie hip-hop All-Star game of an album.” Guests come from all different corners and eras of underground rap–including billy woods (solo and with Armand Hammer), Aesop Rock, Danny Brown, Navy Blue, Quelle Chris, Open Mike Eagle, Bruiser Wolf, AKAI SOLO, Defcee, ShrapKnel, RXK Nephew, Fatboi Sharif, Despot and more–and it all comes together as one unified rap record.

If you’re looking for early 2000s New York-style rap, you can’t go wrong with Papo2oo4. The NJ rapper’s low, booming, casually melodic delivery sounds like the second coming of mixtape-era 50 Cent, and his frequent produer Subjxct 5 channels the early 2000s production style of beatmakers like Swizz Beatz, Just Blaze, Timbaland, and Pharrell. With references to G-Unit, Nas, and Jay-Z littered throughout the album, Papo and Subjxct obviously aren’t shy about their influences, but they add their own twist and these songs are a blast to listen to.

Westside Gunn is one of the leaders of gritty boom bap revival, and he’s also an expert curator, capable of bringing together rappers from all walks of life to bring their voices to Gunn’s cohesive vision. On And Then You Pray For Me, he builds a soundscape with help from Beat Butcha, Conductor Williams, Daringer, Tay Keith, RZA, and a little-known producer named Miguel the Plug (who actually handles the bulk of the beats), and the album gets bars from usual suspects like Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher, Stove God Cooks, Rome Streetz, Boldy James, Keisha Plum, and Gunn himself, plus an array of other rappers that ranges from JID to Denzel Curry to Rick Ross to Giggs to EST to Jeezy to Ty Dolla $ign. It’s no small feat for a cast this diverse to pull off an album this focused, but Westside Gunn makes it happen time and time again.

West Coast rapper Jay Worthy nabbed underground East Coast legend Roc Marciano to produce all of Nothing Bigger Than The Program, and the result is one of the most undeniable bicoastal rap collabs of the year. With appearances from Bun B, Kurupt, Ab-Soul, Kokane, A$AP Ant, Jay 305, Da$h, A$ton Matthews, and Bart Oatmeal, Jay and Roc combine cinematic boom bap revival with vivid storytelling and boundless energy. It’s a fresh, lively update on a version of rap that just never goes out of style.

The Patience doesn’t entirely abandon the lush jazz-rap that Mick Jenkins has tended to favor in the past, but he clearly didn’t want this one to go down too smoothly. He raps harder and louder, ropes in other fiery spitters like Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, and JID, and the often-ominous backdrop matches his newfound urgency.

Just one of the many great Alchemist-produced albums this year was the one with San Francisco rapper Larry June. On The Great Escape, these two go together like two peas in a permastoned pod; Alchemist’s beats are smokey and hypnotic, and Larry matches the mood with bars that are both laid-back and in the pocket. The vibes perfectly match the sunset-colored hues of the “60 Days” video, and verses from Action Bronson, Joey Bada$$, Boldy James, Evidence, Jay Worthy, Big Sean, and members of Slum Village add to the magic.

Four years after releasing his Def Jam debut, LA rapper Maxo returned with two new albums this year, each one taking him more into hazy, abstract territory than the last. With contributions from Madlib, Liv.e, keiyA, Pink Siifu, and more on Even God Has A Sense of Humor, and Zelooperz, The Alchemist, Ahwlee, and more on Debbie’s Son, these albums offer up lush, dizzying soundscapes and Maxo’s raps blur the line between freeform and focused.

Years after allegedly releasing the album under a fake name on YouTube, Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist finally put out their highly-anticipated collaborative LP this year. On the spectrum from the far-out, abstract Some Rap Songs to the overtly direct I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, VOIR DIRE falls somewhere in the middle, with longtime collaborator Vince Staples on two songs and more recent collaborator MIKE on one. The Alchemist’s love of hazy, vintage sounds comes together seamlessly with Earl’s stream-of-consciousness delivery, and, though Earl is one of Alc’s most high-profile recent collaborators, this feels like one of the most intimate-sounding Alchemist-produced albums in recent memory. Coming the same year that Earl played 10th anniversary shows for Doris, VOIR DIRE is a reminder of how much Earl has evolved over the years, and how well he navigates the off-kilter terrain of songs like these.

30 years on from the first Digable Planets album, Ishmael Butler is still making cutting-edge rap music in a lane of his own. His new mini album Robed In Rareness is a zoned-out head-trip that’s up there with any of the year’s best experimental rap releases. Its all-in-the-family cast of guests ranges from very longtime collaborator Geechi Suede of Camp Lo to Ishamel’s twin Lavarr the Starr to his son, emo-rapper Lil Tracy, and everyone sounds as delightfully weird as you’d hope.

After three almost entirely quiet years, J Hus returned to reclaim his throne with Beautiful and Brutal Yard. As one of the pioneers of Afroswing–a fusion of rap, Afrobeats, dancehall, and R&B–J Hus brings his wide range of African diaspora music to this stunning, 19-song, hour-long album, with help from Drake, Burna Boy, Jorja Smith, Popcaan, Naira Marley, and more. It covers so much ground, from breezy polyrhythms to hard-nosed drill, and J Hus is a master who handles it all with care.

With her second full-length and first in seven years, Tkay Maidza has made the kind of maximalist rap/pop/R&B fusion that sounds like it could’ve come from a stadium-headlining A-list star. She’s both a great rapper and a great singer, and she can make anything from the synth-funk of “Out of Luck” to the industrial-rap of “Silent Assassin” sound magical.

The narrative that Scarlet is Doja Cat’s “rap album” after her two pop albums is a little misguided in both directions. She’s been rapping the whole time, and she still can’t help but make pop songs. Narrative and context aside, Scarlet is just another great album from an artist who spent the last decade going from small indie gigs to headlining arenas because she’s just that good. You couldn’t avoid Scarlet‘s chart-topping single “Paint the Town Red” this year for good reason, and so many of the deeper cuts are just as magnetic.

Having taken over the world with last year’s reggaeton-centric Un Verano Sin Ti, Bad Bunny reminds his day ones where he came from on this year’s Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana. It’s almost entirely a return to the Latin trap that he built his career on in the late 2010s, with a few forays into the club vibes of spring ’23 single “Where She Goes,” which is also included here. It hasn’t had the same effect as its world-conquering predecessor (though it’s still pretty huge), but I don’t think it was ever meant to. Paired with Un Verano Sin Ti, it shows the world that Benito can widen his range without ever abandoning his roots.

Sexyy Red’s year began with breakout single “Pound Town,” and by the end of the year, she put out a remix of that song with Nicki Minaj, a second hit single (“SkeeYee”), a slew of memorable guest verses, and a handful of other fan-fave tracks. The bulk of those tracks are on Hood Hottest Princess (with a few more on the deluxe edition), which proved that she’s not a one (or even two) hit wonder. She’s also not a one trick pony; HHP has more raunch where “Pound Town” came from, but it also has harder, darker, angrier anthems that’ll walk all over half the rappers she shares space with on the radio. She’s a St. Louis rapper with a clear love of the South–including assists from Juicy J, DJ Paul, Tay Keith, and a song called “Female Gucci Mane”–and she shout-raps her way through these 11 songs in a way that flips a middle finger to anyone who thinks “pop rap” has gone soft.

Two very different New York rappers, Wiki and MIKE, teamed up for a collaborative album with The Alchemist this year, and they also each released their own albums, 14K Figaro (with producer Tony Seltzer) and Burning Desire, respectively. They’re all great, and instead of trying to rank them all against each other, here they are in one blurb. 14K Figaro connects Wiki with longtime producer Tony Seltzer, and going back to his roots brought some classic Wiki out of him; this album’s full of hyper-local New York references and Wiki delivers cold, hard raps in a classically New York way. MIKE, on the other hand, is the de facto leader of New York’s current experimental rap underground, and Burning Desire finds him pairing his cool, stream-of-consciousness screeds with hazy, jazzy instrumentals to great effect–it’s one of his most purely lush albums yet. My personal favorite of the three, though, is Faith Is A Rock, which finds MIKE and Wiki feeding off of each other over one beats from of the best producers in all of hip hop. They push each other outside of their usual comfort zones, and deliver some all-timer bars in the process.

I know it’s cliché to say an album feels like a movie, but ICECOLDBISHOP’s Generational Curse really earns it. The South Central LA rapper sounds like a cross between Kendrick Lamar at his most theatrical and Danny Brown at his weirdest, as he takes you on a journey through drug addiction, fatal shootings, poverty, violence, institutional racism, and other topics that are all too real. It’s no surprise that multiple people have compared Generational Curse to good kid, m.A.A.d city, which Kendrick referred to as a “short film” on the album cover, and Generational Curse earns those comparisons just like good kid, m.A.A.d city earned its comparisons to Illmatic. The influence is there, but the stories are ICECOLDBISHOP’s own to tell.

When “Munch (Feelin’ U)” dropped in August of 2022, it wasn’t just an instant contender for Song the Summer; it was the arrival of a star. Since then, just about every song she’s touched has either felt like a hit or actually become one, and she makes it look so damn easy. 10 of those song are on the deluxe edition of her debut EP Like..?, plus her pre-fame On The Radar freestyle to show her new fans where she comes from. She and producer RIOTUSA hail from the same New York drill scene that the late Pop Smoke popularized, and they take that sound and add a distinct new twist that has entirely transcended New York drill. Fellow drill staple Lil Tjay and superstar rapper Nicki Minaj both show up on Like..?, only to be bested by Ice Spice herself. Her delivery remains calm and cool as she delivers one-liners that fans want to scream back at her, and as we witnessed when Ice Spice opened for Doja Cat last month, that’s exactly what’s been happening.

Over a decade since his breakthrough and two years into his 40s, Danny Brown has just had one of the best years of his career. He released two very different albums that show off two completely different sides of him. His JPEGMAFIA collaboration Scaring the Hoes finds both rappers at their most chaotic, with yelled verses and hooks over production from JPEGMAFIA that ranges from hyperpop to glitch to industrial to flipped soul samples. On his own Quaranta, Danny leans into his somber, sober side. It’s a reflective, introspective album and it’s also a grown-ass rap album that feels just as spirited as Danny’s more youthful work.

Despite multiple album delays and threats to quit music, Noname has finally given 2018’s Room 25 the followup it deserves. Sundial finds Noname speaking her mind over live instrumentation that makes this one of the year’s best rap albums and one of the year’s best jazz albums, with subtly sticky hooks and an endless amount of mic drops. She looks at everything from her own career to Black art overall to even more macro social/political topics, and all the expectations, contradictions, and hypocrisies that fill them. Noname never shies away from taking a fellow artist to task, and often the artist she’s targeting is herself. Noname can’t be the artist you want her to be, she can’t be perfect, and she can’t be easily described or pigeonholed. She can only be exactly who she is, with all the layers and discrepancies that come with that. Sundial is a reflection of all of this, bottled up into 11 compact, endlessly replayable songs.

billy woods is one of those artists whose music creates an entire universe, and the more time you spend in it, the better it gets. As a solo artist and one half of Armand Hammer (with ELUCID), he usually releases at least one top-tier album a year, and it never feels like too much of a good thing. This year, he reunited with producer Kenny Segal from his especially beloved 2019 album Hiding Places for the new solo album Maps, and Armand Hammer also released We Buy Diabetic Test Strips. They both scratch the same abstract rap itch, and each one brings something completely necessary to the table. Both albums are clever, funny, dark, wise, deep, and poetic in equal measure; they’ll leave you hanging on every word for weeks on end. The lists of collaborators are the stuff that indie-rap dreams are made of–Danny Brown, Aesop Rock, Quelle Chris, Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring, ELUCID and more are on Maps, while We Buy Diabetic Test Strips features Soul Glo’s Pierce Jordan (as Moneynicca), Junglepussy, Moor Mother, Pink Siifu, and more, plus JPEGMAFIA and El-P as producers–and every contributor takes the opportunity to find their own place within this universe. woods and his cohorts make albums for the sake of crafting immersive pieces of art. There’s no ploy for a hit single, a TikTok craze, or a Spotify playlist inclusion; they’re just continuing to make music on their own terms, and even as the world catches up with them, woods & his friends still sound ahead of the curve.