It meant expectations for his return were high. While he hadn’t stepped up to a mic in those years, his fame and notoriety had grown ginormously. Kingdom Come (2006)Įveryone gets a bit rusty, don’t they? That was certainly the case for Kingdom Come, a record that landed in 2006 after Hova had been on a hip-hop hiatus for three years. Equally, if you’re a fan already, let us know in the comments your own ranking. We take a look at the rapper’s LPs and rank them from worst to best, so you have a good idea of where to start when introducing yourself to Jay-Z. With a career that reaches back across three decades, it can be hard to know exactly where Jay’s career crescendoes, perhaps it hasn’t quite reached that point? But, below, we’re trying to lend a helping hand by providing you with a definitive ranking of his most precious asset-his albums. In his albums, he gets to showcase both with a rare simplicity that few can match. It showed that while easily considered one of the greatest rappers of his generation, above all else, Jay was a businessman as well as an artist. The rapper founded his label Roc-A-Fella in 1995 before he later released his debut LP a year later. Never afraid to take a creative leap, there’s no doubt that Jay-Z will be a legendary name in the rap game forevermore.īorn Shawn Corey Carter in 1969, the writing was on the wall for Jay at an early stage in his career. His rhymes are silky, visually engaging and underpinned by Hova’s natural flow, they are as happy to discuss the usual tropes of hip-hop (making money, getting girls and being a gangster on your block) but he’s also, especially in his later years, used his position to try and open the minds of his audience. Unlike any other hip-hop artists before him, the rapper made sure that his albums weren’t hit singles with a few fillers, they were bodies of work, pieces of art set to be discussed for decades.Īnnouncing himself in 1996 with Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z has become the foreword in class. Hova has rightly established himself as one of the legends of hip-hop and while he certainly made his name away from the mic, being Beyonce’s husband can have that effect on your career, it is in the studio that Jay really put his own spin on the rap game. There are very few artists who can match the potency of Jay-Z, the premiere music mogul, undoubted king, and undeniable rhyme master.