This is more than an album, this is a moment in music history. Enjoy it.

He's given us all he could possibly give us; an album worthy of being called a classic.

From "Jeopardy" on, Run the Jewels 2 is uppercut after uppercut.

Instead being flooded with a viral marketing campaign and absurdly hyperbolic praise or scorn, listening to this album feels like a discovery, like finding a dope album in your friend's collection you'd never heard before.

undun clocks in at well under an hour, Questlove said he wants it to be "ADD proof", a running time that also magnifies the importance of the third of the album that's purely instrumental. It's on these vocal-free tracks that The Roots truly show what they're capable of.

This isn't a great rap album, it's just a great album. Period.

9th's created an album that slowly backs away from the bigger, heavily soulful tracks he's best known for and delivers some more subtle, softer work.

Vince sounds more alive on this album, that coldhearted monotone has found a bit of hope.

There's no doubting that he's gone from a freshman to a full-fledged member of R&B's graduating class with Kaleidoscope Dream.

There is no denying that with his knack for catchy melodies, descriptive songwriting, and excellent beat selection, Chance displays qualities on Acid Rap that have the potential to catapult him into superstardom. As a project itself, Acid Rap is one sweet, smooth musical journey that grapples with some serious topics in a pleasing manner.

While it would have been easy for Tech to overpower listeners with fast rhymes and monstrous beats, on the whole Something Else is an intensely serious and sometimes even quiet album than isn’t afraid to tackle issues more rappers wouldn’t come near.

We’re clearly listening to one of the most purely talented artists of our generation working at her peak, or at least somewhere close.

R.A.P. Music sounds like exactly no other album to come out this year.

A few days of repeat spins now have revealed the album to have more depth and sustainability than I first suspected.

You may not love this album, and I'm not sure I do, but you do have to respect it.

Statik might not win the sprint, and isn’t really even running the same race, but Extended Play is definitely prepared for the marathon. You could pick this album up 5-10 years from now and it would have the same power as the day it came out.

Lacking the dynamic between repulsive brutality and oddball humor that made Earl so uncomfortably riveting, Doris is both tonally fragmented and occasionally monotonous: an ocean of griminess broken up by earnest confessional rhymes.

A well-produced, collective backdrop is the foundation of Cilvia’s creative world, but it is Rashad’s poetically penned, energetically delivered raps that gently tip the scale towards a point of well-rounded balance.

It’s ambitious, it’s diverse, it’s exciting and when you hear you hear what made Dre a legend in the first place. No matter what the era, stream, CD or vinyl, Dr. Dre is just on another level.

On his new album, Life Is Good, we're hearing the most locked-in Nas has been in years, and the results are awe-inspiring.

6's & 7's is a hard album to deliver a final verdict. It's an album that was made for a very specific group, everyone else be damned, and so while I honestly can't say I'm a full fledged Techaholic, I do have to acknowledge that for many this album will be nothing short of epic.

Not only does it reinforce that Earl is a capable lyricist, but that he’s growing his legs as a producer. It’s also an album where you can tell the artist found his voice, finally overcoming the pressures of expectation.

The album is an amalgamation of his past trade and his current, and as is fitting for an album from a man whose past is as powdery white as a Colorado winter, it’s dope.

Section80 may not be a sacred text but I've got the feeling that in five years it may just prove to be prophetic.

To play the devil's advocate to the devil's advocate I just played, Thursday does shown a sonic growth from House of Balloons. It even dares – gasp – to up the tempo, bringing in a rapid fire hi-hat to propel the hook of Life of the Party and giving Heaven or Las Vegas a multi-instrument, layered sound we hadn't heard from them before.

Future’s influence might not ever reach the same height as that famous duo’s, but efforts like Honest certainly dispel his consistent-hit-man-of-little-substance status (a la T-Pain).

If you consider dressing up putting on clean socks, if you know what the streets smell like at four in the morning, if you consider Shook Ones Pt. II the perfect track to kick back to, you'll have Random Axe on repeat for weeks.

Ultimately, Trilogy is more of a sonic landmark then it is a new work.

Thankfully we finally have some more new Quik in our lives in the form of his eighth solo album, The Book of David, an album that finds the legendary DJ going back to his roots, and creating some nice music in the process.

These are the songs that don’t initially blow you away, but you find yourself coming back to months later.

The album’s content is narrow, and while there are certainly no duds here, things do get a bit predictable as the album progresses. However, the constant non-sequiturs and familiar production doesn’t take a whole lot away from the overall value of the collection.

Nothing on the album is groundbreaking and it won't go on to sell millions of copies, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a worthy piece of musical art.

We're still a long way from a classic, but Take Care once again proves that he's just too good to disappear anytime soon.

While his darker material seems unchanged by fame, it’s really his lighter, more radio-friendly material that gets taken to the next level on Oxymoron.

At a time when many of his rap peers are even more desperately changing their sound to stay relevant, Ghostface Killah is cementing his relevancy by diving even deeper into what always made him such a unique artist.

Ultimately, Live From the Underground may not be K.R.I.T.'s best album yet, for more that'd be ReturnOf4Eva, but that's like saying Michael Jordan's fourth championship was the "best" of his six titles.

For the most part, Common's been an almost staggeringly consistent presence in music for years, and then fittingly, his new album Nobody's Smiling, is as good as anything he's done.

The "album" feels like a bunch of random songs, some quality songs mind you, but still just a bunch of songs that don't add up to anything larger.

It may have its moments of aggression, but ultimately Habits & Contradictions is often a more quiet and thoughtful album.

K.R.I.T.'s created another album that will stand the test of time with 4EvaNaDay.

How Do You Do is a great listen, but...there's just no getting around the fact that Mayer Hawthorne isn't an especially strong singer.

W.A.R. is only his third project in over ten years. If you're going to pursue quality over quantity you better deliver quality, and thankfully W.A.R. is nothing but quality.

Weekend at Burnie's has earned a regular spot in my iPod rotation. I may not be a full-ledged jet but I when I do fly I've got no problem letting Curren$y be my pilot.

Knock Madness works best when Hopsin is either angrily fighting or humorously poking fun at some sort of ludicrosity.

Payback sounds more like a catharsis, an extended musical middle finger filled with the kind of instrumental interludes, frenetic humor and unconstrained personality that will leave heads nodding, and Clear Channel running in the opposite direction.

Ultimately V&A is an album that presents a fearlessly original and coherent, if distorted, vision, something that's become an endangered species in the age of the hit single.

King of Hearts, his fourth studio album, is strictly for the grown and sexy. It may not be a new school classic (it's not) but this is a damn good album.

The truth is that while far from perfect, this is a more complex and well executed album than the vast majority of anything we'll get this year. Or put more simply, who's really challenging Kanye West and Jay-Z for hip-hop's throne. Seriously. Who?

In many ways Long.Live.A$AP is an album of the present.

Timberlake and Timbaland (Timbalake?) are at their best when they rely more on organic soul than samples.

There's a fine line between consistency and monotony, so while The Cool Kids' style can, over the course of a project, begin to feel like a drone, these bursts of change keep When Fish Ride feeling fresh.

Looking 4 Myself isn't a classic, it's just not, but until I hear better, it's the best R&B album of the year.

This is a good album by all accounts, but it's just not enough to free Joey from rap purgatory.

Cole World is full of evidence that when Cole sits down to write a hit, he mysteriously loses that intangible quality that first earned him these weighty expectations.

While other artists have struggled to contain both their lofty ambitions and animal instincts on the same album (see also, David Banner), and while it does have its low points and high points, Pl3dge sounds remarkably cohesive.

Together the two vets have created a work that's worthy of some serious recognition.

A listen will be worth your time.

Meek understands his audience, they expect a monumental introduction, summer ready hits, sincerity and more hits. He does this all, with a bit of style and an abundance of swagger.

Ultimately, these songs and all of the songs on the album are stories, and to call Macklemore a storytelling rapper would be an understatement. He only tells stories, most often his own, it just turns out he's the kind of gifted storyteller that can keep you listening.

Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, his fifth solo album, is dope.

If you're already a fan of Curren$y I have to imagine you'll at least enjoy adding Immaculate to the collection. And if you're not a Spitta fan there's a solid chance that Immaculate will, if not convert you to a full-fledged fan, at the very least respect the man.

Listeners may be able to follow Rock home and live vicariously through him, but for thousands that is their home. There's no leaving, and those are the people who Follow Me Home was truly made for.

Music this good transcends chronology, so whether you're 85 (what up grandma?), just getting your driver's license or anywhere between, you're all welcome into This Generation.

We'll simply have to look at I'm Gay as a sign that B might not prove to be the flash in the pan that so many haters hope he is.

While I suspect 4 was made in large part to sound more natural and real, it doesn't succeed entirely. The album is a refreshingly understated change from the constantly banging and bumping sound of modern R&B, but it doesn't really bring us closer to the Queen B.

If you've ever found yourself pouring over the lyrics to a Eminem or Royce song, trying to break down each metaphor and punchline, you'll eat Hell up.

Love and Rockets is a chance for hip hop to transform back to its roots; the real, musical, easy to listen to simple beats and lyrics that we all grew to love.

This has the feel of a full, complete body of work, one embedded with nuances, themes and a larger, interwoven framework that nobody could digest in one listen.

I don't think My Life II in and of itself will go down as one of Mary's best albums; for all its quality it just doesn't have the focus and vision of a classic and occasionally seems to pander to the hot house/techno/club trend.

A charismatic, agile rapper good enough to have a long and successful career, but right now a place in rap’s Hall of Fame is still a stretch.

At first listen, you'll think this album is a disappointment and didn't live up to the hype. And maybe it didn't, but this isn't Bastard--it's an album with a much deeper theme and message, with just enough blood-thirsty lines and misogyny to hold the kids over.

For two solo albums now Andre Patton has not merely proved that he's a capable solo artist, he's helping to redefine what a hip-hop album can sound like.

Ultimately, only time will tell if Dark Sky Paradise becomes the first Big Sean album that I like more than his mixtapes, but this one probably has the best chance yet.

While Tinie's obviously talented, I honestly can't hear what all the excitement is over. Sure something will get lost in translation, but even on mega hit Written in the Stars I'm just not catching any lyricism that stands out. Then again, maybe that's what makes Tinie so popular.

He’s added a catchier more movie trailer-esque sound, what some call pop but I’ll just call Love the Way You Lie, but really, despite the upheavals in the world, despite his relapse and recovery from drug addiction, for better or worse Eminem at 41 is essentially the same artist as Eminem at 28-years-old.

Though at times she panders to the club a bit much, and doesn’t provide quite the depth that is expected of a self-titled album and an artist on her fifth go around, Ciara is filled with a fun batch of songs.

The rapping isn’t the problem, it’s his singing and eccentric sounds that leaves me with Van Gogh thoughts.

Overall, Born Sinner is an impressive effort.

The best moments on Gutter Rainbows actually come when Kweli pushes the hardest unto uncharted territory.

The tracks do not really flow into each other or sound good in sequence, but individually some records do shine.

On the whole though, while it might not be a classic, Seen It All will go down in hip-hop history as yet another dope album from an artist who's had an enormous (although under-rated) impact on rap.

The young Somalian is far from the first artist to have to figure out "their" sound while sweating under the spotlight, and by the sound of Silence he's still figuring things out.

There's frankly very little chance I'd ever listen to this album again if I wasn't obligated to revisit it in a month via "1 Listen" rules, but Nicki's got her own lane and it's not a lane I'm going to roadblock.

The point is that despite the delays and false starts and question marks, ultimately Young Jeezy has continued an impressively consistent run of quality albums.

In and of itself, Self Made 2 is a decent album that should find relative success.

If every album from here on sounds like Planet Pit the public will begin to forget just what made him so special in the first place, but right here, right now, it's Pitbull's world and we're just living partying in it.

Wolf’s production features a more textured and subtle sound than we’ve ever heard before.

These days, Soul’s money tree has blossomed and with it, expectations have grown and relationships and trust are harder to come by. But for now at least, Soul is in control.

At 16 tracks, 20 on the deluxe version, this album manages to work in more than a couple joints featuring some of the vicious rap hardcore fans were hoping for.

It has its own moments of pop-leaning lightness, but there's more than enough revolutionary material here to leave the faithful satiated.

Most of Fear of God feels like detached, competent, common-denominator, major-label hip-hop, which would be fine if we weren't already aware what he's capable of.

Gambino's strength is also his weakness. As a TV writer and a comedian he's naturally focused on punchlines and creating moments, which at his best is enormously entertaining and at the worst forced

Maintaining the same "burn down the building" energy that your most loyal fans demand while not actually burning down the building is no easy task, but it's a fine line that MGK mostly manages to walk with success on Lace Up.

We can safely assume that Dreams and Nightmares is the best Meek can possibly muster. And if this is indeed Meek's best, Meek's best is pretty good.

The overall result is an album that's easily enjoyable, but not particularly interesting.

Paperwork is at its most compelling when it feels like he’s being the most autobiographical.

At its best, the California singer offers sweet but forgettable elevator music.

No doubt about it, Finally Famous is full of good music.