Best Albums of 1996
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
It Was WrittenHe trades the tenement window for a widescreen crime picture, and the writing survives the bigger budget.Read the review
Reasonable DoubtThe most quietly assured rap debut ever made, and it has aged better than anything else from its year.
The ScoreWarm, patient and genuinely popular in a way rap albums of that size rarely manage to also be good.
ATLiensThey took the funk out into space and came back with the coldest, strangest record of that year.
Tha DoggfatherThe follow up made without his producer, in a burning building, and it sounds like both of those things.
InfiniteA talented kid doing a passable impression of rappers he loved, on beats nobody would remember without him.