Best Albums of 2009
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
Man on the Moon: The End of DayThe record that gave a decade of rappers permission to be sad out loud, and it still floats.Read the review
So Far GoneThe mixtape that rewrote what a rap record could sound like, and the reason the next fifteen years sound like this.
BastardA free Christmas Day upload from a teenager with cheap keyboards, and the whole strange career is already legible in it.
The Blueprint 3A blockbuster with one immortal single on it and very little underneath, trading on a title it does not earn.
Stronger with Each TearChasing the radio of the moment, and getting there a season or two late.
RelapseThe best beats he ever rapped on, wasted on accents and body parts for seventy six minutes.
Before I Self DestructA return to hardness that mostly proves hardness alone was never the appeal.