To me it's 3k and it's not close. Impact music wise, The Love Below created the sound that we're hearing with 808 & Heartbreaks/Drake etc. Impact commercial wise The Love Below is the highest selling hiphop album of alltime. Can't really beat that.
i 100% agree to that, and i loved everything about that album....
3k was that nigga...i remember that track from barbershop i can't wait... 3k was on another level....
i still play "vibrate" and "she lives in my lap" like allll the time... those tracks just be hitting.....
however this was a later appreciation on my personal behalf.....
when i think 2003 i immediately associate that with the mixtape scene........that was one of my favorite times in rap......I was 21, and I fancied myself a hip hop loyalist
I list Freeway album so high because what we do is wrong could very easily be my favorite club rap song of all time.....like every time it came on niggaz would literally rap all three niggaz parts word for word like we was really in the video... every fucking time.....that track came out in 2003 and niggaz was still doing this shit in 2006...but it wasn't just that song.. the entire album had banger after banger after banger...beans did his thing, young chris was still doing his thing, and freeway surprised me with album making ability in a time when everybody else was stunting on mixtapes......
But i listed Jay as #1 because the black album was just his best album imo.....
and let's not forget....
50 and gunit were KILLING the mixtape scene...as was dipset and wayne...
niggaz was going ham on mixtapes......this was the thing at the time... mixtapes were at their height right around 2003...
with all these niggaz reshaping the whole game off the mixtape scene....Jay actually dropped a mixtape too bruhs...
S. Carter Collection.....2003 bruhs......black album on the way.......
Jay was just too strong that year.....
but 50 was also a force.....G-unit was damn near unstoppable.....that was absolutely the album to blast in your car in the club parking lot.....if you wasn't blasting a g-unit mixtape........shit was serious.....
Dip set was sellign their mixtapes in stores too...shit was hilarious.... them niggaz was getting money on all levels loved them niggaz back then....
then it was like a toss up between Tip and Joe Budden.....While i have to admit I listened to Joe Budden album more......I was finding TI's name in top rapper debates more and more often..I always vouched for Joe Budden, cuz i loved that album....but i wasn't throwing him in the group with greats.....
niggaz was really debating who the king of the south was TI Luda Wayne Scarface....I was leaning towards TI.....and it started with this album
