One of my major takeaways in this exercise was that which album you cherish more between Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt is a preference, mine of which lies firmly with Illmatic both before and after this exercise. Seven out of the top ten Jay-Z songs were from Reasonable Doubt, with another four landing in the top 30. Six out of the top ten Nas songs were from Illmatic, with another three landing in the top 30. Both are terrific albums and are in the elite upper echelon of hip-hop albums. Lucky for us, there are more albums that must be judged.
On a macro-level, my thoughts in a nutshell:
Nas Discography
- Great Albums
- Illmatic (1994)
- Stillmatic (2001)
- Borderline Great Album
- The Lost Tapes (2002)
- Solid Album
- It Was Written (1996)
- Mediocre Albums
- I Am... (1999)
- God's Son (2002)
- Untitled (2008)
- Weak Albums
- Nastradamus (1999)
- Street's Disciple (2004)
- Hip Hop is Dead (2006)
Jay-Z Discography
- Great Albums
- Reasonable Doubt (1996)
- The Blueprint (2001)
- Borderline Great Album - N/A
- Solid Album
- In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997)
- The Black Album (2003)
- Mediocre Albums
- Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life (1998)
- Vol. 3...Life and Times of S. Carter (1999)
- The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (2000)
- Weak Albums
- The Blueprint 2 (2002)
- Kingdom Come (2006)
- American Gangster (2007)
- The Blueprint 3 (2009)
There isn't a whole lot separating these two in terms of album 'ratings'. Instead of using a number scale for each album (i.e. The Black Album, 7.6/10.0) and taking an average of all scores, I chose to use the most important metric to my ears - the individual songs that build the discography. By ranking the songs separately, I could then build a "gun to head" determination of the top 30 songs.
And so it goes.
The above table yields ten Jay-Z and twenty Nas winners, but most notably no Jay-Z winners until #9. Again, a lot of this boiled down to my preference of Illmatic over Reasonable Doubt. I will tell Jay-Z's staunch supporters that I was very conservative with the above table. If there was something that after two or three listens, I still thought it a wash, I gave it Jay-Z, not Nas. The only true tough decision that I deemed Nas the winner was #1 overall. All other Nas wins I considered them unquestioned wins, whereas many Jay-Z wins I had a little voice in the back of my head telling me I was wrong.
I could rank a top 100 instead of a top 30, but that would get cumbersome (trust me, 30 in a diligent manner was enough).
The posting of the topic was delayed several days to an internal question I had for myself. I previously stated that I think Illmatic vs. Reasonable Doubt comes down to preference - is this statement applicable to the entire discographies and not just the oft-compared albums (Illmatic vs. Reasonable Doubt, Stillmatic vs. The Blueprint)?
After deep deliberation, the studio album releases for the Jay-Z vs. Nas debate comes down to personal preference.
Will this statement hold true for songs where these two were featured?
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