Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly has been named the #1 in Rolling Stone’s 50 Best Albums of 2015 list.

“Musically, lyrically and emotionally, Kendrick Lamar‘s third album is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece,” Rolling Stone says of the Compton, California rapper’s 2015 release, “a sprawling epic that’s both the year’s most bumptious party music and its most gripping therapy session.”

Drake’s If Youre Reading This Its Too Late, lands at #3 on Rolling Stone’s list. “No pop hooks, no romance, just a tightly sequenced set of rap cuts where he plays directly to his base by venting his anger and paranoia,” the publication writes. “He disses his own record label and kvetches about groupies as only he can.”

AD

AD LOADING...

Releasing “some of the year’s most thought-provoking hip-hop” with his debut album earned Vince Staples #35 on Rolling Stone’s list for his Summertime ’06.

The stripped-down tracks — built on rhythms that could be banged out on a lunch table — recall the hollow boom of criminal-minded Eighties hip hop, with Staples spinning tales of youth, the pull of thug life, and the consequences therein,” Rolling Stone writes of the Long Beach, California rapper’s project. 

Another emerging act earned a spot on Rolling Stone’s list. Rae Sremmurd’s SremmLife is named as the forty-fourth-best album of 2015.

AD

AD LOADING...

“Rae Sremmurd released an ebullient debut that sounded like it complimented their hits with nine more singles,” Rolling Stone writes. It also refers to the project as, “Easily the most fun hip-hop album of the year.”

To read the full 50 Best Albums of 2015 list, visit Rolling Stone.

For additional Kendrick Lamar coverage, watch the following DX Daily:

4