Best Jay Z Albums

The best Jay Z albums are those records that just want to make you get down to their beat and shake your you-know-what to their groove. The rhymes and raps on these Jay Z albums are also some of the illlest and phattest songs you will ever be lucky enough to listen to in your whole life. Yo, if you want to hear a rapper use some of the fastest or slowest flows known to man, you got to make it Jay Z.

1. "Kingdom Come." The ninth studio album by Jay Z, "Kingdom Come" takes the number one spot as Jay Z's best album because it is technically known as "the comeback album," since 2003's "The Black Album" should have been his last (Gee, could that have been just a ploy to create suspense and more interest in him for more sales in the future? Hmmmmm...). It has the honor of being the album that was the highest-selling in its first week of any Jay Z CD to date. Still, critics tore this album a bit of a new one by complaining that it was full of retreads and, therefore, short of the real comeback Jay Z fans wanted.
2. "The Blueprint 3". This is the final installment in Jay Z's years-long Blueprint trilogy and it features production from the likes of that Taylor Swift microphone-stealing man-child himself, Kanye West. Having sold almost two million albums to date in the US alone, "The Blueprint 3" was also the recipient of the sort of dubious honor of being named only the fourth best album in all of 2009. Critics praised "The Blueprint 3" for its lyrical flow and the energy and intensity that you can easily observe just by listening to its ill rhymes.
3. "Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life." Back in 1999, "Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life" was one of the biggest rap albums of that year and also of the post-Biggie and -Tupac era of hip hop. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, proving that Jay Z was already a household name in the rap community back then. Besides being the winner of a Grammy for the best rap album of that year, "Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life."