"Til you do right by me, everything you even think about gon' fail." –Miss Celie, The Color Purple
When news broke that rap got marked absent from the top 40 slots of Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart for the first time in 35 years, I knew there was a God. That was my first thought. My very next thought was that vexing hex Kendrick Lamar put on the industry just one year ago and how every word he spoke was coming to pass. "Watch the Party Die" almost felt like a misfire when dude dropped it just as the NFL announced him headliner of Superbowl LIX's halftime show. It wasn't the splashy first single setting up the surefire album release. It wasn't the victory lap celebrating his dethroning of pop-rap's chosen one. It wasn't even available on streaming. Forget cashing in on the moment, bruh was crashing out. This was Kendrick, razor in his hand, sharpening it on a strap of cowhide, like Celie in that classic scene from The Color Purple. Home fixin' to shave Mister. Or slice his neck.
Our attention rapt, he was ready to commence with the bloodletting. Nobody was spared. The street rappers with no code. The moguls with no morals. And, most especially, the corporate vultures picking the culture down to the carcass. "I gotta burn it down / to build it up," he spit over a meditative thrum, letting all the helium out the balloon. We're living in the aftermath of his campaign to destroy and rebuild. It hasn't been a one-man mission, either. Kendrick only said what hip-hop, at its core, has been feeling, needing, screaming for years.
Sometimes it's a struggle to come up with a shortlist of rap albums I've loved living with over the course of a year. This is not one of those. Despite a decade of DSPs deprioritizing long plays for singles to feed their omnivorous playlists, hip-hop brought the album back to the forefront in 2025. Singular works of art and grand artistic statements rose over disparate song collections and disposable hits engineered for max airplay.
Doing it for the 'gram took a backseat to doing it for the love. And the vibe was intergenerational. The legends, living and deceased, came through, thanks in large part to the "Legend Has It" series helmed by Nas' Mass Appeal label; Mobb Deep's Infinite and De La Soul's posthumous Cabin in the Sky are both up there with their respective best. Young cats also came true, like Louisiana's La Reezy, who infuses New Orleans' second-line energy into his boom-bap/bounce mashups on Welcome to La Reezyana Vol. 1; and Chicago's Kaicrewsade, who stretches the boundaries of jazz-rap hybridity into eclectic new territory on Joint4u!.
Clipse made their most vulnerable, elevated work to date with Let God Sort Em Out. Other duos, like ELUCID and billy woods of Armand Hammer (Mercy) and Buffalo's Che Noir and Lxvethegenius (Desired Crowns) reminded core fans why the genre will always be grounded in collective effort. J.I.D breathed new life into his city and mine (Atlanta) when we needed it most (God Does Like Ugly). And Dallas-bred producer Kal Banx turned his most personal loss into an epic homage to home. The difference in time zones didn't keep U.K. artists, like soul/R&B singer-songwriter Sasha Keable and classical/hip-hop experimentalist Tony Njoku, from being on the same type of time.
When history looks back at the year 2025, I believe these records — and plenty more — will reflect what the industry failed to register: Hip-hop didn't flame out, it flourished. Over the Billboard charts and industry metrics. Over the algorithmic sway and A.I.'s insidious creep. Art didn't take a backseat to commerce. This time, love won.
Rodney Carmichael's Top 10 Albums of 2025
1. Kal Banx, RHODA
2. J.I.D, God Does Like Ugly
3. Armand Hammer & The Alchemist, Mercy
4. Kaicrewsade, Joint4u!
5. Sasha Keable, act right
6. De La Soul, Cabin In The Sky
7. Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out
8. La Reezy, Welcome To La Reezyana Vol. 1
9. Che Noir and 7xvethegenius, Desired Crowns
10. Tony Njoku, ALL OUR KNIVES ARE ALWAYS SHARP
Read about more of NPR Music's favorite albums of 2025 and our list of the 125 best songs of 2025.
Graphic illustration by David Mascha for NPR.
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