By the time we move over to KTT3, they will fully migrate over to KTT2 lol

What do you consider a classic ?

did i say that? i'm not a nas fan and ur obviously referring to life is good, which is y i said jay "reinforced" the idea.. not invented it. Black Thought is cool but the keywords were 'on a mainstream level' because none of their later career works are as lauded and widely discussed as 4:44

Defines/captures a concept or moment in time.

Significant commercial appeal.

Has the artist working at or close to the peak of their abilities.

we functionally agreed on the first 2 points so idk y u disputed my perspective

Okay.. I’m genuinely just trying to understand

Are u arguing the ppl shouldn’t call 4:44 a classic because u don’t believe the record fulfilled this criteria?

Only on the second point

And they miss the fact he was closer to 50 than 40 when he made it

Please just listen to the music or shut the f*** up lol

its a classic

Yes, it's not the best example of an artist past their prime addressing a subject different from what they came into the game with.

It's not Jay Z working at or close to the peak of his artistic prowess.

It isn't the most commercially successful of a post-prime rapper either.

"captures a moment in time" - how does that not translate to putting out a zeitgeist body of work? if u make waves in the culture, ur actively captivating an audience in the present and tapping into their current sensibilities.

the third point is probly the most subjective of all which is y people get contentious about the term

That's the bone of contention, isn't it?

I don't agree that making waves is the same thing as capturing a moment in time.

Friend, I definitely respect your stance but a lot of your personal preferences in this thread is framed as it can be anchored by any legitimate fact/truth and those that don’t agree are simply ‘wrong’

The universal appeal and reception is enough to atleast acknowledge that this is what a lot of ppl believe while a lot of your posts make it seem like they’re arguing bonefish stats when it’s simply just u with an unpopular opinion y’know..

Everyone using one song (the story of oj) to back up their criticism of an entire album.

Disingenuous glib

fair enough. even though inherently all art is exactly that.

I mean, the only objectively quantifiable thing about music are the numbers.

We can extrapolate retention (how many people continue to revisit an album), impact (how many people listened in the first place), and simply who came first.

With objective numbers, I can tell you who first made an album discussing "mature" themes. I can also tell you which of the albums made the most impact and tell you which of them is being revisited by the most people today.

The problem is that you won't accept it.

Valid.

If that’s the case every Taylor swift, bad bunny and drake album would be considered classics .. there would be no need for any general discussion if all anyone had to do is pull stats.

You even gave two subjective anecdotal attributes to a classic record that has nothing to do with numbers outside of what u said about commercial success

I'm not mad at the people who think all Taylor Swift albums are classic. I don't listen to her so I'm not able to differentiate a great Taylor Swift album from a mediocre one, unfortunately.

Same applies to Bad Bunny.

You can definitely make the argument that the Drake albums that continue to chart long after their debuts are his classics though.

I actually think you can make that argument for any artist, TBH, and I'll trust that argument over any anecdotal discussion about what album is "better" than the other.

“I don't listen to her so I'm not able to differentiate a great Taylor Swift album from a mediocre one, unfortunately.” - by your own logic you don’t have to listen to the album at all

Simply pull up its rankings on various list and look at the commercial dominance and based on these numbers all her records are undisputed classics for this very reason

It’s greatness is in the numbers which never lie

I also refuse to believe that there’s no album that you consider a classic that wasn’t the top releasing album that year

You're being deliberately obtuse.

No artist in the history of music has ever had all their albums behave similarly.

If I was trying to figure out what Taylor Swift albums are classic, as someone who's only ever heard like 3 Taylor Swift songs, I'll go to whatever number/view aggregating site, filter out recent releases, and see what albums > 5 years are consistently charting.

That's a more objective approach than anything else you'd like to name.

Again, not the top selling album that year. The top selling album FOR THAT PARTICULAR ARTIST.

What other mainstream album at the time was touching on these themes? I think it makes sense it got alot more praise once you situate it within the Uzi, Carti, Migos, RTK, Drake or whoever else dropped that year that was just typical rapper flex bs for the most part.

This was coming towards the peak of “yoo f*** the old heads, let’s have funn, it’s all fun music bro” era of rap