No. 5 Ready To Die by the Notorious B.I.G. (1994)
Another almost-mythological debut album, Biggie Smalls dropped onto the hip-hop scene in mid-1994 armed with an uncanny gift for wordplay and a detailed approach to storytelling that immediately catapulted him to the forefront of the genre. Sometimes gritty, sometimes fun–you’d be hard-pressed to find any hip-hop fan who doesn’t own this album.
