The 40 Best Albums of 2022
The gallery on this page contains Metacritic's list of the 40 best-reviewed albums of 2022, ranked by Metascore. This list only includes new albums receiving at least 7 reviews from professional critics.
Otherwise, all full-length studio albums (or mixtapes) released between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022 are eligible, though reissues, live albums, box sets and other compilations are excluded. (Those excluded titles are included in a separate list at the end of the gallery.) Albums are ranked by Metascore prior to rounding based on scores as of December 19, 2022.
(#16) The rapper's 16th studio album overall is also his third "King's Disease" album in as many years following KD in 2020 and KD2 last year. (He also released an unrelated album, Magic, last year just to keep busy.) KD3 is the best-reviewed entry in the trilogy and again features production from Hit-Boy—but, unlike its two predecessors (or nearly every other Nas album), it doesn't have a single feature.
“KD3 keeps Nas in the relevancy conversation because his voice is still impactful, calling to action when some might say he doesn’t need to do this anymore. It’s a lesson in purposeful storytelling and aging with grace.” —HipHopDX
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