On his new album, Life Is Good, we're hearing the most locked-in Nas has been in years, and the results are awe-inspiring.

While his darker material seems unchanged by fame, it’s really his lighter, more radio-friendly material that gets taken to the next level on Oxymoron.

This is more than an album, this is a moment in music history. Enjoy it.

The truth is that while far from perfect, this is a more complex and well executed album than the vast majority of anything we'll get this year. Or put more simply, who's really challenging Kanye West and Jay-Z for hip-hop's throne. Seriously. Who?

At a time when many of his rap peers are even more desperately changing their sound to stay relevant, Ghostface Killah is cementing his relevancy by diving even deeper into what always made him such a unique artist.

This has the feel of a full, complete body of work, one embedded with nuances, themes and a larger, interwoven framework that nobody could digest in one listen.

Together the two vets have created a work that's worthy of some serious recognition.

From "Jeopardy" on, Run the Jewels 2 is uppercut after uppercut.

Overall, Born Sinner is an impressive effort.

It’s ambitious, it’s diverse, it’s exciting and when you hear you hear what made Dre a legend in the first place. No matter what the era, stream, CD or vinyl, Dr. Dre is just on another level.

The music on Black Messiah is quietly powerful, which is the most powerful form of power.

This isn't a great rap album, it's just a great album. Period.

We’re clearly listening to one of the most purely talented artists of our generation working at her peak, or at least somewhere close.

For two solo albums now Andre Patton has not merely proved that he's a capable solo artist, he's helping to redefine what a hip-hop album can sound like.

undun clocks in at well under an hour, Questlove said he wants it to be "ADD proof", a running time that also magnifies the importance of the third of the album that's purely instrumental. It's on these vocal-free tracks that The Roots truly show what they're capable of.

It has its own moments of pop-leaning lightness, but there's more than enough revolutionary material here to leave the faithful satiated.

Section80 may not be a sacred text but I've got the feeling that in five years it may just prove to be prophetic.

While it would have been easy for Tech to overpower listeners with fast rhymes and monstrous beats, on the whole Something Else is an intensely serious and sometimes even quiet album than isn’t afraid to tackle issues more rappers wouldn’t come near.

Ultimately, Trilogy is more of a sonic landmark then it is a new work.

K.R.I.T.'s created another album that will stand the test of time with 4EvaNaDay.

There is no denying that with his knack for catchy melodies, descriptive songwriting, and excellent beat selection, Chance displays qualities on Acid Rap that have the potential to catapult him into superstardom. As a project itself, Acid Rap is one sweet, smooth musical journey that grapples with some serious topics in a pleasing manner.

There's no doubting that he's gone from a freshman to a full-fledged member of R&B's graduating class with Kaleidoscope Dream.

The album’s content is narrow, and while there are certainly no duds here, things do get a bit predictable as the album progresses. However, the constant non-sequiturs and familiar production doesn’t take a whole lot away from the overall value of the collection.

A well-produced, collective backdrop is the foundation of Cilvia’s creative world, but it is Rashad’s poetically penned, energetically delivered raps that gently tip the scale towards a point of well-rounded balance.

Gambino's strength is also his weakness. As a TV writer and a comedian he's naturally focused on punchlines and creating moments, which at his best is enormously entertaining and at the worst forced

Payback sounds more like a catharsis, an extended musical middle finger filled with the kind of instrumental interludes, frenetic humor and unconstrained personality that will leave heads nodding, and Clear Channel running in the opposite direction.

On the whole though, while it might not be a classic, Seen It All will go down in hip-hop history as yet another dope album from an artist who's had an enormous (although under-rated) impact on rap.

Radioactive [is] simultaneously the most and least mainstream friendly album of the year. It's a seeming contradiction that only someone who was supremely confident in their identity as an artist could pull off.

Paperwork is at its most compelling when it feels like he’s being the most autobiographical.

Statik might not win the sprint, and isn’t really even running the same race, but Extended Play is definitely prepared for the marathon. You could pick this album up 5-10 years from now and it would have the same power as the day it came out.

Meek understands his audience, they expect a monumental introduction, summer ready hits, sincerity and more hits. He does this all, with a bit of style and an abundance of swagger.

Wolf’s production features a more textured and subtle sound than we’ve ever heard before.

The forward momentum shown on previous releases continues with Because the Internet. The jokes and gimmicks show up less often and in their place are introspective questions about himself, his relationships, and his family. Most of the time it works.

Has Jay-Z made another classic? Only time will truly tell, but my gut says MCHG will ultimately fall just short of classic status. Where does it rank among his now 15 albums? I’ve got it somewhere in the top third.

Ultimately, only time will tell if Dark Sky Paradise becomes the first Big Sean album that I like more than his mixtapes, but this one probably has the best chance yet.

You know that breathless feeling you had when you ran from the cops after they broke up a house party? This album is that feeling in musical form.

These days, Soul’s money tree has blossomed and with it, expectations have grown and relationships and trust are harder to come by. But for now at least, Soul is in control.

A listen will be worth your time.

The album is fun, enjoyable, and well-done.

It may have been a little long for my liking, but that's a small price to pay for listening to something this remarkably unique.

Vince sounds more alive on this album, that coldhearted monotone has found a bit of hope.

The Gifted is a collection of tracks from an unarguably talented emcee, but the point at which a collection of music becomes an album, a singular work with a focus and unity strong enough to truly make an impact, Wale still hasn’t reached that point.... In the meantime, we’re left with a quality album.

Love and Rockets is a chance for hip hop to transform back to its roots; the real, musical, easy to listen to simple beats and lyrics that we all grew to love.

A charismatic, agile rapper good enough to have a long and successful career, but right now a place in rap’s Hall of Fame is still a stretch.

Overall, Kid Cudi is refreshing and lively thoughout Indicud, proving he can go off and experiment (like he did on WZRD), yet come back to the Day & Night Cudi we have all grown to know and love.

Looking 4 Myself isn't a classic, it's just not, but until I hear better, it's the best R&B album of the year.

The album is an amalgamation of his past trade and his current, and as is fitting for an album from a man whose past is as powdery white as a Colorado winter, it’s dope.

R.A.P. Music sounds like exactly no other album to come out this year.

The point is that despite the delays and false starts and question marks, ultimately Young Jeezy has continued an impressively consistent run of quality albums.

We're still a long way from a classic, but Take Care once again proves that he's just too good to disappear anytime soon.

He’s added a catchier more movie trailer-esque sound, what some call pop but I’ll just call Love the Way You Lie, but really, despite the upheavals in the world, despite his relapse and recovery from drug addiction, for better or worse Eminem at 41 is essentially the same artist as Eminem at 28-years-old.

A few days of repeat spins now have revealed the album to have more depth and sustainability than I first suspected.

Forest Hills Drive has enough twists and turns to inspire an almost schizophrenic stream of reactions.

Songz isn't doing anything new, but when he's still delivering music this high quality it really doesn't matter that much.

Not only does it reinforce that Earl is a capable lyricist, but that he’s growing his legs as a producer. It’s also an album where you can tell the artist found his voice, finally overcoming the pressures of expectation.

If you're already a fan of Curren$y I have to imagine you'll at least enjoy adding Immaculate to the collection. And if you're not a Spitta fan there's a solid chance that Immaculate will, if not convert you to a full-fledged fan, at the very least respect the man.

T.I. is more lyrical than he often gets credit for, but it's his "swag" that truly separates him from the crowd, and Trouble Man is dripping with so much swag T.I. should bottle it and sell it.

The best moments on Gutter Rainbows actually come when Kweli pushes the hardest unto uncharted territory.

This is certainly his most sonically diverse album ever.

Instead being flooded with a viral marketing campaign and absurdly hyperbolic praise or scorn, listening to this album feels like a discovery, like finding a dope album in your friend's collection you'd never heard before.

Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, his fifth solo album, is dope.

Strange Clouds isn't perhaps as thrilling as Adventures, mostly because the thrill of the unknown is gone, but B.o.B.'s second album is superior in almost every respect.

In many ways Long.Live.A$AP is an album of the present.

Ultimately, these songs and all of the songs on the album are stories, and to call Macklemore a storytelling rapper would be an understatement. He only tells stories, most often his own, it just turns out he's the kind of gifted storyteller that can keep you listening.

There aren't many singers who have both the vocal ability and range of delivery to traverse a musical landscape that vast, but Brown does it all while impressively managing to maintain a real cohesion throughout X.

These are the songs that don’t initially blow you away, but you find yourself coming back to months later.

While other artists have struggled to contain both their lofty ambitions and animal instincts on the same album (see also, David Banner), and while it does have its low points and high points, Pl3dge sounds remarkably cohesive.

There's no doubt about it, there's greatness lurking in Game, and in R.E.D. Album. Let's just hope that from here on out he'll find the consistency he needs to truly claim that greatness.

With Joe’s distinct style steering every track, No Love Lost is a much more cohesive and focused work, despite similar fluctuations [to Slaughterhouse's Welcome To: Our House].

6's & 7's is a hard album to deliver a final verdict. It's an album that was made for a very specific group, everyone else be damned, and so while I honestly can't say I'm a full fledged Techaholic, I do have to acknowledge that for many this album will be nothing short of epic.

If you've ever found yourself pouring over the lyrics to a Eminem or Royce song, trying to break down each metaphor and punchline, you'll eat Hell up.

If you consider dressing up putting on clean socks, if you know what the streets smell like at four in the morning, if you consider Shook Ones Pt. II the perfect track to kick back to, you'll have Random Axe on repeat for weeks.

No doubt about it, Finally Famous is full of good music.

King of Hearts, his fourth studio album, is strictly for the grown and sexy. It may not be a new school classic (it's not) but this is a damn good album.

Ultimately, Live From the Underground may not be K.R.I.T.'s best album yet, for more that'd be ReturnOf4Eva, but that's like saying Michael Jordan's fourth championship was the "best" of his six titles.

Kat Dahlia's My Garden is good music. Period.

Z is a mood piece, 10 homogenous tracks that breeze by and flow on a winning combination of sweet vocals, sweeter hooks, and the sweetest of melodies and instrumentals.

Music this good transcends chronology, so whether you're 85 (what up grandma?), just getting your driver's license or anywhere between, you're all welcome into This Generation.

Timberlake and Timbaland (Timbalake?) are at their best when they rely more on organic soul than samples.

For the most part, Common's been an almost staggeringly consistent presence in music for years, and then fittingly, his new album Nobody's Smiling, is as good as anything he's done.

Ultimately V&A is an album that presents a fearlessly original and coherent, if distorted, vision, something that's become an endangered species in the age of the hit single.

The overall result is an album that's easily enjoyable, but not particularly interesting.

Talk That Talk is both a sharp departure from her dark, rock-infused last two albums Rated R and Loud and a more easily enjoyable work.

Chiddy Bang is the sound of the younger generation, which is to say that they sound like whatever they feel like at the time, and their debut album Breakfast proves it.

To play the devil's advocate to the devil's advocate I just played, Thursday does shown a sonic growth from House of Balloons. It even dares – gasp – to up the tempo, bringing in a rapid fire hi-hat to propel the hook of Life of the Party and giving Heaven or Las Vegas a multi-instrument, layered sound we hadn't heard from them before.

Cole World is full of evidence that when Cole sits down to write a hit, he mysteriously loses that intangible quality that first earned him these weighty expectations.

That leaves us with a placeholder project while Dream sorts out some contractual "issues" with Def Jam over his delayed fourth album Diary of a Madman, and frankly I'll take this placeholder over 90% of R&B's official projects.

This is an album you play during a lazy Sunday afternoon, an album you reach for during a long road-trip, and in a way that's far more valuable than the month's new hottest thing.

While there's nothing revolutionary here, New Life is undoubtedly the work of a woman who's supremely comfortable in her own skin and own music.

The animal spin on Get Rich or Die Tryin’. 50 Cent attacks with that mindset on his 5th album, and it’s a solid entry in a very up and down career (in music at least).

At 16 tracks, 20 on the deluxe version, this album manages to work in more than a couple joints featuring some of the vicious rap hardcore fans were hoping for.

Future’s influence might not ever reach the same height as that famous duo’s, but efforts like Honest certainly dispel his consistent-hit-man-of-little-substance status (a la T-Pain).

He understands what a casual, top of the iTunes chart browsing fan is looking for, and what his dedicated fans who have been there since his bluesy beginnings are looking for. Blurred Lines mostly hits its mark when aiming for these two very different audiences, but the interspersing of slimy, pop songs with smooth as butter, tasteful ones comes off as awkward.

While I suspect 4 was made in large part to sound more natural and real, it doesn't succeed entirely. The album is a refreshingly understated change from the constantly banging and bumping sound of modern R&B, but it doesn't really bring us closer to the Queen B.

This is a good album by all accounts, but it's just not enough to free Joey from rap purgatory.

While everyone else is solid, there are no epiphanies, no "that artist is the next to blow!" moment that particularly deserves mention.

Knock Madness works best when Hopsin is either angrily fighting or humorously poking fun at some sort of ludicrosity.

O.N.I.F.C. isn't a great album, but it isn't lazy either.