2006 Recap - Part 2 - Top 5 Overrated Hip-Hop Albums

There were a lot of good albums this year, a few great and a few just awful. Here are my personal top 5 most overrated albums over the year. Either overrated or I just think they should've been better than they were.

#5 - Jay-Z - Kingdom Come / Nas - Hip Hop Is Dead




















2 of the biggest contenders for king of NY put aside their differences and dropped an album each towards the latter part of 2006. I know I'm not alone in saying that I was insanely excited to hear both of these and after the few listens I gave both of them, neither were classics. Albeit they did have a few good songs (ex. Jay-Z - Lost Ones and Nas - Black Republican ft. Jay-Z), neither album lived up to the crazy hype that was put on both of these artists in the coming months before release. Both albums received very high critical acclaim but I think undeservedly. Jay-Z album had me hooked for a bit, but after 2-3 listens, it went off into the pile of cd's rarely to be heard from in a loooong time. Nas' on the other hand didn't even catch me right off the bat. It had it's good tracks, and a good overall message, but the singles bored me and it didn't seem to flow as well as I expected from a great Nas album. Both disappointing.

#4 - Murs - Murray's Revenge



















Start this off, I'm a huge fan of Murs and his normal man/skater/9-5 rap. But this is one of his weakest releases to date. The first Murs & 9th Wonder album 3:16 the 9th Edition was groundbreaking for Murs and gave him solo success in the underground rap world. Murray's Revenge did have a couple nice tracks to listen to a bunch of times, but as an album it didn't make it past a couple listens. A couple good tracks on the album were: L.A. & Barbershop ft. Big Pooh. With only 10 tracks long and only about 35-40 minutes this one almost instantly is gone into the compact disc realm of no return.

#3 - Method Man - 4:21 ... The Day After














We all know that after Tical in 1994, Method Man has not put together a good solo album. I didn't even know this album was coming out until it was already on the shelves so I just passed on it like I would a new D4L album. The first single "Say" was a real lame attempt at promoting the album because it was just awful. This wouldn't have even made it to the list if I didn't see it as an underrated album of the year on a few people's lists. So I thought maybe it wasn't that bad and went to my local Cash Converters and found it there for $6. Gave it a listen and it never even made it to the computer to put on my iPod. Might be selling this one back to Cash Converters in the near future if I run low on gouda.

#2 - The Game - Doctor's Advocate



















When The Documentary dropped I wasn't feeling The Game that much. He did have a good style and some nice lyrics but the G-unit outweighed the good. So when I heard he dropped G-unit and moved on and was dropping a new album I had a tiny bit of excitement inside me. I expected a lot from Compton's next great rapper but he failed me once again. The first single was a banger! "It's Okay (One Blood)" ft. Junior Reid was a great track, and if this was things to come on the album it would've been great. Then came the second single, "Let's Ride" and it was great too, a dope cruising obviously west coast influenced track. But almost immediately after that it went downhill. This album was nearly saved by a couple collabos by Snoop and Nas, but overall I was disappointed in The Game. I think he has it in him to drop a classic album, but this outing wasn't it.

#1 - Lupe Fiasco - Food & Liquor



















Don't get it twisted. I'm not hating on Lupe, I'm just not feeling this album as I was the first mixtape stuff I heard from him. After hearing Fahrenheit 1/15 I thought this dude was gonna blow up crazy with his first album! And he did blow up in the mainstream, but this album didn't live up to the hype of Lupe for me. "Kick, Push" got played out real quick when everybody just jumped on the hip-hop/skate/hypebeast bandwagons and although "Daydreamin'" had a dope video, the song sounded awful. The Jay-Z track on the album is probably one of the poorest collabos of the year. Overall this album was waaaaay overrated by everyone this year. Again it had a couple good tracks ("I Gotcha" & "The Cool") but it was sure as hell no front to back banger that it easily could've been.