Edd’s MANtra: Defining a ‘Classic’

One of my biggest irritations about current hip-hop culture is the desire to label every single item, artist or happening a “classic.”


Take, for instance, Bun B’s newest album, Trill OG. The Source magazine – once hip-hop’s holy grail – bestowed the album with its coveted 5 Mike rating, which designates it as a hip-hop classic. Now as I’m writing this, I haven’t heard the album in its entirety, but trust me, from what I’ve heard I seriously doubt that rating will hold up a year from now. Or even six months from now. Heck, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, The Fugees’ The Score, Snoop’s Doggystyle and Jay-Z’s Reasonable Doubt couldn’t get 5 mikes back in the day, and those are light-years ahead of Bun’s album.

I certainly understand why we wanna label everything a classic nowadays. In an era of extremely disposable music, we all clamor to find that diamond in the rough, one that 10 years from now you can brag about how much you loved before it became “cool” to do so.

But that’s the point I’d like to touch on – there’s a big different between liking, or loving an album, and calling that album a classic.


2010 has been a great year for music – easily the best year in the past five years, and you could make an argument that it has been good as the last banner year, 2001. Throughout the year, analysts, friends and reviewers have all said that albums from Big Boi, Nas and Damian Marley, Eminem, Drake, Rick Ross and even Fat Joe were all classics. I beg to differ – those were all great albums (Drake and Officer Ricky a little less than the others) but NONE were classics.


To me, a classic album can’t be judged a week or two after it is released. A classic helps revolutionize the genre, rockets a star to fame and influences that artist’s peers. I don’t think anyone was inspired by that Rick Ross album, except ghetto movie directors.

Using the criteria above, the last time we saw a true classic was in 2004:

The College Dropout made Kanye West, then merely a underrated producer, a bonafide hip-hop star; everyone started using his so-called “soul beats” (those sped-up soul samples were everywhere); and it wasn’t long before up-and-coming artists started to mimic his rhyming pattern.

That’s an album that influenced a genre. That’s a classic.

Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid is the closest we’ve come to a classic recently but it’s way too early to measure its influence. If a year from now Janelle is still a virtual unknown and autotune still reigns supreme then I’d just call it an excellent album that flew under the radar – a near classic but NOT a true classic.


Remember kids, it’s OK to love an album and support your favorite artist. But let’s cut back on the “classic” designations.

In 1998 I absolutely LOVED Nicole Wray’s debut Make It Hot. And I still do. But how dumb would I look now if I had screamed from the rooftops that that album was a classic? Rick Ross fans should heed my words.