Some albums don’t just make noise; they shape generations. From Nas’ Illmatic to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to Madvillain’s LP, the most timeless Hip-Hop records continue to echo through today’s music. Kendrick Lamar, Doechii, Vince Staples, and The Roots’ Black Thought are just a few of the many artists who trace their creative foundations back to classic albums that changed their lives and sharpened their craft.

Whether it’s the introspective genius of Nas, the precise commentary of Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet, or the emotional depth of Erykah Badu and Ella Fitzgerald, these projects have helped define identity, storytelling, and sound across eras. As we celebrate Black Music Month in partnership with Hyundai, it is essential to recognize that art is a continuum and a generational conversation.

Nas’ Illmatic has been a major influence on Kendrick Lamar
“You hear it in my music what’s surrounded me, and just to be able to elevate your mind a little bit further past that through writing is bigger than one song,” Kendrick told BET when Nas’ debut album was celebrating its 20th anniversary with an authorized documentary and expanded re-release. “In order to do that and craft that, it’s on another plane, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that if it wasn’t for that album [Illmatic], truthfully.” Like Nas’ debut, much of Kendrick’s music has been through the vantage point of a poetic prodigy with the environment as his greatest muse. These artists emphasize place in their works, whether it’s the towering buildings of the Queensbridge Houses or the expansive gangland corridors of Compton. Like Illmatic’s references to Wild Style, Whodini, and T La Rock, much of Kendrick’s music contains in-the-know connections to the Hip-Hop of his childhood, including prominent nods to figures including Tupac, DJ Quik, and others.

Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill set a course for Doechii and Vince Staples
“The first full length album I ever listened to was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” Doechii said in a 2025 Instagram post, written to Ms. Hill. “My mom would play it from top to bottom everyday on my way to school for years. I would sing your songs as if I wrote them, imagining myself on stage. Each song deepened my love for music and my curiosity to write raps. My favorite lyric in ‘Doo Wop’ is ‘don’t be a hard rock when you really are a gem‘ that stuck with me anytime I wanted to ‘get even’ or harden my heart towards those who wronged me. I carried your principles with me during my coming of age,” wrote the TDE star. “And I carry them with me now at this current stage of my career, your lyrics are close to my heart. Thank you Miss Lauryn Hill.” Doechii flaunts her talents as a top MC and a talented singer, a double-threat capability that Lauryn Hill put on the highest level in the late 1990s. Both artists use music as a space for vulnerability, empowerment, and truth-telling. They explore identity, self-worth, relationships, and societal expectations.

“This is my earliest memory of music. My mom had this on cassette and would play it every day while picking me up from school,” Vince Staples previously wrote for TIDAL. “Between that, India.Arie and Kirk Franklin, this connected with me the most. Whether it was dealing with social issues or simply the emotion behind the music, it helped shape some of the views that I still hold with me today.” Both Staples and Ms. Hill have used their platforms to speak on racism, poverty, faith, and identity, particularly from the perspective of Black America. Lauryn did this throughout The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Vince does it through stark, often ironic realism in his storytelling, especially in projects like Summertime ’06 and FM! The Long Beach, California MC has also been outspoken and fiercely authentic in his interviews and media relations.

JAY-Z’s Reasonable Doubt is a primary influence on Pusha-T
“I really like some of the lyrical aspects of it, like the lifestyle. I try to give people lifestyle bars. I felt like that’s what Reasonable Doubt was – it was nothing more than a lifestyle and it was the lifestyle,” Pusha-T told Red Bull Music Academy in 2013. “[JAY-Z] was portraying this whole idea and this ideal of what a certain period of his own life was – and could be – at the time. It was aspirational, but it was also rooted in the street level.” The artist also cited specific songs as influential. “Definitely ‘Dead Presidents’ and ‘Can I Live.’ I mean, that whole introduction to ‘Can I Live,’ like the small monologue he’s doing, that just sets up and outlines what he’s all about on that record. It’s so tight and it’s also so natural.” Pusha, who collaborated with JAY-Z since that quote, has embraced the use of lifestyle Jay paved. The Clipse artist often vividly references his past while offering the growth, trajectory, and expansion since then. Reasonable Doubt marked a pivot point for Jay musically and personally, and that crossroads seems to have served as a long-lasting influence on Pusha-T.

MF DOOM & Madlib’s Madvillan album presented a universe to Denzel Curry
“If you listen to [MF DOOM’s] albums, he has personalities. I have a lot of personalities that I go by: ‘Raven Miyagi,’ ‘Aquarius’killa,’ ‘Leroy Carter,’ ‘Denny Cascade,’ and ‘Ultimate Denzel Curry.’ MF DOOM was the king of that, and he would find a way to rap differently with those aliases,” Denzel Curry told Kerrang magazine in 2022. “He took different identities and made himself. Then you have his collaboration with Madlib, which created Madvillainy, which spawned, arguably, one of the greatest Rap albums of all time, and that influenced one of my own best tapes called UNLOCKED.” Like DOOM, Denzel tucks deep revelations and thought-provoking subjects into his bars. While Daniel Dumile was often celebrated for his whimsy, Denzel gets credit for his aggressive delivery—which often juxtaposes some complex, introspective lyrics.

Rapsody has credited Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun as a north star in her music
“People ask me, if I had to pick one album that’s my favorite of all time, [Mama’s Gun by Erykah Badu is] one of ’em. I listen to that album so much at night and it goes through so many different emotions for me…that’s kinda how we wanted to mirror it. Even with the title of the project [Laila’s Wisdom], Mama’s Gun inspired it. It’s short and sweet, but it says a lot.” In the conversation with Ambrosia For Heads, Rap’ also stated that songs from Badu’s sophomore album landed on a playlist she made to inspire her Grammy-nominated 2017 LP. That inspiration has continued long after the stylistic homage. More recently, Rapsody’s collaboration with Erykah Badu, “3:AM,” earned both artists a Grammy Award.

Big Daddy Kane’s Long Live The Kane laid a foundation for Black Thought
“Here’s how much of a Kane-anite I am: I tried to start calling myself ‘H.A.W.K. Smooth’ because I heard Big Daddy Kane shout out his friend who went by that name,” Black Though admitted in a Pitchfork feature on influential albums, pointing to Kane’s 1988 debut. “Folks would ask about it, and I didn’t want to say I got it from this other rapper shouting out his homies, so I turned it into some African warrior. Questlove and I were a group at that point, and Kane revolutionized my style of storytelling and influenced my cadence. He was one of the first rappers I heard rhyming in iambic pentameter, in that Shakespearean flow. I feel like the lexicon from which Kane put his bars together—the word bank from which he withdrew—conjured so much new imagery for me. On The Roots’ Rising Down, there’s a song called “@ 15” and that’s actually from a voicemail or something I left [Questlove]. If you hear that song, you can definitely hear the influence.” Elsewhere in his career, Black Thought has shared the stage with Kane, freestyled to his instrumentals, and even rapped in a deliberately imitating style on The Roots’ “BOOM.”

Xzibit explains the vocal influence Chuck D and Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet had on him
“I choose Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black Planet out of all of their releases. Public Enemy is my favorite Rap group of all time. And so Fear Of A Black Planet, when it came out, I was really just a fan of Hip-Hop; I hadn’t even really thought about being an artist yet,” Xzibit recently said  of P.E.’s 1990 third album. Mr. X-to-the-Z “I was listening to this record in my Sony Walkman, walking around the hallways, feeling like this was my theme music,” he recalls. “When you play that record, specifically ‘Brothers Gonna Work It Out,’ ‘Fight The Power,’ ‘911 Is A Joke,’ these were really different sounding songs, and they’re very powerful in the climate, and Public Enemy has always been like a Rage Against The Machine-esque Hip-Hop group for me. And that’s why I feel like, from top to bottom, that album represents a sound in an era of Hip-Hop that has yet to be eclipsed.” X says that Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad’s layered production is something he applied to his 30-year catalog. “When something connects and touches your soul like that, you just never forget.” He also explained Chuck D’s personal impact, given the booming sound of P.E. vocals. “I, fast forward, as an artist, have really developed and put that sound into my music as well.” He continued, “My voice sounds like I’ve had this voice since I was a baby, but my voice sounds very gruff and rough. I knew, once I started making records, that I had a very different sounding voice, and being able to use my instrument, and being inspired by Chuck D definitely had an influence on the way I deliver. The content is a lot different, but I think in that aspect—yes, it has been inspirational.”

SZA credits Ella Fitzgerald’s Greatest Hits as a major influence
“We’d eat oatmeal in the morning and listen to Miles Davis and [John] Coltrane. A lot of it was classic Jazz. We’d replay each CD 30,000 times,” SZA said to Interview magazine. “The album that defined my childhood was probably Ella Fitzgerald’s Greatest Hits, whereas my half-sister, who didn’t have the same conservative upbringing, was listening to Cash Money and Crunk.” SZA echoed this sentiment to Variety. “I love Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. When I was young, I used to sing that song all the time because I could see it, [singing] ‘Oh his teeth are… so pearly white’ —it was scary but I loved it, like in a whimsical way… Oh, [Ella’s] ‘Tenderly,’ that’s one of the most beautiful songs, I used to cry to it all the time. That, and ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me,’ when she goes [sings], ‘We may never, never we meet again / On this bumpy road to love,’ and then Louis [Armstrong] goes, ‘Sweet Ella.’ And it just feels like, oh my god, what if they really never see each other again? It feels so finite, and so … disastrous as a possibility.” Like her observations about Ella and Louis, SZA’s music has thrived at its delicate portrayals of the intricacies of relationships—including with self. While incredibly contemporary in sound and presentation, there is a transparency to the heart in SZA’s writing and themes that has made the songstress a superstar to her generation—much like Ella Fitzgerald was for hers.

Cordae says JAY-Z’s The Blueprint has stuck with him
In a 2019 interview with Genius’ For The Record series, Cordae showed (and proved) his deep admiration for JAY-Z’s sixth LP. “I really love Blueprint; that’s one of my all-time favorite albums,” the Maryland MC touted, before enthusiastically rapping a series of bars from the work that have stuck with him. Jay’s 2001 album seamlessly blended his many styles of Rap, and flaunted his evolution. Though newer into his career than Shawn Carter was by his sixth LP, Cordae’s albums have been intentionally versatile, presenting a young lyricist, an introspective writer, and someone who still aims to have hits in rotation.

Freddie Gibbs credits Dr. Dre’s The Chronic as a powerful example of the grind
“My father was a big Ice Cube fan and we used to bump Kill At Will. Cube was dissing [N.W.A.] by that point—he’d already put out ‘No Vaseline’ and all that. When Dre split from Eazy-E, the thing between him and Cube kinda died down. It was a real dynamic time in music,” Gibbs told Pitchfork. “The West Coast had [popularity] on lock for a minute in the early ‘90s. ‘Let Me Ride’ is my favorite song. You could pick any song from The Chronic to be your favorite, but that’s probably my favorite.” He also credits the “Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” video as potent too. “When Dr. Dre walked into Snoop [Dogg’s] house and got him off the couch looking [very struggling], he was like, ‘Get your [self] in the booth and record.’ It wasn’t all this putting-on and flashy [posturing]. You could easily relate to it. A rapper comes out now and already has a Lamborghini. I miss the story; I miss the struggle. You didn’t give me that. If you already made it to the mountaintop, why do I wanna hear your story?” Freddie Gibbs’ own rise from Gary, Indiana and hustling has been a key aesthetic in his music far more than any flash. Even well into his major label releases, the ESGN founder chose to be a man of the people.