On Rap Album of the Year
A Personal Ballot Before the Grammys start
It’s Grammy Sunday, which means the rap field is stacked and the argument is not about talent.
It’s about what we are rewarding.
This year, Rap Album of the Year sits at the intersection of arrival versus culmination, joy versus discipline, momentum versus mastery. Some albums defined moments. Some albums carried people through seasons. And one album, for me, feels like the rare thing that arrives fully formed, with nothing left unresolved.
Below is my Rap Album of the Year ranking, from “I respect it deeply” to “I need this for my mental health”, followed by my Best Rap Performance ballot. This isn’t objective. It is intentional
Rap Album of the Year
(least desired winner to the one I need)
This ranking isn’t about what I played the most. It’s about where each artist is in their creative arc, and whether the album feels like an arrival, continuation, or culmination.
5) Glorious by GloRilla
Released July 26, 2024 · ~43 minutes
Glorious was a breath of fresh air the moment it dropped. From the opening track, it was immediately clear GloRilla was bringing her Memphis fun-girl, girls’ girl energy to a full album, and my only real concern was whether she could hold a theme across a debut project. You never really know with first albums.
She did.
What impressed me most is the range without confusion. She moves between confidence, humor, leadership, sex, and faith and never sounds like she’s chasing respectability. Some features I could take or leave, but others are real bright spots. “Rain Down On Me,” with Kirk Franklin, Maverick City Music, Kierra Sheard, and Chandler Moore, holds space for faith without turning it into a gimmick. “Glo’s Prayer” is one of the most honest conversations with God you’ll hear from a young artist with the world at her feet. It is unpolished, direct, and sincere.
Culturally, Glo’s presence exceeded the album. “Let Her Cook” already feels like an anthem that will live forever in women’s sports. That end-of-game, highlight-package energy is undeniable. Glo moved people this year. She moved me. Watching a younger woman pop her shit while still sounding grounded is a joy.
Why it’s here: a cohesive debut people wanted to hear end to end, without losing joy, faith, or edge.
Why it doesn’t have to win tonight: this is arrival, not culmination, and that is still a victory.
4) God Does Like Ugly by JID
Released October 28, 2024 · ~53 minutes
I was late to JID, and my entry point wasn’t rollout hype or a thinkpiece. It was an Uber ride in Atlanta in 2022. I asked the driver who was really having the most impact in the city’s rap scene. I expected the standard answers. He told me the lyricist pushing things forward was JID, who is more introspective and layered, rapping about real life at a deeper level. He even told me he thought JID could rap better than Cole.
This album feels like the payoff to that scouting report.
The pen is elite, but what makes God Does Like Ugly stick is that JID pairs bars with songs you actually live with. Songs that feel good, feel heavy, feel conflicted, sometimes all at once. He’s comfortable sitting with tension: faith and doubt, ambition and insecurity, clarity and confusion.
The clearest example of how intentional this album is comes on “Community.” JID doesn’t just feature Pusha T and Malice, he hands them the narrative baton. He starts local, names what’s missing in his own environment, then deliberately moves the story to Virginia and lets Clipse finish the thought. That is regional storytelling done with restraint and respect. Knowing when to pass the mic is part of mastery.
Why it’s here: control, emotional range, and authorship.
Why it might not win: the Academy doesn’t always reward artists leveling up in real time unless the narrative is already loud enough.
3) Chromakopia by Tyler, The Creator
Released October 28, 2024 · ~53 minutes
I need to be honest about this album because my relationship to it is inseparable from the moment it arrived.
On the morning of October 28, 2024, three days after my sister and I said goodbye to our mother in a hospital room in Richmond, I put my earbuds in at 6 a.m. and went for a run because I didn’t know how else I was going to survive the week ahead. Funeral planning. Shock. Grief. All of it. I opened Apple Music, and Tyler’s face popped up.
When the Chromokopia album started, and it was his mother speaking, reminding him that the light doesn’t shine on him but shines from within him, it felt like a hand reaching through the moment I was in. A Black mother’s voice offering grounding, affirmation, and love. That morning, that voice landed like something meant for me. I ran seven miles, the fastest and longest run I’ve ever done. Chromakopia will always be tied to that moment.
Musically, there’s so much here that I love. “St. Chroma” is one of the best tracks Tyler has ever made, and the way Daniel Caesar is used feels intentional and earned. “Judge Judy” is provocative and thoughtful in a way people didn’t sit with enough. “I Killed You” will probably always be my favorite song on the album. Any record that can balance humor and pain around the Black hair journey has my heart.
The features are used well. “Sticky,” with GloRilla, Sexyy Red, and Lil Wayne, is one of the most exciting hip-hop moments of the year. And Lola Young/Doechii collabs showing up here is another reminder that Tyler has an eye for who’s about to matter.
Here’s the distinction I can’t ignore. Tyler is already rewarded by the Recording Academy. He doesn’t need pity votes. If Chromakopia wins, it’s because voters believe it’s the strongest album-level argument. And while this album is ambitious, emotionally resonant, and important to me personally, I don’t think it’s his most focused work. If I weren’t such a huge fan of Call Me If You Get Lost, there’s a version of reality where my emotional ties might push this higher. But when I step back, I don’t think it fully clears Tyler at his absolute best.
Why it’s here: timing matters, and this album met me in grief and held me there.
Why it isn’t my number one: meaning and mastery aren’t always the same thing, and this year I’m rewarding mastery.
If Tyler’s album met me in grief, Kendrick’s met the culture in confrontation.
2) GNX by Kendrick Lamar
Released November 22, 2024 · ~44 minutes
GNX does not exist in a vacuum. It arrives after the rap battle that rewired the culture in late November 2024, following a year where Kendrick owned the second half of the conversation. That context matters, because this album sounds like an artist who already understands how he’s perceived in his city, in the industry, and globally, and is choosing how to move with that power.
The sequencing is part of why I respect GNX so much. It opens beautifully with “wacced out murals,” setting the stage for perception and self-awareness, then slides into “squabble up” after teasing it earlier in the year. That song one to song two transition was one of the best I heard all year.
But the real reason I love this album is the writing. “Reincarnated” is my favorite Kendrick Lamar song, and it isn’t close. He distills lives, souls, judgment, purpose, and God-given gifts into four minutes and thirty-six seconds with barely a breath. It is end-to-end storytelling at its highest level.
On a more personal note, I was a huge Black Hippy fan. I always wondered why that collective never became what it could have been. “The Heart Pt 6” answers so many of those unanswered questions, and using an SWV vocal flip to unpack his rise, his relationships, and his own responsibility in how things played out is emotional accountability packaged as art. It’s my favorite “Heart,” and I’m not negotiating that.
Then there’s “gloria,” nearly five minutes of someone showing more commitment to craft than most people show in their relationships. Kendrick knows exactly how to collaborate and elevate voices like SZA without flattening them into decoration.
I love GNX. I love “reincarnated,” “squabble up,” “wacced out murals,” “gloria,” and “the heart pt. 6” so much that I can look past the tracks I like but don’t feel as deeply, like “hey now,” “dodger blue,” and “peekaboo.”
Why it’s here: some of Kendrick’s best writing and sequencing in years, delivered with authority.
Why it’s not my number one: even with all that greatness, I don’t think GNX is Kendrick’s best album, and in a year this strong, I’m voting for the album that feels most complete.
1) Let God Sort Em Out by Clipse
Released January 17, 2025 · ~49 minutes
For me, Rap Album of the Year starts with how an album opens, because the opening tells you what kind of conversation the artist thinks they’re having with you.
Let God Sort Em Out opens with a level of emotional maturity I never expected.
“The Birds Don’t Sing,” featuring John Legend and Voices of Fire, produced by Pharrell Williams, and written in part by Stevie Wonder, is about the last conversations you have with your parents before they die and what it means to live afterward.
That song hits me personally. My mom’s password to everything was some version of “MyTwoGirls,” for my sister and me. Hearing the detail about a dead father’s password being “ILoveMyTwoSons” doesn’t feel poetic. It feels exact. If you’ve lost a parent, especially both parents, that kind of specificity lands like memory. I’ve played that song in the mornings even when it hurt, because it’s healing to hear someone articulate the very particular grief of losing your heroes and what that does to siblinghood.
From there, the album never loses control. “Chains & Whips,” featuring Kendrick Lamar, is structural. Without that verse, this album doesn’t win. The same is true of Tyler on “P.O.V.”, and that feature matters because Tyler, an artist famous for doing whatever he wants, locks into Clipse’s discipline and shines within their constraints. That’s respect.
I was born and raised in Virginia. Watching Clipse perform this new material alongside “Virginia,” “Grindin’,” and “Keys Open Doors” is deeply validating. What they delivered in 2025 doesn’t feel nostalgic. It feels refined. Same hunger, sharper execution, deeper reflection.
Every feature is used correctly. Stove God Cooks, Nas, Ab-Liva, Pharrell again. No wasted placements. No wrong energy. The rhyme schemes don’t just hold for verses. They hold across entire songs. Even when a track isn’t my personal favorite, the rapping is so precise I can’t dismiss it.
That’s why it has to be Let God Sort Em Out for me.
Not because the other albums aren’t great.
But because this one feels like culmination, mastery meeting purpose, with nothing left unresolved.
Best Rap Performance (Quick Ballot)
5. Outside by Cardi B
Performance as event.
4. “Darling, I” by Tyler featuring Teezo Touchdown
Solid, but not the cut I would have chosen.
3. “tv off” by Kendrick featuring Lefty Gunplay
Makes sense, but not the strongest representative from GNX.
2. Anxiety by Doechii
Necessary, and yes, it would make some people mad.
1. “Chains & Whips” by Kendrick, Pharrell, and Pusha T
Capital P Performance. Built for the trophy.
After the show, we’ll be recording a Take It Personal episode reacting to what I got right, what I got wrong, and assigning one song from each Rap AOTY nominee to talk through what actually holds up once the lights are off.
No matter what happens tonight, I the music won. I said what I said. :)
What album met you where you were this year, even if it wasn’t “the best”?