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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

10 No-Skip Hip-Hop and R&B Albums That Are Officially Old Enough to Drink

Noisey looks back at the classic hip-hop and R&B albums of 2005, which are officially old enough to legally drink.

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2005 was quietly one of the greatest years in hip-hop history. The South started tightening its grip on the culture, while still leaving room for acts like Common and Kanye West to release timeless classics. Additionally, R&B was in a good space, with Mariah Carey dominating the charts and Chris Brown rising rapidly as one of the genre’s defining artists at just 16 years old.

For us 90s kids and older, this is going to make you feel extremely old: 2005 was 21 years ago. People born that year can officially drink a beer with the rest of us. Now that you’re feeling especially archaic, Noisey has selected ten no-skip hip-hop and R&B albums from 05 that’ll hopefully make you feel a bit better about aging.

Ten Classic Hip-Hop and R&B Albums That Turn 21 Years Old This Year

Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101 by Young Jeezy

One of the quintessential albums if you ever visit Atlanta. Trap music may have been coined by T.I. and birthed from “Pocket Full of Stones”-era UGK, but Thug Motivation 101 embodied its grittiness the best. A sizzling monument to excess, where Jeezy’s wheezy, simple rapping made for endlessly quotable lines. My favorite lately is, “I see opportunity, I’m a opportunist/N***a ya heard what I said, I’m a opportunist.”

Tha Carter II by Lil Wayne

Tha Carter III may have been massive enough to make Lil........

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