# What is the best jazz-rap album of all time?

> Where hip-hop meets jazz improvisation and live instrumentation — vote for the best album that blends these two iconic American art forms.

*By YPB Team · Published April 17, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-jazz-rap-album-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory**
   ATCQ's 1991 landmark that wove jazz bass lines into hip-hop beats, the blueprint for all jazz-rap to follow.
2. **Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly**
   Kendrick's 2015 jazz-funk masterpiece featuring live musicians including Thundercat and Kamasi Washington.
3. **Digable Planets – Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)**
   Digable Planets' 1993 debut that embodied cool jazz aesthetics with conscious hip-hop rhymes.
4. **Guru – Jazzmatazz Vol. 1**
   Gang Starr's Guru collaborating with live jazz musicians in 1993 to create the definitive jazz-rap fusion statement.
5. **Gang Starr – Step in the Arena**
   Gang Starr's 1991 second album that refined DJ Premier's jazz-sampling production into an influential template.
6. **Gang Starr – Daily Operation**
   Gang Starr's 1992 album featuring Premier's peak jazz sampling and Guru's composed street wisdom.
7. **Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul Brother**
   Pete Rock and CL Smooth's 1992 debut that melded soulful jazz samples with smooth introspective rhymes.
8. **De La Soul – Buhloone Mindstate**
   De La Soul's 1993 album featuring actual jazz musician appearances and a more mature jazz-inflected sound.
9. **Us3 – Hand on the Torch**
   Us3's 1993 debut that sampled directly from Blue Note Records' jazz catalog to create mainstream jazz-rap crossover hits.
10. **The Roots – Things Fall Apart**
   The Roots' 1999 live-instrument hip-hop album incorporating jazz improvisation and social commentary.
11. **Mos Def – Black on Both Sides**
   Yasiin Bey's 1999 debut featuring jazzy instrumentation and wide-ranging intellectual hip-hop.
12. **Common – One Day It'll All Make Sense**
   Common's 1997 album featuring collaborations with Erykah Badu and a jazz-soul approach to hip-hop.
13. **Rapsody – Laila's Wisdom**
   Rapsody's 2017 Grammy-nominated album laced with jazz instrumentals and sharp feminist lyrical craft.
14. **Madvillain – Madvillainy**
   MF DOOM and Madlib's 2004 abstract masterpiece drawing on jazz, soul, and underground hip-hop.

Tags: hip-hop, music, jazz, rap