Illmatic by Nas

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Aretha Franklin

The Queen of Soul gets the R-E-S-P-E-C-T she deserves.

When Aretha Franklin made the decision to pursue a career in secular music after getting her start singing gospel, she knew she wanted to be a crossover artist. She even took the step of signing with Columbia Records’ John Hammond, the guru who’d discovered Bob Dylan—and who would later sign Bruce Springsteen.

Franklin would release nine albums with Columbia before moving to Atlantic Records and working with producer Jerry Wexler, the legendary record man who, alongside his partner Ahmet Ertegun, signed and recorded the greatest R&B artists of the 1950s and 1960s. The first record in this partnership, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, opens with Aretha’s signature, definitive take on Otis Redding’s “Respect”—a version so dynamic, Redding had no choice but to acknowledge its superiority.

“What I love about [‘Respect’] is it’s not just saying, ‘Give me respect.’ It’s demanding respect…She was unapologetically the Queen.”

Nicki Minaj

This would turn out to be the right sound for the right artist at the right time with the right songs, many of which she had co-written—including “Dr. Feelgood,” “Baby, Baby, Baby,” and “Don’t Let Me Lose This Dream.” After years in the music industry, Franklin finally had her first smash hit, and an otherworldly singer became the Queen of Soul.

Illmatic

Nas

Guttural, jazz-heavy hip-hop that defined the NYC sound in the ’90s.

Four tracks into his debut album, Nas told listeners, “The world is yours”—but he was wrong. In fact, the world belonged to Nas himself, a New York rap prodigy hailing from the talent-rich Queensbridge housing projects. And while Illmatic was immediately recognized as a gem by those in the know, its impact on hip-hop at large would only fully be appreciated in the years following.

“There are rhyme schemes on there that most rappers to this day can’t do.”

Eminem

Nas introduces turns of phrase and perspective previously unheard within the art form: “My mic check is life or death, breathing a sniper’s breath/I exhale the yellow smoke of buddha through righteous steps,” he spits on “It Ain’t Hard to Tell.” Illmatic’s sample-heavy sound comes courtesy of a dream team of production talent—DJ Premier, Large Professor, Q-Tip, Pete Rock, and L.E.S.— a lineup that helped break a long-standing tradition of single-producer hip-hop albums. Together they present a unified vision of the murky, guttural, jazz-heavy hip-hop that would come to define the ’90s New York sound.

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You

Illmatic