Ranking Kendrick Lamar's Albums From Worst to Best

There’s no debating the fact that Kendrick Lamar has put together an incredible discography. In fact, it’s so strong it makes ranking his projects even more difficult than it would be for an equally great artist whose career has more obvious peaks and valleys.

Who can say, truly, how much better the contemporary coming-of-age movie Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is against the less replayable but deliciously complex To Pimp a Butterfly? DAMN. won a Pulitzer, but is it his best album? How high is too high for untitled unmastered, a collection of leftovers that is, in many ways, just as nourishing as some full-length official albums?

Where is it appropriate to rank an album like Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, considering the project’s intentionally raw, imperfect nature? And what do you do with an album like his latest, GNX, which features a meaner, grittier Kendrick than we're used to? These are challenging questions. Kendrick Lamar makes challenging albums. We did our best to do right by his catalog. These are Kendrick Lamar’s albums, ranked from worst to best.