Albums which have gone diamond

Compelling from start to end, this is less of an album as it is a chance to enter the psyche of Ms Lauryn Hill, providing a candid insight into her life, worldview, and the music that molded her into a peerless artist. To an entire subset of the audience who hung on his every word -- he essentially was hip-hop.

Amidst all of the fanfare, Marshall Mathers found himself saddled with controversy on all sides. Exasperated as a result, The Eminem Show harnessed the chaotic energy that arose from his world becoming a media circus and deployed it in ways that purposefully shocked -- all while placing a magnifying glass on some of America's pressing societal issues.

Where this record becomes a gauge from which all other hip-hop projects can be judged is that for a brief spell in history, these two innovators held the mainstream in the palm of their hands. All without ever compromising, dialing back, or deterring themselves from creating the art that they loved. By Robert Blair. A comprehensive guide to hip-hop's diamond-certified canon, which includes albums from Eminem, 2Pac, The Notorious B.

G, and Lauryn Hill. Sign in with. Thanks for sharing! Short Code. Pepper -- an album of dubious conceptual coherence but obvious sonic fluency, with peaks and valleys and an epic climax that remains unmatched in rock history.

Life After Death posthumously turned the Notorious B. The country-pop crossover album that even made Garth sound like Steve Earle with its Mutt Lange-blessed largesse. I Feel Like a Woman! Recently celebrating its 40th birthday and taken out on tour by its composer a couple years back, Songs in the Key of Life has the essential vitality to always bubble back up to the forefront of discussion.

An EMP of negative energy unleashed by one man on his wife, his mother, his label, his fans, and -- last and absolutely least -- himself. The Marshall Mathers LP might stand as the last album to really make parents feel like one artist could single-handedly bring about the end of Western Civilization, and Eminem made his apocalyptic case with humor, hooks, and some of the most creative wordplay hip-hop has ever seen, creating a savage and frequently inexcusable masterpiece of not giving a f Your favorite song will never be the same from listen-to-listen, nor will your least favorite, but the overall stew is so rich that at a certain point you stop comparing bites anyway.

Sure, the six Bee Gees songs are all beyond-classic, but Saturday Night Fever endures as the definitive document of the disco era and ranks way higher here than Bodyguard because of how superlative the rest of it is, too. A soundtrack that actually makes for a more coherent cinematic experience than the film it accompanies, Purple Rain is certainly in contention for the most perfect album in rock or pop history, expertly flowing from track to track while delighting, surprising and astounding at each bend.

Search term. Billboard Pro Subscribe Sign In. Top Artists. Top Charts. Hot Songs. Billboard Top Videos. Top Articles. Billboard Lists. By Andrew Unterberger. Copied to clipboard. Click to copy. Artists Mentioned. Kenny G, Breathless , 12x Platinum Some day, a smooth-jazz scholar will make the rounds informing us about why Kenny G was actually a genre innovator and stealth underground influence, shaming us for all the thoughtless jokes made at his expense over the years.

Nickelback, All the Right Reasons , 10x Platinum All the Right Reasons opens with the not-misleadingly titled "Follow You Home," featuring singer Chad Kroeger's promise that trying to murder him would merely slow down his stalking efforts, and follows that with "Fight for All the Wrong Reasons," in which Kroeger testifies that he'd leave his toxic relationship of "favorable slavery" if only his girlfriend would stop going down on him.

Santana, Supernatural , 15x Platinum The least-likely blockbuster LP of the TRL era, with a thenyear-old Carlos Santana riding two Hot topping, big-name-featuring smashes to sales that not even Britney and Backstreet could match. Shania Twain, Up! Hootie and the Blowfish, Cracked Rear View , 16x Platinum A solid power-pop album -- just one whose genial frat-rock veneer blankets any underlying urgency or desperation. Kid Rock, Devil Without a Cause , 11x Platinum Regardless of your feelings about young Robert James Ritchie, how many artists can say they were instrumental in the rise of both nu-metal and Auto-Tune?

Britney Spears, Oops! REO Speedwagon, Hi Infidelity , 10x Platinum Strewn with AOR classics, no doubt, but for a band who's become close to synonymous with overblown stadium rock, you might be surprised by how frisky this set is -- whether REO is mixing power pop with Bo Diddley on "Don't Let Him Go," or throwing back to the girl group era with falsetto to match! Norah Jones, Come Away With Me , 10x Platinum Jazzy enough to be released on Blue Note records, Come Away With Me hardly fits the usual bill as a Diamond album, but became enough of a sensation for its smooth sailing that it swept the Grammys and sold eight digits.

Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell , 14x Platinum A stirred-up cauldron of Wagner, Spector and Andrew Lloyd Webber whose brew was potent enough to make an overweight, overzealous theater kid a rock god for at least one album. Pearl Jam, Ten , 13x Platinum Ten was the sound of a grunge-era Seattle band that actually wanted to still be around a quarter-century later, and was willing to create the songs to merit such longevity.

Eagles, Hotel California , 16x Platinum The least fun that becoming the biggest band in the world has ever sounded, a mess of existential banality, contorted metaphors and vaguely hellish riffs.

No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom 10x Platinum, The national introduction of spunk-punk superstar Gwen Stefani could do with 10 percent less bloat and 20 percent less self-seriousness, certainly.

Eminem, The Eminem Show 10x Platinum, More self-aware than Marshall Mathers , if not necessarily funnier: Eminem's third act asked that you finally pay some attention to the man behind the curtain.

Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill , 16x Platinum Jagged Little Pill may be the most undeniably human album to ever sell eight digits; a pigeonhole-proof statement from an artist who broke out with the bloodiest post-breakup anthem ever inspired by a Full House alum, and who turned her schizophrenic creativity into one of the cuddliest videos of the decade.

Taylor Swift, Fearless , 10x Platinum Taylor earned the title of her sophomore blockbuster with a collection of still-country-leaning pop-rock treasure maps that alternately engaged and disavowed her adolescent fantasies, playing the everygirl without obscuring the cunning and brilliance that allowed her to achieve a peerless level of self-realized success for an artist her age. Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U. Green Day, Dookie , 10x Platinum No blistering collection of paeans to youthful aimlessness has ever ended up foisting such a sense of purpose on a band — within a decade of Dookie conquering suburban America, Green Day were making rock operas protesting the Bush Administration.

Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin II , 12x Platinum The album that cemented Zeppelin as the band that all future rock bands would at some point want to be; the quartet should get a yearly stipend from Sam Ash and Guitar Center. Notorious B. Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life , 10x Platinum Recently celebrating its 40th birthday and taken out on tour by its composer a couple years back, Songs in the Key of Life has the essential vitality to always bubble back up to the forefront of discussion.

Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP , 10x Platinum An EMP of negative energy unleashed by one man on his wife, his mother, his label, his fans, and -- last and absolutely least -- himself. Various Artists, Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack , 16x Platinum Sure, the six Bee Gees songs are all beyond-classic, but Saturday Night Fever endures as the definitive document of the disco era and ranks way higher here than Bodyguard because of how superlative the rest of it is, too.

Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain , 13x Platinum A soundtrack that actually makes for a more coherent cinematic experience than the film it accompanies, Purple Rain is certainly in contention for the most perfect album in rock or pop history, expertly flowing from track to track while delighting, surprising and astounding at each bend.