THE DATA BEHIND THE RANKINGS
Trace every score.
A useful rankings database needs to show what its numbers mean—and where the source material is incomplete.
What the database contains
The 20 September 2026 snapshot contains 126 explicit scorecards from an archive of 551 published articles. Duplicate album reviews are grouped into 112 album entries. The remaining articles include biographies, news, analysis and reviews without a compatible scorecard. They are not silently assigned a rating.
Which number is used
The extraction reads explicitly labelled overall or final ratings out of ten from the site's own tables. Production subscores, sales, chart positions and ratings attributed to Metacritic, Pitchfork or other publications are not treated as our score. The source links and original score values remain attached to each album.
Scores are the published archive's opinions. Indexing them does not establish that every historical claim in those reviews has been independently fact-checked, or that a particular human listening process took place. A review with a material factual concern can be held out of rankings while it is checked.
Duplicates and disagreements
Repeated reviews of the same album produce one database entry. When all their overall scores agree, the shared score is usable. When they differ, the entry is marked “Conflicting scores” and receives no leaderboard position. We do not average contradictory reviews or silently choose the more favourable number.
Release years, labels and artist names
Metadata comes from the review's labelled album details. Where an album also has a checked Rap DNA catalogue record, that source establishes the release year and is linked in the notes. Known name variants, such as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Snoop Dogg, are grouped. Missing years and labels remain visibly unrecorded. Joint credits have separate hubs, and artist pages describe the reviewed catalogue rather than claiming a complete discography.
How leaderboards work
Only albums with an unambiguous usable score enter a ranking. Year and decade lists also require a recorded release year. Higher published scores appear first; equal scores share a competition rank, with alphabetical display order inside the tie. Selection reflects the albums the site has reviewed, so it should not be read as a survey of every release or a statistically representative assessment of an artist.
Reader votes are separate
Polls collect voluntary choices from visitors. Their results never alter the review scores and are not representative surveys. A reader can prefer one album while the archive scores another more highly.
Entries awaiting resolution
The following entries remain visible in the database but are excluded from leaderboards. Source reviews are preserved so the disagreement or concern can be examined.