Top 20 Greatest L.A. Rap Albums Of All Time: 15-11

Editor's note: For our music issue, out on Thursday, Ian Cohen, Rebecca Haithcoat, Jeff Weiss and Ben Westhoff run down the top 20 L.A. rap albums of all time. We're unveiling the list all this week on West Coast Sound.

15. Suga Free
Street Gospel
How do you speak pimp? Let Suga Free learn you something. Imagine if Katt Williams could rap like E-40 and had beats from DJ Quik at his absolute apogee. Then picture the parchment-skinned Pomona player, all crisp linen suits, with a flow as dizzyingly aerial as a paper plane in a monsoon. Suga Free would never hit a woman but he'd slap the shit out of a bitch. He is L.A.'s Iceberg Slim. Even if the stories aren't pretty, Suga Free is, and he will let you know as much. You'd be better off listening to Street Gospel than reading The Game. -Jeff Weiss

14. Ice Cube
Amerikkka's Most Wanted
After the contentious breakup of N.W.A, Ice Cube decamped to New York and enlisted Public Enemy's producers the Bomb Squad for his debut, Amerikkka's Most Wanted. On the work he seems fueled by the change of scenery and invigorated by the fast-paced funk production; having mostly eschewed overt political commentary with N.W.A, he changes course on this album, narrowing his anger, focusing his lyrics and criticizing both black and white America for the inner city's problems. "Once Upon a Time in the Projects," meanwhile, is a searing, sobering look at what it means to be black and broke. -Rebecca Haithcoat

13. Dr. Dre
2001
What's the best-selling Dr. Dre album, again? Oh yeah, 2001, which may not have defined the keys-and-chronic aesthetic like its predecessor, but it damn near perfected it. Now 12 years old, the album sounds nothing like other best-sellers from its bloated era, but rather like an endless string of perfectly conceived trash-talking anthems. The dream team of Dre, Eminem, Snoop, D.O.C., Xzibit, Kurupt and Nate Dogg (along with the oddly ubiquitous Hittman) effectively walks the line of menacing and comical, demanding their respect from the critics (and ladies) who'd deny it. -Ben Westhoff

12. The Game
Doctor's Advocate
Dr. Dre's presence looms so large over this list that he's responsible for one of its entries despite not showing up for it. The Game was alienated from just about everyone responsible for his multiplatinum (and far less interesting) debut, The Documentary, and thus Doctor's Advocate finds him going all Falling Down on the rap game. Believing that he hasn't got shit to lose, he offers up an absolutely frightening and joyless spree of vengeance. Equally suited to '64 Impalas or doctoral dissertations for psychology students, it's the single greatest album entirely about one man's abandonment issues. -Ian Cohen