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Kendrick Lamar’s favourite albums of the 1990s

Thu 6 November 2025 15:00, UK

There can be a special quality to the songs and albums that we grew up with, and the best of them can have a tendency to stick with us for the rest of our lives. For Kendrick Lamar, who was born in 1987, that means the music of the ’90s holds a very special place in his heart. Many of the albums released that decade are among his very favourites.

Speaking to Complex about his 25 favourite albums back in 2012, Kendrick’s list was firmly rooted in the ’90s, with 21 of the 25 deriving from the decade. There were classic names in there alongside some slightly more obscure ones, but each artist, clearly, left their mark on the musician that Kendrick would one day become.

Like so many others born and raised in Compton, Kendrick had a big love for Ice Cube, and particularly for his 1991 album Death Certificate. Kendrick would only have been three or four when that came out, but he nonetheless remembers it being played a lot in his house. He obviously didn’t appreciate at that age how important the album was for the wider hip-hop community, but it still soaked into his consciousness. “I’m sure it was a big influence, just what he talked about,” he noted. “Cube talked about a lot of stuff that was going on in the world as well. He blended that into the streets and it was really from a raw standpoint. That’s why I like that the most.”

Kendrick didn’t take sides in the NWA split, and he also fell in love with the music of Dr Dre. Both The Chronic from 1992 and 2001 from ’99 were huge albums for Kendrick, with The Chronic representing the first album that he remembers listening to “from top to bottom.” He was obviously older when 2001 came out, and this he recalls vividly. “I remember ripping the packaging for that CD, my pops had brung it,” he recalled. “I just remember him playing it all day just for months, for months for months for months. For months. Got attached to it. And years later he’s still playing it so that’s how I know it’s an actual classic.”

2Pac was a huge figure for the young Kendrick, too, with Me Against The World, All Eyez on Me, and The Don Killuminati: The 7-Day Theory all being among his favourite albums of all time. But, as he mentioned to Complex, he listened to them so much that he could get them mixed up. “You know what’s crazy about these Tupac albums?” he said. “These three records, Me Against The World, All Eyez On Me, and Makaveli [The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory] was played so much that you start mixing up what songs was on what album because there was so much in heavy rotation. With the older songs and the newer songs, they were played so much in the household… All of them really were in heavy rotation. That’s all we knew in the house.”

Clearly as a Compton native, West Coast hip-hip was a huge part of Kendrick’s life. But that’s not to say he ignored the East Coast. He loved Biggie, too, listening to Ready To Die and Life After Death a lot, admiring, above all else, Biggie’s ability to tell a story. “The one thing about West Coast music, we had storytelling, it wasn’t crazy in-depth like that, but we had it. Our stuff was more laid back, more flow and feel good, more how records felt. His was just grimy. Stories was crazy. Flows was crazy.”

That’s not to say that the East-West feud wasn’t on his mind as a kid, because it was. That’s why it took him a while to find Jay-Z and his album Reasonable Doubt from ’96, but, once he did, he loved that, too. “I got into Reasonable Doubt like 2002, 2001,” he remembered. “I was super late. On the West Coast we weren’t really playing East Coast music like that just because of all the beef stuff that was going on—we was really influenced by that. I’m like 9, 10, 11 years old. I don’t wanna listen to nothing on the East Coast.”