Explore the best hip-hop concept albums of 2020, featuring standout releases with unique themes and narratives. Covering everything from personal stories and fictional worlds to cultural commentary and deeper explorations of society, these are the albums that stood out among the year's conceptual releases.
Manger on McNichols took over ten years to produce. Boldy is the epitome of the concept that from adversity and pain can blossom art. A number of recurring themes permeate the record, with one of the most potent being that of childhood, and by extension, parenting and Boldy’s own children. Even the title, with the use of the word “manger” brings to mind the visuals of a nativity scene, highlighting the birth of Jesus in a manger or stable, further emblematic of the record’s focus on birth, childhood, and religion. “I started seeing these themes of life and birth and death and rebirth. And who were are intrinsically versus who we’ve been conditioned to become. A lot of us are confined to or imprisoned by circumstance, and we’re in dire need of attempting to reclaim who we truly are.” – Sterling Toles
Like many of Ka’s previous albums, his seventh full-length project Descendants of Cain is themed around an existing body of stories – in this case, the Bible, and especially the book of Genesis – which makes parallels with his own life. Descendants of Cain likens the violence in ghettos to Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and draws on Biblical concepts of justice to indict the injustices of American society. The title can be read as a play on cocaine as well, another key theme of the album, as the cocaine trade provides the immediate context for many of the pictures Ka lyrically paints.
Serving as a “survival guide” for the spirit world, the album follows a narrator through an alternate world, including both “hallucinatory images of killer eels, magic spells, and people on the run” and “anecdotes, recipes, survival tips, warnings, maps, and drawings”
Armand Hammer is a duo from Backwoodz Studioz consisting of billy woods and Elucid. Themes of time and religion thread through Shrines and the skits fit way more in this concept of where we’re going as society and a critical view of nostalgia and religion. The past is seen in a distorted way to make it feel like it was better than it was when actually it was just as shitty as it is now. Their anti-establishment and ant-capitalist stance is firm throughout the album, Shrines acts as a dystopian yet truthful commentary on socioeconomic issues in America. This is also reflected in the album’s cover of Ming the Tiger, who was kept in an apartment in Harlem, NY, as themes of nature and containment are also prevalent. The natural world plays a significant role in this album..
Miles is about the concept of returning to your roots. Even the title Miles, reflective of the influential jazz musician Miles Davis, points to Blu’s origins as a hip-hop artist and African American. Miles charts Blu’s personal history before framing it as one small part of Black history at large.
This sequel album, Marlowe 2, sees our hero detective Marlowe under psychological evaluation. Doctors listen as Marlowe explains that the world consists of parallel worlds, and that the protagonist created a machine that can send people there, and went there himself. Marlowe tries to convince the doctors that the experience was real and that he has not gone insane.
On Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, the concept is simple: beats produced by Preservation are sourced entirely from records found in Hong Kong featuring (mostly) rappers from the United States.
Ajai is a collaboration between rapper Serengeti and producer Kenny Segal, and also is the name of the main character, who is a HUGE sneakerphile. Ajai’s obsession with both shoes and collabs ultimately unravels his life. Serengeti actually pulls double duty here, as he raps the other half of the album as a separate character, Kenny, as this album is also the ninth entry into the Kenny Dennis Saga. The two stories come together as the characters themselves intertwine. One of Ajai’s pair of shoes gets accidentally drop-shipped to Kenny Dennis. He happened to need some shoes too, cause his Brooks were devastatingly messed up, they had no traction or anything. So he puts them on, and walks outside, just going to the store, when he’s approached by another person, who asks to buy those shoes for $4,000 cash. He sells them to him, and that’s how he got his whole introduction to the hypebeast world.
The Koreatown Oddity dropped one of the best albums of 2020 with this concept that is more biographical than anything. TKO explains his life’s influence from two major car crashes when he was younger, which causes his titular chronic nosebleeds. His re-telling of the crashes through his lyricism is poignant and also funny, tying in other elements of his childhood and upbringing. The production is experimental and ambitious and done by The Koreatown Oddity himself.
Your Old Droog dives into his heritage and identity as a Ukranian-born immigrant with his 2020 release Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition. The album sounds like it’s sampled from traditional Jewish folk sounds as well as Soviet-era music, taking us on an Eastern European adventure. YOD even raps an entire song in Russian on the track Malchishka Krutoy. A lot of the lyrics and themes reference heritage, tradition, as well as upbringing. It’s lyrically dense, and while often likened to Nas and MF DOOM, Your Old Droog has a unique voice and perspective that he lets us in on.
Only for Dolphins is characterized by the presence of dolphins in almost every track. Conceptually, the project is inherently enthralling. Only for Dolphins’ soundscape makes you feel as though you’re laying on a exotic beach in a cabana, or riding down Calle Ocho in a drop-top convertible. “The dolphin is one of the most intelligent creatures ever created on whatever planet we’re on. They have their own way of communicating. They have nuance and intangibles like we do. The only people who understand me are those five-tool players, those higher beings who are on the same telepathic wave as me.” – Action Bronson
This serves as a thematic sequel to his 1998 album “Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front.” Similar to its predecessor, E.L.E. 2 is a concept album that delves into themes of societal collapse, apocalyptic scenarios, and the consequences of human actions. In E.L.E. 2, Busta Rhymes revisits the concept of an impending global catastrophe, exploring how the world has evolved since the release of the original album.
Snakes and Birds is a contemplation on the spiritual & mythological, nature vs. technology, personal evolution, and the power of thought and misinformation.
Aphelion’s Traveling Circus by Tennessee rapper Namir Blade takes place in Vertuni, a futuristic planet Blade created that-like Las Vegas or his native Nashville, aka “NashVegas” to some-thrives because of its entertainment district. In the album, a street seller offers Blade free tickets to a traveling circus created by a UniverSoul Circus descendant. “In the specific world where Aphelion’s Traveling Circus takes place, the powers that be fucked up the earth so bad that it was irreparable.” Namir Blade says in an interview with NPR. “People have to move into domes and shit. And what the rich did was they manufactured a planet to orbit the Earth to essentially give them all the comforts of being on earth without actually having to be on the planet…” “They left the quote unquote low-class citizens, the disenfranchised, on earth to essentially work in factories, to manufacture parts and components to keep this artificial planet afloat around the earth. They’re like, “Maybe if you work hard enough, you might be able to afford to come here and live with us.” “A lot of people in this particular universe, they were just like, “Alright, fuck it. We’ll do that. And then other people went to distant galaxies and distant planets to figure out who they were, which is something that I think is hella beautiful. Because despite the shitty circumstances on Earth, who’s to say that there isn’t another planet and another galaxy that has a lot of beauty in it, that can essentially just reconnect you with the wonder that you felt once upon a time, when Earth was a place that filled people with wonder. So it’s a dark future, but a lot of light overtones – I don’t completely give up on humanity.”
The concept behind FlySiifu’s allows the audience to be a ‘fly on the wall’ for a regular work day at FlySiifu’s Records & Tapes. In between tracks, we learn not much work is actually happening, as evidenced by the messages left on “Fly Siifu’s Voicemail.” The album mirrors their musical community, as they welcome guests into FlySiifu’s record store, with appearances from Liv.e, Fousheé, $ILKMONEY, and producers Madlib, Jay Versace, Ohbliv, Awhlee, Budgie, Playa Haze, Animoss, and more.
The second “issue” in the Magneto Was Right series. “The X-Men show is a direct analogy to the civil rights movement, and Magneto is based on Malcolm X, with Professor X being Martin Luther King Jr. Integration happened, and we still got police brutality, the propagation of self-hate.” “We are still dealing with white supremacy, so at the end of the day, Malcolm was right, we’d be better off doing our own thing instead of depending on the system to start treating us equally. Malcolm is based on Magneto. Magneto Was Right. It’s a more recognizable and digestible way of saying the same shit. I been saying for a long time: ‘Use your natural powers and free yourself.'” – Raz Fresco
Milestones is a conceptual EP where each song is a story that holds hands with the ones before and after it. It’s “all about my life as a kid, growing up with my father always in my life, and how that’s now shaped me as a father myself. It’s named “Milestones”, after my son Miles, and also signifying the milestones that us dads reach in life as we grow into fatherhood. This project is solely about growing Up with a dad, being a dad, and the importance of it all. To all the fathers out here who are lovingly and actively doing the work, this one is for us.” – Skyzoo
Spilligion has heavy religious themes and strives to encapsulate the current events of the period in which it was recorded, including the coronavirus pandemic and the protests of racial injustice and police brutality. Throughout the album, the group questions God’s actions and motives.
