Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of hip hop albums considered to be influential


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. The most common deletion argument, that the article is an improper synthesis collecting albums from different types of lists that do not focus on "influence" as such, does not appear to have been changed or refuted. RL0919 (talk) 03:06, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

List of hip hop albums considered to be influential

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Inclusion criteria for this list are necessarily arbitrary, contrary to WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Tagged as a WP:ESSAY since 2019, which policy it also arguably fails. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:45, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Music-related deletion discussions. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:45, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 00:45, 25 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete WP:SYNTH of published lists, which might also violate Copyright in lists. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 01:16, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment: This might be salvageable if it were renamed List of hip hop albums regarded as the best or something similar, but I'd absolutely understand if other editors disagree with that idea... my point is that nowhere in this article is the idea of being "influential" demonstrated, it seems to be simply a list of albums generally regarded as the best in this music genre, kind of a "100 Hip Hop Albums You Must Hear" list. That itself opens the door to a whole lot of debate and edit warring – just off the top of my head I could argue for the inclusion of Liquid Swords, Things Fall Apart, Black on Both Sides, AmerKKKa's Most Wanted, O.G. Original Gangster, All Eyez on Me, and I'm sure there are others that can justifiably claim to be influential hip hop albums. The commentary is either original research or comments lifted straight from the sources, and the sources seem pretty arbitrary as well – Pitchfork and Paste have both done "best albums" lists specifically for hip hop, but these have been overlooked while generalized "best albums" lists from Mixmag (an electronic dance music publication) and NME (mostly guitar music) are included. Even if kept this almost needs a complete WP:TNT. Richard3120 (talk) 02:40, 25 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete per nom. Waddles 🗩 🖉 02:46, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Albums and songs-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 05:58, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment Prior voters, please take a look at the significant trim just performed and reconsider. I agree with some of the points above. For years this article was stable and not full of gushing rambling, or just a mouthpiece for Peter Shapiro. But Robvanvee and I seemed to be the only ones keeping it tidy and we've fallen behind it seems. Yes, this article does attract a lot of drive-by fancrufting, but so do thousands of others. I disagree with some above, because Wikipedia has many established articles like List of films considered the best that is akin to. Not arguing OSE but there's a great many high-traffic high-visibility articles that are these list-dependent "survey" articles that aren't alleged copyvios or nommed for deletion. Cheers, JesseRafe (talk) 18:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:SYNTH. The lede explaining the rubric for inclusion is WP:ORIGINAL and verges on WP:FANCRUFT. This article is fairly similar but I would argue should probably be deleted too and doesn't give precedent. Vladimir.copic (talk) 07:24, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete Unless the is an actual stard definition given to "being influential" this is clearly NPOV rules non-compliant.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:58, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per violating everything that is holy. --Muhandes (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2021 (UTC) While much work was done on the article, "being influential" is still not a viable topic. Most sources used are about the best albums, which is not the same as being influential. --Muhandes (talk) 18:11, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Keep The article in its current state is holding to its stated form, that the albums are on the mainstream lists and the lists are what they purport to be, not best of the year or the like. JesseRafe (talk) 18:01, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment (nom). 's edits seem to have reformulated this list along the lines suggested by above. If this were simply moved to List of hip hop albums regarded as the best or similar, that might negate my concern about arbitrariness. I only say "might" because I am still concerned about indiscriminate picking and choosing of "best of" lists. (A concern that goes for List of films considered the best and List of novels considered the greatest as well.) AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 18:40, 25 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:SYNTH and WP:POV. Ajf773 (talk) 08:56, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment 2 - So I read the talk page for the first time, and ~12 years ago an IP intentionally modeled the structure of the article on List of prominent operas, which still uses that same "arbitrary" criteria of needing to be named on the majority of the lists consulted. I think the problem here is two-fold, one, opera is static and the lists won't change year-over-year, two, this article really should be moved to "...best" (plurality of critics) not "influential" (nebulous, lends to personal subjectivity or academic navel-gazing like the 3 dozen quotes from Shapiro). I don't know why every one of these film, novel, album, opera etc lists need their own superlative in the title space, but the creator of the article hasn't edited since the aughts. I would boldly move it myself, but don't want to obfuscate this discussion. I think if we used the opera model, and stuck to notable lists, e.g. RS's Top 500 albums was widely covered as news itself, not some indie blog's year-end rankings. Also, note that this article gets mid-hundreds views per day. It comes up high on search engines (as do the best films, novels, etc) so it's a topic (that is if we change it to "best) that's both written about and sought out. JesseRafe (talk) 13:00, 26 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd still consider WP:TNT. --Muhandes (talk) 14:06, 26 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Delete By its very construction, this list is pure WP:SYNTH. There are places on the internet where constructing a list in this way would be appropriate, but Wikipedia is not one of them. I think 's comparison with List of films considered the best is a bit misguided, because that list is constructed in an entirely different way—the inclusion criteria there is that each film must have been voted the best in a notable poll. Using polls rather than lists and only counting the top entry from each rather than all entries makes a lot of difference (though I personally think that list should have a slightly higher threshold for inclusion). That being said, I'm not exactly unbiased since I have been quite heavily involved in editing the film list and discussing the entries and inclusion criteria on its talk page. Maybe it would be possible and appropriate to construct a hip hop list in the same way as the film list, but that would be a fundamentally different list than the one under discussion and would need to be constructed from scratch. TompaDompa (talk) 00:54, 29 August 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. <b style="color:red">Please do not modify it.</b> Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.