In honor of the project's 30th anniversary, we talk about and rank each song from Reasonable Doubt's original pressing.
Portrait of American rapper and music executive Jay Z as he sits behind a desk in his lower Manhattan office, New York, New York, April 1996. (Photo by Nitro/Getty Images)
Nitro/Getty Images
Don’t let these nerds lie to you.
Yes, this album was slept on by the greater public when it was first released, but for a certain demographic in the Tri-State area, it was basically gospel upon release. It peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 about a month after it dropped, spent 18 weeks on the chart and reached platinum status in 2002, so there was certainly a slow burn there. However, fans and rappers alike didn’t care about charts and sales like the do now; what they appreciated about the Brooklyn rapper and his Roc-A-Fella clique was their road to independence and their eventual chart and industry dominance.
