Kendrick Lamar's 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly holds a 96 on Metacritic, which aggregates scores from major newspapers, magazines, and digital publishers. According to DJBooth citing Metacritic data, this makes it the highest-rated rap album of all time on the platform — a benchmark no other hip-hop record has matched.
By comparison, good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), while critically acclaimed and commercially dominant with over 10 million U.S. album-equivalent units (Diamond-eligible), scores lower on Metacritic than To Pimp a Butterfly. Section.80, Kendrick's debut, only recently went Platinum after 13 years — making it one of his least commercially successful releases.
DAMN. (2017) further cemented Kendrick's critical legacy by winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first ever awarded to a rapper, and is reported as his biggest-selling album globally. Across both critical and commercial metrics, To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN. clearly surpass good kid, m.A.A.d city and Section.80 in at least one dimension.