One other thing that's been percolating in my mind as I read these reviews
Deep Thought: All the reviewers want to name-check Illmatic, but if they'd been reviewing in 94, what would they have said about Illmatic?
You know what I mean? It's easy for me in any genre decades later to say "X's new album doesn't meet their [debut classic]", but if I had listened to their classic debut without knowing it's a classic, what would my take have been?
I submit that when you take half these reviewers, as persons, and put them in 1994, they wouldn't have been raving about Illmatic. The people who mention Jay-Z now would have been mentioning Snoop then.. same sh1t