The Best Houston Rap Albums

How Houston am I? I spent my earliest years in a shotgun-style house off Wallisville Road and Wayside Drive, in the working-class Mexican-American neighborhood of Denver Harbor. Just across the Union Pacific railroad tracks lay the famous—and sometimes infamous—Fifth Ward. It was there, in earshot of that cultural epicenter, that I first witnessed the emergence of Houston’s biggest cultural export: hip-hop. My initiation came by way of a cassette of Grip It! On That Other Level by the then–Ghetto Boys, sparking a lifelong love for H-Town hip-hop. I won’t claim to be an expert, but I am unapologetically a fan—and I was a lifelong Houstonian until I left for the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021. Every day since, I’ve missed Houston’s unmatched diversity, affordability, its unapologetic commitment to cultural roots, its summers and its superior Mexican food. But above all, I miss the music. Houston’s reputation as a hip-hop powerhouse was decades in the making: from the earliest days of Rap-A-Lot Records to the city’s mid-2000s chart-topping explosion and the forward-thinking wave of artists shaping it now. That distinctive sound—the low-slung bass, slowed-down hooks and uncut narratives—sets Houston apart from every other rap city. Plenty of Houston rappers have...