Billboard named The College Dropout the second best album of 2004. Rhapsody named it the seventh best album of the decade and the fourth best hip hop album of the decade. In 2005, Pitchfork named it No. 50 in their best albums of 2000–2004. In 2006, the album was named by Time as one of the 100 best albums of all time. In its retrospective 2007 issue, XXL named it one of the magazine's "XXL"-rated releases; this perfect rating had previously been given by the magazine to only sixteen other albums. In 2012, Complex named the album one of the classic albums of the last decade, and the 20th best hip hop debut album ever. Dagsavisen listed the album eleventh in its list of the top forty albums of the 2000s decade. The album was also included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. NME placed the album at 273 on its 2013 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, while Rolling Stone ranked it at 74 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2020. Industry awards Influence The College Dropout sparked a resurgence of socially conscious rap in the mid 2000s, arriving at a time when pop rap was saturated with songs featuring product placement and intensely violent lyrics, epitomized by rappers like 50 Cent, Nelly, Ja Rule, Ludacris, and P. Diddy. West instead created a space in the mainstream for rappers to express themselves and black identity without resorting to hip hop's prevalent theme of gang culture. Raul Verma of The Independent said "West is charged with proving mainstream hip hop has a conscience with his nourishing messages of substance flying in the face of the amoral majority perpetuating clichés of guns, girls and bling", while Vibe senior editor Noah Callahan-Bever argued that West's infusion of "pop sensibility" into his otherwise progressive hip hop had "bridged the gap" and encouraged rappers to gravitate more towards the center between mainstream and alternative forms. Today commented that "The College Dropout, stood out in the rap landscape because of its atypical prose. It avoided the usual plotlines about sex, money and violence and touched on everything from his faith to his fears of failure and other crises from his life." According to DJBooth journalist Brad Callas, the album also "helped solidify chipmunk soul as not only the defining sound of