Feb. 13, 1996, Is the Greatest Release Day in Hip-Hop History. Yes, I Said It.

On the same day Tupac dropped “All Eyez On Me,” the Fugees gave us “The Score”—two multimillion-selling albums, two cultural earthquakes and one random Tuesday that changed everything.

(Death Row-Interscope; Ruffhouse-Columbia)

Like most self-described hip-hop heads who came of musical age in the 1990s, Sept. 29, 1998, is a magical day. It’s long been considered the last great hip-hop release date, with some calling it the greatest release date in hip-hop history. On that day, we got the following albums: Outkast’s Aquemini, Jay-Z’s Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement, Brand Nubian’s Foundation, and last, but certainly not least, Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star, by, obviously, Mos Def and Talib Kweli. That day is etched in my mind with such fandom and joy that I can remember where I purchased all those albums (Audrey’s on the campus of Clark Atlanta University) and even remember being robbed of three of them (Outkast, Jay-Z and Tribe) by my crackhead next-door neighbor that evening. True story.

But time and distance have a way of correcting the record. For instance, while that day was amazing at the time, history has shown that only Aquemini was the landmark album of the release. You can make an argument about Vol. 2 or even Black Star, but there are definitely bigger hip-hop fish to fry. I’d even argue that Nov. 13, 1993, was more significant, as that was the day that we got two indisputable classics in A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders and Wu-Tang Clan’s game-changing debut, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

There is, however, a historic day that often gets overlooked as the likely greatest release day in hip-hop: Feb. 13, 1996. For it was on that date that we were granted two of the biggest, most omnipresent and ballyhoo’d albums in not just hip-hop but music history: the Fugees’ The Score and 2Pac’s All Eyez On Me. Yes, you read that right; two of hip-hop’s highest-selling albums—authentically hip-hop albums—were released on the same day, and if you were alive in 1996 and old enough to be into hip-hop, you probably had one, if not both, of those albums.