Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	A−
Los Angeles Times
The New York Times	(favorable)
Rolling Stone
The Source
Trouser Press	(favorable)
Virgin Encyclopedia

One for All is the debut album by American hip hop group Brand Nubian. It was released by Elektra Records on December 4, 1990. The album was highly acclaimed for its politically charged and socially conscious content. Sales never matched the wide acclaim — the album has only sold 350,000 copies as of May 2013 — but it has remained in print since its 1990 release.

The album is mainly produced by Brand Nubian, but it also features production by Skeff Anselm, Stimulated Dummies, and Dave "Jam" Hall. The album's production contains many motifs of hip hop's golden age including James Brown-sampled breakbeats and funky R&B loops. The album is broken down track-by-track by Brand Nubian in Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique.

One for All charted at number 130 on the U.S. Billboard 200, spending 28 weeks on the chart. It also reached number 34 on the Billboard Top Black Albums chart, on which it spent 40 weeks. Alex Henderson of Allmusic writes of the album's commercial performance, "In black neighborhoods of New York and Philadelphia, [One for All] was actually a bigger seller than many of the platinum gangsta rap releases outselling it on a national level."

One for All was a critical success upon its release.Los Angeles Times writer Steve Hochman called it "an impressive debut" and commended "the power of the lessons delivered with style and creativity", stating "There's a playful ease to this record recalling the colorful experiments of De La Soul, and there's as much sexual boasting as Islamic teaching."Jon Pareles of The New York Times described the album as "a peculiar merger of sexual boasting, self-promotion and occasional political perspective." J the Sultan of The Source gave it the publication's maximum five-mike rating and wrote that it "overflows with creativity, originality, and straight-up talent. [...] the type of record that captures a whole world of music, rhymes and vibes with a completely new style." In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave On for All an A- rating, indicating "the kind of garden-variety good record that is the great luxury of musical micromarketing and overproduction. Anyone open to its aesthetic will enjoy more than half its tracks." He commented that "most black-supremacist rap sags under the burden of its belief system just like any other ideological music," but quipped, "This Five Percenter daisy-age is warm, good-humored, intricately interactive—popping rhymes every sixth or eighth syllable, softening the male chauvinism and devil-made-me-do-it with soulful grooves and jokes fit for a couch potato."

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