In 1998, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick was selected as one of The Source's "100 Best Albums".[12] The album was retrospectively awarded a perfect "five-mic" score by the magazine in 2002.[9] In 2012, it was ranked at number 99 on Slant Magazine's list of "The 100 Best Albums of the 1980s".[13] In VH1's 2008 ranking of the "100 Greatest Hip Hop Songs", the single "Children's Story" placed at number 61.[14]
Hip hop artist Nas cites The Great Adventures of Slick Rick as one of his favorite albums.[15] In 2009, fellow rapper Busta Rhymes said of the album:
No artist before or since has painted pictures as vividly as Slick Rick did on that album. He embodied what it was to be a superstar: the over-the-top persona, the jewellery, the clothes, his swagger, charisma, attitude. He had that Londontwang and the mannerisms, but still had the 'hood mentality – the urban, edgy approach. Nobody else had that combination.[16]