I worshipped The Wu through most of High School. I think that's why I'm so into rappers with expressive voices, because there were so many different, incredible voices in that album. Also definitely threw me into at least one or two Kung Fu movie runs, plus OB4CL getting me into John Woo movies.
nowhere close to shitty, but ever so slightly closer than the first three (and I'm not counting Idlewild in that all, mainly cause I watched the movie once and then decided not to bother with the soundtrack at all)
Amen to that. Honestly I really hate these lists because it's always the sort of White, British or American rock-centered perspective to music, but they feel the need to call it a definitive GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME EVER, as if there's no such thing as subjective taste and they've listened to all the music produced by anyone and ranked them all in order. I mean, they barely even put in music outside of the whole New York/LA axis if we're talking about the U.S. How about Chicago House and Detroit Techno (things which blew up like crazy in Britain in their time)? or Houston rap? or The Meters? or more than one Al Green album? In the same way as you were saying, they'll praise British House dudes who were inspired by Chicago, without acknowledging Chicago at all.
Honestly, the Stankonia choice pisses me off because they picked the two OutKast albums that are closest to being shitty (that one and Speakerboxx/Love Below) over ATLiens or Aquemini.
The obsession that some rock critics have with Love Below is the worst. I mean they called Andre adventurous for making an album of sub-par Prince imitations instead of making the actually innovative rap music he did earlier, and now he's off trying to be an actor or shaving his face for commercials.
The thing I hate most about these stupid rock magazine lists is how they always include a few totally misplaced albums from genres they don't actually know shit about. When I read a list from Decibel, I feel good about it because it's obvious they're only writing about the music that they actually give a fuck about.
These NME/Rolling Stone/whatever lists always place some bullshit token Rap/R&B/Electronic/Metal/Jazz albums in some lower place so they seem broad-minded but always at a lower position than their bullshit rock gods. Any Magazine that can count to 500 albums without getting to Soul Food, or Ridin' Dirty, or any Scarface album has no right to talk about Rap at all. Any Magazine that counts to 400 without getting to Otis Blue should probably leave R&B alone.
I don't know if that's a joke or not, but Lil B makes a lot of Ambient Drone Rap, and now half of the Rap Internet copies his style. Though if you're talking without a beat then there's just his Rain in England tape, which wasn't great. 6 Kiss is the place to start and a great album/mixtape/whatever.
Yeah, this is a damn good mixtape. The stuff you were saying about the production inching towards Clams Casino weirdness reminded me of the new Lito album, which is one of my favorite rap releases this year so far. It was jarring to start that album up and hear this sort of dreamy psychedelic beat and Starlito's great conversational flow, and then I hear the Lil Lody drop and I'm thinking "wasn't that dude making aggressive Lex Luger beats a year ago?"
I wish he was a little more aggressive to those rappers. I would love Kendrick so much more if he destroyed ASAP Rocky's career. matter of fact, I would be fine with most of these dudes gone from the rap game. Outside Meek Mill and maybe Pusha T, if he can prove that he actually cares anymore.
I've always been a dabbler of sorts as far as listening to a lot of different music and trying to find music I like in all sorts of different places, but I've gotten very bored with a lot of current "indie" (though I also haven't been listening to very much new music at all, mainly just digging into past music that I haven't heard before). For one thing, it's funny how all this seems to match up with the constant flood of indie rock reunions of bands that can make money off of their now grown-up fanbase. And a lot of bands that are constantly reviving some past style of music.
It's funny how the rappers who've aged best in my opinion (Scarface, DJ Quik, Big Boi, E-40) are always the sort of underrated and bitter guys, while dudes like Jay-Z or Snoop who were always talking about how successful they are have fallen off pretty hard.
Honestly, ATLiens is my favorite Kast album right now, but I'd consider the first four nearly interchangable in quality (though the style of music is so different for each one).
The thing is, the things that they're claiming are cultural consensus is mainly just cultural consensus of old baby boomers mixed in with a few samplings of critically acclaimed music since that era. If we wanted cultural consensus, we could just pull up a list of the greatest selling albums and call it good. But if you want to talk about quality, it should be a personal judgement.
I just hate it that magazines always have to write "best" as if they know shit about all of music. Everyone has some preferences, some gigantic blind spots, etc. Even if they're music writers. So it just ends up being the same stale critical consensus bullshit instead of somebody ignoring that and bringing something actually new to the table.
I haven't listened to Pet Sounds or MBDTF in a while, so why would I bother to put them in a list? and I bet you most of the voters on there voted for something that they haven't cared about in a long time simply for the sake of some mythical "objective quality". Fuck that shit, I'd rather they give us something we haven't already seen a thousand times.
If I were to bitch about the Kanye ranking, it would mainly just be the ridiculous assumption that any Kanye album should be considered the best rap album of all time. His albums are good, but as a rapper, he can't match a Scarface or Jay-Z or OutKast or E-40 at their peaks.
I don't get why people make these sorts of lists. The world of music is too fucking big for anyone to claim they've listened to enough albums to know what the best are, plus that's so relative. There are at least a few dozen albums that I can listen to and be thinking "this has got to be my favorite album ever", until I listen to another one and have the exact same thought. So it just ends being the same old list as all the others, with the same beatles/stones/dylan stuff with a few attempts at relevancy or to make the scope seem a little wider then it is, but nothing that makes me think differently about music.
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