The First Ten

The First Ten

When I was eleven years old I ripped one of those Columbia House ads from a magazine (you know the ad, it advertised ten CDs for a penny) and spent a good two hours picking out which CDs (the paper itself was covered in titles on both sides, and you got to check ten of them) to get. At this time I did not own a CD player. I had saved relentlessly for a Walkman a year before or so and dubbed two of my dad's albums onto tape: Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? and Cream's Strange Brew (which was in fact a greatest hits collection).

So my first ten CDs all came at once, in the biggest box I had probably ever received in the mail. If I could reach back from the future and guide the choosing hand of my eleven-year old self I would certainly make some changes, but for better or for worse, here's what they were:

Aerosmith: Get A Grip

For some reason at this age I was convinced that Aerosmith was the coolest band in the world. I think it was the song "Livin' On The Edge" from this album with its doomsday lyrics and insane length. I also liked to point out the line "if you can tell a wise man by the color of his skin, then mister you're a better man that I," apparently thinking that was the epitome of artistic social commentary. Unfortunately this album isn't very good. All the songs sound like Aerosmith 101 and where they attempt social commentary it falls quite flat. "Eat the Rich" is all about how much they hate rich people, which seems hypocritical at best for an uber-platinum-for-three-decades-straight arena rock band. Still, this album did introduce me to the word "psychedelic," when Steve Tyler yells "psychedelic sandwich!!!" on "Gotta Love It." I asked my dad what it meant and he showed me a heavily altered kaleidoscope picture of the Beatles.

Aerosmith: Pump

Like a lost puppy, I didn't know what to check next so I just checked two Aerosmith albums. This one is probably stronger than Get a Grip but I listened to it less, probably because the other one was newer. The only song I really remember from it is Janie's Got a Gun, which I dug hard because of the drum fills made to sound like thundering gunshots.

Eric Clapton: Timepieces

This is just a greatest hits album of Clapton's solo work and as such is mostly the sappy kind of "After Midnight," "Wonderful Tonight," "Cocaine" pop songs more than the acidic blues-rock he did with Cream. It did include "Layla," though, which up to that point I had only heard on the Unplugged album. I could barely believe they were the same song. I put the original on at least three different mixtapes that year.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: What Hits?I

Well. Time to get to the good stuff. I liked the Chili Peppers' name, and had heard "Give It Away" at some point and knew they were the shit. But I didn't realize to what extent. This is a best-of, but it focuses entirely on their 80's output with the sole exception of "Under The Bridge." At various times "Fight Like a Brave," "Knock Me Down," Taste the Pain," "Show Me Your Soul," and "Under The Bridge" became my favorite songs, and they all deserved it. Anyone who hasn't heard the eighties version of the Peppers is missing out bigtime. They had a wild energy of a flavor that no one else could touch, and that they couldn't possibly keep up into their late 30s, so they later dialed up the Keidis balladry and put the funk on hold. I recommend this album as a starter, then Mothers' Milk, and if you still feel like going from there the rest of their stuff is crazy ill too.

Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Experience

Yet another greatest hits package. I don't think I realized that was what I was getting at first, but when all four songs at the top were from Are You Experienced? I must have gotten wise. It also contained highlights from the other two Experience albums, as well as a bunch of unreleased stuff, the divine "Angel," and his two most famous live performances, "Wild Thing" (where he burns his guitar at the end) and "Star Spangled Banner." For some reason there is no Band of Gypsys material on this album. I was already a Hendrix fan but this made me a fanatic, and by the end of the year I had all the Experience albums, the Band of Gypsys concert, and a bunch of random posthumous crap to boot.

Michael Jackson: Thriller

I bought this one on the logic that the best-selling album of all time couldn't possibly be bad. Unfortunately, the first thing I noticed on it was the novelty of having Paul McCartney on a song ("The Girl Is Mine," as if you didn't know) and that was the song I first put on a mixtape. I had some friends over at my house and it came on and they looked at me like "Michael Jackson? Really?" and I got embarrassed and hid the album for years. I gave it a tenuous respect at arms'-length for a while, even putting "Thriller" (the song) on a mixtape or two, but it wasn't until late high school that it dawned on me what a dance-floor dynamite some of these songs were. By college I had realized that nothing, anywhere, ever, can light up a dancefloor like "Billie Jean," and my original copy still sits in my dusty CD collection, albeit missing the front of the jewel box.

Nas: Illmatic

To buy this album was totally out of character for me. I didn't really like rap (or thought I didn't) and wasn't allowed to get stuff with explicit lyrics labels. But this was a new release so the Columbia House pullout actually showed its cover as a featured album. The dark urban landscape and child's face juxtaposed on the cover was intriguing and bizarre to my young self, and the words "Nas" and "Illmatic" were different from any other words I'd ever heard, in a spellbinding way. I snuck it past my parents somehow, and listened to it only in headphones, and it engulfed me. It sounded absolutely unlike any rap music I had ever heard. At the time the national spotlight was all over Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, criticizing them for making music that glorified violence and misogyny and turned them into a party. Illmatic's music was somewhere between melancholy and menacing, definitely not made with a dance party in mind. Nas's lyrics came "Straight out the fuckin dungeons of rap," and as vivid as his imagery was, it seemed real and immediate, not cartoonish like Snoop Dogg. Also, I got the distinct impression that Nas was not trying to glorify violence but rather to paint a picture. There was a strong theme of using poetry and art to rise above horrible conditions, and not just in terms of money but in terms of art itself. I really didn't fully appreciate this album at the time, partly because my ear wasn't attuned to complicated rap lyrics, and also because my lack of knowledge of the scene kept me from being able to find anything comparable (in terms of lyrics or production) until several years later. I only listened to it a few times that year, but it planted the seed and by the time I was fifteen or so I listened to underground hip hop almost exclusively. I've thought a lot in terms of top five lists and things like that over the years, and I'm pretty sure I would call this the greatest hip hop album ever recorded. Strangely it was almost pure coincidence that it was also the first one I ever owned.

Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix

This tribute album featured wall-to-wall Hendrix covers by the likes of the Cure, PM Dawn, and Temple of the Dog. I didn't really like it and I sold it to a record store within a couple months of buying it. I might like it better if I heard it now, but I kind of doubt it.

I cannot for the life of me remember what the last two albums were. I'd love to say they were Hot Rats and Paul's Boutique, but I'd be lying.

Charanjit Singh: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat

I judged this one on its cover. Even if I hadn't even glanced at the back of the CD to notice it was recorded in 1982 with a Roland TR-808 (classic analog drum machine), TB-303 (classic analog bass synth), and Jupiter-8(classic analog polysynth) (a gear set for which I would gladly give an extra left arm if I'd been born with one), the title Ragas to a Disco Beat seemed a safe bet.

I was right. Although, in true raga form, the tunes consist of little more than a scale selection and then 5 minutes of noodling (and thus one track is not much different from the next), the sound and noodle quality are both fantastic. There was no MIDI implementation on these classic devices, but Roland allowed all their analog gear at the time to sync up without using MIDI, so the bassline, drums and arpeggios are always perfectly matched up to each other timing-wise. Thus this is basically an hour of a skilled musician jamming on a Jupiter-8 with rhythmic backup designed specifically for that synth. You won't get any of these tracks stuck in your head later, but while listening they are incredibly hypnotic for such basic stuff. I highly recommend it if it sounds interesting to you at all.

Slick Rick - The Art Of Storytelling

Most people know Slick Rick for his mid-to-late 80s hits like "La Di Da Di" and "Children's Story." The easy assumption to make is that a 1999 comeback album would be a halfhearted attempt to prolong his former glory, but that is far from the case. The only problem is that too many people made that assumption (or didn't even know it existed) and Rick hasn't put out an album since.Slick Rick's flow evolved a LOT between 1989 and 1999. Where he used to rap in a very fly but also very 80s old-school style, mostly in goofy storytelling form, now (1999) he is a punchline rapper with a cadence unlike anyone else I've heard. He packs his lines with internal rhymes and ends every line with a punchline. He became the type of rapper who almost never spits a syllable that doesn't rhyme with something else, but unlike most who try to do that, he does not sound like he's trying at all. He doesn't spit, he breathes. Sometimes he almost whispers, like he's so fly he doesn't even have to speak up to be heard. Often you get the feeling that Rick is really just humming to himself, except that his humming rhymes. The album is uneven, I'm sorry to say. Some of the less-than-inspired beats and guest appearances make it drag, and it could have used a bit of a trim. But the tracks that hit are among the smoothest slices of hip hop ever offered, and I think it's a shame so few have heard this shit. "Street Talkin'" with Big Boi and "Unify" with Snoop Dogg are good funky singles, but it's the solo tracks like "I Own America" and "Trapped In Me" and the few-and-far-between story tracks that really shine. Yes, Slick Rick still tells stories, and they are still hilarious. He still plays multiple characters right in the middle of his verses, letting their reactions rhyme with his quips effortlessly. "Who Rotten Em" is the story of a young slave to an Egyptian pharoah, who entertains the court with his amazing rhymes. "2 Way Street" is hilarious as Rick continuously almost hooks up with groupies before suddenly remembering he's married, and "Adults Only" is the funniest (and grossest) hip hop ode to anal sex I've ever heard with it's chorus "ain't no way to put it subtle when I want the butthole". For real, for just as much (well-deserved) praise is loaded on the 1980s version of Slick Rick, the nineties version deserves perhaps even more accolades, as one of the most clever, smooth, articulate mc's ever to dip the mic in drawn butter.

Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced

Before I had my own stereo, I saved up my allowance for a Walkman, and for probably a year or so I had only one tape: "Are You Experienced?" In fact it was a dubbed copy of my dad's tape, and the blank tape I used was so much longer than the album that there were over 15 minutes of silence at the end on each side. I probably used twice as many batteries just fast-forwarding so I could start it all over again. I don't know how many times I listened to it. Now, this is a rock album, more so than any other Hendrix album, but to me it will always be a headphone album. The hazes, confusions, depressions, waterfalls, sunsets, itching desires, jacks, clowns, the wind, it all sounds like inner space to me. The emotions touched on are all over the map and they are all raw: whether Hendrix is serenading his waterfall/rainbow, or lamenting that he can't tell the difference between love and confusion, he is always wearing his heart on his sleeve. Obviously this album will always be heralded mostly for Jimi's guitar work, but his singing is just as impressive, in my opinion. He is the greatest singer ever not to be that good of a singer, taking his limited voice to heights of expression that Bob Dylan could only dream of. And he's a poet too; check the laments of the curious alien sampling Earth for the first time on "Third Stone From the Sun", or the ethereal word-painting of "The Wind Cries Mary". And, yes, the guitar is jaw-droppingly awesome throughout. There's not a ton of shredding on "Are You Experienced," but the delayed blips and bloops of "May This Be Love", the reversed pick scrapes of the title track, the dreamy melodies of "Third Stone from the Sun" and the wah-wah/whammy meltdown at the end of "I Don't Live Today" say more with a few notes (they might not even *be* notes) than any other guitarist could say with hundreds. "Are You Experienced" is the greatest rock album ever recorded.

Outkast - Aquemini

"Aquemini" fills the air like the smoke from a fat charcoal grill, causing everything to shimmer behind it with heat. At this point Outkast (and Organized Noize) had the budget for some seriously overblown productions, but before they went the way of galactic space-funk with "Stankonia," they had a barbecue and got down. The instrumentation on here drips with deep dark soul sauce, from the organs and horns of "Return of the G" to the strummed guitars and harmonicas and foot-stomping of "Rosa Parks" to the ethereal percussion and slow-cooking poetry of "Aquemini", to the horn-section melancholy of "Spottieottiedopalicious," and the psychedelic guitar work on "Chonkyfire". The background singing is always beautiful and soulful, like on the feed-the-baby anthem "Slump," the melancholy "Return of the G," and the sublime "Art of Storytelling" which is probably Outkast's greatest song ever, matching Big Boi's parking lot pimping with Andre's tearjerking reminiscence on Sasha Thumper. Big Boi and Andre are both in fine form, spitting forever-quotable lines. The laid-back, never in a hurry production fits their flows perfectly, with Big Boi's fifty-million-syllables-in-a-bar stop and start style never sounding rushed or off-beat, and Andre able to spread his wings and throw (for example) thousands of monosyllable rhymes into one non-stop verse on the title track: "My mind warps and bends, floats the wind, count to ten, meet the twin, Andre Ben, welcome to the lion's den, original skin many men comprehend, I extend myself so you go out and tell a friend, sin all depends on what you believing in, faith is what you make it, that's the hardest shit since MC Ren, Alien can blend right on in with your kin, look again cause I swear I spot one every now and then, It's happenin' again wish I could tell you when, Andre this is Andre, ya'll just gon' have to make amends". Big Daddy Kane got nothin' on this. Anyone deprived enough to still have no Outkast in their collection, start here.

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Apocalypse

The differences are obvious between this and other (earlier) Mahavishnu albums: Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham are gone, Jean-Luc Ponty has arrived, George Martin (the fifth Beatle) produces, and it features the freakin' London Symphony Orchestra! Two orchestras at once, eh? Well it opens up pretty symphonically and traditionally until you realize the lead violin (Ponty) is playing through a wah-wah pedal. Then the band comes in and before you know it John McLaughlin is doing what he does best: shredding his natural ass off. It gets from point A to point B so smoothly I didn't even notice the transition from delicate finger-picked nylon strings to white-hot electric licks, but it happened somewhere. Then the funk kicks in. The album is good from start to finish, not their best album by any means (and I REALLY miss cobham and Hammer) but it's still interesting throughout. There's even an operatic song with vocals by the new female keyboard player! And having a full orchestra really amps up the epicness of the Mahavishnu sound, with grand gestures and microfunk rhythms alike being nailed by the string section. I think I even heard a choir passage or two, but I might have been tripping again.

Faith No More - Angel Dust

I first heard Faith No More on the hit "Epic," which sounded to me like a harder-rock, slightly evil Red Hot Chili Peppers song. I got "Angel Dust" as soon as the opportunity struck, even though "Epic" is from an earlier album. This is one of my favorite hard-rock albums. It blends heavy-metal guitars with funk bass, creepy lyrics and a lot of choruses that are as weird as they are catchy. Mike Patton's singing, as always, goes everywhere from deep metal growls to syrupy lounge leering, and this is probably the most listenable of all his projects, with the creepiness lurking somewhere in the background instead of bashing you over the head. I know that calling anything "the most listenable Mike Patton project" isn't really saying much, but trust me. "Midlife Crisis" is especially amazing, and its breakdown contains the same (at least I think) sample as the opening of the Beastie Boys' "Car Thief," a fabulous falling rhythmic sweep. "Be Aggressive" is weird as hell, with "I swallow, I swallow" repeated over and over again and a bunch of boy scouts spelling out the chorus like it's a flag-raising chant.

Anticon - Anticon Giga Single

Is this the same group? They must have gone home and did their homework or something. The production is tighter and less murky, the song structures have started to exist, some of the mc's have decided to throw rhymes in every once in awhile, and in general it sounds a lot more coherent and thought-out than the worst-titled album ever, "Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop." I think the biggest difference is that Anticon found their niche here. They're not really hip hop, they're more of poets with music. So get rid of Slug, someone said, and replace him with more poets! So they found a way to take lyric poetry and release it on CD. And the way to do that, lo and behold, is to structure it like songs. Sole and Dose One, two of the most annoying mc's ever on that other album, do a dual/duel rapping workout on "A.D.D.", and it actually sounds sorta good! Sage Francis, who actually is a hip hop artist, appears on this album and his beats and rhymes are lightyears beyond anything I expected to find when I popped it in. I'm still not big on Buck 65, whose "Pen Thief" sounds like whatever the take before the first take is called, and I could also do without the annoying "Postmodern Pat Boones" or the inane skit that follows, but overall this is an improvement to a degree I would never have thought possible.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity - Vibrations

Funny how the 70s turned some jazzcats into suave funkateers. The Roy Ayers Ubiquity was a group formed expressly for this purpose when it comes to vibes-man Roy Ayers, and woe unto those purists who avoided it like the plague, because this shit is excellent. Smooth vibes, intensive grooves, quasi-falsetto singing, catchy start-and-stop choruses, I lidove it. My only regret is the Ubiquity is not more Ubiquitous in my collection.

Laurie Anderson - Big Science

The cover of this album looks like some sort of new-wave synth pop, and though there are some shades of that, this is a lot darker and weirder. Often it's just a kooky drumbeat with maybe a little bit of background atmospherics, while Laurie Anderson performs spoken-word poetry that ranges from mundane to disturbing. I don't listen to it a lot but there are bits that are cool. Overall there is definitely a sense that something is missing, and a little research showed me that something indeed is missing: apparently this "album" is in fact a partial soundtrack to a several-hours-long performance art piece.

Anticon - Music For The Advancement of Hip Hop

"Music for the Advancement of Hip Hop"? Really? With a title that pretentious it had better be the dopest shit ever heard. It starts off promising (if not revolutionarily) with Slug (who I never knew was involved with these guys) throwing back to Rakim's seven mc's and then dropping a pretty tight verse. Unfortunately it's downhill from there. Lofty song titles like "Martyr Theme Song", "Human Races the Tortoise" and "Untitled" can't save the fact that everything done here has been done long before, and with a lot more power and soul, by Ultramagnetic MC's, Organized Konfusion, Divine Styler, Wu-Tang, and plenty of others. Most of the rappers' styles are somewhere between rhythmless and annoying, with a few actually managing to climb both those peaks at once. Dose One obviously thinks he's the most original person to ever "rock the mic", with his wavery delivery and pseudo-English accent whenever he says something "deep", but he's really just the biggest Rammelzee rip-off to ever suck. Sole is inaudible, Buck 65 can't decide if he wants to be Kool Keith or Mykah 9, and the production and subject matter throughout sound like some kid read three paragraphs of Eastern philosophy during a bad trip and decided that rhythm is stupid and they should make a rap group to prove it. There are two good mc's on this album, Eyedea and Slug, neither of whom show up often enough to make a difference, and both of whom later went on to much bigger and better things. Slug is a borderline great mc, one who knows his history, makes throwbacks where appropriate, and, in a breath of fresh air for this album, actually seems to realize he's rapping over a beat. His "Nothing But Sunshine" is by far the best track on the album, and if you haven't heard it you should give it a listen.There is one area in which this album really does make a break from the rest of the hip hop world: a complete lack of hip hop slang and urban imagery. I've got nothing against that, but if taking the roots out of hip hop, ignoring its past and pretending to represent its future, is what passes for "advancement", I'll pass. Supposedly this crew cut their hip hop teeth on battles. Who were they battling, Emily Dickinson's corpse?

Caribou - Andorra

I kept accidentally thinking I was listening to the Mamas and the Papas. The sunstained dream melodies on "Andorra" are so similar to 60's flower power songs that you almost feel transported. Except the instrumentation is clearly from the new millenium, with crystal-clear production and bubbly synths flying around in the background. I can't really get into the indie-rock rhythm section that demands bass and guitar be played by metronomes instead of musicians, but the drums and singing come close to saving it for me. For my money though I'd rather drop the needle on "Nuggets".

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath

Get a Flux-equipped Delorean, set your time circuits to somewhere around 1991, and hit up the wee hours of a smallish rave. Before you go in, smoke half a J and put on some earmuffs. That's pretty much what this EP sounds like. The song structures and rhythms are not too far from what rave techno sounds like, but the timbres are parsecs away from cliche. Where others use synthesized Korg pianos for their rhythm tracks, Aphex Twin uses softened drippy synths. Instead of breakbeats and 909s he uses custom synth drums that twist like burnt cans. It's not essential Aphex, especially if you're more into his late-90s rhythmic insanity, but it's worth a listen.

Q-Tip - Amplified

When this album came out, it got pretty much nothing but bad press. The word was that the Abstract had gone pop and it just didn't work. I was naive enough to go on this word and not even get the album to give it a chance. I eventually picked it up about 6 years later in a used bin somewhere. This album has aged a lot better than you might expect. It doesn't sound anything like the popular hip hop of the time, nor does it sound like Quest minus Phife. If anything the closest thing to it in sound is The Love Movement, but the production on Amplified is a lot sparer.Q-Tip does very little message rapping on this, very little narrative, etc. and those of us like myself who are used to his verses being perfect examples of easily-memorizable, impeccable simplicity, will find a different Q-Tip here. In part I would think that being freed from the reins of Tribe allowed him to just stretch out and have fun; at the same time, the cover art and his fur coat, bare-chest look suggest that the label was pressuring him to dumb down his sound and vision. The middle of the album is strongest, from the sing-song "Let's Ride" and "Things U Do" to the crunchy "Go Hard," the Moroder-y "Go Hard"and the *almost* anthemic "Do It." What it comes down to is that this is a good Q-Tip album. It's only a disappointment when you compare it to the huge shelf of classics that have his name on them. The album does a sonic and conceptual U-Turn with the last track, "End of Time." After 11 tracks of having a great time and enjoying life, all of a sudden we're on the brink of apocalypse. Not too convincing. Then there's a not-too-hidden bonus track where Tip raps his autobiography, which is by far the most honest and heartfelt track on the album. All in all, I have to say that if this were a debut album by an unknown artist, it would have been lost in the sands of time. This is the only project Q-Tip has ever been involved in that is not essential.

Radiohead - Amnesiac

The calmest Radiohead album. Unlike Kid A's id you can hear guitars and the singing has a human presence. At least one song is shared between the two albums (in two different versions), and Thom Yorke said they were twins separated at birth. The music is dreamy and soft, not as depressing or ominous as Radiohead sometimes is. The songs flow like syrup or molasses, not fully existing but approaching something like existence as they are played. The orange soundscape is a mostly unpopulated space with elements floating in, out of, and through it without regard to anything except the rhythm, which is an ebb and flow more than a beat. Even the tape hiss is an instrument.

Albert Ayler Quartet - The Hilversum Session

Usually when a good band plays, it sounds like the drummer is creating a couch or pocket for the rest of the band to comfortably sit in. With jazz it's often more like the drummer is an icy lake and the other instruments are figure skaters, skipping around in circles on the rhythm. On this record Albert Ayler's saxophone is the one that everyone else sits in, but instead of a couch or an icy lake, it is like Ayler is dangling the rest of the band at the end of a string that he is slowly twirling around himself. Better yet, a yo-yo that never quite makes it back to his hand. At first every rhythmic and melodic motif sounds random and thrown-together, like each member doesn't really care what the rest of the band is doing or even what key or meter they're playing in. Gradually you start to notice that Ayler's sax and Don Cherry's trumpet converge regularly, playing the same random-seeming squawks of notes simultaneously, with the bass (Garry Peacock) and drums (Sonny Murray) falling into place after like the horns just fell down the stairs and pulled the rhythm section after them. That is to say, the rhythm is there, it's just stretched and squeezed a bit, and the different instruments are following it at different speeds. I don't know if that makes any sense, and my guess is that to most people it still wouldn't make sense even if they were listening to the music at the same time. The lack of piano on a lot of so-called free jazz is probably the biggest barrier to most people's listening enjoyment, whether they realize it or not. The piano is so often the essential glue that holds a jazz group together and makes it cohere. On this album and a lot of others from this time period and in this circle, there is no piano and it makes the music seem stark, disconnected, disjointed. Until you start to figure out the underlying structures that only sort of call attention to themselves. Then, at least for me, I have trouble seeing just where a piano would fit in. This is an album will make at least 90 out of 100 people walk out of the room, or at least unable to concentrate on anything. Of the other ten people, nine will be able to stand it, and maybe even find it interesting, but only one will find it beautiful. That person will cherish the sound and be engulfed by it. I may or may not be that person.

Ice Cube - Amerikkka's Most Wanted

Public Enemy was supposed to be the group that woke everybody up. And yes, they were controversial, but the revolution was nipped in the bud when a little group called NWA broke out on the West Coast with just as much anger and noise, but instead of promoting black people standing up and fighting the power, they glorified black people killing each other for no reason. The powers that be REALLY got up in arms about NWA and so of course every kid wanted to be them. Forget being a revolutionary. Well Ice Cube was having none of it, and he broke east to join up with the Bomb Squad. "Amerikkka's Most Wanted" is the product of this collaboration. These days, with Ice Cube regularly starring in family films, it's easy to forget that he was a very controversial figure in the early 90's. I remember reading a Newsweek with him on the cover pointing a gun at the camera. On "Amerikkka's Most Wanted," he does not tone down the violence of NWA *or* the revolutionary spirit of Public Enemy, and the Bomb Squad's production fuses the squall of noise we love from PE albums with the deep funk and banging beats of NWA, and they fit perfectly. This is probably their best production work; check out the title track, "You Can't Fade Me" and "Endangered Species". Cube's lyrics, as always, are hard hitting and full of internal rhymes, but delivered naturally and forcefully. Chuck D and Flavor Flav both make appearances, and Cube takes vicious shots at everyone. The misogyny is pretty heavy so watch out. Otherwise, to my ears it has aged pretty well, and is the perfect fusion of the heyday of pre-"Chronic" gangsta rap with fist-pumping rage at the system. No radio hits, just hard beats, hard rhymes, deep funk.

Joan Armatrading - Show Some Emotion

Solid, soulful songwriter album that I was lucky enough to find at a Goodwill store for 50 cents. Joan Armatrading has a nice raspy voice, and can belt them out. There are a couple slow'n'boring cuts on side 2, but the other stuff makes up for it. Her songs are in a rock/pop vein as far as songwriting is concerned, but she spices them up with some soul-stylings that keep things interesting.

Jay-Z - American Gangster

After "Kingdom Come" was declared a failure for going only double platinum, it was clear that Jay-Z had to change his game, something he'd never really done before. Not that "Kingdom Come" sucked or anything, it just didn't have that jaw-drop "oh shit!" quality that should accompany every new Hova release. My guess is Jay sat back and decided to make an album that reflected him as an artist and a person rather than trying to chart fifteen hits. At this point he's untoppably rich and famous, and could afford to just do it the way he wanted to. So, "American Gangster." First of all, it's clearly inspired by the movie of the same name, one of the lamest films by one of my favorite directors, Ridley Scott. There are lyrical references to and samples from it throughout. Luckily it doesn't bash you over the head. But the album does follow a loose narrative structure, almost making it Jay-Z's first concept album, except there's other tracks thrown in at various points.The production is exactly what the mature Jay-Z should sound like. The Black Album wishes it could have been so consistent. All thick soul loops from the 70's that give that feeling of class that always graces the best Jay-Z tracks, and I would say that in places it is the best it's been in that respect since "Reasonable Doubt." Jay's lyrics are pretty much perfect throughout, flashy without being flashy, because this is his serious record. The only real misstep is the last verse of the otherwise banging "Ignorant Shit", with its Just-Blaze flipped "Between the Sheets" (and the obligatory Biggie references that implies). Check out this home run derby: "They're all actors, looking at themselves in the mirror backwards, can't even face themselves, don't fear no rappers, they're all weirdos, De Niros in practice, so don't believe everything your earlobe captures, it's mostly backwards, unless it happens to be as accurate as me and everything said in song you happen to see, then, actually believe half of what you see, none of what you hear, even if it's spat by me. And with that said, I will kill n****s dead, cut n****s short, give you wheels for legs, I'm a K-I, double L E-R, see y'all in hell, shoot n****s straight through the ER, whoah, this ain't BR, no, it's S.C., C.E.O., the next Lyor, no, the next leader of the whole free world." In the last verse Jay complains of people complaining of his lyrics and something to do with Don Imus and Paris Hilton and the like; really, Jay's so far above that he could have just ignored it altogether. Oh yeah, and "Hello Brooklyn 2.0," a remake of a criminally overlooked Beastie Boys gem and featuring Lil' Wayne, should have been the dopest shit ever recorded, but isn't. Oh well. These lyrics aren't quite as tight-knit and multi-layered as the rhyme labyrinths on "The Black Album," or "Reasonable Doubt" for that matter, but Jay definitely gets across the whole idea that he's just so relaxed and laid-back and on top of his game that he can spit bombs without even trying, and isn't that what a Jay-Z album is really all about? It didn't work on his last album, but it really works here (example: "Party Life," where he finishes verses by detachedly marveling at the wit of what just came out of his mouth). "Just the sound of his voice is a hit!"Witness the triumphant return of Jay-Z. An overlooked masterpiece.

Apollo - Apollo

I'm a sucker for all things funkonaut. This album was released on Motown in 1979 with Berry Gordy's son Kerry as the leader. As soon as I saw the spaceship on the cover, the beamed-down funkateers, and the fact that there was a track entitled "Astro-Disco", I was powerless. I had to buy it. And I do not regret the decision. "Astro-Disco" is like 8 minutes of non-stop disco madness with lots of spaceship themed sound effects and an extended outro, hootin and hollering, and everything else that is good in the world. There's even a couple crunchy breaks! The rest of the album is no slouch either, with the disco cliches being just barely offset by synth squelches and the prominent space theme. "Space Cannibals" is as dope as it should be with a title like that, pretty much an instrumental funk jam with a lot of echoey savage howling and some equally savage guitar shreds, with the only lyrics being "all night long, all night long." And the last track is a ripping cover of the classic "Do You Love Me" that does disco justice to the original. My favorite shit in this world is when lushly orchestrated disco chords are melded with shimmering synth chords. That shit is all over this record.