Snoop’s debut album introduces his unique flow and steeze to the world (‘Gs up, hoes down’), as well as classic rap anthems. Dre’s production is also notable, this being a year after The Chronic was released, which established Dre’s signature west coast sound of that era, and introduced the world to Snoop who was featured extensively in that record as a key collaborator. Revisiting it in 2024, a lot of tracks feel unmemorable, and while the features lift up LA icons like Nate Dogg, D.O.C., Kurupt and Tha Dogg Pound, much of the others fall short of Snoop’s iconic voice and verses. And while Snoop’s lyricism shines from a stylistic standpoint, he repeats a ton of the same things from song to song, giving the album a half-baked feeling when taken as a whole. The lyrical content is also a product of the misogyny-steeped stance of early 90s rap. Viewed through today’s lens it almost feels like satire given how prevalent these themes are on the record, but they were dead serious about those demeaning lyrics at the time. Now Snoop is a spokesperson for T-Mobile lol.

This is my fav Bob Marley record. Peter Tosh left the band the year this came out, and while Bob was the McCartney of The Wailers — having firm control over the creative decision making — Tosh was more dedicated to the rawer sound of reggae steeped in the sparser, dryer dub subgenre that was in full swing around this time, and his lyrical lens was sharply focused on the political. Without Tosh around their sound shifted drastically towards a more global, polished reggae sound Bob pioneered. One big reason I love this Wailers record is it’s their grooviest record. The heavy influence of soul, r&b, gospel, and folk music present throughout the record is unlike any other Wailers record before or after. This is really evident in the opening 4-8 bar sections of most songs, just before the iconic reggae back-beat settles in. The band is also air-tight. Their unity and collective rhythm is so satisfyingly smooth. They established a pocket on this record somewhere between a traditional swing and reggae’s shifted, lurching pulse. Bob launched The Wailers into the stratosphere around this time too. Their now-ubiquitous catalog of hits started piling up on the record before this with ‘Get Up, Stand Up’ and ‘I Shot The Sheriff’, and this record contributes its fair share to that legacy. And for what it’s worth, ‘Them Belly Full’ is hands-down my fav Wailers song.

Lauper wills a debut album made up mostly of covers of songs written by men into a record that established her as a powerful voice for the independence and nuance of womanhood in an era where women were asserting themselves more and more in all facets of society. In the hands of an artist lacking her confidence and vision, this approach would surely come off corny or pedestrian or just plain bad. Not being familiar with her catalog outside of the hits, it’s the lesser known tracks that really showcase her talent on this album — she tries on lots of musical styles, fitting them into her mold and approach, one that helped usher in a more electronic pop-rock style that dominated the rest of the 80s. She sounds comfortable on pure ballads, synthy pop tunes, pub rock anthems, and songs that draw influence from punk, ska, and the NYC dance scene. Her infectious energy merges all of these styles into a record that is fun and danceable nearly throughout. Musically speaking, I love the female-male harmonies featured on most of the tracks. The sequencing makes it an enjoyable record to listen all the way through, and oddball moments like the second to last track that serves as a coda interlude before the final track is lovely. And she successfully pulls off a great Prince cover — honestly her and Prince could’ve made some great music together especially given they were good friends, but he served more as a mentor in the music biz than a collaborator in her career. Her influence on so many contemporary artists I love is self-evident too. Her unique vocal delivery and punk sensibility surely influenced the wave of women-centric indie rock, synth pop, and dance punk from the early aughts on. It’s hard not to mention Madonna here. They’re both living in NYC at the time, and this debut record dropped a few months after Madonna’s eponymous debut. Lauper is the rock/synth pop/singer songwriter counterpart to Madonna’s Danceteria club girl disco fueled record. Before these debut records of theirs in 1983, Lauper was in a prolific cover band while Madonna was clubbing in Manhattan. Madonna’s influence was always purely aesthetic imo: she had an incredible personal style and curated powerhouse trend setters to guide her music stylistically her whole career, but her vocal talents, song writing, and musicality by comparison was lacking. Lauper’s strengths were much more musical: she sits squarely in the singer/songwriter category, and her vocal range and delivery is one of her greatest assets. Exploring and researching this record sparked a huge interest in the synth pop of the time that I’m really enjoying at the moment. I’ve listened to this record a bunch over the last few days, and I’ve come to really admire her music.

When I started making music in my late teens I started collecting records. Stevie was by no means unknown to me at that age, but I had never listened to any of his albums in full, and I was only really familiar with the hits. The immense popularity he held during his entire career meant that his albums were literally a dime a dozen. This was the first of his records I purchased on my own — a copy I still have today — and it sparked a deep love for an artist I find to be one of the best to ever make music, easily in my top five artists, someone I listened to very regularly. Why do I love the man and the music so much, and this album? His musicality is prolific: like many of his records he plays nearly everything heard here. Like other musicians with such immense talent, Stevie creates a sonic palate all his own, literally. When a musician records music with themselves, tracked over many takes playing each instrument in succession, what emerges are songs that pulse with a sharply-defined melodic and rhythmic signature. To me, his sonic signature is first characterized by expert songwriting, a skill he mastered as one of Motown’s star craftsman, having written countless hits for their legendary roster over the first 15 years of his career that preceded this record — alongside other greats including the Holland Brothers, Smokey Robinson, Ashford and Simpson, Lamont Dozier, and Gordy himself to name a few. Stevie was only 22 when this album came out, a mind-blowing fact that cements him alongside wunderkinds like Beethoven; they both started writing music around age 10. Alongside his writing chops, the rhythmic pocket he creates playing alongside himself undulates like a living being. His sense of rhythm fluctuates from bar to bar and note to note with such creativity and diversity. While he is known primarily as a harmonic musician through his mastery of keyboards and the harmonica, he was a prolific rhythmic musician — I count him as one of my favorite drum players. He takes simple patterns and infuses them with a melodic voice that elevates the instrument to something greater. He fills every bar with color and texture like a jazz drummer, but he strips the pretension and seriousness away and commercializes that approach, fitting it into his expertly crafted songs. Stevie’s now iconic sound is also defined by his use of various keyboard instruments, a facet he developed around the time of this record. He pioneered the use of electronic sounds from the emerging synth landscape of the late 60s and early 70s, including instruments from Hohner, Korg, and Moog, the most definitive of which was the Hohner Clavinet: this is the instrument featured on megahits like “Superstition” from this album, and the one most ppl associate with him. He also pioneered the use of synth bass lines that anchored his sound firmly in the electronic age. My favorite Stevie album is hands-down Innervision, the record that follows this one. It’s a masterpiece. But it’s hard to separate this record from that subsequent release, as well as the record that preceded it, Music of My Mind. Many of the songs across these three albums, popularly known as his classic period, were recorded in the same sessions. Through the progression of these three records he builds incredible thematic and stylistic steam — all of which lead to Songs in the Key of Life, a sprawling collection of songs that ends his classic period in spectacular fashion. In this classic period we hear Stevie finding his voice as an artist. As he entered his late teens the controlling command of Berry Gordy at Motown was stifling his creative growth. The saccharine sound he helped cultivate no longer aligned with his interest in the growing chaotic music landscape of the late 60s, of which the most influential trends for Stevie were steeped in psychedelia, funk, and electronica. He renegotiated his contract with Motown starting with Music of My Mind that gave him full artistic control, unleashing his true creative potential and propelling him to create his finest works. Musicality aside, Stevie’s work during this period introduces us to the side of him deeply interested in equality and existentialism. Inspired by Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, he blossoms as one of music’s greatest social and political activists during his long career, using his platform to expose injustices and propose an alternate reality of love and compassion. And the threads of naturalist and existential themes are a perfect pairing to his electronic-tinged sound; there are countless references to outer space and the natural world in his work that gives his music a deeply human vein. This album is great from start to finish. No notes whatsoever. All the songs shine like supernovas. I have easily listened to this album hundreds of times, and I listened to it at least ten times since it showed up here on this generator, and I will surely listen to it a hundred times more before I die.

Iconic sophomore record that established Bob as the voice of his generation. It’s authentically-steeped in the American folk, blues, and spirituals traditions, as well as traditional English folk — and these considered head-nods to the past create a rock-solid platform for his strongest talent, storytelling. He tells raw, critical tales about the anxieties and melancholy that defined the early 60s. I really identify with his insistent otherness, his commitment to the socialist-leaning morality of Pete Seeger-esque folk (who I adore), and his critical view of current events on this record — all of which is tinged with his personal brand of skewed melancholy that my soul really gravitates toward as I get older. Historically cited as one of the best albums of all time, Bob’s arguably greatest record is a quintessential example of the outsized importance given to white male artists during the rise of the pop music critic culture we know today, the vestiges of which we’ve only started shedding in the last decade or so as western anglo hetero cultural dominance is being leveled out for a more inclusive landscape to flourish. Is it worthy of all that notoriety? For sure. But with 60 years between its release and today, the cult of Bob feels archaic. He always hated the ‘voice of a generation’ monicker anyway, and viewed himself more as an opportunistic conduit more than anything. He summed this up himself in an interview around this record’s release: “The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn't do it, somebody else would.” If he was up-and-coming today with the same spirit he had then, he would def align with the liberal stances that dominate today’s pop culture, and the stories defining our times would be filtered through that same world-weary kid from Minnesota to similar ends. What would a contemporary bb Dylan have to say about transgender rights, the culture of inclusivity, the rise of technology, and the continued injustice in the world today?

The singles from The Killers debut were an inescapable part of the musical landscape during my final years in high school. I didn’t really like the album then, and that hasn’t changed 20 years later. While the hooks on the singles are catchy, having lived through the release of this album it’s hard to say whether that’s an objective quality or one based on those songs’ ubiquity during that period of my life. If I had to pick a song that I liked, “Smile Like You Mean It” is the best song on the album, tho I def won’t listen to it again voluntarily. I was pleasantly surprised by the soul-infused rock on the second half of “All These Things That I’ve Done”, and I appreciate the stylistic and production choices on “Everything Will Be Alright”, but like all of The Killers music it is cancelled out by Brandon Flowers mediocre songwriting and a voice that, while technically sound, lacks anything of interest for me, and feels vacant of any effective emotional character. And that delay chorus effect that defined his vocals performances on this album is a bold choice, its used to excess on nearly every track rendering it exhausting. As a big fan of the long arcs of dance punk and post punk, the influence those genres have on their sound is obvious, but their execution falls flat when compared to other bands around this time that successfully build on those same aesthetics — the most striking of which were debut records by The Strokes, The Rapture, Frank Ferdinand, and LCD Soundsytem to name a few, all of which I still love to this day.

Revisiting this album today in the wake of their epic about-face into electronic music that is now their definitive sound, their first two records (and half of the third Ok Computer) leading up to Kid A feel like anomalies in their discography — almost functioning like demos and earlier incarnations for any other band. But Radiohead was an excellent alterntaive band, and their first three records produced their megahits and are to this day their most streamed albums by a shockingly wide margin. It’s clear and well known that their foray into electronic music turned off a huge swath of their original fanbase. They synthesized many aspects of the genres of the era and tinged it with their enjoyable pretentious stance. This is my favorite of their alt rock releases, and really demonstrates the musicianship and budding experimental and textural nature of their band members. I absolutely love Johnny Greenwood, and his dynamic with Thom reminds me of the dynamic between Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, a true creative partnership divided along the lyric/music divide that makes up songwriting. The brother dynamic between Johnny and Colin surely provided cohesion that, paired with Phil Selway’s precise unassuming drumming make for a band that moves as one. And of course their longtime producer Nigel Godrich is basically the band’s sixth member, a huge propelling force behind their dedication to experimentation. The bipolar nature of their output over their first decade of music making taken together lays-bare an incredible commitment to evolution as a core facet of their dna; Radiohead is a band that always sounds like they’re searching for a new identity with each and every song they create — a manic precocious teen in a dressing room never fully satisfied with what they see in the mirror but resoundingly self-assured in their identity. Kid A turned me into a Radiohead-head. In my eyes they can do no wrong, and they have crafted some of my favorite songs and albums that sit firmly in the catalog of music I continuously return to over and over again. I’ve invested so much emotional energy and life memories into their music and this album is no exception. They’ve soundtracked many tumultuous growth periods in my life, in no small part due to the fact that they are neurotic and melancholic and tragic to their core, especially with a fearless leader as nuanced and idiosyncratic as Thom. The future band they will become can be heard in these songs, but it’s buried under the stylistic forces that defined the era. And that’s not a bad thing. In hindsight it’s apparent that their most popular music on their first three albums, this one included, showcase an immensely talented band not quite sure who they want to be, all the while producing groundbreaking music with mass appeal that afforded them the time and space to explore uncharted territory, ultimately opening up new frontiers for countless bands in their wake to further explore.

I had no clue who Elvis Costello was when I found this album digging in my early 20s. As collectors are want to do, the cover immediately spoke to me so I bought it, an instinct that never fails to deliver interesting music — and evidence of the integral relationship between visuals and sound in contemporary popular music. The now iconic sleeve art was designed by Barney Bubbles, the influential resident designer at Stiff records who helped pioneer artistic-driven album artwork through his work in the independent music coming out of England during the mid to late 70s. I hauled my records home that day, threw This Year’s Model on first and was so taken by its sound. It sparked a longtime love for label mates Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe, who produced the entire album and whose debut Jesus of Cool came out the same month in 1978, another record I adore. Over the next couple of years I filled my collection with many of Costello and Lowe’s early works, and they remain some of my all time favs. These two bespectacled british guys exuded a coolness I had never encountered before. They were close collaborators, and they both cultivated a distinctive blend of two burgeoning styles of the time, punk and new wave. Other notable UK bands working in the same vein included The Clash, the Buzzcocks, The Jam, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The English Beat, and The Specials to name a few, the last of which Costello produced their debut, and whose release was only a few months after this record. Sheesh so many “The”s lol, and so many great bands coming on the scene! That period from 1976-1980 was such an energetic moment in rock and pop music, from which those two genres punk and new wave were sprouting from. In America bands like Devo, Talking Heads, and Blondie were channeling similar energy, and on the international stage Fela’s afrobeat and Marley’s reggae were huge influences on this scene’s sound. One key aspect of was the importance of powerful rhythm sections paired with catchy riffs and songwriting, and Costello’s mastery of both aspects is on full display. The trio backing Costello, The Attractions, also played a huge part in the record’s sound, sonically and literally the driving force behind Costello’s songwriting. What’s so striking about the instrumentation is how de-prioritized the guitar is in the arrangements and mixes, and just how good they are. “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” is easily my favorite song on this record, and it’s a perfect example of what incredible musicians they are. They are regarded as one of the best backing rhythm sections of all time — the music speaks for itself. Pete Thomas’ drumming is so iconic and technically perfect, and Bruce and Steve’s bass and keys, respectively, are locked into such pleasing grooves the entire time. The keyboards are also stylistically distinct: the constant organ throughout is arguably one of the most recognizable parts of this record, always funky and insistent and sounding so much like electronic synths, at times even resembling yet-invented video game sounds, as heard on “Living in Paradise”. And of course Costello’s vocals are so energetic and insistent — iconic. Elvis Costello is such a singular voice. The hallmark of great artists is their ability to rise above trends and styles. His influences are clearly on display, but he merges and synthesizes them into something greater, something all his own. He straddles the precarious line between mainstream success and artistic authenticity with such style and grace. What a legend!