An absolute masterpiece. No weak spots* whatsoever. This album was lightning in a bottle, as none of them (even Lauryn) would reach these heights after. All three of them play off each other in an elegant, incredible way. The contrasting voices, styles, and modes of wordplay give it an unimpeachable base to build on. When you add to that Lauryn's incredible versatility as an MC and a singer, it's near-perfect. * - Near perfect because it's so badly marred by the skits, especially the Chinese restaurant one. Skits in rap music are often tedious and almost inevitably date an album. This isn't always the worst, but the racist, stupid, un-funny Chinese restaurant skit is almost enough to knock off a star, IMO. It's a testament to the greatness of the album that it overcomes this real weakness.

Heretical as it is for me to say as a Chicagoan, pure blues has never really been my genre, as much as I can appreciate it as one of the crucial building blocks of modern music. King's technical skill and overwhelming charisma come through in spades on this album, but for me, personally, I struggle with each track seeming sort of same-y, which I often feel when tackling blues-qua-blues.

This is very much not my sort of thing. Fast Car remains a jam, but for me this sort of washes over me like a lot of other socks-and-sandals folk records.

Sort of impossible to listen to an album of what were mostly at the time and now are standards and come away truly wowed. As thieves of Black music go, he's no Page & Plant, but I enjoyed it well enough. Great cover tho.

This greatly exceeded my expectations. The first two tracks absolutely whip, the first sort of struck me as pleasurable in the same way a Henry Mancini soundtrack is, and the second genuinely rocked, which is not something I expect in the jazz fusion world. The rest sort of wore on me and got pretty same-y, but overall a good listen and something that may enter the rotation as background/working music. Will probably check out other Zappa as a result, which is also contrary to my expectation.

With the exception of "Ohio" and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" most of CSNY is pretty meh for me, although it has a few standout moments, mostly from Young.

Reminiscent of the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack (complimentary). Not a jazz guy but lovely as background music.

This came up and I audibly said "Yesssssss..." So sad, so sexy. Great album.

I prefer weird rock Bowie to weird dance Bowie, but the latter is still a pleasure as well.

Meh.

A few high moments, but indie pop just ain't my thing. Meh.

Exceeded expectations by a good bit. Some of the ballad-y stuff was just so-so, but a few of these tracks--"Sober II (Melodrama" "Liability" especially--really hit. It's profoundly un-fun pop music, which is a tough needle to thread. I didn't know her much beyond "Royals" aside from knowing she was lauded across the spectrum, but I may check out more after this.

Lauryn is a hall of famer in my estimation based solely on this and The Score. A great, great album, with some incredible standouts (the singles, obviously, but also "Every Ghetto, Every City" "Can't Take My Eyes off of You"). Was thinking 4 before I re-listened, but it's an obvious 5 after.

So much of this is old hat, but a little bit of it really hits. The circus-y/creepy nonsense ("Alabama Song") and the sleaze ("The End" "Twentieth Century Fox" ) are a total lead balloon. But when its rock and keyboards, I like it. I'm surprised it made it up to 3, even though the songs of theirs I like the most ("Roadside Blues") are pretty great.

Came into this not knowing what to expect. It's tough for me to grade relative to anything else because I'm totally unfamiliar with this kind of music, but on its own merits I found it pleasurable. Don't know that I would seek it or something similar out again, but I wouldn't mind it if I come across it.

At first I was thinking it was fine for the background, but God it's SO long and SO tedious. No one needs 90 minutes of quick high hats and snares. It's like a soundtrack to a 1990s technothriller chase scene except the scene just keeps going and you're watching some computer nerd ride a bike REAL FAST for an hour and a half. Ugh.

I don't know that I've ever sought out Eels, but whenever their music works it way into my feed I really enjoy it. As it turns out, I think I'm maybe a singles guy for them? This album is good, not great, and I had really kind of anticipated the latter. It does have the great mellow/weird vibe that I wanted, but in the cases where they clearly want it to be darker and grittier it doesn't accomplish what it sets out to.

An extremely easy 5/5, along with much of their catalogue. I've come around to the view that this is probably only the *fourth* best Radiohead album (OK Computer, Amnesiac, In Rainbows) but at its very highest ("How to Disappear Completely"; "Idiotique") it is absolutely untouchable, IMHO.

Great voice, but allsoundsame.

The crooning and twinkling piano at the beginning was fine enough, but didn't do much for me. The spoken-word, slam-poetry style jams at the end, on the other hand, really hit for me.

Wish I had half-star ratings available, 3 too low, 4 too high. Not his best work, but it does contain, probably, his best song ("Little Wing") along with a few other gems. Doesn't blow me away, but still quite good.

Fine. I like some trip hop well enough, but this didn't have much that really stood out.

I was huge into 3rd wave ska when I was a highschooler, and I dipped in and out of 2nd wave and Jamaican stuff, but I wanted it to be more punk. I even think I saw one of the Zombie Specials live once in the 2000s, but it might have been some other rudeboy outfit. I appreciate this a lot more now then I did then. It's fun but pointed, extremely listenable.

Incredibly listenable. The hits are good, the deep tracks are good, everything is good. Not a ton of transcendent moments, in my opinion, but loads of good ones and few to no dead spots.

Ups and down. The more instrumental, riff-based songs ("Bloodsport" "The Wait") are pretty excellent. As for the others, when it's in more of a punk-y/post-punk-y vibe rather than a grimmer/metal mode, I think it's more effective. It's not scary music, though it wants to be, but it is enjoyable. Their insistence on constantly using echoes is tiresome, however.

It's very on the nose that they post the day after Ozzy died, which is probably coloring my reaction, but this is just terrific. I've always enjoyed the first three Sabbath albums a great deal, the riffs are just undeniable and it isn't like a lot of the later stuff (esp. Dio-era) that feels like a parody. RIP to the Prince of Darkness

The limited bits I had heard of them washed over me with little more than the impression "goddamn this is British as hell." This, too, was British as hell. I found myself enjoyed the snotty, punk-ish vocals more than I had in the past. Scratches a nice post-punk itch without profoundly standing out from the crowd. I bet it did in 1979 though.

Few songs hit as hard as "Gloria," genuinely the baddest, punkest shit you'll ever hear. Pure tear-the-roof-off energy. It's sort of impossible for the rest of the album to not feel like a let down after such a high high, but even in its more drawn-out and uneven stretches it's captivating. Other highlights include "Birdland" and "Free Money", and the "Land" medley. Just a massive, powerful talent.

I've listened to other live James Brown albums and this very much captures the electricity of what he does. It's a very interesting contrast to modern concerts with the amount of interstitial instrumentation involved. A great listen.

An absolute masterpiece. No weak spots* whatsoever. This album was lightning in a bottle, as none of them (even Lauryn) would reach these heights after. All three of them play off each other in an elegant, incredible way. The contrasting voices, styles, and modes of wordplay give it an unimpeachable base to build on. When you add to that Lauryn's incredible versatility as an MC and a singer, it's near-perfect. * - Near perfect because it's so badly marred by the skits, especially the Chinese restaurant one. Skits in rap music are often tedious and almost inevitably date an album. This isn't always the worst, but the racist, stupid, un-funny Chinese restaurant skit is almost enough to knock off a star, IMO. It's a testament to the greatness of the album that it overcomes this real weakness.

Sam Cooke had one of the very best voices in all of music, and simply oozes charisma and charm. The album suffers slightly from period-appropriate flaws with the production that mutes the instrumentation a bit, although it also provides some sense of verisimilitude. Truly great showcase for a truly great talent.

Still in the heart of the Golden Age of Wu-Tang, where all the solo albums were in many ways extensions of the whole (RZA producing, others guesting). This one, of course, is really a Ghost & Rae production, and Ghost has the best bars because, well, he's better, but that's no knock on the Chef. (Best single verse on the album, however, is Inspectah Deck on "Guillotine (Swords)".) Hard to ignore the importance of this album in the creation of the mafioso/coke-dealer persona that would be followed by rappers for decades (Nas predates this, as does Jay-Z, but the latter owes a ton to this record, as do Rick Ross, Clipse, and countless others). This is not the best Wu solo album (Joe Biden was right, it's LIQUID SWORDS). Nonetheless, it's very, very good, although still somewhat uneven, with a few spots that drag ("Can't It All Be So Simple (Remix)"; "Wisdom Body"), but it has some absolute bangers, especially "Crimonology," "Guillotine (Swords)," "Ice Water," and "Wu Gambinos." It's not on the level of 36 Chambers, Liquid Swords, or Supreme Clientele, but it's excellent.

I find listening to any album by The Who as a whole confounding. When they commit themselves to truly rocking out, they are among the greats, although a lot of their (earned) legacy seems borne out of the more out-there moves they make, especially later with the concept albums, rock operas, etc. Here, for my money, it's wildly uneven, but when it's good it's so good. On the bad side: when they attempt standards or originals where they sound like they're aping American blues ("Please Please Please" "I'm a Man") it's cringey and borders on unlistenable. The harmony-based, British-invasion-sounding stuff is good not great ("The Kids Are Alright" "A Legal Matter"). Having said all that, I certainly can't bury an album that has perhaps the first punk song ("My Generation") in both its sound and sensibility. Even more striking, however, was "The Ox," which I'm not sure I'd ever heard before. When it began I had to check to see whether the album had turned over and there was something on Spotify shuffle. The song sounds like proto-metal with some blues sensibility and transcends everything on the album except maybe the title track. It's brilliant, not just for its time, but in general. I'd listen to hours of instrumentals like it.

I don't know whether I don't get Dylan, or just don't like Dylan, but outside the well-known songs, it just doesn't grab me. Awesome cover tho.

They're really not beating the allegations that it's just noise. That said, I'm sorta down for just noise sometimes.

I've always thought that Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers have universal appeal but is also basically no one's favorite act. They're great, and the sheer number of undeniable classics across the catalog. I had never listened to this album in its entirety, but like so much Petty, I'd say it's overall good not great. American Girl is obviously fantastic, and many of the other songs are very good. I don't see a lot in this (or most Petty) that's inventive or innovative, but damn if the man can't just write a ton of extremely good rock songs.

Pleasant enough, but nothing special. Extreme background music.

I'm not sure I knew anything about Fleet Foxes, though I recognized the name, and when I listened to this, I recognized some of the songs. tldr: BORRRR-INNNNNNG Longer version: I really hated this era of music, all that Americana-revival stuff (your Avett Bros., your Mumford and Sons, UGGGHHHH THE LUMINEERS). It might just be that I'm a lunk-headed rock bro, but I just find most straight-folk stuff with no other elements really enervating. I have no doubt there's real talent, the harmonies are impressive, but it's just not for me.

This was a damn delight. Extremely lively, interesting, and complex throughout. Don't have enough experience to grade it relative to other exemplars of the genre, but I would definitely throw this on to hang outside, at a get-together, or just cuz.

This was an enjoyable, mellow listen. No real highs or lows, but it was pleasurable enough.

Man, I don't know. The ambient/prog-y/shoegaze-y stuff in the first few tracks I enjoyed, and I imagine it was pretty groundbreaking. Almost anything with lyrics didn't hit for me, with some of it being actively off-putting (esp., "Giggy Smile"). There are pieces of intentionally irksome music I've enjoyed and found interesting (see, in particular, the early work of IDLES), but this ain't it.

I enjoy Queen, but don't love them. They rock pretty hard while maintaining the silliness and camp that I associate them with. Highlights: "Brighton Rock", "Now I'm Here", "Stone Cold Crazy"

This is a great, upsetting listen, which is my favorite kind of upsetting listen. Curtis' vocals would haunt your dreams even if you didn't know what happened to him. The gloom-punk collision is often imitated and never quite emulated. Really loved it.

God DAMN this is the whackest shit. I get they're virtuosos and whatever, but it's just so, so whack. RIP to Steve Albini, whose final post said it all.

This really just sort of washed over me. Listenable but quite unremarkable.

I was going to say that this album feels ahead of its time, but then it registered to me that it would feel totally in place as a classic soul album, albeit with funkier instrumentation and better production. So perhaps it's "out of time" or perhaps just timeless. I feel like I've only ever listened to the hits, which feels like an oversight on my part after this.

An album that answers the question "What if we just made the whole plane out of awesome riffs?" QOTSA is, in my view, the best hard rock band of the 21st century and one of my personal favorite acts. This album is a blueprint they would build on in the years to come, getting weirder and more diverse, and reaching much higher highs (esp. on Songs for the Deaf, ... Like Clockwork). They lyrics here never really pop, but that's not the point anyway. This is an album that meant to make you bob your head and air guitar, and it does that in spades. Best tracks: "Regular John," "If Only," "You Would Know," "Mexicola."

Like all Doors music, some of it is pretty good ("Peace Frogs", "Maggie M'Gill"), a little bit is great ("Roadhouse Blues") and some of the woo-woo mystic stuff is tedious and not as cool, pathbreaking, or interesting as it thinks it is. This was fine, but when I saw it pop up I was not excited by the prospect of listening to an entire Doors album.

I cannot explain what makes me like one prog album versus another. I like peak Pink Floyd, really loved the first two Mars Volta albums, dig a few other things, but then I hear something like this and I want to jump out of my goddamn skin. There were a scant few of the longer instrumental sections where they had the guitars lead and the keys in support that I truly dug. But beyond that, I really hated it, and the vocals were nails on a chalkboard to me.

Like most double albums, it's a little bloated. I very much appreciate that they were trying a lot of different stuff in their later albums, but little of it is actually nearly as good to me as when they just allow themselves to be the Hammer of the Gods. And the God-Hammerin' on this album is great ("Trampled Under Foot" "Houses of the Holy" "The Wanton Song" "The Rover"), as is a lot of the blues-ier stuff ("Custard Pie"). It's a little too overstuffed to rank with their very best, but a great rock record by one of the great rock bands.

A really wonderful and unique voice. Great listen, great vibes.

This sort of thing is just not my genre. The more broody, ballad-y songs do very little for me. The man has a wonderful singing voice, and I think the arrangements and lyrics are perfectly lovely, but I often found myself pretty bored. Had a few real highlights, however, especially "Crumb by Crumb," which I thought was truly delightful.

This is such a landmark for a reason. For a group that couldn't really play for shit, it sounds really good (although that's more the production than the musicianship, IMO). The snotty, sneering vocals and the withering sentiment across every moment just exudes punk attitude. I know much of this was manufactured and less than genuine, but as an experience it really does make you want to flip off the Queen and punch a Tory in the goddamn face. It's not perfect, and some of the later tracks are quite same-y ("Seventeen" "Submission" "New York"). But the iconic tracks ("Anarchy in the UK" "God Save the Queen") are iconic for a reason. There's more to like too: the great kickoff of "Holidays in the Sun," the grim, gross "Bodies," the call-and-response of "EMI." Loved this album since I was a kid. Holds up.

I obviously knew "Black Magic Woman" and "Oye Como Va," both of which I enjoy quite a bit. The remainder of it has a similar sort of psychedelic Latin vibe. Dug it a lot.

I came into this knowing: a) Def Leppard was hugely popular; b) among music knowers, they're considered better than a lot of their contemporaries/comparators (Poison, Tesla, RATT, etc.); and c) the hits on this albums ("Love Bites" "Pour Some Sugar on Me" "Hysteria") and Pyromania. I groaned when this came up and expected to find myself plodding through some tedious buttrock that I'm superior to. And... I actually really liked a lot of it. I think the lyrics are dumb, and I don't really like the singing voice either, but I get it. Some of the tracks I may have never heard ("Don't Shoot Shot Gun" "Run Riot") are buttrock, but kickass buttrock. It's overproduced, but in a way that actually really suits the music. It's... kinda good? I'm sort of amazed this is what I've concluded.

Accidentally listened to this on shuffle without realizing it. Doubt that really shaped the experience. This just isn't my thing. I'm sure she's mighty talented and all, but I did not enjoy this.

I don't remember where I was in Chicago around the time this album came out (prolly Wicker Park, if I'm being honest), when someone handed by a CD single of "Golden Skans." I *hated* it, as I did a lot of the sort of dance-pop of the time. Listening to the album as a whole, I come away feeling somewhat differently. Some of the tracks, including "Golden Skans," are still just not by sound, but there's a greater depth and versatility here than I might have expected. I also think my tastes have changed to a decent degree and there are definitely some songs here that veer closer to the sort of dance-punk of DFA 1979 or later IDLES that I quite enjoyed.

I've loved this album for 30 years. Still do. It's tempting to pick nits about the ham-fisted lyrics, the hypocrisy of rich rockstars raging against the machine, and whatever, but this absolutely rips. There are weaker spots but that means they're simply good, not great ("Settle for Nothing" "Fistful of Steel"). There's also a few things that aged poorly, but they were huge for a reason. Rap-rock generally sucks, but not always. RATM forever.

Good-to-very-good throughout. The best known tracks ("Born on the Bayou" "Good Golly Miss Molly" "Proud Mary") all still pop. I wasn't bowled over by "Bootleg" or "Keep on Chooglin'", principally because they practically sounded like Fogerty was trying to scat or something, but the other two tracks ("Graveyard Train" "Penthouse Pauper") rip. The whole thing is all extremely Creedence. If you're into that sort of thing (I am), very enjoyable listen.

Clapton is obviously a racist, fascist shitbag, which is particularly rich for a guy who built his career on Black music. But there's also a reason the graffiti called him God. Both halves of the title track feel transcendent for a reason. The covers are great, especially "Little Wing," where Clapton really shows the fuck off. Some of the deep tracks ("Anyday", "Key to the Highway") rank with the hits. Like most blues rock, it gets a little noodle-y for me at points, but I find it hard to deny that it's a great album made by a bad, ignorant man who happens to be a guitar genius.

Had never heard of this, let alone listened to it. It was fun, immensely listenable. Not my genre, but I found myself getting pretty pumped along with it. The version Spotify pulled up for me had some bonus tracks, one of of which "O Medo De Amara E O Medo De Ser Livre," absolutely blew me away both in the vocals and the instrumentation (the guitar outro, in particular, kicked all sorts of ass). The rest was fairly indistinguishable from one another, but was good.

Portions of this are the sort of off-putting psychedelic silliness that might seem deep or fun if you're very into drugs, which I'm not. I'm thinking here of "Chapter 24" and especially "The Gnome" and "Bike." On those tracks I went from bored to genuinely irritated. Some of it, though, it's absolutely transcendent even if sober. "Interstellar Overdrive" is an all-time kickass jam that echoes throughout rock history. It's so far ahead of it's time it's almost difficult to conceive of it being released in 1967 were it not for, say, the Beatles experimenting similarly. "Astronomy Domine," "Lucifer Sam," "Matilda Mother," all whip. It's a bizzaro funhouse mirror of an album. It's tedious and trite at times, but overall I don't think I had properly appreciated it before. It's almost (pardon the play on another title) apples-and-oranges to the Waters-era concept run (Wish You Were Here, Animals, Dark Side, Wall), which I love, but this is great too. Curious what would've happened if Syd hadn't lost his mind. I'm skeptical it would've remained great, but who the hell knows.

This was a lot of fun. I'm more familiar with the Ruffin-era Temptations, although I had obviously heard the title track. Some of these songs were fairly standard crooners done by men with great voices, but some were far beyond that. I'm thinking in particular of the title track and especially "Runaway Child, Running Wild," which had some great vocal and instrumental flourishes. A very good listen.

AAAAHAGHGGHHHGGG This is the absolute, ultimate art-from-the-artist question. I gave "Layla" 4 stars even if Clapton is a fascist shitbag, so, ughhhhh, here we go: It's sort of funny that I got excited when this came up because I totally gave up on Kanye, to the point where I didn't want him to get the one-trillionth of a cent for even a single stream. But I was really, really looking forward to listening to this again. Not sure what that says about me. Ok, but the music! This album was absolutely unescapable my senior year of college when it dropped. Kanye didn't invent backpack rap, or conscious rap, or Autotune, or incorporating gospel, or much of anything, but goddamn he did something incredibly fresh with it. Lyrically, musically, overall it's a fascinating moment in time. Kanye mostly does a great job walking the balance beam between his desire to an advocate and a poet while acknowledging his materialist, misogynist core. Here, he's still conflicted about it, which is what makes it great. By the time he's done he just wants to wallow in and celebrate his awfulness. Some of this aged poorly: "The New Workout Plan" (really encapsulate the misogyny that runs through all his work), "Breathe In Breath Out," the stupidly long adlib at the end, and the goddamn skits. But this album is so, so dense, and has so many bangers I almost forgot some existed (e.g., "School Spirit," "Two Words," "Spaceship"), along with some of the best songs of the aughts ("All Falls Down" "Family Business" "Jesus Walks"). A great album by a rotten, mentally ill man.

A sign of a good album: When this popped up I immediately said, aloud, "Hell yeah." There's not a lot to say about this album that would break new ground. Rubber Soul seems for most to mark the moment when they truly catapulted creatively and that begins to crescendo here, continuing to peak over the next several albums following. For my money, the classic, four-chord R&B Beatles songs on Rubber Soul are, mostly, superior to the ones you find here, and the far out craziness and adventuresome stuff hits higher highs for me in Sgt. Pepper and especially Abbey Road. That is, however, sort of like saying that, I dunno, Albert Pujols wasn't as good as Babe Ruth. Everything pops here. It's astonishing the outpouring of genius these guys had in such a short time. A million monkeys in a million years might stumble on "Master of Puppets", but they'd still never replicate "Eleanor Rigby". The Beatles are amazing, and the fact that they have even *better* albums than this (IMHO) is bananas. (There's a small list of bands where their, like, fourth or fifth best album is still a perfect score. The only others I can think of immediately are the Stones, Radiohead, REM, and OutKast)