1001 Albums Summary

First album, and what a way to start it off. What hasn’t been said about this. Its funky, freaky, all around fantastic album. The title track and Little Red Corvette are perfect tracks, only complaint is that it’s a bit long, but that’s hardly a problem, its banger after banger, the time would fly by if you were dancing to this!

Scar Tissue, Otherside, and Californication are the big hits, and are all great. Never heard Around The World, the opener, but I thought it was also great, will definitely revisit. I more so enjoy their funkier earlier stuff a bit more, like Mother’s Milk, but that isn't completely gone on this album. I’m glad I’m not the only one who realised the heavy compression on this thing which makes every instrument sound at the exact same volume. I feel like that hinders some tracks here.

This is a relisten, and still doesn’t click with me, I feel the same about this as I did before. Just feel like there’s something missing from here for my tastes but I can’t quite describe it. YYZ is a cool track though.

Wow I went into this not expecting to like this as much as I did, as I listened to Parklife ages ago and it didn't click (may need a relisten of that). Song 2 is the one everyone knows, and it's a cool track but I find it baffling THAT became the hit from this album really. If this album didn't drop off a bit towards the second half, if it was just a bit shorter, this would be a 4 instead of a 3.

I love All My Friends, so I was very pleased to find some of these tracks are around that level for me. Very close to a 5 star.

One of the great things about me going through this 1001 albums list is that you give albums a go that you would have just avoided otherwise. In this case, this really exceeded my expectations. I thought Deep Purple was just soulless boomer rock, this album is much more than that clearly. Genuinely interesting and polished arrangements across the board.

What’s said about the production of this album has already been said, there are numerous choices on this album that are genuinely interesting and I vibe with. I like this album less now than I used to, and I dunno. When I was younger, I used to think these lyrics were stupid, but also ironic, tongue-in-cheek, charming, but knowing what we know about Kanye from the past 7 years, these lyrics reveal themselves to be just stupid.