1001 Albums Summary

Mellow grooves and smooth rapping from Q-Tip, but it feels like a warm-up for Low End Theory. It needs Phife's grit.

Chuck D's politics are sharp, but it's the sound that gets me. The Bomb Squad's noisy chaos doesn't sound like anything else in rap.

Nothing here tops "Deceptacon," but the scrappy garage-band energy wins me over. I probably like it more than I should.

Love the heavy riffs and trippy production. The slow blues stretches drag for me.

I'd avoided this one because of "Girls & Boys," but it's much better than that song. The best tracks have the melody and storytelling of The Kinks. The constant genre-hopping got tiring, though.