Slant Magazine's 100 Best Albums of the Aughts

Two Suns is a shared journey for artist and audience, where both tread through the darkness and into a musical promised land. For Khan or any comparable artist, there can be no greater accomplishment.

St. Elsewhere is a rich, slick album that defies easy categorization; Danger Mouse’s inventive samples and uncanny ear meshes well with Cee-Lo’s neo-soul stylings, creating a 21st century-ready fusion that the press notes bill as “psychedelic soul.”

As with almost every Radiohead album, there are moments of brilliance, inventiveness, and surprise.

This Is Not A Test! is Missy’s third album in just over three years, and while she (in any incarnation) still trumps her hip-hop contemporaries, a little time away might give us a much-needed opportunity to miss Missy—and remind us why we loved her in the first place.

Learn to Sing Like a Star, which falls somewhere in between her typically spare acoustic solo outings and her harder-edged Throwing Muses output, might be her most coherent, consistently listenable record since Hips and Makers.

As versatile as Gibbons’s vocal is ... you won’t find her wailing in the sinister Portishead style.

While country radio probably won’t “get it,” and rock radio will most likely treat it as a trite novelty, the important thing to remember is that somehow, in the midst of the vacuous sucking sound that is modern music, soul music can still be heard, sung by the sweetest voices God gave breath to.

Panda Bear, everyone’s favorite endangered species and Animal Collectivist, masters problems of scope on Person Pitch.

The album sits comfortably somewhere in between the computer-generated Kid A and the prog-rock splendor of OK Computer, which is an inch in the right direction but still a whole step away.

Dear Science is a structural marvel in the way that its music reflects its tone.

Brash, insightful, wry, and, above all else, smart, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend confirms that Miranda Lambert is far more than just the latest in a long line of bad girls: She's a country music legend in the making, and the most vital artist Music Row has produced in a generation.

Hercules and Love Affair is relentlessly listenable (the group’s songs are too good to be classified as tributes), but it’s nevertheless defined by the inspirational pull of a golden age that’s gone.

Soulful and almost structurally flawless, Merriweather finds one of the most talented, most creative pop bands finally and gloriously figuring it all out.

With A Grand Don’t Come for Free, the Streets are once again keeping it real.

Under Construction is a living, breathing homage to old-school rap’s simpler days.

Their music is accessible, but what makes the band stand out aside from their "weird" presentation is their refusal to compromise their artistic integrity.

Like every hip-hop album (even the great ones), Kanye West's The College Dropout is marred by too many guest artists, too many interludes, and just too many songs period. 

With Mama’s Gun, Badu reintroduces her fresh hybrid of organic grooves, live instrumentation and the latest recording technology.