3 Favorite Tracks:
Feel Good, Inc.
Demon Days
DARE

This thing feels more like a collection of random tracks than a cohesive album but it's still undeniably Gorillaz. The singles still slap today and tracks like "5/4", "Slow Country" and "Left Hand Suzuki Method" are much better than I remember. If they had cut some of the fat on this thing it could've got a much higher rating.

3 Favorite Tracks:
19-2000
5/4
Clint Eastwood

Probably one of the best vocal performances I've heard in a while. The first four tracks especially. They completely blew me away. I was surprised by some of the similarities between this and South Asian folk music, then I read that flamenco comes from the Romani people who migrated from Rajasthan and then blended it with local Spanish and Arabic music. Pretty fascinating. About halfway through, the songs start to use scale patterns my ears aren't used to and it's a little hard to digest. ... read more

This used to sound a lot better.

3 Favorite Tracks:
Dance, Dance
Sugar, We're Goin Down
Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner

3 Favorite Tracks:
All Apologies
Heart-Shaped Box
Serve the Servants

3 Favorite Tracks:
Dance Yrself Clean
All I Want
Drunk Girls

3 Favorite Tracks:
Moonage Daydream
Starman
Ziggy Stardust

The lyrics are nothing special and Pac's flow isn't anything crazy either. I think it gets overrated because it was so many people's entry point into the genre. It's a good pop rap album, not much more.

3 Favorite Tracks:
Ambitionz Az A Ridah
All Eyez On Me
Only God Can Judge Me

3 Favorite Tracks:
The Beast
The Mask
No Woman, No Cry

Mobb Deep got Nas, Ghostface, Raekwon, and Q-Tip to be on this. Bruh. Holds up incredibly well too. There's not much variety in the sound, although if you're listening to this I doubt you're here for distinct hooks or anything like that. Arguably the peak of 90s lyricism along with Illmatic.

3 Favorite Tracks:
Shook Ones, Pt II
Survival of the Fittest
Eye for a Eye

This album is straight up red meat for blues fans. It doesn't take any risks and doesn't pretend to. Apparently these are covers of older hills blues songs but I'm not familiar with the original material so it's all new to me. And it's actually pretty dang good. There's more of a laid back quality to the tracklist compared to the rest of their catalogue and I prefer it. Tracks rarely deviate from their main musical idea and some might even say they drag on, but I found the repetition very ... read more

3 Favorite Tracks:
Traffic
Twist
Impossible Knots

I haven't kept up with the Killers since they released Battle Born. Like many people, I got into them with Hot Fuss and slowly lost interest as they changed their sound. Heartland rock isn't exactly my go-to genre and a lot of the Americana pastiche that I'm averse to is present here, although it could've been much worse.

The recordings do a good job of painting a picture of a small town in the 'heartland', even though it would've been nice if they were interludes so they could be skipped. By ... read more

Puzzlingly outdated pop record. Usually when bands make an homage to a different era, they build on those old sounds to make something that sounds fresh. This is not that.

3 Favorite Tracks:
N/A

3 Favorite Tracks:
Someone Great
All My Friends
North American Scum

3 Favorite Tracks:
Cranes In the Sky
F.U.B.U.
Weary

One of the more prominent examples of an album created in a lab by record label execs. Lupe has been completely open about the nightmare that was the production of this album. Turns out the label did a good job concocting something my 13 year old ears would enjoy because I unironically enjoyed this album when it dropped, and still do. Nostalgia is a helluva a drug. The first half is better than the second.

3 Favorite Tracks:
The Show Goes On
Words I Never Said
Till I Get There

It's interesting to see how the Arctic Monkeys went from being a fresh and imaginative post-punk band to a dime-a-dozen indie band on bandcamp. It's not bad, it's just disappointingly middle-of-the-road. This new dreamier pop aesthetic is what would eventually catapult their popularity online and in the Americas. And if that was their goal, I guess we can't fault them.

3 Favorite Tracks:
Piledriver Waltz
Black Treacle
Suck It and See

This thing is an hour and 42 minutes long. Even with the premise of being a sequel to his "best" album, sitting through the whole thing is a tough ask from a lot of listeners. Unsurprisingly, there's a ton of filler. Some of it is forgettable (ex. "Survival","Legacy"), some of it is unforgettably bad ("So Much Better","Asshole"). I find the blues guitar on "So Far..." and "Desperation" particularly grating but that might be a ... read more

Everyone loved this when it came out but now I hop online and apparently it sucked? J. Cole's not as great as he thinks he is but he's still pretty good.

3 Favorite Tracks:
Fire Squad
Love Yourz
January 28th