Reviews by guggmo

I’m at a 5.

This is my first Kate Bush album – obviously, Running Up That Hill was huge a few years ago, but I never really took a deeper dive into her music.

What’s here is one hell of a look at the idea of the human condition and the need for relevancy, comfort, and connection, bedazzled and supplemented with fantastic production work that seems to be the absolute pinnacle of the mid-80s style, refined all the way to this point in 1989. Her vocals are incredible throughout this album, and the lyricism is pretty damn good throughout.

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a more effective beat drop in my life than the launch of “Rocket’s Tail” – just a masterclass of how to do that sort of thing and have it work perfectly. It’s one of the many examples of great production work blending with Kate’s vision that are scattered throughout the album, but it hits brilliantly on that track in particular. This Woman’s Work might be one of the most emotional album closers that I’ve ever heard. Seeing the scene it’s paired with adds an incredible layer of depth.

Really, I could keep glowing with praise, but I just felt really touched by this album. It hits a few snags of repetition or empty spots at points, but those get immediately washed away by some great line or a great vocal hit or something crazy in the soundscape. It’s just a really fucking strong album, and a very easy 5 for me.

As I sort of thought going into this, it’s a very nice 4.

Stan Getz is pretty damn good at this whole bossa nova thing, and this is a really fucking good bossa nova album. As I said about Getz/Gilberto, what’s here is incredibly relaxing, very enjoyable, and super easy to listen to. As I also said about Getz/Gilberto, the only reason I’m at a 4 is mainly just how rigid the album can feel; not in terms of the compositions themselves, but simply the instruments at hand.

This album sticks deeply to its shaker percussion, its cowbell, its guitar, and its saxophone, and it never really strays from that. The compositions are great, but even at just 33 minutes, there’s eventually gonna be some fatigue from hearing the shaker percussion in every single track without ever really pausing that much – the same goes for the saxophone riffs, or the guitar melodies, and the cowbell especially sticks out on the last track.

With all of that said, there’s not a single bad track here, and I really did enjoy the hell out of this – it really could go to a 5 on a subsequent listen or two, because the vibes are just immaculate throughout. It’s a great album, it’s a great listen, and it should be on the list – I wish there was a vocal track or two (or even just a track with a little more bite to it) for variety’s sake, but that’s just my wishful thinking. It’s a very deserved and very strong 4. Definitely deserves to be on the list.

I’m at a 1.5 that I’m going to round down to a 1. That is the first, and hopefully last time I will ever have to write a sentence like that.

This album fluctuated for a while in terms of where I was at with it; I thought the first track, “Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers” was fine – not super captivating, but just ultimately fine. I thought the second track, “Spit on It” was obnoxiously mixed and I quickly thought this would be a completely disastrous trainwreck. On the Lash had the worst intro ever, and started to reaffirm my fears, until it ended up actually being pretty good. Caviar was fine, but just sort of a directionless slog. Spike Island was decent – not that good, but it was enjoyable enough that I liked it. Kiss Like Lizards is the highest point of the album – I genuinely think it’s a great track with a lot of fun energy. By that point, I was probably at around a 2.5 that I could bump up to a 3. It was poorly mixed, sure, but it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t appreciate what the album was going for, it just wasn’t gonna be fully my thing.

Getting Bright at Night is one of the longest, loudest, and least substantial tracks I think we’ve gotten on any album so far. It is a never-ending 9-minute mess with a never-ending guitar that never once lets the song breathe on its own merits, and it immediately fucking dragged down the mood. The sad part is that the album gets in one last good gasp of air with Big Sleep, which I thought was pretty enjoyable. After that point, from Track 9 (White Devil) and onward, the album just… ugh. Tracks 9 and 10 are fine, but completely boring – they exist for the sake of padding. Track 11, Virgin Velcro, is decent enough but it’s not doing anything new or special. By now, every song just blended together and felt the same to me, even the better ones. At this point, I had simply grown tired of the album.

Seasick is decent enough until the final 2 minutes. The final 2 minutes of Seasick broke me. It’s just noise. It’s genuinely just noise. It’s not even noise with vocals to give the appearance of music. It’s truly just noise, and it’s not even noise that’s good and relaxing in the white noise Brian Eno-esque sort of way – it’s some of the most grating and painfully awful noise ever put to tape to be commercially sold. There’s not a single positive behind it. It grows louder and louder, and then it just… transitions into “Party the Baby Off,” as I’m just supposed to accept that I had my ear to the door of a T-1000 getting tortured in a lab for the last 2 minutes like it didn’t fucking exist.

Party the Baby Off has some of the worst lyrics I’ve ever heard in any album closer ever. “But motherfuckers do what they have to, beat your face black and blue” before repeating “take off all your clothes” as the album faded out was genuinely the final straw for me. It genuinely went from an album where 3 of the first 6 tracks were fine to being an utter trainwreck of an album that I simply had no respect for.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that On the Lash, Spike Island, Kiss Like Lizards, and Big Sleep are all good tracks, and I might throw those in my playlists. However, this album just soured on me to such a deeply harsh fucking degree that I simply don’t think I can even give it a 2, as much as I thought about doing so. If this had had even a decent closing track, I could’ve probably been nice and gone up to a 2, just barely, if only to reward the good tracks for actually being good. It’s just not there for me.

When I gave Maxinquaye a 1, it was because I simply found the album to be deeply boring – there was no energy and it did absolutely nothing for me. I’m at a 1.5 with this one, and because of the lyrics in that last track, I simply refuse to bump it up to a 2. I do think this album has a better energy and is probably still better than Maxinquaye, but it’s the third time I’m giving an album a 1 (fuck you Kid Rock), and it’s only because it had such an extreme decline that just made me feel disappointed that I even listened to it by the end. This did not need to be on the list.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’m rounding down to a 3.

There’s not any bad tracks here, but there’s a number of tracks that just aren’t very captivating to me, and those tracks just drag the album down from the incredibly hot start it had. I was really into the first 4 tracks, but starting from Track 5, I think the album just gets a little too broad from a lyrical standpoint and for some reason, it just nagged at me the entire time. When the lyrics got too broad, the songs felt like they had less substance and less structure, and while that’s probably better for some people, it just doesn’t work as well for me. When the album does strike on tracks that have a structure and a substance during those final 8 tracks, I think it clicks really well, but it only does it a handful of times.

There’s fantastic instrumentation throughout this album, but it just feels like too many of the songs on here are full of missed opportunity for my musical tastes – I want to dig deeper into these slice-of-life monotonous moments that are usually captured pretty well, but the scope of so many tracks being so broad just sort of left me underwhelmed.

Once again, though, there’s not a bad track, and I don’t think this is a bad album. It’s just not fully my thing, but I can see how it could be someone else’s. It’s probably a 4 or maybe even a 5 for someone else, but for me, I’m just kinda stuck on a 3.

That’s an easy 5, and thank goodness it is.

I always use this album as a sort of benchmark, but it’s been so long since I actually heard it that I wondered if my memory was sort of faltering on me – obviously, Band on the Run and Jet are the two biggest hits off of this album, and some of Paul’s best known post-Beatles stuff, but I couldn’t fully remember the rest of the album.

The rest of the album is just as damn good; the only real point of “ehh” for me was the sort of “first minute is the whole song” track that is “Let Me Roll It,” but even that’s a pretty good song when it comes to it – I think this is just a great fucking listen, regardless of paying attention to the lyrics, and if you do pay attention to the lyrics, I think it just adds even more to the album. The structures on all of these tracks are super fun, both vocally and instrumentally in a way that’s both reminiscent of The Beatles and much closer to some of his contemporaries at the time, like say, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, or even a lot of the U.S. bands that had kinda tried to fill the post-Beatles void (especially on No Words & Helen Wheels).

I could keep going, but I’m just glad this album was as strong as I remembered it being – I truly forgot the album had ended on a small reprise of Band on the Run, so that was a fun looping point. It’s just a great fucking album, and when music can make someone feel this good, there’s not a damn thing wrong with it. Just a really strong listen from top to bottom, and a real pinnacle of 70s rock to me. One of the easiest 5’s I’ll give.

I’m at a 5.

God, what a beautiful, beautiful album. I’ve never heard of Michael Kiwanuka until now, but this album is one hell of an introduction; such a deeply vivid album, from its instrumentals, to its lyricism, and even to its vocals – his voice has such a great fucking tone to it that manages to sound like Bill Withers, Phil Collins, and Seal all at once. In terms of the genres, this album bounces all over the place, but it never once loses any sense of cohesion – it can go from Stevie Wonder-esque pop, to Bill Withers-esque soul, to a bit of Jimi Hendrix on a dime, while managing to explore a lot of other genres within those influences – for example, the instrumental part of Interlude (Loving the People) really stuck out to me. It feels almost Brian Eno-esque at the end while scattering in some awesome electric guitar throughout. Looking at the whole thing, it's basically a modern 70s album, even down to its cover art.

Really, I’m just stunned this never entered my radar before now, and based on Spotify plays and whatnot, this is criminally fucking underrated. I’m really blown away by how cohesive this feels as an album experience; I feel like 2019 was very much a year for “playlist albums” thrown together without rhyme or reason, so to have an album cohesively put together with a definitive start and finish, excellent transitions throughout, and an overarching window of his version of the Black experience (if you didn't get this throughout the album, you truly did not get it) just feels kind of special. I thought this hit on all cylinders from top to bottom, and almost every influence it touches on involves some of my favorite artists ever, so everything here was right down my alley. Just a spectacular album – honestly, probably a 10/10 for me.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4.

I don’t think this album does anything super special, but it certainly doesn’t do anything wrong; this is a pretty quick 31 minutes that’s full of pretty quality tracks, but as an album experience, I feel like there’s not much of a sense of direction for the band to firmly plant itself on as a debut album.

Individually, I don’t think there’s a bad track here – a few mediocre ones, sure, but nothing ever reaches outright bad. The instrumentation is pretty entertaining, and the vocals know when to switch between calm, angry, and forceful. The lyrics are sort of where this album falls flat; not that they’re bad, but there’s never really a super catchy hook here to really hang your hat on as a signature song.

However, in terms of the album, it just sort of felt like going track to track without a direction, and while Odessey & Oracle was sort of the same way, it worked because of the consistency in the stylings of each track – this album can’t really decide if it wants to be super heavy, a little light, or somewhere right in the middle. It jumps between each tone, and it makes the album experience feel just a little bit too dissonant at times.

Regardless, what’s here is super fun, and most of the little nitpicks I had don’t take away from the overall quality of each track or the album; it’s got a lot of great energy, and when everything is clicking, it feels a little unstoppable in a charismatic way. It just doesn’t click as often as I’d like, but it clicks often enough to bump this up to a 4.

I’m at a 4.5 that I think just barely bumps itself up to a 5.

I wasn’t really feeling the first 2 tracks on this album; I thought they felt a little repetitive in their lyricism and vocals, even if the instrumentals were pretty good. From Track 3 onward though, I thought this album took a nice ramp up in energy; each track got progressively better and better (save for the sort of super generic track that is “I Want Her, She Wants Me”) before it started firing on all cylinders by Track 9 and never looked back. I genuinely had a big grin on my face when I realized “Time of the Season” was that track, because I’ve heard it several times (obviously, the Eminem sample helped a bit), but I’ve never really thought to listen to the original.

The quality that stems from 9 of those final 10 tracks is what gets this to go from a 4.5 up to a 5; I think they’re just too damn good to sell them short by leaving them at a 4. Yes, the album starts slow, but it really does ramp up and finish in a remarkable way; the choice to end on Time of the Season, and save frankly your best song for last is really hard in the modern music industry, and it’s kind of a breath of fresh air to see it happen here. I might be overhyping it a little, but I really, really did enjoy this – I feel good about going to a 5.

It’s a 4.5 that I’ll bump up to a 5.

There are some (ok, probably many) aspects of this album that haven’t aged well, but for 1992, Dre’s solo debut, and the introduction of Snoop Dogg to the world, it’d be ridiculous for me to not bump this up to a 5 on account of just how damn well Dre fucking nailed this.

The biggest outliers are, frankly, the tracks where Dre isn’t as prominent on them – I’d say Snoop carries at least half of this album, but even in N.W.A., I can’t really say Dre was a featured rapper to that degree. He was the beats guy, and he fucking kills almost every single beat here. Yes, he dips into his bag of tricks in a way that feels a little same-y the deeper the album goes, but a lot of that is usually saved by just how damn good the lyricism and flow on these tracks are.

I do think the album starts to lose a bit of steam after The $20 Sack Pyramid, and that’s why it’s only at a 4.5 that I’m bumping up and not a straight 5, but I’d be hard-pressed to not call this one of the top 5 rap albums of the 90s; I’m sure I’m being forgetful to a point where it could slip into a top 10 slot, but regardless, I just deeply enjoy this album. I think those first 6 tracks after the intro are all-timers, and even if the album goes on a bit of a descent after Track 10, it’s just too damn good to not bump it up to a 5. It’s a great fucking album, and a genuine landmark moment for west coast hip hop, arguably even more than Straight Outta Compton was. It’s absolutely worth the listen and absolutely worth being on the list.

I’m at a 3.5 that I think I’m gonna just barely bump up to a 4.

I really wish I could keep it at that 3.5, but what’s here, in terms of energy and atmosphere and tempo is all honestly pretty good. The biggest knock I have on this album is its pacing and some of its production; I think there are too many tracks in a row that rely entirely on the energy of the soundscape, going at blazing fast speeds that are sure to perk up a listener, but at the expense of not being able to comprehend the lyrics, which are a bit incomprehensible throughout chunks of the back half of the album. It would be fine if it were one or two tracks in a row, but it feels like it’s around 3 or 4, and that’s simply too much.

However, I thought too many of the soundscapes during that stretch were fucking rad as hell to ignore them like that. It’s a really entertaining 28 minutes, and that short length stops any one track from truly overstaying its welcome and becoming annoying. These are great individually, but as an album, they’re a little weirdly clumped together.

With that said, the energy is still entirely infectious, and this album stays at a consistent enough quality that I think it can get that bump up to a 4, but it really is hanging on by a thread. I imagine if I come back to this album, those little lingering issues about lyrical comprehension and the overall pacing of the 12 tracks (seriously, who decided to have that many fast tracks in a row in the middle there?) are gonna bite at me more and more to a point where I might drop it down to a 3… but it’s no less than a 3. It’s pretty fun, and pretty good, and I think it should be on the list.

I’m at a 10.

I truly don’t know that I have the words to describe how all of this made me feel, but I imagine I’ll stumble into them as I write stuff; first and foremost, this is my first Pink Floyd album in full. Never heard anything off of Dark Side, and really, the only Pink Floyd track I’ve heard before this was Wish You Were Here, which I think is an excellent track.

I’ve had moments throughout listening to all of these albums where I’ve felt dumb for not listening to an artist or a band before they popped up in this list and I had to be confronted with it. This is perhaps the dumbest I’ve ever felt yet. I don’t want to give a full recap of the plot or anything; that’s for other people to type out and analyze. I just want to type how I feel, which is that this just hit remarkably close to home for me a little too often, but in a good and confrontational way. The wall is a very real, and very valid thing. The message this album is trying to send is arguably more relevant now in 2024 than it was in 1979, and it’s a goddamn shame that apparently Roger Waters himself has lost the fucking plot on it.

I’m still at a loss for words, so I’ll just skip to the finish: there is not a single missed note, or beat, or anything on here. This is 80 minutes of some of the best stuff ever put to tape, in terms of a fully cohesive vision and its execution. I feel remarkably idiotic for not listening to this before, and I curse Doug Walker every day for making “The Wall” into his own personal shitshow of a joke. Just a truly fabulous album that I may never put into words. Just listen to it. It’s a 10 out of 10, and well-deserving of so much of its critical acclaim. I truly, truly loved this.

It’s a 4.

I’ve never heard the debut, though I have heard Demon Days, and while I firmly think Demon Days is the better album of the two after this listen, what’s here is remarkably experimental and genre-bending for 2001 that I have to give this album a lot of flowers. Obviously, Clint Eastwood is the big star of the album, but a lot of this is really fucking good.

The big thing stopping this from being within 5 territory is simply how many tracks feel a little flat or a little repetitive for my tastes; there’s not any bad tracks, but a few too many weren’t clicking for one reason or another, namely the stretch of Tracks 12 through 14, whether it’s the language barrier biting at me, not really vibing with the emptiness in a soundscape, or simply being really fucking annoyed by a never-ending sample of a cheering crowd that anchors an entire song. Yeah, Slow Country sucks, I said it. I did not like that track.

Regardless of that, though, the rest of this album clicked incredibly well for me. It’s a bit repetitive in a few spots, and sometimes the beats kept droning on without much of an evolution in the sound, but I don’t think any of it really took my enjoyment away until that stretch of tracks 12-14. There’s simply too much that doesn’t vibe with my tastes to go up to a 5, but it’s absolutely no less than a 4; great fucking stuff here, and easily deserving to be on the list.

I’m at a 4.5 that I really want to bump up to a 5, but I just don’t think I can.

What’s here, for the most part, is totally engaging and super rad; the 13 minutes of City, Country, City in particular might be one of my favorite extended instrumental tracks we’ve gotten, and a remarkable showcase of early 70s funk and jazz. This is a great fucking album that feels deeply reminiscent of some of Stevie Wonder’s best.

However, those little extra parts that aren’t as engaging are what drag this album down to just a 4 for me – it’s got nothing to do with the instrumentation itself, or the energy of each track, or the lyrics, but it’s all about the length of some of these tracks. I think Four Cornered Room went on about 2 or 3 minutes too long in a way that didn’t substantially add anything to the track except for some runtime padding. I think The World Is A Ghetto, while fabulous, could’ve been trimmed down just a bit around the edges to make it feel more cohesive in a way that doesn’t sacrifice its soundscape. 10 minutes is long for that track, and there’s a sort of creative bankruptcy to the repetition of saying the song’s title over and over again, at least for me.

The same applies to the first and the last tracks as well – great soundscapes, but I thought The Cisco Kid was sort of unengaging as the opener and Beetles in the Bog just fell flat for me with the vocal and instrumental repetition, especially as an album closer.

Once again though, this is a great fucking album, and my complaints don’t take away from the fact that this is funky as hell, has great lyricism, great instrumentation, super fun energy, and is overall a great listen. I just think for my tastes it could’ve been trimmed a bit to shave down the filler and make for a tighter album experience. It’s really close to being a 5, but it’s an excellent 4 regardless of that, and deserves to be on the list.

I’m… uh… let’s go with a 3.

I don’t know that I’ve ever had less words for an album after listening to it; it’s not that I think this is bad. If anything, its eccentricities, its cacophonies, and all of its intentionally delivered flaws and oddities make it one of the more captivating of the 209 albums we’ve gotten so far, for better or for worse. I truly don’t think this album ever lost me in terms of being attentive and aware.

It completely fucking lost me somewhere in the middle in terms of my own personality, invaded my brain, and simply replaced me with a new man somewhere by the end. This album is a goddamn acid trip on a runaway train that, while you know it’s going entirely off the rails, you are sat down as if this thing is taking you to the destination that you don’t even know you want to go to.

I truly cannot describe the intricacies of this album; it is a complete enigma, and I somehow feel rejuvenated and confused at the same time after listening to it. I may never know quite what overcame me after a single listen, but I… think I enjoyed it. It’s a 3. It’s a very weird 3. It is worth a listen, if only to experience whatever sensation I just felt.

I’m at a really good 4.

The biggest misstep on this album is the endlessly droning “Somebody Loves Me,” but besides that, what a great CHIC album. Yes, I know; it’s a Sister Sledge album, but this may as well be CHIC ft. Sister Sledge. That’s not to be taken as a complaint at all; I’m sure they had some level of say in the instrumentation and lyricism to make the songs feel more like their own, but this is a Nile Rodgers-led production if I’ve ever heard one.

Some of the lingering issues from Risque are here, but they come up far less often; a few songs hit on a little too much repetition, or a melody that lingers a bit too long, or a soundscape that just loses its luster after 4 minutes without really changing stuff up. Those issues are here, but I can usually look past them because of the excellent vocals of Sister Sledge.

I really don’t have any complaints; it’s a damn good album that gets dragged down to a 4 because of “Somebody Loves Me,” but without that track, I’d probably be at a 5. Honestly, I’ll probably just listen to it that way. It’s a very good listen, it’s catchy as hell, and it’s just some of the best disco of the era. Easily deserving to be on the list.

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4.

This is a good album, with one big issue for my sensibilities: the solos just go really fucking long, man. I wouldn’t mind it if it were one solo every now and then, but it feels like every single fucking song has to have at least a 90 second solo (or what feels like even longer) in a way that creates such a gap between verses that it just starts to feel like empty noise after a bit.

That’s not to say the solos are bad; a good number of them have excellent guitar work and percussion, and they’re captivating in their own way, but if I were listening to this album in a car, I feel like those solos would just drag the fuck on in a bad way.

With all of that said, though, what’s here is really strong 80s rock. Yes, it’s a bit formulaic, and that formulaic nature is what stops this from ever getting close to a 5 in my ears, but the formula works really well at an individual level. As an album experience, though, it just becomes too noticeable, much like the extended solos do. There’s great energy on all of these tracks, and I enjoyed every single one of them, but I kind of found myself in a holding pattern after the melodies wore off with each new track.

I could keep nitpicking at this, but I’ll just get to it: it’s a solid album with noticeable problems (for my tastes) that manages to drag a lot of great 80s rock standards out while occasionally dragging along and sounding like a drag. However, the good outweighs the bad enough for me to bump this up to a 4; it’s still a pretty enjoyable album and a hell of a way to practice your air guitar, at least.

It’s a 2.5 and I wish I could leave it there… but I’ll graciously round it up to a 3, even if I really don’t want to.

I just wasn’t that captivated by this. There’s nothing technically wrong with any of these tracks, and in terms of execution, I think they nailed exactly what they were going for. This is my first time listening to anything shoegaze, and my assessment of it is that it’s like leaving the reverb in as if it’s a smoke cloud from a fire; it just hangs around, and stays there, and it doesn’t really bother you, but it is kind of weird that it’s there.

It’s just… I dunno, for my tastes, not that interesting. There’s not a bad track here, but there’s not really a standout either; it’s a bunch of tracks that just sort of blend together for me in a directionless way. Yeah, the lyricism is fine, but the melodies (both vocally and instrumentally) feel either monotone or buried by the swirling wall of reverb smoke that permeates most of these tracks. It’s cool on the first track, but when you realize that it’s an entire album of just this, it just sort of loses the luster immediately.

It just really does not feel like an album I had to listen to before I die, you know? Could’ve gone my whole life without hearing it, and now that I have heard it, it’s just OK. It doesn’t do anything special, and it doesn’t feel like it stands out. In terms of the individual tracks, they sound pretty neat, and I’m not opposed to the concept of shoegaze, but as an album experience, this just sorta dragged me into mediocrity. At least the last track was nice.

I’ll acknowledge that this could do a lot more for someone else, but for me, ultimately, it’s a 2.5 that just barely does enough for me to bump it up to a 3. However, it could honestly go down over time. There’s just no room for going any higher than a 3, and that’s that.

By some genuine miracle, I’m at a 3.

This album makes one of the worst first impressions imaginable compared to expectations; when you read something like “rap opera,” the brain makes comparisons to shit like Tommy by The Who, in terms of “opera” in traditional music, or Hamilton in terms of “rap” to tell a story. This album is quite literally neither of those, and to call it a “rap opera” is a genuinely misleading description that might taint the album if you just don’t stick to it.

This is not a rap opera; it’s a rap TV drama. To make the U.K. reference, this is basically just an 11-episode arc of Eastenders or Coronation Street, or some other goofy hokey drama, with a bit of a sitcom lean. To call this album an opera is like calling High School Musical a Broadway production; it just sets the wrong expectations.

Once this album truly settles in, it’s… totally fine, honestly. Completely inoffensive beats, if a bit boring at times (but perfectly fitting on others), decent storytelling (but not anything TOO evocative, save for the genuinely fantastic “Dry Your Eyes”), and ultimately, a fine story that just feels a bit relatable in the end. It’s not THAT great; critics giving this like, a 90 on Metacritic or calling it a top 50 album of the 2000s are severely overrating it.

However, I genuinely think it’s good. It takes a terrible first impression, and eventually finds its voice – yes, the flow could be better, the melodic qualities could use a bit of work, and the delivery feels a little bland without really getting too deep into the emotions trying to be portrayed… but I just kinda ended up liking it. It’s definitely not a 4, and it’s nowhere near a 5, but I can’t agree with the people that are giving this a 1 or 2.

Lower the expectations before you go into it, because you’re not gonna get something like Tommy, which genuinely became a movie. You’re gonna get a 11-episode arc of a TV show where a weed-smoking guy loses his money behind a TV, meets his girlfriend, gets cheated on by one of his friends, and then learns to live with it. A completely average plot for a good album that simply does a good job of executing its vision. In other words, a resounding 3, but one I’d actually recommend.

Yeah, that’s a 5.

Obviously, it kills me to give Kanye any kind of credit in 2024, but as I’ve said; the version of the man that existed in 2004 is the version of the man I want to remember and admire if I ever think of Kanye, and his influence is felt all over this album, whether it’s in writing credits, production credits, or just the reshaping of Chicago rap that came in after College Dropout.

Make no goddamn mistake about it, though; this is Common’s album, and he has the final say on everything here. What emerges from this collaboration is something that is distinctly more of his voice than Kanye’s, and that’s why I can sort of look past how much of Kanye’s fingerprints shape this album, because Common is the star here. He’s the main writer, he’s the one rapping, and overall, these are his stories to tell. He tells them beautifully – there’s not a single wasted line here, even when he’s horny as hell on Go!, it’s still delivered with such a confident flow that he just rolls with it without missing a beat.

Speaking of the beats… yeah, Kanye cooked on a lot of these tracks, but so did J. Dilla – I don’t know that I’ve ever really heard a J. Dilla beat (sue me, I still haven’t heard Donuts), but the swirling piano that surrounds the outro of the entire album (and really, most of the beat on It’s Your World) is utterly perfect. I can’t remember the last time an album stuck the landing on the ending that hard.

I could keep gushing here, but it’s just a fabulous rap album for 2005 – obviously, Kanye’s star power after College Dropout is probably what gave this album a bit of commercial appeal, but the end result is all Common’s, and it’s all great. It’s an easy 5 – it might even be a 10/10 for me, genuinely. I don’t think there’s a skip here. I loved this.

I’m at a 4.

This is a much improved effort over Surfer Rosa for my sensibilities; it blends a bit more of a commercialized sound with their techniques, and in terms of the overall mixing and sound production, what’s here does a much better job of letting each instrument shine, for the most part.

Much like Welcome to the Pleasuredome, though, I do think this album suffers from being a little too directionless in the back half, which is weird to say for a 38 minute album, but that’s just how I feel. There’s a number of tracks here that seem to exist as jam session ideas that pad out time to make the album feel worth the purchase, and while I don’t think any of them are bad, I simply think they’re a little unnecessary, and once again hinder the album’s listening experience.

With that said, I still enjoyed this more than Surfer Rosa – not enough to go up to a 5, but there is the chance that it could all click at a later point for me. There’s some great fucking tracks here, and while some of them get a little dragged down lyrically, I don’t think anything is outright ruined. It’s a much more approachable record, and whether that makes it better or worse is up to personal opinion. I just know this one clicked better for me, and it’s definitely worthy of being on the list. Pretty damn good 4.