Reviews by jaileer5

I’ll put this as diplomatically as possible: this is dogshit. If you take The Rolling Stones, a shitty, overrated band, and have them cover Buddy Holly and crappy 50s songs, you get this album. It is a bad album. A very bad album.

The genius of Tupac is that he was equally comfortable with hardcore gangsta rap, and "conscious rap", akin to groups like Tribe Called Quest, Common, and Mos Def. This album is closer to the latter, therefore a bit slower, and requires a bit more thought. On the flip side, it definitely has that mid-90s, West Coast G-funk flavor which allows you to just sit back and nod your head to the groove.

Tupac was a poet that happened to use music to package his message. Even though the music is a time capsule to its time, Pac's storytelling is timeless, a boots-on-the-ground recording of the 1990s. This is a great album and, although not 2Pac's best (in my opinion, that's his next - and last - release, All Eyez On Me), a very worthy inclusion to this project.

The soundtrack of white supremacy.

Why?

I think a lot of the ingredients that shot them to stardom are here, but they just haven’t come together into that something special just quite yet - that’ll come in their next album, Only By The Night. THAT album is 5 stars, but his one is a little more difficult for me to score. I like it, but I don’t love it. I want to give it a 4, but that feels like a reputation score more than an accurate reflection of how I feel. I was excited for this album and I’ve been a bit disappointed. A 3 feels low, especially considering some of the other stuff I’ve given a 3 lately, but therein lies my biggest issue with not having half stars.

Three White Stripes albums and at least one Jack White solo album but apparently no Deftones albums, and no Tool albums. It getting increasingly difficult to give this project even a passing amount of legitimacy.

So, yesterday I made some snarky comments about the a-ha album being cookie-cutter 80s euro-pop. I apologize to a-ha, because this album is worse. It's cookie-cutter 80s euro-pop masquerading as hip hop. If uncanny valley was a thing in 1989, that's how this album would have been described. It's *approaching* hip hop, but it's by someone who has clearly observed the American experience from afar rather than personally experienced it.

It's like the book/movie The Help. The way the black women talk in that book becomes FAR more problematic when you learn that it was written by a white woman. Same with this album. It's like Neneh Cherry saw Salt-n-Pepa and thought, "I can do that."

Spoiler: she cannot.

Oh boy! ANOTHER cookie-cutter 80s euro-pop album! I'm so glad I heard this before I died! *sad trombone* *fart noise*

Sounds like an episode of Phineas and Ferb.

This is a tough one. Not sure why it's on the list over some others, but that's going to be a common refrain from me over the next 400+ (fml) albums.

I could only find 24 minutes of it on Youtube. I didn't hate it, and I thought it was kind of interesting. I could tell it was telling a pretty emotional story, but half of it was in German, so I couldn't follow. The song she sings to her son, who becomes the one kind of good Nazi (a dead Nazi) is pretty sad when putting yourself in her shoes.

Overall, I thought it was fine and interesting. I'll never listen to it again, but it makes more sense as an "adventure" than yet another Frank fucking Sinatra album, or a tenth David Bowie.

It’s not for me. I see its influence, though, as there are lots of parts that sort of sound like the bridge between Motörhead and Metallica. I think it’s a little hokey with the satan worship shit, but I bet in 1982 this is the kind of thing that led to the Satanic Panic that meant my mom wouldn’t let me play soccer.

Pretty decent, but not quite 4 stars good.

This is a really good album. All the pop punk you hear on the radio these days? This is the album that broke down those doors. This is the original, and the best.

I think it's exceptional. I'm curious about what the community score will be though. Because this project fucking LOVES 70s music, but very much hates electronic/ambient music. For me, though, this is a banger.

It’s just music that makes you feel good, you know?

I will say, 1 hour 45 minutes is toooooo long, so I’m taking away half a star. But I’m giving it right back because I just happened to check Wikipedia while listening to Isn’t She Lovely and learned that it was written about his first born, which made me tear up because my first born went away to college last week and I love him so much and I’m so sad and excited for him at the same time.

There are few things more underwhelming than a Frank Sinatra record. Like everything else he’s ever done, this is great music to put on in the background when you e got a new date coming over and you’re trying to convince her that you have taste so you can get laid.

This is like the soundtrack for O' Brother Where Art Thou, but bad.

I quite like it, though not as much as the grade I'm going to give it - I'm grading very much on a curve. You see, this album should be 3.5 stars. It's good, maybe bordering on very good with the caveat that it's boilerplate BOOTSandHATS techno and should be listened to primarily while taking drugs or in the background while working in an office or cubicle well after your drug-taking days have concluded. But we don't get half stars in this project, so that's out.

So this album should be 3 stars. It's good, but (prior caveats notwithstanding), it's not *very* good, you know? So then why am I rating it 4 stars? Because I have massively fucked up my own personal ratings. I've had some halfway shitty albums that I've rated 3 stars, because I didn't hate them enough to rate them 2 stars. but now I like this album way, WAY more than those albums, so is it fair to give it the same rating? I gave Tim fucking Buckley 3 stars, FFS, and now I'm supposed to give *this* 3 stars? yesterday's album was Let's Get Killed by David Holmes, a very pedestrian, albeit listenable, album of the same genre, and this one is way better. So how do I give it 3 stars?

I don't know, but this is taking up too much space in my life. It's pretty good if you like techno. The end.

It's fine. I tend to rate electronic music higher than most on this project, but the inclusion of this album is confusing. So much electronic music during this time period that are classics, genre-bending, and influential, whereas this one just kind of exists. I'll give it a 3, but I feel like 3 stars is turning into a "meh, whatever" rating.

I don't like it, but I respect its influence. It just sounds old, and kind of outdated, you know? You can definitely see the bones of what punk tock became. Sister Ray starts out pretty decent, but 17 minutes is too damned long.