Reviews by slinky

I was absolutely dreading this album. I'm not a Kanye fan so the prospect of spending over an hour listening to him wasn't filling me with excitement. Joke's on me because this album absolutely slaps.
The rapping, the singing, the insane production, the guest appearances, the experimentation.... it all works. "Power" and "Runaway" are phenomenal, and "All of the lights" isn't far behind. By 2010 Kanye had enough fame to do whatever the hell he wanted & rather than play it safe, he took some enormous swings. He connected on just about all of them. Even the weird stuff kept me interested and the closing track caught me off guard but I enjoyed the message.
Are some of the lyrics questionable? Absolutely. Is Kanye a douche? Undoubtedly. Am I slightly annoyed that I now have to give him one of my rare five-star ratings? You bet.
But credit where it's due. I went into this expecting an endurance test and came out wondering if I'd just heard one of the best hip-hop albums ever made.
5/5. I hate that I loved it.

When I don't know an artist/album, I just hit play, no prior research. After I got done with this one, I jotted down 2 stars and then tried to figure out why it is on the list. I cannot believe that this album has sold 4 million albums. I can totally believe that it was largely improvised - it seemed like it, and not in a good way. The songs were meandering, not particularly interesting, and repetitive at times. I can get down with instrumentals only, I just need to feel something, something like Keith Jarrett apparently felt making this because it sounds like he's just off mic blowing a load at several points. 2/5

A little before my time so while I know they were revolutionary and their beats were later sampled by so many others, I just don't have the enjoyment listening to this album that some do. The music and the rapping is pleasant but so slow and simple. 3 stars

I don't know what makes this album punk or any album punk and at this point I don't care to have it explained to me. The songs aren't catchy, aren't entertaining, aren't fun, and they aren't bad. I can't imagine someone liking this stuff but I'm sure there's some freaks out there that do. 2 stars

Mother Nature is a banger. Loved it. Liked most of the other songs but nothing else got above a 3, so it is alas a 3 album.

Albums I just don't like but have at least one enjoyable song I give 2 stars. I couldn't find any joy from a song on this album. Maybe it was the lead singers voice (which isn't good), but probably it is just the style of music because the playing of the instruments itself seemed fine. None of the songs were fun, none were catchy, none were interesting, none got me thinking "I want to hear this again." I just wanted it to be over. 1 star

Listened to it while on a walk so I'm sure that bumped it up a star but I was walking with a little funk in small town Idaho late at night while enjoying this album. The lyrics didn't really hit for me on most song but they seemed to be an afterthought anyways so for the funk alone, 3 stars

I'm not a Cure fan but this sounds like Cure lite to me, just generic sounding early 80s bland pop that had absolutely no staying power. I did like Elegia quite a bit and Sunrise is alright, but neither can bump this up to a 3 for me. 2 stars

I'm a sucker for a female vocalist - be it solo, duo or in a band. Not sure if PJ Harvey is just a solo artist or a band and the music wasn't good enough to make me want to find out. I like it just fine, but it seemed like an album that I could hear passing by a garage band of 16 year olds who had been playing together for a year and writing their own songs. Didn't mind it, but no reason to come back to this one. 3 stars

Some albums are called timeless, like Abbey Road. This album is almost the exact opposite—it is firmly cemented in 1987–89. The production, the beats, and especially the rapping make it impossible to separate from that very specific moment in music.

If she had just stuck to singing, this would probably be a 4 for me. I like her voice, I like a lot of the lyrics, and I like the in your face punchiness of some of the songs. But the late 80s rapping style is featured on most of the album, and while it probably sounded fresh at the time, today it dates the music more than anything else. There's a 4 star album buried in here for me, but I can't quite get past how much of it sounds like a time capsule. 3 good stars

I am grateful that I found this website, because it has introduced me to a lot of albums and artists I never would have listened to otherwise. I can't believe I've listened to music for 35+ years and had never even heard of Nick Drake until a few months ago.
But with the good comes the bad and I curse this website for putting this shit on here. Nobody could possibly like this album. Not on drugs, not not on drugs, not trying to sleep, not trying to stay awake. There is no appropriate state of consciousness for Shleep.
Every song is some drawn out, slow paced melody with muted lyrics that I don't even care enough to try to decipher. It just drones on and on until eventually another song starts doing basically the same thing. 1 stupid star.

2/5 and that's being slightly generous. the 15 minute jam session on my generation might be critical acclaimed but I found it mostly boring

First track is pretty good, but then the album kind of disappears for me. Most of it sounds like Beatles-lite, and considering I don't particularly like the Beatles, that's not exactly a winning formula. If they leaned more into the folk side of things I think I'd be on board. “Melody for an Unknown Girl” is easily my favorite track, probably because it's mostly instrumental and doesn't sound much like anything else on the album. Two stars for those two songs, nothing for the rest. 2/5.

I don't like the singer's tone, I don't like the music, I don't like the style, I don't like anything about it, I don't understand why anyone would need to hear this album. 1 star

Side 1 was upbeat and almost made me come around on ass smacking jazz, but side 2 smacked my ass back into not really liking it. I'm sure people in the moment loved it, I'm not at that moment. Two stars

Was just bopping my big head along to the tracks in order, and it felt like a standard folk/rock album for the time. I'd never heard of the band before and figured this was the reason why. Run of the mill, nothing special. I was pretty firmly sitting at a 2.

Then "No Time to Live" came on. The song starts off as a slow piano tickler, but just builds into this warm ballad that picks up the pace toward the end. Suddenly this was looking more like a 3. Then things started getting a little weirder, including a song about the fucking mulberry bush that I somehow enjoyed, until "Shanghai Noodle Factory," which is just a fun and funky song about what? I don't know, I assume mushrooms given the time period, but it doesn't really matter.

I really did not see a 4 coming after those first few tracks, but the second half of this album gets a little stanky, in a good way. 4/5.

Edit: I just found out Shanghai Noon is not on the original album, back down to 3. Oh well

I'm not sure there's enough pyschadelics that I could take where I would be in a good spot to enjoy this album. It's not that the music isn't good - don't get me wrong it isn't - it's that it isn't thought provoking or enjoyable in any way, shape or form. Most of the tracks sound like they would be looped on a DVD menu screen that just plays while its waiting for you to make a selection. I would like to meet the person who likes this album so that I could pick their drug addled brain to see what makes them tick, but I assume I will find some fungus controlling their brain. 1 star

Boy oh boy, in theory this should be right up my alley. I like folk music, I like call and response songs, I like songs with only a few instruments and I like songs with lots of singers and instruments. This album has all of that. Unfortunately, none of it is done well.
If there's a singular lead singer, which I think there is, he has a tinny, hollow voice with absolutely no depth. When he's joined by the others and the instruments, instead of a Phil Spector style Wall of Sound you get more of a shower curtain of noise. Technically there's something there, and god bless them they are trying, but it's thin, unpleasant and I can pretty much hear right through it.
Some of these songs have the production and entertainment quality of a Ren faire band playing on the fourth stage, the one you accidentally stumble upon because you were looking for a turkey leg. I'm not sure what the target audience for this was back in 1968. I wasn't born yet, but if I had been, there would have been no bullseye on my back as this wasn't for me. 1/5

Wanted to like it, if their style was more in the style of the two hits then maybe I would like it more but most of it sounded like too heavy of a guitar paired with too uninteresting of a voice and lyrics. 2/5

I had only heard "We Are Family" before, so I had no idea what to expect from the rest of the album. Then "He's the Greatest Dancer" opened with the part Will Smith sampled for Gettin' Jiggy wit It and suddenly I was Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV. That song is a banger. The up tempo songs are fun, finger snapping little ditties with grooves that make it nearly impossible to sit still, while the slow songs are surprisingly powerful and give the album just enough variety. There really wasn't a stretch where I was waiting for a song to end so I could get to the next one.

I originally had this at 4 stars, then immediately started replaying a couple of the tracks and realized that was stupid. This is exactly what I've been waiting for with this project: an album I'd never heard before that I genuinely loved from start to finish. Will Smith knew what he was doing when he robbed these ladies 20 years later. There's only four Sledge sisters but this album is 5 stars.