April 14th, 2008
7. The Notorious B.I.G., Ready To Die (1994)
The title of Biggie Smalls' 1994 debut proved sadly prophetic. Within three years of making one of the great rap records of the era, he was dead. But while Ready To Die stands out in Biggie's catalog mostly due to lack of competition (though 1997's Life After Death is no slouch, either), it's likely he would have had trouble matching it even had he lived to try. A record that perfectly balances hardcore New York rap with rock-solid pop hooks, Ready To Die sounds more and more like a summation of rap's golden age.
8. John Prine, John Prine (1971)
There's an old cliché about having a lifetime to write your debut record, and only a few months to write your second. It explains why many artists suffer from the dreaded sophomore slump, but it doesn't quite account for the startling greatness John Prine displayed on his first record. Songs as deep and wise as "Sam Stone" and "Hello In There" don't seem like the reflections of an ordinary 24-year-old, and they weren't. Prine was a fully formed, extraordinary songwriter right off the bat, and while he kept on writing great songs for nearly 40 years, the foundation of his career will always be John Prine.
9. Kanye West, The College Dropout (2004)
When he made The College Dropout, Kanye West already was a big-name producer known for crafting much of Jay-Z's classic The Blueprint, so he was by no means humble. But West wasn't quite the egomaniac he would quickly become after The College Dropout made him one of the biggest popular and critical success stories of the decade. In fact, The College Dropout (from the title on down) is an appealingly self-deprecating, "regular dude" rap record, made by a guy whose genre-defying eccentricities would be fully absorbed by the genre by the time of his second record just one year later.
10. Television, Marquee Moon (1977)
It's a shame Marquee Moon is easily Television's best album: A band this boundlessly creative should have made more records to compete for the title. As it was, Television imploded after Marquee Moon's decent follow-up, Adventure. (A self-titled reunion record was released 14 years later, in 1992.) But while Television was merely a shooting star in the late-'70s New York punk scene, it shone brighter than most bands, finding common ground between Miles Davis and the 13th Floor Elevators with jazzy, exploratory guitar jams that countless indie-rock bands are still trying to copy.
11. Taking Back Sunday, Tell All Your Friends (2002)
When Taking Back Sunday debuted in 2002 with Tell All Your Friends, the Long Island band was part of the rising tide of new emo. (Six years later, few associations could sound more pejorative.) Tell All Your Friends succeeded because of its unpolished mix of punk and pop; the loud/quiet dynamics and big choruses broke no new ground, but they also couldn't have sounded better on songs like "Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team)." They worked so well, they became Taking Back Sunday's rigid stylistic template: subdued verse, louder bridge, big chorus, repeat, breakdown, chorus, end. Guitarist-vocalist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper found it so stifling that they left the band just as the world started taking notice. Two repetitious TBS albums later, they look like the smart ones.
12. The Sundays, Reading, Writing, And Arithmetic (1990)
While the British pop scene of the late '80s and early '90s was dominated by noisy shoegazers and neo-disco acts, the Reading quintet The Sundays took a subtler approach, calling back to the early-'80s sound of Aztec Camera and The Smiths on their delicate, tuneful debut. Songs like "Here's Where The Story Ends," "Joy," and "Can't Be Sure" became staples of college radio and MTV's 120 Minutes, and The Sundays seemed poised to become crossover superstars. But although the band's next two albums were good (especially the third, Static And Silence), neither was as consistently enthralling, and in 1998, the band went on what seems to have become a permanent hiatus.
13. Black Flag, Damaged (1981)
By 1981, Black Flag was famous for three things: punishing live shows, hilariously brutish singles, and burning through lead singers at an alarming rate. DC-area pilgrim Henry Rollins became the band's permanent frontman in '81, and with his gutter-poet soul and macho bluster, he eventually transformed Black Flag into something more like avant-garde metal than bratty punk. But first, the Rollins-led Black Flag dispatched some old business by re-recording the best of its early material for Damaged, the album that best encapsulates the aggression and teen angst of the L.A. hardcore scene. As shouted by Rollins, songs like "TV Party" and "Six Pack" stopped being merely snotty and became almost scary—howls from the stricken soul of suburbia.
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