Found Or Forgotten; 60 Years Of Great Music
Was hip hop dead in 2004? Was rock?!? Well, no, even afro-beat was alive and well, as long as you knew where to look.
Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #4 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 1978!
The Greatest Albums of 2004
When I set out to review the music of the last six decades, a few specific years immediately leapt to mind as contenders for the best: 1968, 1987 & 88, 1995, 2000. 2004 was not one of those years. In fact, I couldn’t immediately recall a single album that had come out that year, which is kind of crazy because I can list at least 6 albums from 1968 off the top of my head, and that was 10 years before I was born. What I’m discovering, however, is that even the seemingly slight years have a wealth of great music hiding on the fringes. Three of my top six albums from ’04 were ones that I had not previously owned, and nearly half of my honorable mentions are music that I discovered preparing for this post. I don’t know what value I’m driving for anyone else by writing this series (reading 4,000 words on forty-year old music is a bit much for all but the nerdiest of music nerds), but I am definitely reaping the benefits myself.
It’s tough to point to a general theme of 2004, as the internet and digital tools (Myspace, Napster, etc.) had set into motion the democratization of music distribution that is still in affect today. No longer were there gatekeepers to the ears of the public, as enterprising music fans could discover endless variety. I do recall that this was around the start of the whole “hip hop is dead” hand-wringing, which was, to paraphrase Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated. Sure, 90’s rap paragons Jay Z, Method Man and Nas all released stale albums, and even the Roots, the closest to a “sure thing” in hip hop, had a bit of a misfire. Still, quality was there for those willing to look. There was a ton of innovation going on with MF Doom and Kanye, not to mention some creative (but poorly received, critically) work by Mos Def and Handsome Boy Modelling School. I was much more concerned with the death of rock and roll at the time, particularly because I never bought into the genre’s supposed early-2000’s resurrection at the hands of the Strokes, Vines and Hives. The only rock album I bought in 2004 was Velvet Revolver’s debut, which I still like, but c’mon, those guys weren’t exactly going to push the genre forward in the new millennium. Turns out I was also needlessly worried, as my look back has turned me on to a lot of cool, shaggy rock music that I’ll be enjoying for some time to come.
The two big winners in the critical consensus sweepstakes in ’04 couldn’t have been more clearly divided by the age of the critics. I missed out on both at the time, but Arcade Fire’s Funeral is now firmly nestled into my top 5 for the year. The “critics of a certain age” contingent, however, were falling all over themselves to praise Smile, Brian Wilson’s aborted follow-up to 1966’s Pet Sounds that he had managed to pull together some 38 years after the fact. I think it’s mostly the mythology of the thing that these writers found irresistible, because the music is only passable, and that’s coming from someone who considers Pet Sounds a masterpiece. Enough about the music that didn’t make the cut, however, let’s dive into the music that did.
Get Lifted – John Legend
There is an unmistakable narrative to Get Lifted. It starts with Legend spouting braggadocio and unapologetic accounts of womanizing over slick hip-hop beats. The production on “I Used to Love You” is one of producer Kanye West’s finest moments, and provides the album with an early highlight. “Alright” and “She Don’t Have to Know” both breach the subject of infidelity, but nowhere near as audaciously as “Number One”. With its bouncy Curtis Mayfield loop and campy guest spot from West, “Number One” is one of the most infectious tunes on the album. Legend’s lyrics are so flippant, though, that it comes off almost insulting, but it perfectly captures the mindset of the habitual cheater. By the time “I Can Change” comes around, we have no doubt that the song’s title is a bald-faced lie. The song turns out to be a pivot point for the whole album, however. Starting off in the same vein as all of the previous tracks, “I Can Change” is a hip-hop/R&B hybrid with dense horns, a steady groove and even a verse by Snoop Dog. Legend is re-treading much of the same ground as he did in “Number One”, but there is an actual touch of sincerity to his voice. Somewhere along the way, West and Legend completely flip the script and take us to church, dropping the horn samples and the bass and bringing in a full choir while Legend makes us believe that a change really is going to come.
“Ordinary People” is one of those songs that grips you instantly the first time you hear it, but takes several listens to fully appreciate. On the heels of seven terrifically produced songs complete with full instrumentation and samples, the track is a little disorienting. Stripped of all bells and whistles, “Ordinary People” relies only on Legend’s robust voice and a single acoustic piano to survive. It is at the same time the most powerful song on the album and the most fragile, mirroring the subject matter perfectly. In addition to serving as Get Lifted‘s centerpiece, it serves to cleanse our palate for the second half.
Here is where the soulful side of John Legend gets a workout. The focus becomes more about Legend’s voice, and the subject matter deals with life after the attempted reconciliation of “Ordinary People”. Unabashed love songs like “So High” and the Solomon Burke-style “Stay With You” suggest that the reconciliation worked. In addition, Legend has shifted his focus from hook-ups to family life, as in the glorious “It Don’t Have to Change” (which features his actual family) and “Live it Up”. Even though the sexual energy hasn’t dried up, it is presented in a monogamous context. The title track, featured early on, is a cocky come-on to one and all, boasting Legend’s prowess by comparing it to a drug. The reprise of the song is much more intimate and focuses only on seducing the woman he loves. What separates these songs from the R&B of time period is partly their production, but more importantly the choices that Legend makes with his vocals. He has a very good voice, but it isn’t particularly awe-inspiring. Fortunately, he has the control to push it to its limit without going too far, and the maturity to avoid the type of self-indulgent caterwauling that is popular with so many of the pop divas (men and women both) over the years.
The dichotomy of Get Lifted is such that it almost feels like two different albums. John Legend’s songwriting is so strong that they would be two considerable debuts if forced to stand alone. When combined, however, the listener is taken on a journey through the mind of a man (it isn’t clear how much of Get Lifted is auto-biographical) as he makes mistakes, gets hurt, hurts others and ultimately grows. It is an intoxicating effort that never left my CD player (yes, CD player) when it first came out.
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Madvillainy – Madvillain
The only collaboration so far between diabolical emcee, MF Doom, and prolific producer, Madlib, is one of the best hip hop albums in the past twenty years. Doom is so in love with words and language that he treads ground with his lyrics that no one else would even think to cover. What’s most impressive, however, is that it all tracks. What I mean is that a group like Camp Lo will create a beautiful flow out of a bunch of words, but they won’t actually mean anything when they are subjected to any scrutiny. Even Ghostface’s brilliant Supreme Clientele is at least 50% nonsense. You’re supposed to have to sacrifice coherence to advance your flow to that level, but for Doom, that’s not an option. His writing is in service of the rhyme above all else, for sure, but more often than not his lyrics actually express a real idea or story. Take this excerpt from the triumphant album-closer, “Rhinestone Cowboy”:
Goony goo goo loony cuckoo like Gary Gnu off New Zoo Revue But who knew the mask had a loose screw? Hell, could hardly tell Had to tighten it up like the Drells and Archie Bell It speaks well of the hyper base Wasn’t even tweaked and it leaked into cyberspace Couldn’t wait for the snipes to place At least a track list in bold print typeface Stopped for a year Come back with thumb tacks, pop full of beer We’re hip hop sharecroppers Used to wear flip flops, now rare gear coppers He’s in this for the quiche You might as well not ask him for no free shit, capiche?
That’s an awfully complex rhyme scheme, and it sounds dope when he spits it, but you’ll also notice it ultimately tells a story (His album leaked so he went back and tweaked it and came out better when he finally released it a year later. Also: He likes money.) The album is littered with verses like that, and it can be fun to puzzle out what it is he’s actually talking about. Or you can just sit back and enjoy the artistry of the wordplay.
Madvillainy isn’t all about Doom, though, and Madlib contributes a bizarro soundscape as surreal and in need of Ritalin as his emcee partner in crime. He leverages narration from old super hero cartoons to fit the villainous super-team concept, which is fitting because the sonic palette of the album seems heavily influenced by 70’s exploitation flicks, television theme songs and other similar pop culture ephemera. The whole thing comes together into one of the most unique and fully realized aesthetics in hip hop history. Now when can we expect volume two?
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The College Dropout – Kanye West
It’s hard to go back and rate The College Dropout without incorporating the last several years of the artist’s buffoonery into your decision. Today, we know Kanye as an award show-hijacking, Jesus Christ-posing, Kardashian-impregnating narcissist. Back in ’04, however, he was a relative unknown, a hot producer who wanted to try his hand at rapping. The resulting album was a delight, and that’s how it still sounds today, as long as you can set aside all of the aforementioned baggage.
Straddling the line between mainstream rap and “conscious” hip hop, Kanye gets a lot of mileage out of his duality, even apologizing to collaborators Mos Def and Talib Kweli for rapping about “money, hoes and rims again”. And he really does incorporate both sides of the divide. Most mainstream rap (a la frequent West collaborator, Jay Z) approaches the topic of money with one problem in mind: “How do I get a lot of it?” The solution, typically either rapping or selling drugs, has its own off-shoot of issues that are dealt with, but the end goal is still the same. Kanye is less interested in the how, and more interested in why he wants money so bad, and what he does with it once he’s got it. He’s actually disarmingly genuine in examining his issues with desire for status and poor financial choices, allowing himself to be a surrogate for the culture at large. He doesn’t come up with any answers, but he’s bold in even breaching the subject.
Production-wise, this is a joyous, soulful album. Of course, West is rarely criticized as a producer, while his rapping ability is often called into question. Deservedly so. Some may not realize, however, that his flow has actually regressed, or more accurately ebbed and flowed, over the years. On The College Dropout, Kanye is a flawed but inoffensive emcee. Truly clumsy moments are minimal, and he gets by on a mix of enthusiasm, self-deprecation and corny puns. Plus, he loads up on ringers who balance the overall level of quality out. Kanye has always been the worst rapper on his own albums, but at least that means we get to hear all these blue-chippers over his amazing beats.
I remain infatuated with Kanye’s work, purely because I consider him a once-in-a-decade type of producer, like the RZA or the Bomb Squad. That said, if you can’t get past the public persona, I don’t blame you. If you can, then The College Dropout is one of the better hip hop albums of the previous decade.
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Funeral – Arcade Fire
I always get frustrated when I can’t get into a band that I feel like I should be able to. Call it FOMO, or whatever, but if the whole world seems to love some music that generally seems like it could be my bag, but I don’t get the appeal, it kind of bums me out. The more revered it is, the more I feel like it’s my fault that it doesn’t speak to me. Arcade Fire is hardly the most severe example of this (hello, London Calling) but their music is very well regarded and for a long time I just didn’t get it. For whatever reason, this is the time it clicked for me. Funeral is kind of the perfect blend of indie rock and arena rock. It’s quaintly epic, if that makes any sense. The hallmarks of indie (loose around the edges, fuzzy and/or not-very-accomplished vocals, myriad unusual instruments, personal and depressing lyrics) are all here, but the song-writing is very anthemic. Not to say I could hear Journey performing this music… but I would kind of like to know what that would sound like. Yet it’s much cooler than my fantasy covers album suggests, and therein lies what I think is the appeal: You can rock out to great hooks and fist-pumping bombast, but in a way that doesn’t seem obnoxious or played-out but instead contains a real sincerity and beauty. If it sounds like I’m struggling to articulate what I find appealing about the album, well I’m still parsing all that out. Suffice to say it’s kind of brilliant, and I’m somewhat mystified that I didn’t recognize that the first time I had the opportunity.
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Who Is This America? – Antibalas
Afro-beat, for the uninitiated, is a form of funk music with its origins in Nigeria that features large bands playing long songs filled with polyrhythms, call and response vocals and a focus on percussion. Fela Kuti originated the music in the early 70’s, and he remains far and away the artist most synonymous with the genre. A lot of afro-beat aspires to Fela’s grooves, but few imitators can successfully summon his righteous contempt for corruption. Antibalas delivers on both counts.
Intensely funky and focused, these tracks, several topping out at over ten minutes, are serious work outs. Brooklyn-based Antibalas has replaced Kuti’s trademark outrage over the African class system with outrage over the American class system, but sonically they follow the established formula to a tee. You would be forgiven for hearing Who is This America? and assuming it was one of Fela’s. After a while, though, the band’s own character starts to shine through some more. A little bit of dubstep influence, some sinister-sounding synthesizers, enough to make Antibalas more than just a carbon copy.
It’s not a given that fans of traditional American funk music will be into this. Someone who likes, say, the Gap Band or the Ohio Players might find the grooves too repetitive and the content too political. I love it, though, and it was the last thing I expected to come across while researching the music of 2004. It serves to illustrate that despite popular trends, the world of music can only expand as we march forward in time, never contract.
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Love Is Hell – Ryan Adams
I don’t know who wrecked Ryan Adams between 2001’s Gold and this album, but she did a thorough job. If the title didn’t tip you off enough, this is Adams dealing with some serious lady issues, and you won’t find many tracks of the up-beat or optimistic variety. Depressing music can be beautiful, though, and has been the fodder for some of the great albums of all time. Regardless of its nature, Adams has definitely found inspiration here, and packed the double album wall-to-wall with sincere, heartfelt music. I don’t think it turned out to be a particularly well-loved entry in his catalogue, and to be fair, it isn’t on the level of his stellar first two releases, Heartbreaker and Gold. It’s also pretty far from the alt-country that Adams made his name performing. The commonly cited sin of not sounding like you used to sound is one that is both over-levied and generally misguided, however, so I try not to penalize artists for evolving. If this is the Adams album that sounds least like Graham Parsons, it’s the one that sounds most like Jeff Buckley, and I’m cool with the trade. When the material is as good as “I See Monsters” and “English Girls Approximately”, most criticism seems a little specious at best. If nothing else, we should all be thankful to Adams for allowing us to listen to the genuinely great “Wonderwall” without having to buy an Oasis album.
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The Grey Album – DJ Danger Mouse
I can understand how this might put someone off, Beatles purists I suppose, or (is there such a thing?) Jay-Z purists. And those who believe that sampling can be no more than slapping a vocal on top of someone else’s hard work and claiming credit for it. But for the rest of us, like the music or don’t, I can’t understand how you could see this as anything other than a staggering technical achievement. This is, in no way, just slapping some Jay-Z rhymes over The White Album. Danger Mouse has admitted it was basically just a lark to impress his friends, but even he has to be shocked with how it turned out. It’s the complete re-construction of the music, from the inside out, transforming it into something completely different yet harnessing and preserving its innate beauty. That being said, is it a good album, or just an exceptional feat of ingenuity? I am not a huge Jay-Z fan, but I happily listen to this as an album. The rhymes are far more confessional and intimate than any of his other work, and Danger Mouse’s experiment gives them a poignant backdrop to work in concert with that might even improve upon Rick Rubin’s Black Album original. I’ve never heard a “mash-up” yet that comes close.
(can’t buy it, you’ll have to find your own download of this one)
Musicology – Prince
Musicology sort of came out of nowhere. It’s not that Prince wasn’t producing music at the time, he was nothing if not prolific, but it was a bit of a surprise to find him putting out music this good. Not just good, though, but focused. The last time he had made any kind of splash was in the mid-90’s when he released Emancipation and Crystal Ball, two bloated, 3-disc monstrosities that contained indisputable moments of greatness, but equally as many moments of baffling experimentation. Then, a decade later, he drops this tight, consistent and tremendously fun album. I recall being delighted at the time, because a world where Prince is making good music is one that is significantly better than one where he is not (feel free to pause here and grab a tissue if you are reading this in 2016…) Tonally, this is also pretty different from his other work. It combines soul, funk, and rock, which is nothing new for him, but the result just feels so laid-back and contented. Contentment didn’t lead him to drop five-alarm genius bombs like 1999 and Sign O’ the Times, of course, but he wasn’t going to do that in his forties anyway. Instead we get funky history lessons on black music, clever tales of sugar mamas and their ingénues, and sexy ballads about monogamy. “It’s un-dignified to sleep alone” isn’t the typical Prince come-on, especially delivered in a song where he’s trying to convince his woman to take back his banishment to the couch, but its probably much more honest to his life at the time than “Darling Nikki” part two would have been. That candor, and the comfortable playfulness with which he dispenses it, is why Musicology sounded unique after 30 years of releasing music that had seemingly covered all the ground it possibly could have. This was a new side of Prince, and for that alone, it is worth celebrating.
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Cee-Lo Green… Is the Soul Machine – Cee Lo Green
If I’m perfectly honest, this one got away from Cee-Lo a little bit. There’s just so much going on; so many ideas, so many guests, so many musical styles. It would take a miracle for it to all come together cohesively, and Green was saving his miracle to release a huge commercial hit titled “Fuck You” a few years later. The only theme, inasmuch as there is one, seems to be “Cee-Lo is awesome”, and that unwavering belief, well before the charts bore it out, is probably why no one had any luck reeling him in a little bit. Yet, a remarkable number of the ideas are good ones, all of the guests deliver, and Green floats between rapping and singing seamlessly. I’m no fan of Ludacris or Timbaland, but in service of Cee-Lo’s vision, they shine, contributing to incredibly fun, bouncy hip hop tracks. Elsewhere, Green delivers sweet R&B and sweaty funk, showing off a voice that is remarkably elastic and nimble. Where he fares the worst are a couple of serviceable gangsta rap offerings that derail the genial, party-like atmosphere of the proceedings. Mostly, its all gravy though. Yes, there’s an even better album hidden among this schizophrenic grab bag, a sort of soul/hip hop hybrid of breezy summer music that might have actually become a classic. Every time I think about trimming the fat to realize that vision, however, I can’t pull the trigger. There’s beauty in over-reaching, too.
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The New Danger – Mos Def
This album was a bit too much for a lot of people who were hoping for something more like Black on Both Sides. I get why, too, seeing as how Mos gives a lot of love to rock guitars and doesn’t actually, y’know, rap until the third track. But to me, The New Danger is almost as great as its predecessor, and the rampant experimentation isn’t anything that should be a surprise to fans of that album. There are highs and lows, to be sure, but the lows don’t exactly bottom out the way some would have you believe. And the highs are triumphant. Take “Modern Marvel”, a 3-part homage to Marvin Gaye that features low-key rhyming and nearly formless crooning but still manages to evoke the marvel for which it was named. Or “Sunshine”, a Kanye West-produced blast of pure hip-hop that should have been hailed as the flip side of the coin to Talib Kweli’s Kanye-produced “Get By”. Or “Blue Black Jack”, a pretty much straight blues jam with a little extra oomph that crawls into your sub-conscious and makes it impossible not to nod your head. There’s enough going on here that you probably won’t like everything, but you’d be hard pressed not to love something.
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Honorable Mentions
Rock: The Dirty South – Drive-By Truckers; Free the Bees – The Bees; Aha Shake Heartbreak – Kings of Leon; Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes – TV on the Radio; Talkie Walkie – Air; Kasabian – Kasabian; A Ghost is Born – Wilco; Fly or Die – N.E.R.D.; Contraband – Velvet Revolver
Country/Folk: Lonely Runs Both Ways – Alison Krauss; Seven Swans – Sufjan Stevens; Van Lear Rose – Loretta Lynn; Acoustic Citsuoca – My Morning Jacket; The Tigers Have Spoken – Neko Case; Our Endless Numbered Days – Iron & Wine
Hip Hop: Connected – The Foreign Exchange; White People – Handsome Boy Modeling School; The Pretty Toney Album – Ghostface; The Grind Date – De La Soul; The Tipping Point – The Roots
Funk/Soul: Beautifully Human – Jill Scott; Thunder, Lightning, Strike – The Go! Team; “Paradiso” – Konono No. 1
Metal: Through the Ashes of Empires – Machine Head; Panopticon – Isis; Leviathan – Mastodon
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