(Not Drama) What is your favorite album?

Im basic AF but Peter Gabriel and Kanye have made some of my favorite albums. I love College Dropout the most out of all of Yeezy’s output but MBDTF was an album I listened back to front obsessively after my first breakup. Tho recently I listened to Life of Pablo and im surprised at how much I loved it. I dont think I disliked a single song on it. I think with College Dropout Ye is at his most relatable and the satire of education is pretty on point. I love the light hearted soul sampled production and think all the songs have interesting themes and dont blend together like some of his other albums do. TLOP I loved like I said but Famous, Highlights and Feedback just talk about himself in the same way. When he talks about college he never does it in the same way in his first album. I also like Late Registration but I find it too similar but with darker production that isn’t as memorable to me. MBDTF is thematically his best album and I love how maximalist its production is. It’s a perfect album for both feeling sorry for yourself and thinking you’re hot shit. It’s not as consistent as College Dropout, So Appalled and the first two verses of Monster are kinda shit but the album is a great experience as a whole. He also is able to make his dumb tabloid drama relatable to me even tho I never went out with Amber Rose I can sympathize with having a crazy white woman ex who demonizes you after the fact as like an emotionally abusive person but at the same time after the breakup having a mix of love and hate for her. Tho in Ye’s case she says he hit her

Gabriel my favorite albums of his switches from either his third album PG3/Melt or his fifth album So. Or his sixth one Us. So is the perfect pop record, it goes from highbrow to lowbrow and is really brilliant and at the same time is accessible. I love Peter Gabriel as an artist because he isnt pretentious, he loves making songs about immature things like swimming and s*x while also making serious ballads about the depression of working men in the ‘80s or the death of Steve Biko. But theres times where I think that Melt is superior because it’s a darker and more thematic album. I love the harder songs on it, the opening four are brilliant for this. They convey a theme of psychopathy, Intruder is about a cross-dressing home invader, No Self Control could be interpreted to be about people with mental illnesses that lead to things like eating disorders, Start+I Don’t Remember is this amazing bombastic song that you can kind of relate to the mental illness theme. It’s a bit of a stretch but I do think the album does have that interpretation of it being a concept album about a psychopath, even a song about Racism like Not One of Us can also apply to the mentally ill. His sixth album I think is almost perfect, the only thing I’d change is either getting rid of Come Talk to Me or moving it up later in the track listing because I’m not sure I don’t like it but I feel every other song is on a similar level of greatness that the opener doesnt match. So i’d have Love to be Loved start the album and it introduces the theme of strained relationships well. I’d also change the version of Steam on the album to the Quiet version and have the single be a bonus track. I love Steam, it’s my profile anthem, it transcends being a Sledgehammer repeat to me because it’s an insanely almost over produced track and I love the theme and lyrics but it doesnt fit the album

Another album I listened to recently and would put among my favorites is Lambs Anger by Mr Oizo. I love Flat Beat ofc but I heard of this album as being sort of weird and inaccessible but I checked it out and I disagree. The album is weird but almost all the tracks are really good danceable melodies theyre just sort of experimental and clearly Quentin is having a lot of fun just throwing shit at the wall. He’s another artist I think manages to avoid pretension by just doing stuff for fun. The music is meant to be weird and off putting but I think thats just what he sees as good music, as it’s still pleasing to the ear it’s not like that deliberately bad like that Frank Zappa album with the fish head. Take the song as an example Bruce Willis is Dead, it’s just those four words then a beat but it’s a really good beat. So while you might not get into it at first i’m sure if you played it at a club they’d warm up to it because it does get you hyped to dance

Two more I want to add are Pink Season and Bedroom Bedrock. Two youtuber albums but despite youtubers being dumb I love these albums. I havent listened to Pink Season in a while but I think its a perfectly structured troll album. Even from the first song it’s designed to make you either laugh or get pissed off. It’s a similar reason why I like Bedroom Bedrock, i redisovered it recently and what I love about it is it’s a pretty shit album. I’m a layman but I can safely say objectively it’s got bad lyrics, bad audio quality, the beats are actually good the only good thing about it but the production itself is bad. That’s the reason why I like it tho, while I enjoy Kanye I dont get inspired to work by him because I know he’s got a big studio. Im going to put on Bedroom Bedrock next time I write because of how indie it is, if this r-slur can put out a cringe album with no help and get people listening to it I can put out something substantially better. I think the beats and ideas also make it an enjoyable rather than a so bad its good or geniunely terrible album. The ideas of this album include songs of the rapper bragging about being the best and having a good workflow which is ironic but like I said inspiring, songs about being an anime watching loser and I think two songs about how white people should be able to say the n word. Strange and unique premises for rap songs

Last one I want to mention is Blackstar. I dont think I’ve listened to this album in full since the year or year after it came out. The reason why is I kind of want to preserve the memories I have of this album being fantastic and dont want to ruin or sully it. It really is a fantastic send off to Bowie’s career and I listened to it obsessively. I love the weird esoteric references like in Sue, I love that it’s Bowie confronting his mortality and I love the modern sometimes Jazzy sound mixed with some classic maybe more traditional Bowie glam stuff like in the title track. I also love as you can tell short six to nine track albums that concisely tell you what they want to say