50 at 50: Albums

In honor of turning 50, I decided to make a bunch of ’50 Favorite’ lists. This is my 50 Favorite Albums. How does one make the list? It has to be something I have in heavy rotation, or at least did at one time, or an album that had an influence on my musical tastes. One thing that I realized here is that there are a lot of groups and artists for whom I’ve only listened to through greatest hits compilations; if you don’t see a name (say, Stevie Wonder or The Who) it’s not because I don’t love their music it’s because I’ve never actually listened to an individual album of theirs all the way though. So don’t take any omission as a slight against anyone

R&B Music: (10)

• Michael Jackson, Thriller
• Janet Jackson, Control and Janet
• Prince, Purple Rain
• New Edition, New Edition, NE Heartbreak, and Home Again
• Guy, Guy and The Future
• Anita Baker, Rapture

OK, I’ve listened to way more R&B music than this list suggests. But I haven’t listened to a lot of full R&B albums. While I was growing up Motown, Stax, etc had recently fallen into the rearview mirror and radio was getting segregated in it’s formats. And by the time I had my own money to buys records, tapes, etc rap was all the rage. So these are the albums that either I heard all the way through because somebody else was playing them in the house, or that I got around to buying for myself as a teenager or adult. As you can tell by them having three albums here New Edition was THE R&B group of my childhood; they really were a victim of timing in that had they come along during the Motown heyday or the Jodeci/Boys II Men era later they would have been even more successful than they were in the 80s. As it was they had to deal with being the next generation of the Temptations/Four Tops/Jackson 5 during a time when that music wasn’t at the forefront anymore, and what they did was ultimately made more popular outside of Black radio and Black music fans by white groups like New Kids on the Block and then the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync and so on. And then Jodeci and Boys II Men came along leaving little room for them in that corner of the music world. Thankfully they’ve always been able to do well enough touring, and put together some decent to great runs as solo acts during the 90s, to stay visible in the world.

As for the other names here, I’m sure you’re familiar with most of them so I’ll stick to the one you may not be. Guy came along when I was in high school as part of the New Jack Swing Era. For a few years and over their first two albums they had cornered the R&B group market in while New Edition had split into doing separate projects up until Boys II Men and Jodeci came along. This was also around the time I started making my own money to buy music so they made into my catalog.

Rap: (20)

Rap’s rise into prominence began when I was a preteen and continues on to this day. I was fortunate enough to hear a lot of the artists that are now considered old school like Run DMC, Whodini, LL Cool J, etc at the beginning of their careers and then others like Tribe Called Quest, Wu Tang Clan, Dr Dre right when I had enough money to buy all of it that I wanted to hear. Some of these albums I bought when they first dropped while some others I took to later on, but up until around 2000-ish I was a rap fan first and foremost. And I was lucky in that a lot of these albums, and my ability to buy them, came along when I was in college and didn’t have to worry about my parents hearing all the profanity and shutting the whole thing down. Several of these are still on my frequently played playlists even today. The Black Album being the most recent entry on my list is not by accident. Staying current with hip hop is a younger person’s game from my experience. I was lucky to be a kid, teenager, and young adult during the genre’s rise and got to take in a lot of really good stuff across the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s but once I hit my 30s and up I kinda checked out and stuck to what I’d grown up with. I have sampled a few more recent artists, including a couple of Kendrick Lamar and Meg the Stallion’s full albums, and while I found those two to be really good I’m kinda too set in my ways now to dig into their full catalogs. I get why some of y’all love them, though.

• Run DMC, Raising Hell
• Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill
• Tribe Called Quest – People’s Instinctive Travels, Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders
• Public Enemy It – Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back and Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black
• Eric B & Rakim, Paid in Full
• Black Sheep, A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
• Wu Tang Clan, Enter the 36th Chamber
• Raekwon & Ghost Face, Only Built for Cuban Linx
• GZA, Liquid Swords
• Mobb Deep, The Infamous
• Dr Dre, The Chronic
• The D.O.C., No One Can Do it Better
• Ice Cube, The Predator
• Nas, Illmatic
• Jay Z, The Black Album
• Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca and the Soul Brother and The Main Ingredient

Rock: (17)

I got some early exposure to what we call rock music when I was a kid, mostly by way of MTV. This new channel that played music videos all day, only played a few videos by Black artists – Michael Jackson and Prince – so there were several hours waiting spent waiting for them to play Thriller or Let’s Go Crazy, and during those hours I got a healthy intake of U2, Duran Duran, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, Van Halen and others. Then as they got with the program and started regularly playing videos from Black artists there were more videos from U2 and Van Halen, with Guns n Roses, Motley Crue, REM added in and then some Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana and Pearl Jam added to the mix. Then I got to college and a roommate of mine introduced me to Jimi Hendrix, who was my gateway to what we call Classic Rock today. I got into The Who and Led Zeppelin and dabbled in some other groups from that era, and that ultimately took back towards some more current acts like Green Day, Foo Fighters, and Black Keys. Which led me to play all of these start to finish over and over again, some even to this day.

• Green Day – Dookie and American Idiot
• The White Stripes – Elephunk
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication, Stadium Arcadium, I’m with You
• Foo Fighters – One by One and Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
• Oasis – What’s the Story Morning Glory?
• Black Keys – Brothers and El Camino
• U2 – Boy, Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum, Achtung Baby, and All That You Can’t Leave Behind
• AC/DC – Back in Black

Jazz (1)

I like Jazz music, but I only ever bought one jazz album and that’s this one:

• Miles Davis, Kind of Blue

Gospel (2)

I got heavy into Gospel music after I got home from college, right around the time that Kirk Franklin started to blow up. I bought a bunch of stuff from him and Fred Hammond in the early 2000s and still give them a listen now. Of course Franklin and some others from that early 2000s era are still going strong today, but I prefer the stuff they did from back then.

• Kirk Franklin and the Family
• Fred Hammond, Spirit of David and Purpose by Design

So that’s it! 50 albums for 50 years. There are several that just missed the cut but these are the ones that got the most play and have had the most staying power in my personal music library. I recommend all of these to anyone who’s interested.