46. Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott - Miss E...So Addictive
(Elektra Records, 2001)
It’s been longer since I listened to this than probably any other album on the list, I lost my copy of it like 3 apartments ago. Still, I remember it being a shitload of fun, and Timbo was on such a good roll that year, this might be my favorite Missy album.

47. Karmella’s Game - The Art Of Distraction
(Speedbump Recordings, 2006)
I’ve seen these guys live in Baltimore so many times over the last few years, and they’re really just a tremendous pop band, with big girly harmonies and screaming portamento synth lines and chunky guitar riffs, and this album really sums up so much of why they’re great into one package. My iTunes play count for “Skip The Funeral” is ridiculous.

48. DJ Quik & Kurupt - BlaQKout
(Mad Science/Fontana Distribution, 2009)
So many fading hip hop stars were gradually exiled from the mainstream over the past 10 years, and those that kept recording on an independent level generally went in one of two directions: make low budget trend-jumping pop rap in hopes of one day returning to the big leagues, or make deliberately ‘underground’ rap that tries too hard to play up some quality that wasn’t even in their music to begin with (hi, horrorcore Slaughterhouse bullshit). Quik and Kurupt managed to do none of the above, my making an album that was so creative and fun and unencumbered by either industry pressure or fanbase second-guessing that it should make mainstream rappers jealous.

49. UGK - Underground Kingz
(Jive Records, 2007)
Double rap albums, or really double albums in general, didn’t have a very good decade (even the one other one on this list, Diplomatic Immunity, doesn’t really feel like a double or at least doesn’t benefit much from being one). But UGK were in the perfect position to make the rare one that doesn’t suck, between Bun B’s prolific guest spot run and Pimp C’s pre-mixtape mentality of stockpiling material for albums, and the general comeback atmosphere that made the album seem like an event, something special. It was also a way for them to satisfy each of their fanbases, new and old, with enough new jack guests and enough classic country rap that you could pretty easily carve an ideal single disc album out of this no matter what your preferences are.



50. Ken Stringfellow - Touched
(Manifesto, 2001)
The Posies are one of my favorite bands of the ‘90s, but I didn’t totally realize that until the first couple years of this decade, after they’d broken up (for the first time, anyway), and I started to dig through their back catalog and realize how consistent they were. And as Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow splintered off to do seperate projects, it was the latter that quickly became the more interesting and prolific artist outside the band (whereas in the band their talents were shockingly well matched). I remember the summer before his first proper solo album was released, I was living in Newark, Delaware down the road from a record store that had an EP by his short-lived post-Posies band Saltine, that included versions of two Touched songs, and his 1997 demo-ish album This Sounds Like Goodbye, which had another future Touched song, so I was already totally obsessed with like a quarter of this album’s songs before I even heard it.

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