16. The Dismemberment Plan - Change
(DeSoto Records, 2001)
The Dismemberment Plan were hands down my favorite contemporary band for at least a couple years around the turn of the century, mostly for their late ‘90s masterpiece Emergency & I. But during those couple years that I saw them live over a dozen times, they were constantly previewing increasingly exciting songs from the follow up, which proved to be almost as good, even if the band’s frequent nods to canonical ‘difficult fourth albums’ like Remain In Light and Kid A made Change seem like some kind of experimental studio creation, instead of the road-tested natural progression it really was. Some might see this album as the halfway point to the (somewhat, but only somewhat, unfairly maligned) Travis Morrison solo career, but any album that includes “Following Through” and “Superpowers” has to count as a band going out at the top of its game.

17. Lake Trout - Alone At Last: Live With DJ Who
(Phoenix Media Group, 2000)
The Baltimore quintet Lake Trout were probably the band I saw 2nd most in the first few years of the decade, and they even eventually linked up with the Dismemberment Plan and did a bunch of shows together and influenced each other (Change’s “The Other Side” is a direct homage to Lake Trout). Their music during that period was mostly instrumental and largely improvised live, with long stretches of rhythmic repitition, and they got pretty amazing for a while there from late ‘99, when this album was recorded, through the next couple years, until they started focusing back on vocals and songwriting, which were good but never their strong suit. The damage had been done by that point, though, at that point they were already starting to get a ‘jam band’ stigma. My one big coup when writing for Pitchfork was to give this album an 8.0, although it’s since disappeared along with a lot of my other reviews, and according to a mutual friend one of PF’s other writers from back then still characterizes me as being really into jam bands. I don't care, though, this band was incredible back then and this record is just brimming with great sounds and ideas that never made it onto any of their studio albums.

18. Aaliyah - Aaliyah
( Records, 2001)
Sometimes being in awe of Timbaland can go too far; for a long time I accepted the party line that some artists, like Aaliyah, were only great with his production, and kind of ignored the fact that a lot of the producers that were clearly following the template he created occasionally came up with pretty great stuff themselves. So the knowledge that he only produced three tracks, all of which became singles, from this album kinda kept me from checking Aaliyah out for a long time, which was dumb, because the whole record is great, and the other producers, including longtime Timbo collaborator Static Major, really hold the whole thing down and make it a perfect continuation of the innovations of One In A Million and “Are You That Somebody?” with amazing post-Timbo tracks like “Read Between The Lines” and “U Got Nerve.”

19. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One: 4th World War
(Universal Motown, 2008)
Even though I know on a conscious level that this album has a context, both in Badu’s career and in terms of its samples and influences, and that this is the sound of a mom recording vocals to beats sent to her while at home with her kids, there’s some whole other intangible, almost alien energy to this record that just makes it endlessly fascinating to kind of crawl inside and live in for a while.



20. Scarface - The Fix
(Def Jam Records, 2002)
The Last Of A Dying Breed, Made and Emeritus are all really good records, so I feel kind of corny making my one Scarface pick on this list predictably the 5 mic Def Jam one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this album really is awesome, and is actually amazingly committed to Face’s usual aesthetic despite the involvement of Jay/Nas/Kanye/Neptunes/etc. It kind of amazes me that a big hyped major label rap album in 2002 was able to keep things under 50 minutes, but that’s partly where The Fix’s strength comes from, it accomodated what the industry was going through at the time but didn’t bend to it.

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