A little over two years ago, I put together a list of my 100 favorite albums of 2000-2009. And since it's impossible to really put a cap on something like that and say with total certainty that that's your final opinion, but it'd be silly to keep revising or rethinking the list, last year I decided to just start annually noting 10 albums that either didn't make the cut or that I've heard since then that would most certainly make at least a top 200 if I were to make the list that long.

Lil Wayne - Tha Carter (Cash Money/Universal Records, 2004)
As Lil Wayne's era of superstardom begins to last longer than his era of mere stardom, it's odd to think of the inevitable revisionism that has already happened and will only intensify from here on out, particularly with the sales peak Tha Carter III becoming his default best album. And while Carter II is still my favorite (#10 on the original decade list), it's been very interesting to think about how the series and his whole rebirth and ascent began. The contrast just between "Get Something," the original lead single from the scrapped first version of Tha Carter, and "Bring It Back," the eventual proper lead single of the album as it was released, is kind of amazing in and of itself. But this whole album has aged pretty well, both as Wayne's last album with the amazing Mannie Fresh (who is overdue for reevaluation, which will probably happen this year with him doing work with Kanye), and as kind of a transitional period where Wayne wasn't quite firing on all cylinders like he was in '06 but he was really improving quickly, and wasn't completely obnoxious and constantly laughing at his own jokes yet.

The Mercury Program - All The Suits Began To Fall Off EP (Boxcar Records, 2001)
One of the funny things that happens fairly regularly in indie rock (and may become more common in the mainstream as major labels rely more on EPs) is bands who seemingly by accident kind of peak with an EP or hit upon something that doesn't quite happen on any of their full-lengths. This instrumental band from Florida, who I got into via a friend from down there who knows them, is a good example of that. I like their LPs, but there's really nothing they've done that I love as much as "Marianas" or "The Secret To Quiet," and at 30 minutes this is practically an album anyway.

Jeremih - Jeremih (Def Jam, 2009)
After "Birthday Sex" it was reasonable to expect that Jeremih would just disappear from view as quickly as he had appeared. But the couple of underperforming follow-up singles and their parent album really endeared the guy to me, as I discovered this kind of unlikely sweetness and Stevie-like wonder in his voice that you so rarely get from these swaggy post-The-Dream R&B singers, and a pretty brilliant and versatile producer in Mick Schultz. It's been kind of bittersweet watching Jeremih's career thrive as he's helped subpar or over-the-hill rappers stay on the radio (Wale, Diggy Simmons, 50 Cent), but at least that means he's in a pretty good position to keep releasing albums.



Homesick Orchestra - Scarlet Fever (self released, 2008)
I loved the band Soul Coughing when they were going back in the '90s, and one of my oldest friends used to know those guys pretty well and has kept up with some of them. And a couple times a few years ago he played me this solo record that bassist Sebastian Steinberg had been quietly working on forever, and I thought it was really cool but we had no idea when it'd see the light of day. Finally when he mentioned that the band name was Homesick Orchestra and I googled it a couple years ago, I found that he actually had released the album, although nobody seemed to have heard it (it's not even mentioned on Steinberg's wikipedia entry), and this pretty great little record with people like Lisa Germano and Joey Waronker playing on it is just lingering unloved on CDBaby. It's kind of slight and uneven (there's a guest rap from one of the Anti-Pop Consortium guys on "Out Of My Mind" that sounds really out of place), but it has a great sound and atmosphere and a couple of the songs, particularly the title track, are really lovely. I've been coming back to this album a lot lately while Steinberg's old bandmate Mike Doughty's been getting tons of publicity for basically going on a weird campaign of disavowing Soul Coughing and everyone he played in the band with.

Darkroom Productions - Hamsterdam: The Best of Baltimore, Vol. 1 (Darkroom Inc., 2005)
I've always been a big fan of producer-driven hip hop compilations and at a time when I was really getting immersed in Baltimore hip hop it was fun to see a couple of talented and enterprising producers just get together all the best MCs they knew and put together such a consistent mixtape and cannily use a bit of lore from "The Wire" to brand their product (although in the ensuing years everyone in town tried to get shine off of "The Wire" and it quickly became kind of desperate and corny). Haven't heard from these guys in a while but a lot of songs on here still knock, some of them even ended up on "The Wire"'s official soundtrack.

Parts & Labor - Receivers (Jagjaguwar, 2008)
The last few months of outpouring goodwill for Parts & Labor as they disbanded or took an extended hiatus or whatever have been kind of fun to see since they were such an underrated band. And while the two albums featuring my rock critic peer and occasional message board/twitter sparring partner Chris Weingarten are in many ways the apex of the band's overdriven noise anthem aesthetic (2006's Stay Afraid was #52 on my original decade list), this album with later drummer Joe Wong is pretty great too and I feel like maybe didn't get enough love in all the recent retrospectives of the band's career. "Sattelites" and "Wedding In A Wasteland" are killer.



Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American (Dreamworks/Geffen, 2001)
All four hits from this album placed in my top 522 singles of 2000-2009, so while I don't love every deep cut I have to say the album probably deserves a mention. I remember when this album came out, I was in Delaware working a shitty summer job with this adorable emo girl (who I think was dating someone from Boy Sets Fire? lol Delaware emo) who was just crestfallen than Jimmy Eat World had sold out and had a song on the radio, whereas I was like wow "Bleed American" is good, these guys might not actually be worthless after all. It was also pretty goofy after 9/11 when this album became 'self-titled' for a while.

Brooke Valentine - Chain Letter (Virgin Records, 2005)
I just pulled this up on Spotify and found that Brooke Valentine just released some generic new single called "Forever." Shame her career took a total nosedive after the fairly unrepresentative "Girlfight" was a minor hit (too late for a Jeremih-style resurgence, I suppose), but this whole album is a lot of fun and kind of feels ahead of the verse in terms of the more sassy, personality-driven vocal styles and all-over-the-place production styles that have taken over R&B in the years since.

Walter Becker - Circus Money (Mailboat Records, 2008)
Pretty much any Steely Dan fan will freely admit that the Grammy triumph of Two Against Nature was a belated acknowledgment of their amazing original '70s run. But it does raise the question of whether that album is the best thing these guys have done in the three decades since their initial split, and I'm gonna go ahead and say that Becker's unheralded second solo album is the best Steely Dan album since Gaucho. He'll never be half the vocalist Donald Fagen is, but he's finally kind of grown into his gruff voice and the instrumentation just has a lovely live oomph that was sorely missing from Nature and Everything Must Go.



Eminem - Marshall Mathers LP (Shady/Aftermath/Interscope, 2000)
Another album that's better than Two Against Nature is of course the one that famously lost the Grammy to it, although at the time I had grown up on Steely Dan and was kind of sick of Eminem so I was happy with the way it went down. When I was doing the top 20 MCs of all time radio segments a few weeks ago, I was forever lowballing Eminem and trying to push him out of the top 10, just because I've never been a huge fan and thought he was overrated, but I have to acknowledge that at his best he did do some pretty amazing stuff and I can't really front on that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 03, 2012 at 12:00 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.