I’m starting my 7th year of writing on a website. I’ve spent much of it blabbing on and on about little or nothing. And I like that. Anyway, I’ve made it a goal of mine since August/September of last year to have post something on my blog every single day. If you’ve been following, I’ve managed to do that. The problem is, as a creative person, the well sometimes runs a little dry for ideas.

When the clock struck 2010, I made another small goal that I would make a list of all the books I read during the year and give a mini-review. You’ve probably seen the first of those on the website. Anyway, another project that I want to do is to transfer all of my music to iTunes. In the process of doing it, I also want to listen to every cd that I have just because there are some of them I’ve forgotten about and haven’t listened to in probably 10-15 years. So, I’ve been putting transferring about 2-3 cd’s per day from iTunes to my phone and listening to them while I’m at work. In doing that, I figured why not take a few minutes at night to write about them. So, over the next few weeks and hopefully going forward, I’m going to give you my thoughts on music that is mostly 10-15 years old. I’ve found it kind of fun to either appreciate a forgotten classic, revisit a fun album that didn’t stand the test of time, or question my insanity why I ever thought certain music was good.

Wyclef Jean – The Carnival

Wyclef Jean was a big part of the super-talented rap group “The Fugees” who essentially stole America’s heart for one solid record and then disappeared. They aren’t the first hip hop band that’s done it and surely won’t be the last. “The Carnival” sold over 2 million copies which is a ton of copies today. But in 1997, 2 million copies wasn’t anything special. Consider these cd’s that came out the same year sold some insane numbers:
Shania Twain – Come On Over – 20 million
Backstreet Boys – Backstreet Boys – 14 million
Titanic Soundtrack – 11 million
Notorious B.I.G. – Life After Death – 10 million
Celine Dion – Let’s Talk About Love – 10 million
Garth Brooks – Sevens – 10 million
N’Sync – N’Sync – 10 million
Will Smith – Big Willie Style – 9 million
Savage Garden – Savage Garden – 7 million

Put it like this. The 10th best-selling album of 1998 was the “Armageddon Soundtrack” which sold more records than the number one cd of 2009 (Taylor Swift).

Really long analogy to get to the point that even though this sold 2-million records, it’s still kind of under the radar. During the time this came out, the hip hop industry was changing. A lot of artists were coming out with an album of about 18 tracks. 12 of them were using a different producer on each track and about 6 tracks were stupid sketches that added nothing to the album. The formula produced a lot of similar sounding albums (every album had a DJ Premier track, a Swizz Beats track, a Neptunes track, a D Dot song, a Jermaine Dupri song, a Timbaland song… you get the picture). To make matters even worse, these albums were littered with guest appearances that were there to sell records (“I’ve got Jay-Z, DMX, Puff Daddy, Ja Rule, and Busta Rhymes all on my next record). These guest appearances were often recorded in a studio thousands of miles away with no actual interaction or artist collaboration between the two artists. Or even worse, you got a rapper who decided he was going to use his cd as a springboard for “his boys” leading to countless verses by untalented rappers who lucked out in having a friend who made it. If you look back in the history of pop music, you find countless examples of a producer writing the music or lyrics to a song. When you look in the history of rock music, though, you’ll find that a lot of the cd’s that have done will were created by the actual artists. Novel concepts, huh? Musicians who actual make music. Anyway, Wyclef’s “The Carnival” is a hip hop album made like a rock album when most hip hop album were being made like pop albums. Confusing much?

“The Carnival” features guests and skits. But none of the guests, other than Lauryn Hill, are more famous the Wyclef. The guests that are featured aren’t listed on the back of the cd, so they are obviously there for the betterment of the music and not to sell the records. In the same breath, the skits on the cd are mostly humorous (not annoying like most hip hop skits).

The record starts off with two songs that couldn’t be more different. “Apocalypse” features rapping over a song that could be heard in an opera house if not for the bass and snare beat. “Guantanamera”, starts off with a sample of the Cuban version of “Guantanamera” before Wyclef comes in with a simple bass (guitar) and drum beat. Portions of the song are sung in Spanish. Wyclef even jokes on this when a girl is singing a verse from the original song and he interjects with “Do you speak English” and “Can I buy you a drink?” The next song is the simple “Bubblegoose.” Wyclef tells a story of someone getting shot while making the song almost sound like a kid song.

“Gone Til November” is one of the best songs of the 90s period. I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something about that song that almost transcends music. I find myself trying to playing guitar. I’ll be learning a new song by Airborne Toxic Event, Kings of Leon or whoever. If I find a song that hits the first fret on the fourth string of the guitar (having played guitar for 9 years now, I should probably learn the names of notes and strings at some point), I’ll always transition into playing “Gone to November.” Featuring the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and a simple guitar lick, this song is the first song that really showcases Wyclef’s abilities as a singer and songwriting regardless of the genre.

The highlight first single off the album is “We Trying to Stay Alive” which samples the Bee Gees classic disco hit. Wyclef takes the elements we liked about the original song and repurposes into something that is very much his own.

Overall – I think this album is a classic as in “Top 25 hip hop albums of all-time” (if you are asking me). Wyclef brings an originality to the genre that we have rarely seen before or since. In fact, the list of hip hop albums that I remember hearing and thinking ‘hmm… this is different, but definitely good’ would probably consist of Wyclef’s “The Carnival,” A Tribe Called Quest’s “Midnight Marauders,” Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/Love Below”, Wu-Tang Clan’s “36 Chambers”, and Kanye West’s “College Dropout.” It’s kind of sad that I haven’t liked any of the Wyclef albums since “The Carnival” nearly as much, but thankfully I’ll always have this album.

The Prodigy – Fat of the Land

When this cd came out, much ado was made about the single “Smack My B Up.” The video was banned from MTV and was eventually named the “Most Controversial Video” in MTV history. It’s kind of sad because I think it takes away from the fact that this album is an all-time great. In fact, I’d say it’s easily my favorite techno (or electronica, industrial, dance or whatever genre you want to label it) album of all-time.

I was introduced to the Prodigy thanks to a little PlayStation game called WipEout XL on the original Playstation. Not to get off on a tangent, but I have to admit that Wipeout HD is the only reason I’d really like to own a PS3 (much like a pinball game called “Black Knight” is the only reason I’d like to own a Wii).

Back to The Prodigy. They have an equally good album that came out before this “Music for the Gilted Generation” but “Fat of the Land” is the album that gained them commercial success. I wish the iPod would have been invented in 1997 as I would’ve logged a log of hours shooting hoops to this album. I actually have logged a lot of hours shooting hoops and running in the past few years – almost always with a few songs by the Prodigy on the playlist. This group and Daft Punk remain the two techno bands that I’d be ecstatic to see in concert (although I haven’t a clue if either are any good live).

Highlights of this cd include the three singles “Smack My B Up,” “Breathe,” and “Firestarter.” Honestly, you won’t find a bad song on this album. I personally love “Climbative” which has starts off by seemingly adding another musical layer and building every 10 seconds throughout the entire song. I also love the punk rock attitude displayed throughout the entire album. “Fuel My Fire” somehow sounds like Johnny Rotten singing a caffeine-induced techno song.

Shyne – Self Titled

In the late 90s, rapper Shyne was discovered as a guy who sounded incredibly like the late Notorious B.I.G. A bidding war ensued and eventually he signed with Puff Daddy’s (by the way, I refused to call him anything else) label Bad Boy records.

Unfortunately for Puff Daddy and Shyne, the two were involved in a high profile nightclub shooting. From what we can tell, there was a shooting, three people were injured and Shyne was charged with attempted murder among other things.

While awaiting his trial, Shyne released his solo debut. At the time, I liked a few of the songs. “That’s Gangster” remains on my playlist to this day as does the two songs that featured the criminally underrated Barrington Levy – “Bad Boyz” and “Bonnie and Shyne.”

10 years later, I listen to this album and just think to myself that this album is everything that went wrong with rap music. Instead of finding people who were pushing the envelope and doing something new or simply doing something better than it had ever been done before, hip hop became an industry obsessed with false bravado (For the record, I’d like to see a “Where are they now” feature on every rapper who’s told me how much money they had 10 years ago) and copycats. Shyne’s voice sounds a lot like Biggie. But that just doesn’t do it. Biggie had a larger than larger than life personality. He had almost two Biggie’s (as you can hear in the song Gimmie the Loot). This album has three really good songs, but the rest of the cd is stuffed with filler. Songs with horrible beats, bad skits, and fake thuggery just make this album hard to listen to (besides the aforementioned three pretty solid songs). You’ll wear out your