Last 10 Years

Yesterdays post about Fenech-Soler brought back memories of other music I was listening to when I first discovered them. Basically I didn't think I was old enough to reach the 'better in the old days' stage of my life and made an effort to keep my music tastes current.

One thing I did was pick my 25 favourite albums. It was a very biased list favouring the more recent albums though, 17 of them were from the 21st century and the other 8 were from the 90s. It also included an album which had only just come out at the time.

Nowadays I'm at a point where I'm not even up to date with a lot of artists I've liked in years gone by. Some went to to make some truly dreadful music and others I just forgot about. I do sometimes seek out new music from an artist if I'm going to see them in concert, but many don't really bother making new music anymore and stick to the classics.

It got me thinking, what albums have the 25 artists of those albums I picked released in the last 10 years. Well here's the answer:

2 Many DJs - No albums

Norman Jay - 2 albums: Skank & Boogie (2015), Mister Good Times (2017)

Portishead - No albums

Massive Attack - No albums

High Contrast - 2 albums: Night Gallery (2017), Notes from the Underground (2020)

Plump DJs - No albums

Jacques Lu Cont - No albums

Erol Alkan - 1 album: Fabriclive 77 (2014)

Spiritcatcher - No albums

Various Artists - N/A

DJ Shadow - 2 albums: The Mountain Will Fall (2016), Our Pathetic Age (2019)

Tiga - 1 album: No Fantasy Required  (2016)

Air - No albums

Fatboy Slim - No albums

Sander Kleinenberg - No albums

Snoop Dogg - 6 albums: Bush (2015), Coolaid (2016), Neva Left (2017), Bible of Love (2018), I Wanna Thank Me (2019), From tha Streets 2 tha Suites (2021), BODR (2022)

Jurassic 5 - No albums

Kruder & Dorfmeister - 1 album: Johnson (2022)

Zero 7 - No albums

Mylo - No albums

Digitalism - 2 albums: Mirage (2016), JPEG (2019)

Underworld - 2 albums: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (2016), Drift Series 1 (2019)

LCD Soundsystem - 1 album: American Dream (2017)

London Elektricity - 2 albums: Are We There Yet? (2015), Building Better Worlds (2019)

Propellerheads - No albums

Just 11 of the artists have released an album in the last 10 years and only 3 of them have released one in the decade so far. Only Snoop Dogg has been prolific with none of the others managing more than 2 albums in a decade.

This leads to another question, are these albums any good?

Just one way to find out. I'm going to give each of those albums a listen and post what I think of them here.

My 25 Favourite Albums: Jurassic 5 - J5LP

During my childhood and into my young adult life I went through various phases music wise. Rap music was one of those phases, but it wasn't a case of just listening to the entire genre so to speak. It began with Eminem, then those associated with Eminem such as Dr Dre, then more West Coast rap and then at some point it was any rap I found good.

There came a point when my rap phase was over, but amazingly one rap act I didn't listen to during that phase was the featured act in this post, Jurassic 5. There came a point in my life though where I was no longer committed to a specific genre, and that's when I started listening to Jurassic 5.

A lot of rap music had become less about the struggles of growing up in a rough part of the world and more about bragging about how much money they now had and how they were "pimping it up in the club". Jurassic 5 were never about that though, they were as they put it "all about the beats and the lyrics".

Another thing I liked was the fact they are a group and the dynamic they have as a group comes through on the record. The reality is that a decent producer can make a poor rapper a good tune, and a bad producer can make a good rapper a crap tune. Jurassic 5 had Cut Chemist and DJ Nu-Mark to take care of that, who are both great at what they do.

Then you have the 4 rappers, yes confusingly there are 6 members of Jurassic 5. Who is the stand out rapper? Well none of them really, it's all about how they rap together.

What this album taught me is that to make a good rap record, you don't need to claim to be the best rapper in the world, you don't need the who's who of good producers, you don't need to swear all the time and you don't need to go to war with other rappers.

Whilst it's not gangsta rap though, it's not your cheesy Will Smith type nonsense either. The lyrics do have a few expletives, they have a message with the tunes. But the emphasis is on the music, and that's the whole point of music at the end of the day.