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May 04, 2007
Texan coda
The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas, completed its list of the best 25 modern rap albums” today. If you’ve read the previous post on this topic, you could probably name 5-1 for me right now. Eminem, Outkast, Dre, Kanye and Jay-Z are certainly five of the biggest names in hip-hop, and perhaps that was the primary driving force behind the Texan’s list. Or maybe they just strung together their 25 favorite albums. Or the first 25 they could think of. Moreover, I don’t want to dwell too much on what could have and I thought should have been included (madvilliandeltronmissyelliotcannibaloxpossiblydizzeerascalorthestreets), because I’ve got my own venues for that. But all hyper-criticism aside, I really want to applaud the staff of the Daily Texan for putting this together.
While, on one hand, it can be viewed as easy filler for year-end issues (experience tells me it is), it’s also a living indictment of one’s tastes. When expressing your beliefs with regards to religion and politics in a frank and quantitative manner, level-headed people tend to admire and even appreciate it. However, when expressing your personal tastes, especially with music, all bets are off.
Maybe in ten years or so, when I’m working with the next big media outlet, I’ll stumble across some twenty-somethings’ tournament of White Stripes songs or top 25 ranking of laptop-dance albums and I’ll about it write with scathing wit and derision. But even then I will do so under the recognition that not long too ago, that was me.
Posted by Keith O'Brien at May 4, 2007 10:12 AM
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Comments
Holy Shit. There were no Missy Elliott albums in the whole top 25? That's just straight up bullshit.
Posted by: Jeff K at May 4, 2007 11:12 AM
When Big Pun and 50 Cent are on the list, it kinda is.
Posted by: Randall Monty at May 4, 2007 04:17 PM
