An Album For Each Year

So, I recently stumbled upon this challenge where you have to pick your all-time favorite album from every year you’ve been alive. The tricky part? You can only choose one album from each artist. Now, the tough bit about this is there are always albums you gotta leave out, which…sucks.

Now, before I dive in, I gotta clarify: typically, I don’t believe in separating the art from the artist. But for this list, I’ve done just that. Why, you ask? Well, when these albums dropped, these artists either weren’t as problematic, or I simply wasn’t aware of their issues. Does that erase the issues? Of course not! But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I feel strongly about these albums as pure works of art. That said, I don’t listen to them anymore.

Without further ado, here’s the list:

1990: Naked City, Naked City
1991: A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory
1992: Prince, Love Symbol Album
1993: Wu-Tang Clan, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
1994: Portishead, Dummy
1995: Meshuggah, Destroy Erase Improve
1996: Sublime, Sublime
1997: Erykah Badu, Baduizm
1998: Massive Attack, Mezzanine
1999: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
2000: Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
2001: Daft Punk, Discovery
2002: System of a Down, Steal This Album
2003: 340ml, Moving
2004: Madvillain, Madvillainy
2005: Brazilian Girls, Brazilian Girls
2006: Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
2007: Burial, Untrue
2008: Sérgio Mendes, Encanto
2009: The xx, xx
2010: Nas and Damian Marley, Distant Relatives
2011: Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX, We’re New Here
2012: Deftones, Koi No Yokan
2013: Kanye West, Yeezus
2014: Azealia Banks, Broke with Expensive Taste
2015: Snoop Dogg, Bush
2016: Solange Knowles, A Seat at the Table
2017: Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy
2018: SOPHIE, Oil of Every Pearl’s Un - Insides
2019: British Sea Power, Disco Elysium
2020: P.T. Adamczyk, Cyberpunk 2077
2021: The Bug, Fire
2022: Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers
2023: JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes
2024: Tyler, the Creator, Chromakopia

Notes

2001 was such a hard year. I left out Gorillaz, Neurosis, Linkin Park, Janet Jackson, System of a Down, Aesop Rock, Koop, and the Final Fantasy X soundtrack. That year went hard! 2015 a close second with Kendrick Lamar, Grimes, Vince Staples, Future, and Florence & The Machine. In multiple years, I left out The Avalanches, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Janelle Monae and Radiohead.