My first is probably Talib Kweli's Quality. That one fits with the timing of me actually being in High School, though I got in to him and Reflection Eternal all around the same time. Going to talibkweli.com drove me to okayplayer eventually back then, which drove a lot of my musical discoveries later. Those albums were the reason I started caring about music and wanting to go to the store and care enough to buy them.

Next is probably The Listening. The guy at the store I used to shop at put me on because he knew my tastes, in retrospect he was probably the only reason a copy was even in that Pickering mall store back then. I don't think I realized they were dudes from the boards back then yet either, my lurker attention was limited.

My other two might be Franz Ferdinand's self titled debut and Modest Mouse's Good News for People who love Bad News. They were some of my first dabbling outside of Hip Hop at that age, and realizing I could like other genres. I remember listening to them for the first time when no one was home because I knew my Dad would be annoying about not hearing rap coming out of my speakers (I'm not gonna talk about all that lol).