I mean there are a million I could name that would fall into this category but ... for the sake of time and brevity, the most magical/impactful listening experiences upon my first listens to an album were:

Dr. Dre "The Chronic"
I fell in love with hip-hop with this album. I was watching MTV and saw an Ice Cube video; for the life of me I can't remember what song it was but I know it was Ice Cube. I loved the low riders in the video and more importantly my head was nodding like crazy. So I talked to some older neighbors I rode bikes with about how blown away I was by the music whatever Cube song it was and one of them gave me The Chronic tape and - holy shit did the complexity and power of these beats blow my 9 year old mind lol. Never looked back.


Reflection Eternal "Train of Thought"
What a damn experience this album was. It's so perfect. My favorite album of all time. By this time I was in high school and had expanded from almost exclusively listening to west coast/g-funk to the Rawkus/Soulquarian movement so I'd heard some Roots, Common, Mos Def/BlackStar/etc. by this time. I loved all of it, but this album IMO was the best front to back experience of them all. I say it all the time around these parts but I could write a book about how great this album is, and how important and nostalgic it is for me, but I'll save you guys the novel for now. But yea - this album is just so powerful IMO.


Jay-Z "The Blueprint"
Another album I could write a ton of words about but I'll just say it came out my senior year in high school and really just defined that whole year. So many great memories tied to it and it's just so so so damn good front to back.


Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon"
Heard this in college (typical white dude shit) while smoking and yea - not much to say that hasn't been said a million times about this one but I definitely grew up a lot with this one and it opened up my mind a lot.


OutKast "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below"
I could probably name like 3 or 4 OutKast albums but this one sticks out just cause of the time of my life in which it came out (sophomore year of college) when I was simultaneously discovering myself in a lot of ways and having just a TON of fun. And obviously besides the nostalgia that's tied to this album, it was just a damn good listening experience and as we all know it stretched the limits of hip-hop despite whatever gripes we may individually have with some parts of it (bad singing, for example lol). And "Hey Ya" is of course just a timeless dance/party jam.


Q-Tip "The Renaissance"
Came out when I moved out of state and again, just a beautiful album that I remember zoning out to almost exclusively for like 4 straight months. Tons of road trips, plane rides, etc. when I just wore this album OUTTT haha.


PRhyme "PRhyme"
When this came out I was in the midst of a pretty significant dry spell in terms of hearing new hip-hop music. And Royce and Preem just decided to remind me ... no, hit me over the damn head to remind me why I loved hip-hop music so much. No lie I have every lyric memorized on this album and listened to it front to back incessantly for damn near a whole year. Such a gem.


Like I said there are a ton of other albums that would qualify for this post for me, but these ones are the most meaningful for the reasons stated above and as I went through I realized I was creating sort of a chronological timeline so I stuck with that; one album for each kind of listening era. For example I'd love to hear Doggystyle again for the first time but I kinda tie that in with The Chronic and that whole g-funk/west coast movement so I'm refraining from going that deep cause I could probably go on forever.

----------------------------------------

"Fuck aliens." © WarriorPoet415