TOP FIVE FOUNDATIONAL ALBUMS THAT SHAPED MY TASTE

In October 2023, I got the idea that despite not being a musician myself and with no industry connections, no currency in any scene or any reputation to speak of, I would start writing about music again after having done so for a few years in college in the late 2000s. I figured why not? If I’m shouting into the void, then I’m shouting into the void. I’m going to do it. This is a labor of love. It is my hope that I can continue to build this site as a destination for people who value my perspective and message, and we can foster a sense of community here.

All that being said, if you’ll forgive the self-indulgence, in order for readers to get to know a little more about me—more specifically what started my musical journey—I thought it would be interesting to write a list of the albums from my youth that proved most foundational in shaping my taste in music. This is a post to peel back the curtain and give you a sense of what got me into music in the first place, and set the stage for me to dive into the musical "deep end" and, eventually many years later, decide to write about it. The cut-off for this list is my first two years of high school, as at the end of that period is when I began going down the iceberg, so to speak, of all kinds of different genres. We all start somewhere, though, and for me, chronologically in the order I got into the albums not necessarily when they were released, this is where my musical journey began. I also cheated and included nine albums while shouting out way more albums and artists, so it’s really not a top five at all, but I like the top five format, so here we are. I was of course listening to many more artists than this, but these are the ones that stand out to me in hindsight for introducing me to a particular genre and/or generally having a lasting impact on me or my musical taste direction(s).

5. (Tie) Green Day-Dookie and The Offspring-Smash (1994)

Two of the first albums I ever bought, albeit not right when they came out as I would’ve been a little too young. I can’t say exactly when, but I had to have been old enough to be earning allowance money for miscellaneous chores and actually have a nascent taste in music. Smash outstripped even the wildest expectations of Epitaph Records, going many times platinum and putting the label on the map, where it remains to this day an alternative music powerhouse. Green Day caught a lot of flak for leaving Lookout! Records and taking advantage of the increased budget, influence, and connections of Reprise Records (eliciting accusations of "selling out," even though their sound didn’t appreciably change). If it wasn’t for bands like Green Day and The Offspring, though, kids like me wouldn’t ever be exposed to punk music and go down the iceberg to find more "real punk," either from the bands’ labels (or former labels) or elsewhere. It would be a while yet before I’d be digging into the catalogues of Epitaph, Lookout!, and others, but I was already gravitating to the punk rock sound at an early age.

4. (Tie) Puff Daddy and the Family-No Way Out and Mase-Harlem World (1997)

This is the era where I was rocking a XXL Puffy "It’s All About the Benjamins" t-shirt and my mom, after seeing Tommy Hilfiger on TV saying baggy was about to be out, recommending clothing that actually fit me properly. Mom and Tommy would in time be proven correct.

In any case, I could’ve also put a bunch of other albums from this year here, too, because this was the year my taste in music really started to become much more defined. These are the two from the rap world I gravitated to most, but I also really liked Sugar Ray’s Floored (tell me a hardcore band covering "American Pig" wouldn’t be sick) and Third Eye Blind’s self-titled album, as well as bands like Spacehog, Silverchair, and Better Than Ezra. I knew Sublime and Rancid from the radio and loved those songs, but hadn’t fully gotten into their other music yet.

Shout out to the dance music like Real McCoy, Technotronic, and La Bouche my sensei would blast during sparring practice at karate.

3. (Tie) Rage Against the Machine-Evil Empire (1996) and The Prodigy-The Fat of the Land (1997)

Rage sat right at that crossroads of some of the different sounds I was gravitating toward and really drew me in. The Prodigy had and has a very different reputation in America than in Britain, coming out of the rave scene; in America their fan base was more of the alternative/rock crowd, and they were played pretty much exclusively on the alternative/rock stations. It was kind of the Nine Inch Nails treatment. I had some prior familiarity with The Prodigy from watching the extremely advanced movie Hackers with my grandparents, but I didn’t really put two and two together if you will until "Breathe" and "Firestarter" came along, blew up, and I was like "oh, that Prodigy." Also, I’ll never not find it funny that "The Prodigy’s video for ‘Firestarter’ terrified thousands watching Top of the Pops in ‘96. Several channels banned the song altogether after concerned parents complained that scary Keith Flint was causing their darling children to cower in fear behind the sofa. The video also broke an impressive record: achieving the highest number of complaints ever received by the BBC." How can you not like that as a kid looking for something edgy?

2. (Tie) Orgy-Candyass (1998) and Sevendust-Home (1999)

Orgy was the first show I ever went to. I was ten or eleven, and my dad took me to see them play the Asylum club in Portland, Maine. There was one other younger kid there with her mom. I was hooked, and for the next few years I would go with my dad and/or my friends to see bands like System of a Down, Korn, Slipknot, Godsmack, Sevendust, Breaking Benjamin, really most of the big nü metal or hard rock bands out at that time, as well as a lot of the next level in popularity down like American Head Charge, Cold, Nonpoint, etc. I also saw other bands like 311, Alien Ant Farm, and Incubus. I was very into the stuff getting heavy rotation on the alternative rock radio stations such as the aforementioned bands and others like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. I was especially into Sevendust, and Home in particular, as I loved how crunchy it was. Interestingly enough, years later I’d read Bury Your Dead cite Sevendust as an influence. Another shoutout from this era for me would be Nothingface’s 2000 album Violence, which like Home was released by TVT Records.

I also got really into Sublime at this time, and Blink-182’s classics Dude Ranch and Enema of the State, and New Found Glory’s Nothing Gold Can Stay, were in heavy rotation for me. I discovered reggae, soul, and funk as well, and would later see Ziggy Marley and George Clinton, separately, in my early high school years.

1. Bad Brains-Rock for Light (1983)

I can’t remember when, exactly, some time in my freshman or sophomore year of high school, I was talking to a friend about how as much as I liked the bands from above, I was looking for something more nakedly aggressive. Considering I was also very into reggae at this time—I probably had almost everything in the Trojan Records catalogue—the ground was quite fertile for the Bad Brains seed to be planted and for my love of punk and later hardcore to blossom (in terms of hardcore, it didn’t come until the end of high school as I really only listened to the early 80s stuff like Bad Brains and Black Flag—and I guess we can put the more metal Earth A.D. by The Misfits in here, too—that is the shared ground of punk and hardcore before they really became two separate entities). More knowledgeable friend smirks, brings a burned copy of this CD in to school for me the next day, and that was that.

If there was one album I could pinpoint that sent me down the rabbit hole of alternative music of all sorts, this is it Michael Jackson. In short order, I was not only listening to The Dead Kennedys, Fear, Crass, Leftover Crack, Operation Ivy, the Descendents, Jodie Foster’s Army, the Germs, the Circle Jerks, etc., but also had stuff ranging from Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Neurosis and Maine doom metal outfit Ocean on my mp3 player. Through my head-first dive into punk, in some ways my taste came full circle, as I would get really into Epitaph Records (shout out to the Punk-O-Rama compilations), launched into prominence by The Offspring’s Smash, and syncing with my existing love of hip-hop and rap, the alternative and underground hip-hop albums released by Epitaph would also figure in my immersion in that world. For underground hip-hop, The Coup, Dead Prez, and Atmosphere would become my favorites, and more mainstream favorites would be Wu-Tang Clan, Common, Tupac, Big Punisher, and Notorious B.I.G. I had been listening to a lot of Dr. Dre, and also in heavy rotation would be many Stones Throw and Barely Breaking Even Records releases, J Dilla, Three Six Mafia, 2 Live Crew, Big L, Arrested Development, and Black Star; I would say I really gravitated to g funk and new jack swing and went way down that iceberg. I listened to a lot of Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill as well, and there was a fair bit of "real screamo" in there, too. I already knew of Rancid from songs like "Ruby Soho," but in high school they would become my favorite band with The Misfits a close second. After a few years later I ran headlong into the embrace of modern hardcore after hearing Refused and American Nightmare followed by This Is Hell’s Sundowning, Gallows’s Orchestra of Wolves, and Blacklisted’s …The Beat Goes On, that was more or less the foundation right there.