revisited

So a project I've been doing for the past year or so is listening to all of my music in alphabetical order (by artist).  When I started, I had about 11,000 songs.  Now I have about 15,000.  But now that I'm unemployed I've had a lot of time, and I've gotten through the O's pretty quickly.  There are a lot of great O artists.  Of Montreal.  Okkervil River.  Out Hud.  Operation Ivy.  Oingo Boingo.  Oasis.

And of course Outkast.

Listening to The

 Love Below, for the first time I'm really starting to get excited for Speakerboxxx.  I've always loved The Love Below, but it's a little exhausting right now, and I'm really excited for the energy Big Boi will be providing.  The album is always called "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below" but when you're listening in alphabetical order, it's the other way around.*  But Speakerboxxx is such an incredible pop hip hop album, and in fact, the first 9 tracks (up until the first damn interlude) all have 4+ star ratings from myself.

Both discs have high ratings from me in general, although The Love Below has more stupid interludes.  Seriously, when will the hip hop world realize that interludes kill their momentum?  Interludes are rarely entertaining upon the first listen, let alone after repeated engagements.  Kudos to Ludacris, by the way, for including NONE on his last album, after being one of the worst in that way.

I am off topic.  But does that really matter?  

My point, really, is that Speakerboxxx is a great, great album that often gets overlooked.  I'm not gonna post an mp3 because chances are you own it yourself.  If you've overlooked it or ever thought of it as inferior to TLB, please give it another listen.  It really holds up.

*and yes, if you know your Outkast discography and your alphabet, this means I don't own Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik.  Sorry to disappoint.  I will be sure to pick it up soon.