Dr. Mike Check's Album of the Year Award Goes To...

I was going to write a whole long list ranking the illest track of 2007 or the most valuable verse or the most improved spitter, etc. None of it really matters. One tight puzzle piece doesn’t mean much if the puzzle isn’t a work of art. I can give props all day to Talib Kweli’s lyricism in the third verse on Eardrum’s Say Something or Jigga’s marketing scheme, tying in his album with Denzel Washington’s gangster flick. I can hand out official unofficial awards to Kanye dethroning Fitty or the comic relief of Little Brother’s Good Clothes off the GetBack LP. I can write a whole post about the grand majesty of International Players Anthem by UGK ft. Outkast, the record and the video. I could clown Lil Weezy for being the most overrated rapper of all time.

I could. But I won’t.

As we close the door on 2007, I only want to cast my vote for the year’s greatest album. Now, when people talk about classics, a key factor is an album’s impact, meaning the effect the album had on artists and albums and on society as a whole. You take albums like The Chronic and Reasonable Doubt and their ranks on hip hop’s highest shelves seem obvious. That’s why it is slightly inaccurate to call Common’s Be a classic (even though that remains my personal favorite album of the past three years): it didn’t alter hip hop’s landscape.

But that’s neither here nor there because I can’t say there has been a true classic that has come out this year. That is not to say that there haven’t been excellent albums. In fact, this year (especially in the fourth quarter), we have seen some really good hip hop music come out (We still have ways to go before I would call it a resurrection with Soulja Boy still on dominating the scene.) So here is my picks for the top five albums of 2007:

Honorable Mention:

Getback- Little Brother
What is Little Brother without resident producer 9th Wonder? Still ill, it turns out. When it comes to everyman comedy, this rapping duo from North Carolina is your ticket. On Getback, Rapper Big Pooh steps up his game and Phonte has to be among the most consistent in the game. Part of what kept out of the top five is that their previous albums were so good. This album doesn’t have the package deal like the others had. (Sidebar: Minstrel Show is my second favorite hip hop album of the past three years after Be).
Standout Tracks: Sirens, Good Clothes, Two Step Blues

5. Eardrum – Talib Kweli
After putting out superior mixtapes Right About Now and Liberation with Madlib, Kweli returns with this infectious studio album. With this underrated LP, Kweli proved he could do a little bit of everything. The album opens with the legendary Sonia Sanchez and then moves into back-to-back bangers with some of the illest producers giving Kweli the soulful arrangements that fit best with his voice. Ever since Liberation, I have felt that Madlib is the best match for Kweli. His lush production allows Kweli to fall into the sounds rather than try to force his precise rhyme scheme into the crevices. Hi-Tek, Kanye and will.i.am do excellent work too, but Madlib stands out as Kweli’s best bet. But throughout the album, Kweli sounds hungry. It’s a good sound too, especially on tracks like Say Something where he and Blacksmith labelmate Jean Grae trade-off flawless verses on this will.i.am produced track: “We not falling for your tricks/’cause your image is like a gimic/forget it, every rhyme is bitten/you like a mimic/I’m callin on the lord and I’m askin him for forgiveness/just for kickin niggas out the club like Michael Richards.” Like I wrote in this post, the only bad thing about this album is the fact that there’s no overarching theme, no net that holds all of the tracks together. It might have been a problem from the beginning with the name Eardrum itself. Unlike Finding Forever or The Cool, Eardrum doesn’t lend itself to any type of narrative. Regardless, this is the album that grows on you over time and the production allows Kweli to get his preach on without you feeling like you’re sitting in a pew.
Standout Tracks: Say Something, Eat To Live, In The Mood, New Day

4. Graduation – Kanye West
This album is up for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year and it will probably win. I call Graduation a “masterpiece of minimalism.” It is the third in his academic trilogy and you can easily see how much Ye has grown and how far he has come. I love that the album is only 14 tracks instead of his typical 21 and that he has limited guest appearances this time around and no skits (I loved the skits on College Dropout but I can’t stand them on Late Registration.) He really has come of age as a producer and the feel of the able is consistent, seemingly connected with a thread of synths. Actually, some years ago, people probably wouldn’t even call this a hip hop album. It is so far left that seems to be something else entirely, not quite hip hop, not quite pop, but an electronic fusion of what the future of music looks like. That’s Yeezy. Always created, always forward-thinking. From his website to his Stronger video, you can see that this man is out of this world creative-wise, standing at the forefront of possibility and crossing over into facet of culture like Will Smith. With that said, this is his best album, but my least favorite of his albums. Compared to his previous two LPs, Graduation finds Kanye less humorous, less political, less versatile, less personal and less hungry. It’s not his fault. He’s only rapping about where he is in life, which is basking in his superstardom (Good Life). Lil Wayne brings down the whole project with his uninspired verse on Barry Bonds and Drunk and Hot Girls is nowhere near as funny or timely or utterly ubiquitous as Golddigger. But all in all, Graduation is still a great album. He deserves that degree.
Standout Tracks: Flashing Lights, Champion, Glory


3. American Gangster – Jay-Z
American Gangster put Jay-Z back on track. There’s not much more to say that I haven’t said already. The soul samples and the feel of the album work with Jay’s voice and flow and make this one of the year’s best LPs. He took it back to Blueprint with this one and created the third best album of his career. It debuted at No. 1 tying him with Elvis for the second most No. 1 debuts in history after The Beatles. And the album tied into the movie, which made it even more appealing, even though it was a completely separate project. I put this album should be higher than Graduation because Jay is, quite simply, a better rapper and this time around (rather than Kingdom Come), he chose production that was complementary to him. He doesn’t have Beyonce singing some forced hook (although she is speaking on Pray, but it sounds right). He doesn’t have a lot of heavy drums that push his voice around. It’s the lush instrumentation that holds his rhymes up in the air and let’s you all know that the ruler’s back. “Push/money over broads you got it F**k Bush/Chef, guess what I cooked/Baked a lot of bread/And kept it off the books/Rockstars/Look/Way before the bars my picture was getting took/Feds, they like wack rappers/Try as they may they couldn’t get me on the hook.” (Blue Magic)
What more can I say?
Standout Tracks: Roc Boys, No Hook, Ignorant Sh*t, Blue Magic

2. The Cool – Lupe Fiasco
I didn’t think much of it at first. But the more I hear it, the more it seeps into my subconscious. Listening to The Cool (or any of Lupe’s records for that matter) is like mining for gold, or watching a classic film noir or shopping at Black Thursday: you know there’s good stuff there somewhere but it’s going to take some work to find it. I find myself picking apart his verses, coming up with my own theories to his meanings and double entendres. The album, which elaborates on the Kanye West-produced track The Cool off of Food & Liquor is supposed to be a concept album that revolves around three characters. The main character is Michael Young History and then you have The Streets (a chick with dollar signs in his eyes) and The Game. I do think this album surpasses his previous effort Food & Liquor (although I might have a different opinion if the leaked version of F&L was the released version because that Theme Music To A Drive By is still one of the best tracks I ever heard from Lupe.) He can’t do whatever he wants lyrically, switching up his flow at the drop of a beat and going from talking about rape to spitting about one of the greatest Super Nintendo games of all time in Gold Watch: “I love Street Fighter 2/I just really hate Zangeif/Only Ken and Ryu/I find it hard to beat Blanka.” The downside is that the album is too long and there are too many skippable songs like Hi-Definition. He always doesn’t even start rapping until track 3, which just feels like a forced attempt to do something different. But when Lupe is on, he is on and his lyrics speak for themselves: And from a throne of their bones, I rule/These fools are my fuel so I make them cool/Baptize em in the water out of Scarface pool/And feed em from the table that held the Corleone's Food/If you die tell em that you played my game/I hope your bullet holes become mouths that say my name/Cause I'm the {*gunshot*} (Put You On Game). It’s a shame he’s allegedly hanging up the mic after his next one.
Standout Tracks: The Coolest, Intruder Alert, Streets on Fire, Little Weapon, Gotta Eat, Dumb It Down

And the winner is….

1. Below The Heavens – Blu & Exile
There’s not much to say. This album has it all: Lyrics, music, theme. Blu is a beast. He has all the makings of a top notch emcee. His delivery is on point and his rhyme scheme never fails and unlike a lot of rappers in this era, Blu is not afraid to speak candidly. He talks about his father beating his mom and what it was like when he first found out his girl was pregnant. Blu gets deeply personal and the album almost comes off like his own lyrical bibliography, which makes me curious to see what he’ll come back with the next time around. He’s skilled when it comes to storytelling and has the comedic punches to match. On top of all that is producer Exile whose soulful beats are versatile so that the album never becomes redundant but each one is specific to the emotion of the track. But Exile’s production never goes over the top so much to outshine the emcee. But they vibe off of each other. On tracks like Cold Heated, Blu plays hopscotch with the beat, jumping back and forth across the repetitive drum pattern effortlessly. This album actually caught me off guard. I had been skimming over some boards online and some heads were going on and on about Blu & Exile’s Below the Heavens. One poster even claimed that he would refund the purchase price if someone bought it and didn’t like it. I went to his myspace page to check out some samples and by the time the intro was a quarter of the way through, I was already sold. At the underground music store I go to, there were only three copies (not because it was sold out but they only ordered a handful.) so I got it, peeled off the plastic and I’ve been bumping this ever since. Blu is a unique talent in a world that has gone commercial. And he’s only a rookie so just imagine what he’ll be doing at this time next year.
Standout Tracks: All of them (and if you don't have this album, go cop it.)

and that's all for 2007 folks. happy new year! see you on the flip side.

peace.