Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger

Interviews by Paul Lester
Friday June 15, 2007
The Guardian

Tupac Shakur All Eyez On Me
Nominated by Mark Ronson, producer

This was Tupac's biggest record, and is seen by rap fans as the greatest latterday hip-hop album. But I've never got the cult of Tupac. Sure, he was in a lot of pain but he never said anything particularly clever - Notorious B.I.G. was far superior. People really related to the emotion in his voice, but it didn't resonate with me. No one would doubt Tupac's "realness" - he was shot nine times, for God's sake, and he began recording this album hours after being released from prison - but it doesn't compare to Biggie. Dr Dre produced it, and I didn't rate his production, either.

Problem was, Tupac was so prolific. He would write 50 songs in a weekend. Maybe he knew he was going to die, so he recorded relentlessly. I bought it at the time because it had one song on it that I'd play in clubs, but one out of 20 isn't great. In fact, there are 27 tracks on it - it started the trend of putting loads of songs on rap albums. Tupac wasn't up there with Dylan - Dylan was a brilliant poet. Eminem is probably the Dylan of rap, whereas Tupac just sounded like he was whining.

Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger

Nirvana, Nevermind
Nominated by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips

It's better to be overrated than underrated. Besides, it's not the musicians' fault Nevermind is overrated - it's the public's, or the critics'. But you don't find yourself ever longing to listen to it, because there were - still are, in fact - so many mediocre bands that sound like it, that you're constantly experiencing it. I never get out Nevermind and think: what great production, what great songs. Nevermind had a poisonous, pernicious influence. It legitimised suffering. The sainthood of Kurt Cobain overshadows the album: Kurt's lyrics, his attitudinising and navel-gazing, were hard to separate from the band's image. You can never just hear the record. For me, Bleach and In Utero are superior. Even the album cover seems cheap: that stupid dollar bill just seems to have been airbrushed in there. If Alice in Chains had done it, we'd have thought it was a joke, but because it was Nirvana we thought it was oh-so-clever. If you think you're going to hear an utterly original, powerful and freaky record when you put on Nevermind, as a young kid might, Christ you're going to be disappointed. You're going to think, "Who is this band that sounds just like Nickelback? What are these drug addicts going on about?"

Originally Posted by Urban Hatemonger

The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Nominated by Luke Pritchard of the Kooks

Of all the albums that get written about as "classics", this one least deserves it. Having said that, it contains one of the greatest songs ever written: God Only Knows, which is melancholic yet uplifting, pure yet f**ked-up. But the rest of the record is a total let-down - I felt that way from the very first listen. Pet Sounds is a million miles away from Sgt Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon. I do appreciate the lyrics, and I know it's an album about getting older, but as a concept album, it doesn't quite add up. Good tunes, yes - Wouldn't It Be Nice is a great pop song - but most of the other tracks just don't resonate for me. I apologise unreservedly to everyone who loves every word and note, every last crackle, on this album, but that's how it is. Oh, and it's got the worst sleeve of any major album, ever. Feeding time at the zoo? I don't think so.

Originally Posted by Shake

This one I disagree with too. I love Pet Sounds. The album cover does suck though.

Originally Posted by Shake

I pretty much agree with everything here. Nirvana was in the right place at the right time, and nothing more. If Kurt hadn't killed himself, they wouldn't have made such an impact.

Originally Posted by Violent & Funky

They had already made a HUGE impact before Kurt died though...

Originally Posted by Shake

That's true, but my opinion is that there were a lot of other bands at the time who were much better than Nirvana.

Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream
Soundgarden's Superunknown
Rage Against The Machine's ST album
Pearl Jam's Ten, VS, and Vitalogy
Tool's Undertow
Radiohead's Pablo Honey and (even though it was out after Kurt's Death) The Bends..............

Originally Posted by bandteacher1

I type whicked fast,

Originally Posted by Shake

That's true, but my opinion is that there were a lot of other bands at the time who were much better than Nirvana.

Smashing Pumpkin's Siamese Dream
Soundgarden's Superunknown
Rage Against The Machine's ST album
Pearl Jam's Ten, VS, and Vitalogy
Tool's Undertow
Radiohead's Pablo Honey and (even though it was out after Kurt's Death) The Bends..............

The list goes on and on. Kurt became a martyr because he died. Their best days were behind them, again, in my opinion. Bleach was their best album, followed by (I guess) Nevermind. But In Utero was garbage. Muddy Banks was garbage. Incesticide was nothing more than b-sides and rare tracks.

So, right place at the right time, I guess. I don't feel like he ever did much worth really remembering.

I still, on a monthly basis, will listen to Soundgarden, Rage, and especially Pearl Jam. I would put any or all three of their frontmen ahead of Cobain as the "voice of the generation"

Originally Posted by mr dave

aside from Ten (and Pablo Honey for other reasons) every single one of those albums owes a debt to Nevermind for busting open the door to the mainstream.

if anything it's Pearl Jam that got in the right place at the right time to squeeze into the mainstream. consider something with the classic rock swagger of 'Alive' being released to the mainstream just a few years later, like say '94. they would have been written off the same way Collective Soul did.

Pablo Honey was just plain bland and inoffensive, it was calculated adult contemporary drivel. lucky for us Johnny Greenwood hated what 'Creep' originally sounded like tried his damnedest to 'ruin' the song with his solo and subsequently helped move the band in a far less sucky direction. being that he repeated the style almost to a T for 'Just'.

Originally Posted by OBEY

"Never trust your own eyes, believe what you are told".