(Profile 1986, Russell Simmons)
Now I'm sure some will be scratching there heads and wondering how Raising Hell has snuck above 3 Feet High And Rising, it certainly should raise your eyebrows as De La Soul's album is superior, but Raising Hell has a special place in hip hop history, it was one of the first hip hop albums to go main stream in a BIG way without comprimising itself stylistically. Run DMC were essentially two MCs and some scratching, Run and DMC's interplay is superb and a clear influence on all hip hop duos and certianly on the Beastie Boys. This record conquered the world, it took hip hop all over the globe, riding on the back of Walk This Way Run DMC made sure they were bringing the hits It's Tricky, My Addidas and You'll Be Illin. The symbolic success of Run-DMC came at the imfamous live aid concert, they were the only hip hop act on the bill and they went out there and did there thing. No gimmicks, no rock riffs, no comprimise they brought hip hop to the masses and shoved it in there faces. When DMC said there's a lot of rock bands here today but I've got one thing to say and then launched into King Of Rock it was the ballsy in your face moment that said hip hop had arrived. Raising Hell made sure that recorder labels world wide would be on the look out for urban acts because Raising Hell proved hip hop would remain counter culture no longer.
34. Paul's Boutique - The Beastie Boys
(Def Jam 1989, The Dust Brothers)
The Beastie Boys will always get the critical recognition they deserve, there is no doubt about this, they must have had more five star reviews than any other hip hop act in history, yet when it comes to the popular memory hip hop fans don't even have The Beasties in the argument for greatest of all time, which is completely ludicrious. See it's funny, when it comes to hip hop, if your pretentious, bury your head up your own arse, completely overrate yourself and make the same exact record four times in a row you somehow end up the best of all time. However if your eccentric, tongue in cheek, unpretentious, ludicrious, endless creative and impossible to pigoenhole apparently that makes you outsiders and a joke. God imagine if hip hop historians were in charge of rock!?! They'd have scoffed at David Bowie and The Smiths and the Stereophonics would be named the best in the world. The Beastie Boys have all of the above qualities and none of the weakness, Paul's Boutique was silly but it was amazingly inventive, the use of samples is incredibly, its so dense, so well crafted, you could lose your mind trying to indentify each one, and to think these days Kanye just has to raps over a Daft Punk song. So next time you talk about hip hops greatest albums; when your friends say The Blue Print and Ready To Die you say...Paul's Boutique.
33. Joshua Tree - U2
(Island 1987, Brian Eno)
Well you didn't think I'd leave it out did you? You did didn't you? Well don't worry for the longest time I thought about it too. While I do personally prefer War and think overall it's the more consistant affair, the hugeness of this album cannot be denied. It's inescapable, chances are that sometime in your life someone has played this album in your vacinity or you've heard one of those horribly speils on VH1 when Joshua Tree inevitably wins their greatest album poll, and I mean honestly how pretentious is it to declare that you can name the greatest albums of all time in some order of your own choosing, seriously you'd have to be a bigger dick than Bono to do something like that. Anyway my point was that this album is mamoth, not just in popularity, this was a band making huge brush strokes they were talking about big emotions, huge global feelings, epic songwritting, big sweeping arrangements, they wanted to sum up the human condition in stadium sized pop songs. No street level story telling, no struggle of the individual, this big broad brush strokes, this is raw emotion, big themes, big imagary, big choruses. It still inspires waves of stadium rockers aiming for the big time, who want to connect with everyone and no one. It's impossible to deny that U2 have talent, but it's equally ludicrious to call the Joshua Tree the greatest album, it's good, it has five mamoth songs, its raw ambition, its earnestly and knowingly huge. So bland, yes, bigger than life itself, you better believe it.
32. Pretty Hate Machine - Nine Inch Nails
(TVT 1989, Trent Reznor)
Wow it's been twenty years since Pretty Hate Machine that's pretty incredible, no wonder Trent has called it a day, twenty years of being a miserable rage filled git must take it out of you. He should come back with super camp synth rock act, just to cheer himself up. Trent was obviously a smart man, which song does he chose to open his first ever album? That's right the most raging hate filled and immediate track he'd ever pen Head Like A Hole having heard Crue sing about Girls, Girls, Girls and having watched Axl sing about how his girlfriends eyes remind him of moonlit skies (excuse me while I throw up) it must have been so exhilerating to hear Trent sing "No You Can't Take That Away From Me" and then scream "Head Like A Hole / Dark As Your Soul / I'd Rather Die Than Give You Control" behind all the dorm room agnst laid a super slick and super eighties industrial beat, now Nails fans will kill me for saying this but ignore Trent's words and listen to that groove tell me you can't see Bobby Brown dancing and sliding around stage to that bassline? See, what always made Nine Inch Nails so great is how subversive their music is, it's not just anger channelled through the medium of screaming and pummelling (see Sepultura) this is satirical ironic lyrics delivered in a sleek whisper to draw you in so he can suddenly bite your fucking ear off. Best way to describe this album, it's a eighties sexy party to celebrate the apocalypse, in an abandoned warehouse were the lights flicker on and off constantly, while there's a mad man running around smashing the walls in with a lead pipe, you got that? I hope so, oh and incase your wondering that's a good thing, erh...I think.
31. Born In The U.S.A - Bruce Springsteen
(Columbia 1984, Jon Landau)
From the mamoth Stadium rock of U2 to another stadium siazed super album but they could be more different. Take one listen to I'm On Fire a big sparse epic ballad, sounds just like U2 right, well wrong, where as Bono croons about big emotions, Bruce Springsteen takes an individual, a small story, small town emotional story telling, rooted around the one man's struggle and real life, Bono is in the clouds, Bruce is strickly street level. While it's always feels a bit lame to pick the album with all the hits, it's obviously, kind of like the Joshua Tree however this literally has all hits. Count them Born In The USA, Glory Days, I'm On Fire, No Surrender, Bobby Jean, My Hometown and Dancing In The Dark. That's seven hits! This is effectively a greatest hits album, this is honestly all killer no filler. It's all those big blue collar anthems that you can belt out, its completely unshamedly fun "Well We Made A Promise We Swore We'd Always Remember / No Retreat Baby And No Surrender" seriously you have no idea how much fun that is to sing aloud with 50, 000 people. Then there's Dancing In The Dark it contains one of the all time great lyrics in musically history "I Check My Look In The Mirror / I Wanna Change My Clothes, My Hair, My Face!". Of course there's the satrical genius of Born In The U.S.A that Ronald Reagan ruined for all of us. I'm running out of space already, this is an album that I could talk about all day Working On A Highway, Downbound Train and I'm Going Down are as brilliant as any of the singles and should not be overlooked. Quite frankly this is as fantastic and fun as albums get.
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