Reacting to My Favorite Albums from High School

Seniors in high school all follow the exact same train of thought: My music taste is hot. Looking back on my favorite albums in high school, I can safely say That’s a crock of hot shit.

I was in the process of cleaning out my computer so that I could download more... music, and I came across the image you see above. Created through a website that I cannot find three years later, I compiled a chart that displays fifty of my favorite albums of all time. Some habits haven’t changed, and some albums have barely been touched in the three years since the creation of this list.

Big Takeaways

The person who created this list has not heard a single rock album.

There are only five white artists on this list.

Populated with jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop, this list is incredibly emblematic of my high school listening habits.

This list has changed

Top 4

Three years later, my top four have stayed relatively consistent. To this day, I still hold deep reverence for A Love Supreme, a magisterial profession of faith rooted in hard bop with flirtations of the avant-garde. As haughty as it might seem for me to proclaim, I doubt that any album will dethrone A Love Supreme in my personal pantheon. Unchanged as well is the second spot, To Pimp A Butterfly. You can read more about my feelings toward that album in the full length review below. Following is The Epic by Kamasi Washington, a triple LP that creates a sweeping fusion of jazz, funk, and orchestral music. As epic as it was, and still is, this album has fallen out of my top four. With subsequent releases, I found Washington’s harmonic material and soloistic capabilities to stagnate, relying on the same licks to get through increasingly bloated instrumentals (I did appreciate the concise Harmony of Difference EP). Finally, while The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady still stands out as one of my favorite albums, it does not have the same replay value later on to warrant a spot atop the pedestal.

Second tier classics

Many of the albums here are still favorites of mine, specifically GKMC, Malibu, Porgy and Bess, and untitled, unmastered. One of these albums has moved up to fill the vacuum left in the top four, and that is Voodoo. The defining statement of neo-soul and the Soulquarians sound at large, this album has a timeless quality that is shared by TPAB and A Love Supreme. And still there are albums on this level that drop down a tier or even off the map entirely: Awaken, My Love!, DAMN., and Soul Station specifically. My taste for these albums has not decreased, but as my musical lexicon has expanded, there are other albums which rank higher for different reasons than these.

Other favorites

This is where the fun begins. Let’s start with albums that have fallen off of the list entirely:

Exchange - The JuJu Exchange

I couldn’t remember the name or artist of this album, which is a great indicator that it shouldn’t be on my favorites list anymore. After some serious trawling on the Internet, I finally found the album and I can see why high-school Duncan would dig. The album is a funky exploration of the smooth mid-10s Chicago hip-hop sound pioneered by Chance The Rapper, Noname, Saba, Smino, and others. It’s a good album, but not in the favorites

Duality - Captain Murphy (AKA Flying Lotus)

I can’t remember a single note from this album. Listening back to it, I can’t remember listening to it in the first place. Duality isn’t a bad project by any stretch of the word, but it’s not a favorite and I’m unsure why it was

Marsalis Standard Time - Wynton Marsalis

It’s a good record, but I have found other jazz records that scratch the same itch without the comments about how hip-hop is not real music.

Lickety Split - The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

There are other Vanguard Orchestra records much more deserving of a place in my collection than this one, and I know for a fact that I only listened to it for the tune “Extra Credit,” which my high school jazz band was playing around the time of this list.

The Shining - J Dilla

No beef with the man, but Donuts is a better project with retrospect

There are others on this tier that will probably fall off, but these were the most interesting placements to three-years-later Duncan.

Snubs/Recent Releases

Within these three years, there were albums that, while released before the list, I didn’t quite grasp until later on in my musical growth. The best example of this would undoubtedly be Blonde by Frank Ocean. I do have a vivid memory of listening to this album in high school, resonating with “Skyline To” and “Godspeed.” But I hadn’t lived enough life at that point; my heart hadn’t been broken, I was living in the time that nostalgia transports us to, and I wasn’t able to understand the impressionistic lyrical ability of Frank Ocean. Another example would be The Life of Pablo by Kanye West; there was a hypebeast Yeezy reseller in my early bird anatomy class that soured the taste of Kanye fandom for awhile. Having written scholarly works on Mr. West, however, has changed my opinion of his artistic output in a positive way. And there are numerous others, deep cuts found as a result of years of virtual crate-digging.

Additionally, there are albums that weren’t released yet. This was made shortly before the release of the SATURATION trilogy by BROCKHAMPTON, a band who served as the soundtrack of my summer before college. There were strong follow-up albums from Anderson .Paak and Jacob Collier, both of whom are on this list. I was turned on to lesser-known acts like Khruangbin, James Blake, Mick Jenkins, and Bon Iver. Finally, I have become less of a dick when it comes to liking pop music, as Lorde and The Weeknd have grasped my attention.

Without further ado, here is my updated list. I can’t wait to react to this one three years from now.