Aquemini
My favorite Outkast album and it would be perfect, if not for the incredibly annoying "Mamacita."

I'll give it a second chance, but I only remembered being impressed by Turn it Again.

Emo
I was skeptical of this genre because the more popular varieties of it that came out in early-mid 00s seemed juvenile and whiny, I was older than the fanbase, and I unfairly dismissed it as "punk for teenage girls" (mostly because of Dashboard Confessional). Then I started hanging with some friends who were…

I was aware of them since Mother's Milk, but I never really got into them until Californication. I know for some people that's the equivalent of getting into Metallica post-Black Album, but I still like the aforementioned album and By the Way mostly because of Frusciante's laid-back, melodic guitar accompaniments.…

What's wrong with frat boys anyways? They supplied a lot of cheap/free beer for underage drinkers and good parties, and bore risk of liability if the police came by. It was a public service.

I still liked Less Than Jake for a while until Anthem. I hated that the trend (for commercial radio, at least) fizzled out so fast as the industry moved on to nu-metal and rap-rock. I was like, "No, I'm not done having fun yet, I'm not going to rock out to Korn throat-gargling! Give me some horns!"

Without any evidence, I think the emergence of pop punk almost marks a generational divide, like between X and Y. More of my peers (and myself) in middle school caught on to them, while my older siblings didn't necessarily dislike them, but thought they were silly, and they didn't ' represent the formative music of…

"There's also the awful ballad "Glycerine," a song I've always hated and occasionally slow-danced to."

I still have a fondness for third wave ska. It was silly, fun, and your friends in Band class could actually play their instruments in local acts. When I was in high school, the "high school bands" that were formed by students were ska-punk acts.

I think my first GBV experience was with Mag! Earwhig, because the video for "Bulldog Skin" got played on MTV. I liked that song, but it's not very representative of their lofi music that predates that album. It took a while for me to catch on to their highly touted albums like Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand. Still,…

Yeah, 96-97, I recall hearing about a "techno" revolution (that's what we called it, still call it that in the States - only the cool kids could differentiate it as big beat at the time). Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers made some hits and Madonna and U2 flirted with it in their next album, but, by and large, it…

Yeah, he had a clean, kid-friendly image, although I'm a little surprised Rabin admits he can't be critically detached, seeing as how he wasn't exactly Brown's target audience.

Ditto. That's an incredible album, but unfortunately, not too well recognized. Sparxxx came off as a cornpone joke when I first saw him in his premiere video ("Ugly"), so I was pretty skeptical that he was capable of making a genuinely good album. Timbaland's production certainly helped - the first credible blend…

Titus Andronicus
Best live show I saw this year.

I like how he manages to keep tying the wires around his arm.

Incidentally, I thought Lost handled Walt's aging into a teenager well, or at least, conveniently.

Al Lettieri is injured throughout most of the movie, but he has this casual menace about him that's quite memorable.

Layne Staley, Jar of Flies
Jar of Flies was also released in 94, and went number one. In hindsight, while drugs certainly fueled Cobain's sudden suicide, that year seemed to have been the start of Staley's slow suicide- he always had problems with drugs, but he went into rehab that year, got addicted again, and the…

Oops, i mean "can't cover everything."

Yeah, it's not a criticism of Hyden, who can't cover anything (and his detailed focus on certain events and bands are part of what makes these columns work).