Album Reviews, Playlists, and More

Is there a precedent for 55-year-old rappers making good albums?No?Well, of course, count on LL Cool J to break the mold. It’s something he’s been doing for four decades. He was the first solo rapper to have a Gold album. The first s…

Trying to condense LL Cool J's career into a podcast was hard, but I think Mike and I did a great job at telling our story as it relates to our LL fandom alongside his journey.What was also hard was putting together a list of our favorite LL songs…

We're at the end of Bruno week here on 50 For 50. It's time for our Bruno Mars playlist as created by our mix-tape-ologist, Mike Joseph.On one of our podcast episodes this week about Bruno Mars, Mike mentioned that if Bruno ever put out a greatest…

We’re in 2026. Bruno Mars is, arguably, the biggest male singer on the planet*. His world tour sold out in minutes. He’s already amassed more Grammy Awards than his heroes Elvis, Michael and Prince. It’s hard to believe that once, …

This week is Bruno Week on 50 For 50. Bruno Mars' new album, The Romantic, dropped last weekend and Mike Joseph and I have been anticipating it since we heard the news of the release several months ago.We decided that this week is Bruno wee…

TLC was so cool.They would stay cool after their second album sent them into superstardom, but it would be a different kind of cool; like a famous person cool. When Ooooooohhh... On the TLC Tip dropped, they dripped with the type of coolness …

When TLC stepped onto the scene in 1992, they broke the mold. While they were created in the image of Bell Biv DeVoe’s “hip-hop smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it” mission statement, TLC offered a differen…

Janet Jackson's career spans so many years, that if she was coming out with an album this year, she could literally call it "40 Y.0."Just like most artists, her discography is up and down. She has iconic, must-have, era-defining albums, and she has …

When 19-year-old Janet Jackson flew to Minneapolis to record the album that ultimately became Control, she couldn’t have had any idea that the recording sessions she signed on for could reshape pop music. After all, the producers she was trave…

You can separate Michael Jackson's career into a few different buckets. There's the Jackson 5 portion of his career. Then, with the move away from Motown, the Jacksons part of his career. But that part of his career also coincides with his adult sol…

Michael Jackson is widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest pop stars of all-time. The Motown-era Jackson Five are acclaimed as the granddaddy of the modern boy band. However, the average music fan assumes that the Jackson brothers left Motown…

Trying to whittle down your favorite songs of one of your favorite artists to just five can be torturous. Obviously, not physically torturous, but maybe mentally so.Mike isn't the biggest Tupac Shakur fan, though he did enjoy a lot of his music. M…

It’s hard to listen to, much less review, Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez On Me without taking in all that happened in the months leading up to the album’s release, and all that happened in the months after the album’s release. …

Our Amy Winehouse podcast was the hardest one from an emotional perspective so far. After watching the A24 documentary (really good) and the biopic that came out a couple of years ago (pretty bad), and listening to all of her music, I was just sad t…

Where were you the first time you heard Amy Winehouse? I very distinctly remember my boss pulling me aside one afternoon and saying “listen to this.” “This” was “Rehab,” the cheeky opening track of Amy’s sec…

If you heard our Top 5 on Lauryn Hill and the Fugees, I chose a song as my top choice that isn't out there on streaming for some reason. However, it is on YouTube and I've embedded it below, Rumble In The Jungle from 1997. I wanted to take …

Group dynamics are always a tricky thing. Even if a collective is set up with the intention of being a democracy, there will always be some kind of imbalance. Someone’s gonna get more lead vocals, someone’s gonna get more production cred…

When Mike and I started our conversation about Lionel Richie on our 50 For 50 podcast, I asked Mike if he thought Lionel was a bit corny. And that wasn't meant as a dig at Lionel. I think it's something that's unique about the man. When everyon…

1982 was a transformative year for music in many ways. The second British Invasion exploded, thanks to new, fresh acts like The Human League, Yazoo and Duran Duran. Rap music planted its flag with two era-defining singles, “The Message” …

One of the things Mike and I wanted to do with this 50 For 50 project is also create a space to celebrate music. And what better way to celebrate music than to create playlists of all the music we're talking about. As part of our discussion abo…

The members of New Edition found themselves at a series of crossroads when the Heart Break album was conceived and recorded in 1988. After making their debut in 1983 with “Candy Girl”, the group had established themselves as one of the m…