The Red Circle

10. Jay-Z – The Blueprint (2001)
Like the terror attacks that shook the nation on the day of its release, Jay-Z’s The Blueprint was less an album than a force that changed the world on September 11th, 2001. Hov proved on that day that not only was he one of the best rappers alive but also a brilliant artist and businessman. Kanye West and Just Blaze provided most of the album’s brilliant beats, which almost all repurpose classic soul and R&B music. While West might have transformed The Doors’ “Five To One” into a monster beat, it was Jay-Z’s rapping that makes it arguably the best diss track of all time. Written, memorized and recorded in under two weeks, The Blueprint’s lyrics represent Jay at his peak both creatively and quantitatively; the only guest spot on the album is by Eminem who delivers two solid verses over a beat of his own creation. Jay-Z’s tough-guy posturing on tracks like “The Takeover” and “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Live)” makes his vulnerability on “Song Cry” that much more appealing. Though the self-proclaimed Jay-Hova never again hit such a creative high, it’s no wonder an album this good spawned two sequels.

9. The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday (2005)
The Hold Steady have been one of the most notable and polarizing acts of the last decade, with Craig Finn’s spoken word vocal delivery at the center of most arguments for or against the group. For those that embrace his idiosyncratic singing, the group’s 2005 album Separation Sunday, a complex, winding triptik that follows a misguided woman named Holly and her sometimes-lover-sometimes-pimp Charlemagne through a tumultuous cycle of sex, drugs and redemption. The band expertly executes a brand of classic rock unheard since the days of the early E street Band or T.Rex and Finn immerses himself in the subject as the album’s narrator. While steeped in Biblical allusions and metaphors, Separation Sunday avoids the typical male Madonna-Whore complex by inhabiting the space in between, eschewing judgement on even Holly’s most morally questionable decisions and casting shadows of doubt upon her purest. Separation Sunday is the spirit of beat poetry set to the musical soundtrack of the generations it inspired and applied to a timeless tale of post-teenage angst.

8. The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible (2007)
The Arcade Fire’s emergence as ambassadors of a certain sort of “indie rock” to the otherwise uninitiated masses was an organic build based on strong word of mouth and critical acclaim for their 2004 debut. Neon Bible‘s debut at #2 on the Billboard Album charts might not seem as remarkable in the light of Modest Mouse’s #1 debut weeks earlier but in contrast. Arcade Fire had no charting single, no radio airplay to speak of and no corporate support. Win Butler and company ratcheted up the already grandiose nature of the group’s arrangements, recorded most of the album in a renovated church and employed the talents of a Hungarian choir and orchestra. Each carefully chosen and arranged piece of this puzzle fits together into a broad brushstroke reimagination of American music and culture that benefits from the group’s Canadian point of view. The detached earnesty of Butler’s lyrics match the impatient pleading of his vocal perfectly and complete an album that undoubtedly would have wound up crushed under its own moderately pretentious weight in less capable hands. The songs have grand aspirations and in every case, they reach or surpass them. Springsteen worship, pipe organs and thousands of cubic feet of reverb might be the album’s most commonly recurring musical motifs they’re definitely only a few of the band’s tricks. Neon Bible proved to be one of the decade’s most remarkable albums because the Arcade Fire worked so much harder than everyone else.

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