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103. De La Soul, "Three Feet High And Rising"

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  Sorry for the service interruption!  Monday I had, like, work stuff to do and yesterday I was picking my wife up at the airport and they lost her bag and we had to file a claim about that and by the time I got home it was well into my Work Hours and you know, I'm just sorry.  (This was tail end of quite a journey for my wife that found her taking off in Ireland and landing in Newark, New Jersey, and then sitting in a plane for almost three hours and then the flight just getting cancelled and then staying in the Courtyard by Marriott in downtown Newark, NJ [not recommended, she says] and then getting on a flight to SFO at 6:30 am and finally getting back here a solid 14 hours later than expected.) Speaking of the greater New York City metropolitan area, a group of kids from Amityville, Long Island, got together in 1988 and started making songs and released this album, one of the best in hip hop or any other genre, in 1989.  De La have been called the "Beatles of hip...
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16. The Clash, "London Calling"

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  After yesterday's, um, unpleasantness , it is so nice to get an album like this, an album I love completely that also happens to be one of the Greatest Albums Ever Recorded, Slam-Dunk edition.   The opening chords to the first track, the title song, sound like an alarm, a staccato siren, and the song is  an alarm, a warning about the myriad fears of the Cold War era, when disaster always seemed a day or so away: The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in Engines stop running, the wheat is growin' thin A nuclear error, but I have no fear Cause London is drowning, I, I live by the river The alarmlike quality of the song is accented by Topper Headon's martial drums, pounding out a march that matches Joe Strummer's guitar.  Strummer's voice is typically hoarse and strained, and that quality lends itself to the time-is-running out anxiousness of the song.  Strummer's wolf howls and yelps only add to the feeling of doom. I guess this was called "punk,...
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255. Bob Dylan, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"

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