The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far (Paste Magazine version) • Page 2

This Lift to Experience album is fucking wild lol

 

True but subsequently R&B fell off so…

 

It was falling off long before Frank tbh

 

Yeah and the reach goes beyond standard r&b. “Bedroom pop” as a genre remains super popular for high schoolers/zoomers

 

Is Frank directly responsible for Taylor Swift not having a huge pop chorus since Cruel Summer???

 

True, but with the EDM shit they at least scored some actual hits still

 

I mean I personally don’t care about that, but you’re not wrong

 

I think “contemporary R&B” without hits is really not the same

 

Is this what happened to melodies? I assumed it was because of the Boygenius triumvirate.

 

hell yeah. surprised a bit that you in particular havent come across this one before

pretty unanimously considered his best from everyone ive ever spoken to about him so it seems pretty apropos to me

i agree about their coverage writ large but i actually think this list is pretty unique. feels like theres a lot on here that i dont think either of those sites would think to include

 

Real heads know his best is one from BTMI!

 

That’s right: vacation

 

I’ve actually grown more and more fond of Scrambles as his opus the older I get

 

as a "real head" I agree with Worry. being the opus, though I like We Cool and Vacation only a smidge less

 

Worry is definitely a good album and by far the best of his “solo” stuff, but it lacks the chaotic brilliance of even the messiest BTMI stuff. I think Scrambles is the perfect mix of the styles. Adults EP, really, but Scrambles in terms of an album

 

a lot on here I haven't heard of before. will be sure to check em out and report back. not gonna pay much attention to the numbering as that's just rage bait

 

Nailed it

 

Give me more actually interesting artists like Frank over generic pop-R&B hits any day of the week. The Frank slander in here is wild… I can agree that “alternative R&B” has become played out, but I think like with many musical trends, the original innovators aren’t to blame for lesser imitators that came along later.

 

To be fair, @OhTheWater has been a Frank skeptic for years. This isn't a retroactive "Are we sure he was good?" situation.

 

I still think the hype for CO is insane and wrong. Blonde is good

 

Frank does very little for me

 

I don't know you, so this is not about you personally, but the dismissal of "pop-R&B" (which is not a good term but I think I understand what you mean by it) in favour of "alternative R&B" by this massive group of new rap and R&B listeners (not new as in kids, new as in the post 808s & Heartbreak "indie rock"-to-R&B-and-rap pipeline) in the 2010s sucks and has made everything so boring and diluted. That's not to say there isn't room for "alternative R&B", because there is and always has been (Frank is part of a long lineage).

 

Its is directly responsible for such madness as thinking Damn is the best rap album of the last 25 years, Confessions being so much lower on the list than CTRL and albums like, say, The Emancipation of Mimi not even making the list and on and on. I sometimes wish publications/list-makers like this would just stick to their obvious lanes.

Sorry, rant over. It just annoys me because I used to not have to bother engaging with stuff like this because at one point in time healthy Hip Hop/R&B media existed.

 

Struggling to identify the connection between “alternative R+B” and people overrating Damn