One Last Listen: My 10 Favorite Albums Of 2006

The hardest part of making a year-end list such as My Favorite 10 Albums of 2006 isn't picking the worthy albums. It's narrowing them down. When I sat down and listed my favorites of the previous year, I came up with 15 albums. I won't say it was easy to whittle the list down or that I won't want to change my mind in the future, but I am happy with this list as 2007 gets started.

St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley: “Crazy” hooked many onto the Gnarls Barkley bandwagon but, fortunately, it was far from the only good song on St. Elsewhere. The minds of singer/rapper Cee-Lo (formerly of Goodie Mob) and producer Danger Mouse combined to create an album that was relentlessly inventive, unusual yet still accessible, and something that bridged the ideas of “urban” and “alternative.”

Fishscale by Ghostface Killah: For all the calls to do something “different,” there's something to doing what you do best and doing it well. Ghostface Killah's Fishscale didn't break new ground in the slightest. It followed the blueprint of many a Ghostface Killah album: vividly told stories of the street, wordplay that can be as great as it is hard to digest, solid soul-sampled production, and the unique personality that is Tony Starks. What made Fishscale stand out is how it was almost polished to a shine.

Future Sex/Love Sounds by Justin Timberlake: When an ambitious artist and equally ambitious producers work together, great music is usually the result. Justin Timberlake's collaboration with producers Timbaland and Danja on most of Future Sex/Love Sounds resulted in a fun, wide-ranging album that managed to win over this *NSYNC hater. Pop melded with everything from electronica to R & B without skipping a beat and Timberlake got the boybander monkey off his back.

Game Theory by The Roots: For their first outing on Def Jam, leave it to The Roots to make a real, every-song-should-be-heard-in-sequence album. While the sum of its parts was nothing to laugh at, Game Theory's real power was as a whole. It was at times hard-hitting, angry, cutting-edge, incendiary, and thoughtful. Whether Black Thought talked about the state of the country or the state of his hometown of Philly, he was on top of his game. The musical backdrops were innovative and stayed true to what the group has done in the past. The Roots can stay on Def Jam as long as they like if they keep putting out albums this good.

Article Author: Sterfish

From music to manga and television to comics, Sterfish enjoys it all. He's older than you think and younger than you expect.

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