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"FacebookPinterest\n\nRemember when we argued about albums? When we listened to them straight through? When the last note of the radio single made us reflexively hum the intro to the next track? Us, too! Believe it or not, that's not all gone. Even in the millennium that brought us quick-and-dirty downloads, these artists created fully immersive musical journeys of the highest order. This is a celebration of our hands-down, most emphatically favorite LPs from the past fifteen years\u2014plus a few nominations from the artists themselves.\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Joseph Okpako/Getty Images\n\n1. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)\n\n Kanye West\n\nBECAUSE: It could've been any one of the seven albums West released this century, as fascinating a catalog of celebrity, triumph, love, loss, terrible puns, pretty decent puns, that was ever fucking put together by a single artist. MBDTF was just the record where he talked about all those things at once\u2014a portrait of a man seizing the spotlight, drowning in it, and then somehow finding a way to turn that harrowing experience into art. Anybody who wants to be famous or make music for a living\u2014or do both at the same time\u2014should be forced to listen to MBDTF first. The rest of us are free to enjoy it for the bloody, hard-won, titanic achievement that it is.\n\nSee Kanye's cover story, including exclusive details about his forthcoming album\u2014a certain contender for future versions of this list.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images\n\n2. Is This It (2001)\n\n The Strokes\n\nBECAUSE: When Y2K arrived, MTV VJs and saccharine-pop enthusiasts told us rock 'n' roll was dead. But then, out of nowhere, came this back-to-basics guitar-driven record made by five leather-clad hipsters (before that was a thing). We're not saying the album saved rock for millennials... Oh, wait, yes we are.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n3. Stankonia (2000)\n\n OutKast\n\nBECAUSE: Andr\u00E9 3000 with a perm, bleating Don't pull the thang out unless you plan to bang? It wasn't hip-hop. It was electric gospel, like the heavens had opened up and revealed that the angels were cyborgs and that the Pearly Gates were electrically charged. Yow! With Stankonia's weird dimensions dominating radio\u2014that's \"B.O.B.,\" as well as \"Ms. Jackson\" and \"So Fresh, So Clean\"\u2014OutKast proved that hip-hop had no outer edges and was, in fact, so dominant and so limitless as to not even be a genre at all.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Marc Grimwade/Getty Images\n\n4. Discovery (2001)\n\n Daft Punk\n\nBECAUSE: No one, including Daft Punk, has made a better dance record\u2014big and bright and melancholy and the blueprint for damn near half the pop music that has come since, from Kanye to Skrillex to Pharrell, all of whom are still unashamedly ripping off Discovery today.\n\nDAFT PUNK NOMINATE: The Strokes' aforementioned Is This It. \"Julian and his bandmates followed in the footsteps of the Velvet Underground, Television, Suicide, the Ramones, and Blondie, creating the fresh, distinctive sound we'd been waiting for for over a decade.\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: WireImage/Getty Images\n\n5. Sound of Silver (2007)\n\n LCD Soundsystem\n\nBECAUSE: No other record\u2014no other single song, in the case of \"All My Friends,\" which should come packaged with the keys to your first New York apartment\u2014better captured the disorienting thrill of being young and smart and heartbroken in the first decade of the twenty-first century.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images\n\n6. Voodoo (2000)\n\n D'Angelo\n\nBECAUSE: This preacher's son and composing prodigy turned the spirits to his side, wedding rap and R&amp;amp;B and a yawning sense of the void into spooky, sensual art. Oh, and because Justin Timberlake says so.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Karl Walter/Getty Images\n\n7. Channel Orange (2012)\n\n Frank Ocean\n\nBECAUSE: We'd been waiting thirty years for another Marvin Gaye. And then, suddenly, we had Ocean and his debut, Channel Orange\u2014a fully realized instant classic from an artist who couldn't be bothered with even a single one of the steps between \"neophyte\" and \"master.\" We're not waiting anymore.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Jon Super/Getty Images\n\n8. Elephant (2003)\n\n The White Stripes\n\nBECAUSE: Jack and Meg built out the raw garage rock from their first three albums into an entirely re-imagined sound, taking their pissed-off swagger and channeling it into ambition: blistering blues, whimsical folk, Stooges-esque punk, contemplative love tunes. In case we'd forgotten, we were reminded that Jack can fucking shred on guitar.\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images\n\n9. Futuresex/Lovesounds (2006)\n\n Justin Timberlake\n\nBECAUSE: After all the SNL bits and Fallon appearances and movie roles, it's almost hard to remember how radical this record was when it came out\u2014the moment a 25-year-old boy-band survivor vaulted to the vanguard of pop music, making sex-soaked R&amp;amp;B over space-age production, courtesy of a resurgent, on-fire Timbaland. Serious actor JT and grown-ass soul man JT got nothing on this guy.\n\nJT NOMINATES: \"D'Angelo's Voodoo and Radiohead's Kid A. It may seem ironic that I'd pick two albums released in the first year of the twenty-first century, with all the great music that has come since then. But I was 19. I was ready to listen to music in a different way. Not only were they filled with great songs, but the sound of them really affected me. They were complete pieces of work\u2014progressive and retro at the same time. They transformed whatever world I was in at the time. And eventually led to my desire to make my first solo record. I'll always reference them as the inspiration that got me off of my ass. I always go back to them, and they still do (get me off of my ass).\"\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images\n\n10. Supreme Clientele (2000)\n\n Ghostface Killah\n\nBECAUSE: It's the first and last classic that the anarchic, diabolically clever, and delightfully insane Wu-Tang Clan released this century. Twenty-one tracks here, and not one of them\u2014including the skit about the guy trying to lowball Ghostface for drugs\u2014is less than thrilling.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Jill Edelstein/Camera Press/Redux\n\n11. Back to Black (2006)\n\n Amy Winehouse\n\nBECAUSE: Of the depth and pain in her voice\u2014which sounded like something she'd left outside overnight one too many times and then wrung out in the morning. Also: because of the casual honesty she brought to inventorying her own flaws. And finally: because for one short moment, she pushed back the demons to make something this full of life.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Kevin Kane/Getty Images\n\n12. The Blueprint (2001)\n\n Jay-Z\n\nBECAUSE: We've spent the past three minutes shattering furniture at GQ HQ listening to the tireless anthem \"U Don't Know.\" It feels weird to even have to justify this one. It's Jay-Z. And Kanye West and Just Blaze, and Eminem and Timbaland. Inventing\u2014then immediately perfecting\u2014the triumphant, breezy, bigger-than-rap mythology that Jay's wrapped himself in ever since. (Jay himself rates this one second among his great albums, after Reasonable Doubt; nope, sorry, Jay!)\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Wendy Redfern/Getty Images\n\n13. Sea Change (2002)\n\n Beck\n\nBECAUSE: It was the moment when the snotty singer of \"Loser\" and \"Where It's At\" broke up with his then girlfriend, left his own head, and mined his darkened emotional core.\n\nBECK NOMINATES: \"M.I.A.'s Arular. You could feel that album in the air a few years before she did it\u2014just these incredible kaleidoscopic filters of different cultures coming together in a pure and innocent way. The record had a political feeling of early Public Enemy but a sense of fun and energy. She's just a raconteur.\"\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: JSN Photography/Getty Images\n\n14. Let England Shake (2011)\n\n PJ Harvey\n\nBECAUSE: Polly Jean could sing about a stapler and we'd be transfid\u2014that deeply rooted voice, the way she weaves gritty melodies with poetic, take-no-prisoners lyrics. Here she takes on nothing less than the broken state of the modern-day English sociopolitical landscape, and the results are devastating.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Samir Hussein/Getty Images\n\n15. We're New Here (2011)\n\n Gil Scott-Heron &amp;amp; Jamie xx\n\nBECAUSE: The vocals will crush you with the earned, weary sadness that Scott-Heron brought to his final album before his death in 2011; Jamie xx's remix of the record\u2014wobbly and gorgeous and steeped in adoration for Scott-Heron (pictured below)\u2014will lift you back up.\n\nJAMIE XX NOMINATES: \"Number one is Original Pirate Material by the Streets. It was one of the first things I heard when I decided to make music using a computer. Although I could play some instruments, I wasn't good enough to be original. With electronic music, it was different. Each song is basically a sample, a bass line and a beat to give Mike Skinner the space to do his thing. He just speaks and tells stories. It's set around the area I grew up in\u2014Brixton, in southwest London. Everybody my age was listening to it. Everybody got it.\"\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Tabatha Fireman/Getty Images\n\n16. Fever to Tell (2003)\n\n Yeah Yeah Yeahs\n\nBECAUSE: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, ahhhhh! The low-tempo tracks (\"Maps\" broke out on the radio) on YYY's debut are really more like water breaks during a thirty-seven-minute sweat-drenched sprint. Karen O + drums + guitar produces the effect of sticking your tongue into a wall outlet, only easier to dance to.\n\nKAREN O NOMINATES: \"Liars' They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top. With gnarly absurdist hooks, it was for me the jewel in the crown of the New York music scene at the turn of the century. We questioned it then, but now I'm certain we were having an honest-to-God moment.\"\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Gary Wolstenholme/Getty Images\n\n17. Modern Vampires of the City (2013)\n\n Vampire Weekend\n\nBECAUSE: After making two solid albums about the sounds of spring semester in New York and summers on barrier islands, they over-delivered with a radical declaration of maturity that turned on an entirely new set of listeners. VW figured out what to chuck and what to cultivate. The lyrics are wiser and more worldly, the voices more flexible, the music more expansive. We figured they'd work their way to this place\u2014it just came, like, ten years early.\n\nEZRA KOENIG NOMINATES: \"Besides Stankonia? How 'bout the Dirty Projectors album The Glad Fact. It came at this moment when people were really wondering where alt-rock was gonna head. Dave Longstreth had this uniqueness of voice\u2014and I don't just mean his singing voice, which is unique, but the perspective. Also: It was my one and only published music review. Ha.\"\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood Entertainment/Getty Images\n\n18. Beyonc\u00E9 (2013)\n\n Beyonc\u00E9\n\nBECAUSE: The greatest female R&amp;amp;B artist of the century finally made a record as sexy, snarling, soft, strange, and outright superlative as she is. And by releasing it without warning or fanfare late one December night, she gave us something we haven't had in a very long time\u2014a moment when we all listened to the same thing, at the same time. (Watched, too.) We hope \"the album\" looks like this from here on out.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\n19. Donuts (2006)\n\n J Dilla\n\nBECAUSE: Before he died from a rare blood disease at age 32, James Dewitt Yancey\u2014J Dilla\u2014was your favorite producer's favorite producer. And Donuts was his finest work: casual, conversational, and deftly composed. It's all overlapping samples and off-kilter drums\u2014without speaking a word, J Dilla made an album that still has so much to say.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: Simone Joyner/Getty Images\n\n20. Up the Bracket (2002)\n\n The Libertines\n\nBECAUSE: When times were good, Pete Doherty and Carl Bar&amp;amp;#xE2;t bottled rock 'n' roll lightning. Sweating and spitting into each other's mouths while singing \"If you've lost your faith in love and music, the end won't be long\" into a shared mike. The drums set the tempo way too fast, like everything was out of control, like it could not last. And so it couldn't.\n\n\n\nFacebookPinterestPhoto: John Shearer/Getty Images\n\n21. Extraordinary Machine (2005)\n\n Fiona Apple\n\nBECAUSE: After a six-year gap between records\u2014due to contemplation of retirement, a lyrical drought, and record-label delays\u2014Fiona was all of a sudden all grown up. With the help of producer Jon Brion, she built a sound so big and bright, it was as though all the sadness we'd come to expect had been shoved behind a floodlight.\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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