To celebrate our 30th anniversary and all the great music that made the past three decades special, MAGNET contributors past and present chose their 30 favorite albums released between 1993 and 2022. The only rules were that each record has to be a full-length and that no artist could be represented more than once in the same incarnation. We’re posting these lists throughout the rest of the year.
1) Bill Callahan Apocalypse (Drag City), 2011
2) Run The Jewels Run The Jewels 2 (Mass Appeal), 2014
3) Antony And The Johnsons I Am A Bird Now (Secretly Canadian), 2005
4) Lucinda Williams Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (Mercury), 1998
5) OutKast Aquemini (LaFace), 1998
6) Nas Illmatic (Columbia), 1994
7) Guided By Voices Bee Thousand (Scat), 1994
8) Tinariwen Aman Iman: Water Is Life (World Village), 2007
9) Spiritualized Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (Dedicated/Arista), 1997
10) Dungen Ta Det Lugnt (Kemado), 2005
11) V-3 Photograph Burns (Onion/American), 1996
12) Gillian Welch Time (The Revelator) (Acony), 2001
13) Kendrick Lamar Damn (Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope), 2017
14) Silver Jews Tanglewood Numbers (Drag City), 2005
15) Low I Could Live In Hope (Vernon Yard), 1994
16) Portishead Dummy (Go! Beat/London), 1994
17) The Shins Oh, Inverted World (Sub Pop), 2001
18) Animal Collective Strawberry Jam (Domino), 2007
19) Frank Ocean Channel Orange (Def Jam), 2012
20) Rosali Bones (No Medium), 2021
21) Stereolab Emperor Tomato Ketchup (Elektra), 1996
22) Califone Roomsound (Perishable), 2001
23) M.I.A. Kala (XL/Interscope), 2007
24) The Roots Things Fall Apart (MCA), 1999
25) Royal Trux Cats And Dogs (Drag City), 1993
26) Bettie Serveert Palomine (Matador), 1993
27) Kamasi Washington Heaven And Earth (Young Turks), 2018
28) Nicolai Dunger Soul Rush (Lakeshore), 2002
29) Washed Out Within And Without (Sub Pop), 2011
30) Reigning Sound Time Bomb High School (In The Red), 2002