I am making Kapell to be more connected to music. Being a a hip-hop “head” means I’m also well versed in the jazz, soul, and gospel contributions to that genre. I largely stay in the rap, r&b, and neo-soul genres but I want to be well versed. I’ve decided to listen to Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, bottom to top. In fact, it’s kinda why I’ve been making Kapell. I learn about every album and track along the way.

I’ll start by explaining how I use Kapell to listen. First, the rules!

Rules

To hold myself accountable I follow a few rules:

• Give the album a shot, even if it’s wildly out of genre
• Read about the album and tracks to connect to the people/time
• Listen to at least the first 3 songs before getting too judgey
• Background listening is fine, and sometimes, preferred
• Use the session as an opportunity to improve Kapell’s enrichment soures so others benefit.

Make a Crate

Step one is to make a Crate. Why a Crate? Because Crates default to not being added to your recent listening history. This doesn’t cause Apple Music to ignore it, but it does improve your more common “throw something on” sessions by not thinking you want to start from a ’50s doo-wop album on your next drive to the gym.

10 albums in the crate is arbitrary, but feels tractable so that when I’m in the middle of an album I don’t care for the task still feels surmountable.

I hope to make this process automated in the future with pre-made crates for notable “lists”.

Listen!

Open the crate and click “Play”. Kapell hides the nav sidebar to avoid distractions and off we go. I commonly do other tasks, occasionally flipping to Kapell to read or pull a thread. It’s not uncommon for me to end up full-fat Wikipedia, YouTube or Discogs as I listen. I’d love for Kapell to bring me everything but then again if I’m actively listening what’s the harm?

So workflow out of the way, what did my first 50 albums say?

The Notes

It’s easy to think that the bottom of a list of 500 would be poor, but this is the best 500 of all albums so while they all had their high points I’ve selected some special ones for notes:

• 499: Chaka Khan & Rufus’ Ask Rufus (on Kapell) was great from end to end and revealed a sample in J. Cole’s St Tropez (on Kapell) I’d never known.
• 493: Marvin Gaye’s Here, My Dear (on Kapell) started off with a bang when I learned that his divorce settlement with his ex-wife required him to make two albums and per her the royalties. It never stopped being great.
• 489: Apple does not have Phil Spector’s Back to Mono
• 488: I was “who are The Stooges (on Kapell)” and after a few songs realized this was Iggy Pop and had a fun time.
• 487: Black Flag’s Damaged (on Kapell) was… interesting but I really wish I could delete it from Apple’s history so they never suggest anything like it again.
• 480: Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings (on Kapell) starting of surprisingly good, but I got bored halfway through.
• 475: At some point I binned Sheryl Crow into the not-worth-my-time column but her self-titled album Sheryl Crow (on Kapell) was a reminder she’s good at what she does.
• 468: My experience listening to The Rolling Stone’s Some Girls (on Kapell) is proof that this project was worthwhile, as it was fantastic.
• 464: I was looking forward to The Isley Brother’s 3+3 (on Kapell) and was not disappointed.
• 460: I couldn’t have told you anything about Lorde outside of Royals, but fuck me if Melodrama (on Kapell) wasn’t a ride. Hats off to Jack Antonoff (on Kapell).
• 456: Do I have to say anything about Al Green’s Greatest Hits (on Kapell)? Well, I will: Magic.
• 450: Paul and Linda McCartney’s RAM (on Kapell) was really lighthearted and eclectic. I’m not from the era of the Beatles and have never really listened them aside from the hits. I tend to find Beatles fans insufferable, so maybe I’ve avoided it for the wrong reasons.

Conclusions

My experience with these 50 albums was exactly what’d I’d hoped for when starting this project. I highly recommend it!