I was always interested in Apple Music's essential albums, mostly because its my primary platform for streaming and I stream a whole bunch of albums. Basically an Essential album is an influential project from a particular artist, at least according to AM. What's cool is that it's always changing and I wish it was possible to see which albums get that 'promotion' and which don't, who gets the new essentials, whose essentials are funny or dont make sense, etc. This is why I created this thread

Some facts that I discovered myself include:

• the largest number of essential albums for one artist is 9 for Bob Dylan and George Jones. other artists with 9 essentials included The Beatles up until recently

• David Bowie has 7 essentials, Prince has 6, Elvis has 5, Stevie Wonder has 4, MJ has 3

• Jay-Z has 4 essential albums and Kanye has 6, but Reasonable Doubt is not listed as an essential (the f*** )

• Kendrick has DAMN twice as his essential album (both original and reversed versions), but doesn't have GKMC as his essential (the f*** )

• Johnny Cash has 6 essential albums. None of them is At Folsom Prison

• Both Biggie's albums are essentials. Same for Frank Ocean and Dr. Dre. Childish Gambino has 0 essentials (stop hating on boy )

Since this is a very specific thread, I welcome any thoughts on recent music reviews that you enjoyed, or anything funny you saw in a review bc it's stupid/wrong/pretentious. please dont turn this into a fantano stupid/critics bad thread tho

Childish Gambino having 0 essentials is very factual

BTI defined an entire decade but I know this isn't the place for that type of talk

I’m sorry if that mid defined your decade

Thread is now BTI appreciation

I wonder who picks these albums. It can't be the artists for sure so who is qualified? In some cases like Drake it isn't clear what his classics are yet...

I think it's interesting that Eminem's only essential is MMLP

And that Lil Wayne's is Carter 2 and not 3

Drake has 4 essentials. Future has 1. J Cole has none

Songs from the good part of the album (act B)

Yeah they gotta work on some of that s***, I don't remember exactly what I saw but there were some issues

I'm sure there are separate people who do write-ups and decide on the essentials, as in an editorial. those editorials are specific to every country bc they dont just translate the English ones but rather create different reviews for different audiences (which is cool). one of my boys almost got that gig but something went wrong

So Far Gone
Take Care
Nothing Was The Same
IYRTITL
Views all essentials

Future and Cole need more tho

Thug 0 essentials

Migos got 1 and its so right

SFG and Views are a reach

fr Apple Music is lame as f*** for this tbh

Eminem Show is as good as MMLP

I expected Eminem to have like 4-5 essentials considering the fan base

The editors who write those descriptions for albums

Adele's new album got like 5 paragraphs

Because u on some bullshit we now have a BTI appreciation thread going

well I didn’t mean they’re lame for the Eminem thing, I mean they’re lame for arbitrarily picking albums and calling them “””essential”””

Not his best album

Not even top 2 Migos

Some other mind boggling misses:
Kanye doesn't have Yeezus in essentials
Charles Mingus - no Ah Um in essentials

Usually it's some very safe s*** in the reviews

They'll never say "this song is bad" or whatever it's always "Adele's brave self portrait encapsulated in a masterful record"