Why Rolling Stone and Pitchfork’s ‘Best Of’ Lists Are Rage Bait!

In the past month two music lists were released that one can only assume is rage bait. On September 30, Pitchfork ranked what they think are the 100 best rap albums of all time while several days later the Rolling Stones dropped a list stating what they consider to be the top 250 best songs of the 21^st century so far.

This must be the year of infuriating lists. Because some of these picks are atrocious…and I’m being kind.

It was clear that Pitchfork was trying to raise the blood pressure of everyone who loves Hip Hop by placing Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle” at 100. Sexxy Red’s “Hood Hottest Princess” was ranked higher. Hell, Suga Free’s perfectly fine but deeply forgettable album “Street Gospel” is higher on the list. Then they have Juvenile’s very good but not great “400 Degreez” ranked higher than Nas’s brilliant “Illmatic.” That is just unforgivable. They got it right placing Mobb Deep’s “The Infamous” at the top of the list, but the rest must have been picked by a deaf monkey who has the I.Q. of a pile of rocks.

Then there is the Rolling Stones’ list of the top 250 songs of the 21^st Century. But first, some context.

In January of this year this revered publication with a questionable relationship with Black culture said that Bey’s Lemonade was the best album of the 21^st Century so far, so one would expect them to put a song from the album in the top 10 just to be consistent…but they don’t care about anything like integrity.

The Stones’ list is all over the place. Their top five songs of this century include a Taylor Swift song (not my thing, but OK), two rock songs (did you know they were still making popular rock music?) with the #1 song of the 21^st century being ‘Get Ur Freak On’ by Missy Elliott. A good song, to be sure. Even a banger. But the absolute best song of the 21^st century? Ehh…I have three questions.

Who voted for the albums and songs included on these lists?

Seriously. We need to know who voted for these lists. Were they all members of the master race? Were they all under the age of 25? Did they all grow up in the Netherlands? Something is up and we need answers.

Who edited these lists?

A little bit of inside baseball. Anytime a list like this is compiled, there are editors behind the scenes that make sure the commas are in the right place and that nothing crazy is put out by the publication. So…who read these lists and thought they were good enough to publish? I’m not saying the people who edited these lists deserve to be fired, but they deserve to wear a dunce hat and sit in the coroner.

Were Black people who did not grow up in the suburbs consulted?

No shade to the brothers and sisters who grew up in homes with spacious front yards and were members of Jack and Jill of America, but these lists feel like they were made by people who were either white or the kind of people Lawrence Otis Graham wrote about in Our Kind Of People.

At this point these publications just need to stop making lists and write about something else. How about Taylor Swift’s underwhelming new album? (I ain’t listened to it, but the internet streets are talking.) Or how about the L Mr. OVO just took in the courtroom?

Anything other than these lists. They are not worth the paper they’re printed on. And the lists are not even printed out.