Devin the Dude makes best 1998 album list
There are pleasant surprises and then there’s Pitchfork’s new 50 best albums of 1998 list, celebrating recordings that turn(ed) 20 years old this year. The usual suspects from the indie/alterna/ electro worlds are all present: OutKast, Beck, Cat Power, Lauryn Hill, PJ Harvey, Elliott Smith, Neutral Milk Hotel.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the very first recording that shows up on the list. At No. 50, sitting on the toilet, smoking a joint, reading the “Houston Chronic” is Devin the Dude on the distinctive cover of his “The Dude” album.
“It’s difficult for rap to sound timeless,” Matthew Schnipper writes.
Devin’s solution? “Sounding like a muppet with a cold, the Houston-based Devin raps about his devotion to marijuana and watching the world go by.”
More than a fifth of the list consisted of rap albums, but Devin was by far the most underground among them on a list that included such names as Jay-Z and DMX. It’s not likely to change his fortunes in any great way, but nice to know somebody out there was listening.
And it was pretty much the sole Houston album on the list. There was no Beyoncé record — in fact, 1998 saw the release of Destiny’s Child’s first album. The closest this city got to another entry was “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,” by Lucinda Williams, who lived in Houston at times during the ’80s.