Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Horses

Patti Smith

The high priestess of punk’s debut seamlessly mixed traditionalism with radicalism.

In some ways, Patti Smith was a traditionalist, taking inspiration from the likes of Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger and ’60s pop. In others, she was a radical—the resolve, the intensity, the way she informed a nascent, rough-hewn downtown New York art and punk scene with poetry and jazz, name-checking Rimbaud and Kerouac. Her 1975 debut (produced by The Velvet Underground’s John Cale) covered all of this ground and more.

The magic of Horses is that it sounds deeply steeped in the history of rock while also trying to convey the music as though nobody had ever heard it before. So when she opens her adaptation of Them’s “Gloria” with the line “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” it’s to remind you that rock is the sound of renegades. And when the apocalyptic visions of “Land” give way to the ’60s song “Land of 1000 Dances,” it’s because teenagers expressing themselves through their bodies is, in its own way, sacred. And when “Birdland” winds down with Smith singing doo-wop, it’s because sometimes words fail.

“Just that long format, that spoken-word platform, the way that she played with a live band. In that way, it’s innovative to the point of blurring discipline.”

Liz Phair

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

50 Cent

Defying logic and modern medicine, a rap supervillain with an ear for a hook rises.

On the cover of Get Rich or Die Tryin’, 50 Cent essentially looks like a superhero—but if anything, the album was an origin story for one of rap’s all-time great supervillains. 50 learned the ropes under the mentorship of Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay, landed a deal with Columbia Records, and built a buzz with single “How to Rob” before being hit with nine bullets outside of his grandmother’s home in Queens. After he recovered, his legendary mixtape run with his G-Unit crew reworked the hit rap and R&B records of the time, adding his own deadpan, street-savvy choruses.

“It’s so important to have your own style, your own sound, your own identity or you can’t impact as hard.”

50 Cent

When it came time for 50’s studio debut, those powers were on full display and his resources were abundant. “In Da Club” was an inescapable party starter, and “Many Men (Wish Death)” revisits his nearly fatal shooting, triumphantly boasting about his survival. And like any supervillain, he had a rival: Ja Rule, a chart conqueror in his own right whose street feuds with 50 made him the target of the haunting “Back Down.” Not bad for someone who was counted out a few years earlier.