Remember when we argued about albums? When we listened to them straight through? When the last note of the radio single made us reflexively hum the intro to the next track? Us, too! Believe it or not, that’s not all gone. Even in the millennium that brought us quick-and-dirty downloads, these artists created fully immersive musical journeys of the highest order. This is a celebration of our hands-down, most emphatically favorite LPs from the past fifteen years—plus a few nominations from the artists themselves.

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1. _My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy _(2010)

Kanye West

BECAUSE: It could’ve been any one of the seven albums West released this century, as fascinating a catalog of celebrity, triumph, love, loss, terrible puns, pretty decent puns, that was ever fucking put together by a single artist. MBDTF was just the record where he talked about all those things at once—a portrait of a man seizing the spotlight, drowning in it, and then somehow finding a way to turn that harrowing experience into art. Anybody who wants to be famous or make music for a living—or do both at the same time—should be forced to listen to MBDTF first. The rest of us are free to enjoy it for the bloody, hard-won, titanic achievement that it is.