RollingStone's best Albums & Songs of the Decade

Best Albums of the Decade:

#69. Under Construction by Missy Elliott

#46. FutureSex/LoveSounds by Justin Timberlake
"Was this the teen-pop Kid A? On his second solo joint, the Timber-Snake teamed up with Timbaland for an avant-garde sprawl of abstract electronica and hallucinatory space funk, all in a heroic quest to bring sexy back. Both guys were on a historic creative roll, willing to try anything. "LoveStoned/I Think She Knows" was their madcap peak, flowing from hip-hop bump-and-grind to an ambient wash of Interpol-inspired guitar drone. It was like sexy never went away."

#14. The Black Album by Jay-Z
"OK, so the retirement didn't last long. Jay-Z's vaunted "farewell record" is still one of the greatest albums by the rapper who is (if he says so himself) "pound for pound . . . the best to ever come around." With a phalanx of production all-stars on hand (Just Blaze, Kanye West, the Neptunes, Timbaland), Hova gazed back and gloated — retelling the story of his rags-to-riches rise ("From bricks to billboards, grams to Grammys"), brushing the dirt off his shoulders, and body-slamming the critics, the police and just about everyone else in the walloping rap-rock epic "99 Problems." He should retire more often."

#09. Kala by M.I.A.
"The London-via-Sri Lanka art-punk funkateer came on like she knew she was kind of a big deal, and it didn't take her long to convince everyone in earshot. On her second album, she restyled hip-hop as one big international block party, mixing up a whole sound clash of beatbox riddims, playground rhymes, left-field samples and gunshots. It's a dance-off in a combat zone. Full of political fury and musical imagination, Maya Arulpragasam proved she could steal beats from anywhere — the Pixies, the Modern Lovers, Sri Lankan temples, Bollywood disco soundtracks — and turn it all into a party chant. From "20 Dollar" to "Bamboo Banga," she rolls from one Third World battleground to another: "Price of living in a shantytown just seems very high/But we still like T.I./But we still look fly." Kala lives up to the world-hopping promise of the Clash, so it makes cosmic sense that she sampled them in "Paper Planes" — which bizarrely blew up into a Top 10 pop smash in the U.S. Joe Strummer would have been proud."

#04. The Blueprint by Jay-Z
"Unlike many of Jay-Z's records — the retirement and comeback discs, the movie soundtracks, the posse albums and "rock" albums — The Blueprint didn't have a gimmick. It rounded up a bunch of surefire beats and turned the greatest rapper on Earth loose.
Presto: Jay-Z's best record, and one of the finest rap albums of all time. Much credit is due to producers Just Blaze, Timbaland and especially Kanye West, who made his name with relentlessly catchy tracks like "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)." The old-school soul samples give the record a lush feel, but Blueprint was recorded at the height of Jay-Z's feud with Nas, and he was out for blood. Punch lines arrive fast and furious — "Sensitive thugs/You all need hugs," he quips — but what really stands out is the rapper's sheer musicality: the new flows, timbres and tones that Jay-Z unveils in every song, with a virtuosity that marked him a vocal stylist on par with pop's greatest singers. "I'm the compadre/The Sinatra of my day," he rapped. For once, he wasn't talking trash."


Best Songs of the Decade:

#86. "Try Again" by Aaliyah

#82. "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" by Jay-Z

#28. "Work It" by Missy Elliott
"The Divine Miss E puts her thing down, flips it and reverses it over one of Timbaland's most futuristic sex jams."

#20. "Cry Me A River" by Justin Timberlake
"The video, in which Justin stalks a Britney look-alike, made clear the inspiration for this breakup aria. But the real story was the formation of the Timberlake-Timbaland team: a match made in pop heaven."

#14. "Get Your Freak On" by Missy Elliott
"One of the most deliciously freaky, gleefully experimental hip-hop songs ever: Timbaland delivers an amazing bhangra beat while Missy throws down like some weird-ass cheerleader who knows that the world is listening."