1.      Spice (1996)

If we are going to start anywhere we might as well start here (although it’s not the first album I ever bought, that was Backstreet Boys on cassette). It’s the summer of 1996. I am 10 years old and, like every other girl in the country, obsessed with the Spice Girls. Their debut single, Wannabe, was released in June 1996- the summer of Euro ’96 – so we spent that summer doing Spice Girls dance routines in our England shirts. I was always made to be “Scary” even though I wanted to be “Baby”, but alas neither my hair nor skin was the right colour for that most converted role. Yes, this was the start of manufactured pop, but it was an iconic album nevertheless. “Girl Power” inspired a whole generation of girls to have the confidence to be themselves, take risks and- most importantly- have fun.

Top Tracks

• Wannabe
•  Say You’ll Be There
•  Who Do You Think You Are
  

2.      Californication (1999)

I’m jumping ahead a bit here, but I think this was the year (aged 13) I was given a 5 disk Hi-Fi Stereo system for my birthday (which meant you could load 5 CDs at once rather than having to change CDs every time you wanted to hear a different album). This album totally taps into the ebs and flows of heightened adolescent emotion – even though it was not written by teenagers – because it comes from the heart: the band writing about their own battles with addiction, depression, death and heartbreak. Its lyrics are pure poetry, and the tracks vary from the aggressive energy of its punk funk opener “Around the World,” to the more meditative, melancholy vibes of “Scar Tissue” and “Otherside”. I listened to it while reading “God of Small Things” for the first time and it was the most perfect soundtrack to that novel. 

Top Tracks

·              Parallel Universe 

·              Otherside  

·              Scar Tissue

3.     Eternal (1996) I grew up in a big extended family with lots of (mostly male) cousins. Weekends would be spent with my cousins and their friends and as they were all older than me a lot of the music I listened to during my teens was influenced by them. Asian boys growing up in London at this time invariably listened to rap – Tupac, Biggie, Snoop, Dre- and built their whole identity around them. When I was 13, a lot of this sounded like misogynistic noise, but this Bone Thugs album really got me. While for my cousins the appeal of this album was primarily the soundtrack it provided to driving around London with your seat so far back you were almost lying down, one hand on the wheel, for me it was their smooth and melodious style, how they worked in harmony as a group, and the fact that their topics were not limited to sex/women/ drugs (“1st of Tha Month” is a celebration of receiving your welfare check). Produced by Easy-E (N.W.A) this album propelled an otherwise unknown rap group into super stardom: “Notorious Thugs”- their collaboration with Biggie- is surely one of the greatest rap songs ever made.

Top Tracks

• East 1999
• 1st of Tha Month
• The Crossroads (but not the version you’ll hear on modern versions of the album: you have to go to Youtube and search “original crossroads” for the one that appeared on the original album).
  

4.      The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)

Having listened to rap for the greater part of my teens, I learned to appreciate the talent while bypassing the sexism and misogyny of the lyrics, but it wasn’t easy. The 90s were dominated by MTV and music videos for this genre were notoriously degrading for women who featured as mere playthings for the rappers, scantily clad and ornamentally pretty. These women projected a version of femininity that I was uncomfortable with, and, while my cousins aspired to be like the male rappers, I did not aspire to be the women in the videos! The arrival of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was timely for us all: here was a female rapper, already well respected and established from her time with The Fugees, singing about issues that were particular to teenage girls. She was not a “side chick”, she was the main event: she didn’t dance around in skimpy clothes, she knew how to handle herself around men and to hold her own against racism and misogyny. “Everything is Everything” opens with the words “I wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth”: I felt like she was rapping just for me.

Top Tracks

• Everything is Everything
• Ex- Factor
• Doo Wop (That Thing)
  

5. Aaliyah (2001)

Here was another female antidote to the overtly masculine rap of this decade. As much as I loved rap (and 2000- 2001 were excellent years for it, from Nelly’s “Country Grammar” to Dr Dre’s “2001”) as a teenage girl you craved that female voice who would sing for you rather than about you. Aaliyah was an absolute goddess and her death was unbelievably tragic, a real loss to the industry. Her whole aesthetic, style and sound was very influential (we all wore baggy pants and tank tops in her honour) but more than that, her message was unashamedly feminist. I have no idea why someone so beautiful, talented and smart would agree to marry R. Kelly aged 15 (he produced her first album), but that she somehow managed to remove herself from him, seemingly unscathed, and go on to make this timeless classic of an album without him is surely testament to her talent. 

Top Tracks

• Lose Rap
• More than a Woman 
• Rock the Boat 
  

6.       Tupac – Pirate Radio (2002)

When I was studying for my A Levels I had a very intense routine of exercise, school, homework and two part time jobs. I had to be efficient with my time, so I would wake up at 6am every morning and meditate for 20 minutes, followed by 100 sit ups before school (I don’t know why I did this, it seems mad to me now!). Whilst working out I would tune into whichever local Pirate Radio I could find that was playing music at the time. Pirate Radio was a very London thing: these were unlicensed, illegal stations playing whatever they wanted, but it was the only place to hear rap, a genre seldom played on commercial radio. Pirate stations were hard to find too: you had to rotate the dial on your radio skilfully like a thief unlocking a safe, until you caught one hiding out beneath the crackle of white noise.  6am was early even for Pirate DJs, so they would often play albums on loop while the DJs, I assumed, slept. This particular station played Tupac albums on loop in the mornings, so I did my sit ups listening to Tupac, and now it’s always Tupac I turn to for motivation and drive!

Top Tracks

• Keep Ya Head Up – his feminist anthem
• Do For Love – for turbulent relationships
• I Get Around – to get the party started
  

 7. Devdas (2002)
Although I’m Sri Lankan and do not speak a word of Hindi, Bollywood featured heavily in my childhood. You could take the bus from Finchley to Wood Green and watch Bollywood films at the cinema there. In the summer of 2002 my female cousins from Sri Lanka came to stay with us in London and we did this regularly. After seeing Devdas we took another bus to Wembley to buy a (bootleg) CD of the soundtrack, which we then took home and played at full volume while dancing around my bedroom draped in bedsheets wrapped round us like sarees.

Top Tracks

• Silsia Ye Chahat Ka
• Woh Chand Jaisi Ladki
• Dola Re Dola 
  

8. Mixtape – (2003)

When I was in the Sixth Form I got into my first relationship that felt serious (at the time!). In some ways we were the perfect match, but in other ways we were far too similar. We were both creative but also fiercely ambitious and competitive. We applied to Oxford at the same time and when I got in but he didn’t, the relationship turned sour. Anyway, before the unpleasant part he made me a mixtape (well, CD). No one had made me a mixtape before, so I was ecstatic! But perhaps what made this more significant was that, having thus far listened primarily to Rap, this album introduced me to Indie- a new genre and new artists I had never heard before. I was instantly hooked and proceeded to buy the albums of all the artists he introduced me to (Nirvana, Pixies, Radiohead). Like many of us at the time, his main influence for music was film: the Pulp Fiction, Fight Club and Romeo + Juliet OST featured heavily. He later dumped me via text message (classy!) while I was in my first year at university and he was taking a gap year in South Africa, but many of the bands he introduced me to became lifelong favourites.

Top Tracks

• Dumb – Nirvana
• Talk Show Host – Radiohead 
• Can’t Stand Me Now – The Libertines 
• Where is My Mind– Pixies
  

9. Channel ORANGE (2012)

Let’s skip ahead a bit. I’m working at a secondary school in North London teaching English. I’ve only just qualified (for my interview I teach a lesson using “Umbrella” by Rihanna to explain rhyming couplets. It’s totally mad, but they let me in!). So, the school is getting ready for House Music, and a group of girls are rehearsing “Thinking About You” daily. They’re good, but their rendition is somewhat nasal, and after the 50^th take I decide I need to find this song in its original form and hear it for myself. So I do and: wow, what a sound! This was an album to unite all those disparate high school tribes: it didn’t matter what you were into – pop, indie, rap – everyone loved it. It’s an album that has followed me wherever I go: no matter where I teach, kids love Frank Ocean. Like “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill”, the album is a “day in the life” of high school students and therefore seems to sing to every adolescent who hears it. But it’s quite hard to imagine what it was like hearing it for the first time: intelligent, poetic, sensitive, it was game changing. He set the tone for a new kind of geeky, bookish cool, far removed from the ‘swagger-cars-money-girls’ that preoccupied more commercial hip hop. 

Top Tracks

• Thinking Bout You
• Forrest Gump
• Super Rich Kids
  

10. good kid m.A.A.d. city (2012)

Two albums from the same year: but how could I not. At the same school in North London I went on my first ski trip (as a member of staff). I had never skied before but thought a school trip would be a good place to start given that someone else was paying for it. I was however so useless that I did not spend much time skiing. I spent most of my time listening to this album on repeat at the hotel while annotating “The Wife Of Bath” which I was teaching for the first time that year. “Swimming Pools (Drank)” was the commercial hit that everyone had heard, but the album had to be listened to from beginning to end (no skipping!) to appreciate the genius that is Kendrick Lamar. Around this time a friend gifted me “The Wire” box set, and Kendrick’s storytelling of life on Compton’s streets is on a level with that TV show’s raw, unadulterated vision of Baltimore: both lift the lid on lives the state would rather keep hidden, keep downtrodden, keep oppressed. Not since Tupac had I heard anything like it, and I have yet to hear anyone who can match it! 

Top Tracks

• Money Trees
• Good Kid
• Sing About Me, I’m Dying of….