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Many would agree, perhaps reluctantly, that Pitchfork.com is easily the most influential, most read, most loathed publication for the largest share of music-loving, online-dwelling twentysomethings of this generation. It's a demographic of which your friendly editors are card-carrying members, as are, we expect, many of you. We frequently, occasionally vehemently, disagree with P4k, but it is a hate/love relationship, and we eagerly discuss the site amongst friends just as frequently as we curse it.

Today the online magazine capped off its months-long exploration of the Decade In Music by revealing selections for the top 20 albums of the decade - the final entry in a week-long countdown from 500. If you've spent any time on indie music blogs or forums in the past 10 years, this one is a fairly predictable bunch. (The earlier entries are chock-full of poorly sequenced formative touchstones and one-off obscurities.) Nevertheless, there are some bold declarations, and one vindication of a Wallabee-shoe loving, coke-game-chronicling rapper/ friend to the ladies who happens to be a peerless storyteller and is responsible for the name of this very site.

What follows is a run-down in two (very different) parts.

ATG sizes it all up.

ATG sizes it all up.

Speaking of Cudi. Uh, yeah. You know, I'm ALWAYS for rapper's pushing boundaries and experimenting creatively. In fact, I still defend Electric Circus to this day, despite the fact that it gets me dagger stares in hip-hop debates. So why am I so cynical about this album?

Maybe it's the hideous artwork, or the awful subtitle (Man On the Moon: THE END OF DAY in stores Sept. 15th), or maybe it's the general feeling that Kid Cudi tries so fucking hard to be DIFFERENT that he just ends up looking like a clown.

ATG sizes it all up.

I could count the number of times I've walked out of a movie on one hand. Not only do I avidly avoid suspected cinematic stinkers, but I generally hate leaving anything unfinished. Usually, if I find myself parked in front of a particularly bad waste of celluloid (Shrek 3, The Taking of Pelham 123), I'll just doze off and catch up on some shut-eye while I wait for the third act resolution. Halfway through District 9, though, as my brother and I gathered our half-eaten, over-priced snack foods, arose from our seats and prepared to exit the theater, I have to admit that I felt pretty good about it. 

ATG sizes it all up.

It makes sense that as we watch the music and persona of Kanye West drift into the outer reaches of the popular stratosphere, ripple effects would start to emerge. But I can only imagine what it was like to watch the pale, shirtless, "free spirits" midway through the interpretive dance of "Robocop" depicted above...

ATG sizes it all up.

ATG sizes it all up.

You could feel it coming, really. These days there's hardly a record industry meme more played than "NO MORE RECORD INDUSTRY!!!" The music biz as a whole is in crisis like the rest of us, hanging on by a thread and trying to remake itself even as its million quivering components are pushed and pulled through a million tubes. Yet despite a widely-expected imminent death for music purveyors, most of the major players have kept on kicking.

In terms of ushering in the new age, traditional Slayers of the Old Guard, i.e. Radiohead and Steve Jobs, have offered little more than premature experimentation, feigning attempts to break the dominance of label-backed CDs (In Rainbows and the MacBook Air respectively) before giving into the lure of old-fashioned shiny discs.

Hip-hop is different, though. When it comes to trends, industry-related and not, the genre has always been a leading indicator. And now, in 2009, hip-hop has found itself as the canary in the mine shaft - the first sector of the industry to fully succumb to the brave new era. Excluding freaks of nature like Lil Wayne, Kanye West and Jay-Z, it's safe to say that 90 percent of hip-hop albums released today are teetering on the brink of zero value, worth neither the plastic on which they're printed nor the gas, time and energy required to procure them. The final nail in the proverbial coffin, it seems, has come from none other than the album's lighter, more nimble, more immediately gratifying cousin. Blame it on the mixtape...

ATG sizes it all up.

Furreal. No kidding. We swear on one of Diddy's names.

In case you missed this minblowing report from Hip-hop DX, the rapper Jamal Barrow, bka Shyne, is getting out of jail eight years after taking the fall in the infamous Bad Boy shootout of '99...