Half-Album Annoyance and Getting Retarded?

Recently, I've noticed something that's a problem with a good deal of the albums I buy - artists aren't making good albums. Instead, I seem to get a lot of half-albums. They'll start off strong, but by track 6 or 7, the album's usually taken a huge turn, and just gets boring. Rap albums in particular have been notorious with this. I love rap and hip-hop, but by god, is it that hard to put together 14 or 15 solid tracks? Example: today on my way to Albany I listened to one of the better hip-hop albums of the last year - Elephunk by the Black Eyed Peas - the first 7 tracks are great, but after that...it gets boring.

And speaking of the Black Eyed Peas, their record company's gotten odd. I'm sure by now, you've probably seen those "24 Seconds To Live" promos that they did for the NBA Playoffs - they were by far and away the best part of the playoffs early on. The song in those promos, "Let's Get It Started", is just a radio friendly edit of an album song "Let's Get Retarded". Way before those promos, that was probably one of the best songs on the album - great beat, great hook, just a really fun song. Turns out now though, with all the exposure the "Get it Started" version has gotten, the people at their label have now decided to make that version, the radio-friendly version, the version on the album. So all future copies of Elephunk will have the edited version, and not the original, much better version. A damned shame, if you ask me. "Let's Get Retarded" is a great song - go download it.

Oh, and The Empire Strikes First is out today. New, good Bad Religion - you should get it.