Best album on Mixmag & Muzik's Best Albums of 1996?

I'll take UK garage over anything I've heard from this list.

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xxxpost If we consider that "UK garage" in its original iteration actually came from NYC and specifically the work of Armand Van Helden, it was pretty popular at the raves on the east coast of the USA around this time, We called it "speed garage" at first though. The main inspiration for speed garage that I know of came from "Armand's Dark Garage Mix" of Spin Spin Sugar by The Sneaker Pimps (although his "Drum & Bass Mix" of Sugar is Sweeter by CJ Bolland came first but was not as popular). In that song he laid out the exact prototype that most UK garage would follow for years -- the snare-driven beat, the mid-sub bass, and even the standard effect of timestrrrrrrretched vocals.

There is one song that I found around this time and loved because it was from 1992 but shared many of those traits, the song A Kind of Living by Eon (which I guess lends credence to the claim that there was a lot more experimentation and innovation earlier in the decade. Personally I think at that time it was all very localized. I'm sure what I experienced in SF and the (mostly suburban) east coast of the USA was vastly different to what someone would hear in London, Glasgow, Melbourne, Munich, Tokyo, or wherever.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bMxSQEZOBo

Anyway I'm voting for EBTG because it's what I listened to most, it was my introduction to the act, and I think it's a bit underrated. For overall influence I'd give to DJ Shadow, and for production values my vote would go to the Fugees. Those skits on hip hop albums really don't age well though. That skit in the Chinese restaurant is particularly cringeworthy.

This is going possibly sound pretty bad, but I can remember a conversation with some raver friends in 1996 that went something like this.

Raver #1: So do you guys like hip hop?
Ravers #2 and 3 (in unison): Yeah, we like A Tribe Called Quest
Raver #3: The Fugees are pretty good too.

I had no idea how much great hip hop was coming out around this time. I loved some of the older stuff but by the mid-90's I thought all the new hip hop was sugar-coated and watered down, so to speak.

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That's pretty much how I expected the Top 3 to look like, tbh. Just not in that order!

I thought second toughest would win tbh

Honest reappraisal of 1996 habits show this took up much of the end of my year and leaked into 97. A couple songs really hold up (PM Dawn, Cazuza), but Drum N Bossa be damned

http://www.music-bazaar.com/album-images/vol4/340/340126/2192202-big/Red-Hot-Rio-3-picture.jpg

stereolab doing 'one-note samba' is just too perfect of a pairing

whoa herbie mann played on that? damn. i love the groop.

Are we doing singles from 1996?