Dynamite Hack

What is it?  :  Most known for its ironic take on Easy-E’s “Boyz in the Hood” that repurposes the song as an adult-contemporary acoustic jam and whose video expertly skewers whiteness and cultural appropriation, the Texas band’s second and most successful album is one of the turn-of-the-century’s underrated gems, filled with cheeky humor, honest emotions, and deft power-pop guitar work.

Why isn’t it on vinyl?  :  Blame Y2K.  (Note to younger readers:  when the year 2000 was about to happen, many people in America thought that we would all die because computers wouldn’t know how to make sense of the date change.  #themoreyouknow)  Not that this had anything to do with Y2K fears, it's more about the timing:  back then the music industry thought digital was the irreconcilable wave of the future – why press an album on vinyl when there was (or would soon be) no market for it?

Why should it be?  :  I’ll admit this is a bit of a “homer” pick – I can’t justify it by simply pointing at the music because there's nothing transcendent here, but even so it manages to be a strong collection of songs.  Mostly, I was taken aback when it came out by the unexpected vitality and replayability of the album and it became a hallmark of a certain time in my life.  But damned if I don’t believe in my ever-loving soul that the album closer’s reprise of “Anyway” won’t sound freaking amazing in a warmer analog presentation.