9. Kimya DawsonI’m Sorry That Sometimes I’m Mean
I grew up with Kimya and watching her come into her own and write songs was inspiring. We would write songs together originally, then at some point she got a guitar and started writing songs herself. She borrowed my tape recorder and never gave it back! She took it into her room and started to make this record. I knew that she was amazing and a great lyricist because we wrote songs together, but I was shocked by how good this album was. My mind was blown by it. The lyrics are so good and so personal. When she made that record she made up her own genre of Kimya’s of an incredible playful, introspective, symbolic, metaphysical diary of herself. It’s part nursery rhyme, part fable, part confessional. She continues to explore that more and more. I have no idea how to describe this record properly, but it’s coming from a very pure place. It’s not so much this record has all her best songs, it was hard to pick just one of her solo albums, but this is the beginning of her journey. She offers you so much access to who she is on this record. The way Kimya rhymes is so clever, I just don’t know anyone who can touch her.