Sex Packets is the debut studio album by American hip hop group Digital Underground , released on March 20, 1990 ( 1990-03-20 ) .
52-463: The album is a concept album about "G.S.R.A." (Genetic Suppression Relief Antidotes), a pharmaceutical substance that is produced in the form of a large glowing pill about the size of a quarter , which comes in a condom-sized package and is allegedly developed by the government to provide its intended users such as astronauts with a satisfying sexual experience in situations where the normal attainment of such experiences would be counter-productive to
104-458: A rap opera by the Fat Boys and American Idiot , a punk rock opera by Green Day , the latter of whom having made 21st Century Breakdown , another rock opera. The Who had previously toyed with the concepts which would lead to the full-blown rock opera with their six-movement 1966 track " A Quick One, While He's Away ". A rock opera that experienced commercial recording and Broadway success
156-464: A Memory , which has been regarded as Rock Opera. The album tells the story of Nicholas, a man getting flashbacks from a previous life, as he undergoes hypnosis sessions to recall the memories of Victoria, a young girl who he discovers was murdered as a violent result of a love affair. In an effort to appeal to more modern audiences, opera companies have welcomed more pop and rock influences. The resulting rock operas have met varying degrees of success as
208-612: A central concept, such as cars, surfing, and teenage lifestyles. Writing in 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music , Chris Smith commented: "Though albums such as Frank Sinatra's 1955 In the Wee Small Hours and Marty Robbins ' 1959 Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs had already introduced concept albums, [the Beach Boys' 1963 album] Little Deuce Coupe was the first to comprise almost all original material rather than standard covers." Music historian Larry Starr , who identifies
260-624: A result of traumatic life experiences. The album was included in Rolling Stone ' s lists of the greatest albums of all time in 2003, 2012, and 2020. James Guthrie, the album's engineer, won the 1980 Grammy award for Best Engineered Recording (non-classical), and the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year . The album was subsequently made into a 1982 film entitled Pink Floyd – The Wall . An elaborate 1980-1981 concert tour
312-422: A rock album (as a story, play, or opus), or a project that either revolves around a specific theme or a collection of related materials. AllMusic writes, "A concept album could be a collection of songs by an individual songwriter or a particular theme – these are the concept LPs that reigned in the '50s ... the phrase 'concept album' is inextricably tied to the late 1960s, when rock & rollers began stretching
364-411: A special category for "concept album" in its annual recordings of the year awards , to celebrate "albums where a creative mind has curated something visionary, a programme whose whole speaks more powerfully than its parts. A thought-through journey, which compels to be heard in one sitting." In a year-ending essay on the album in 2019, Ann Powers wrote for Slate that the year found the medium in
416-432: A state of flux. In her observation, many recording artists revitalized the concept album around autobiographical narratives and personal themes, such as intimacy, intersectionality , African-American life, boundaries among women, and grief associated with death. She cited such albums as Brittany Howard 's Jaime , Raphael Saadiq 's Jimmy Lee , Jamila Woods ' Legacy! Legacy! , Rapsody 's Eve , Jenny Lewis ' On
468-461: A subversively labeled musical . Clements states that lyrics drive rock operas, which makes them not a true form of opera. Responding to accusations that rock operas are pretentious and overblown, Pete Townshend wrote that pop music by its very nature rejects such characteristics and is an inherently simple form. Townshend said that the only goal of pop music is to reach audiences, and rock operas are merely one more way to do so. Peter Kiesewalter , on
520-461: A suite of original songs about a man's search for love. In the early 1960s, concept albums began featuring highly in American country music , but the fact went largely unacknowledged by rock/pop fans and critics, who would only begin noting "concept albums" as a phenomenon later in the decade, when albums became closely aligned with countercultural ideology, resulting in a recognised " album era " and
572-494: Is Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice , and in respect of which Lloyd Webber said "the piece was written as a rock album from the outset and set out from the start to tell the story through the music itself." In 1972, David Bowie released the rock opera The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars . Bat Out of Hell is a rock album by Meat Loaf that remains one of
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#1733084734056624-546: Is Woody Guthrie's 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads . The Independent regards it as "perhaps" one of the first concept albums, consisting exclusively of semi-autobiographical songs about the hardships of American migrant labourers during the 1930s. In the late 1940s, the LP record was introduced, with space age pop composers producing concept albums soon after. Themes included exploring wild life and dealing with emotions, with some albums meant to be played while dining or relaxing. This
676-513: Is a collection of rock music songs with lyrics that relate to a common story. Rock operas are typically released as concept albums and are not scripted for acting, which distinguishes them from operas , although several have been adapted as rock musicals . The use of various character roles within the song lyrics is a common storytelling device. The success of the rock opera genre has inspired similar works in other musical styles, such as rap opera . A number of rock artists became interested in
728-467: Is another example of a modern concept album. Dorian Lynskey, writing for GQ , noted a resurgence of concept albums in the 2010s due to streaming : "This is happening not in spite of the rise of streaming and playlists, but because of it. Threatened with redundancy in the digital era, albums have fought back by becoming more album-like." Cucchiara argues that concept albums should also describe "this new generation of concept albums, for one key reason. This
780-467: Is because the unison between the songs on a particular album has now been expanded into a broader field of visual and artistic design and marketing strategies that play into the themes and stories that form the album." Towards the end of the 80s, however, as heavy metal suited a fairly niche crowd, a few heavy metal artists began producing concept albums, particularly among the more progressive groups. King Diamond's Abigail and Savatage's Hall of
832-523: Is broken down track-by-track by Digital Underground in Brian Coleman's book Check the Technique . The cassette version of the album has 3 extra tracks, plus an extended version of "Gutfest '89" Shipments figures based on certification alone. Concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This
884-433: Is one of the most famous concept albums by any artist. In addition to The Wall , Danesi highlights Genesis ' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) and Frank Zappa 's Joe's Garage (1979) as other culturally significant concept albums. According to author Edward Macan, concept albums as a recurrent theme in progressive rock was directly inspired by the counterculture associated with "the proto-progressive bands of
936-465: Is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Sometimes the term is applied to albums considered to be of "uniform excellence" rather than an LP with an explicit musical or lyrical motif. There is no consensus among music critics as to the specific criteria for what a "concept album" is. The format originates with folk singer Woody Guthrie 's Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) and
988-511: The Manchester Opera House in 2017. The album's producer, Jim Steinman , coined the term Wagnerian rock after composer Richard Wagner to describe the genre of the record. Perhaps the archetypal and most famous rock opera is The Wall , a double album released by Pink Floyd in 1979. The Wall chronicles the story of Pink, a character who ultimately constructs an emotional wall to protect himself after being driven into insanity as
1040-592: The best-selling albums of all time , having sold over 50 million copies worldwide. It is certified 14× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). As of June 2019, it has spent 522 weeks in the UK Albums Chart , the second longest chart run by a studio album. Rolling Stone ranked it at number 343 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time . A musical based on Bat Out of Hell , staged by Jay Scheib , opened at
1092-640: The 1960s", observing: "the consistent use of lengthy forms such as the programmatic song cycle of the concept album and the multimovement suite underscores the hippies' new, drug-induced conception of time." Progressive soul musicians inspired by this approach conceived concept albums during this era reflecting themes and concerns of the African-American experience , including Marvin Gaye (1971's What's Going On ) and George Clinton (the 1975 Parliament album Mothership Connection and Dope Dogs ). With
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#17330847340561144-464: The Beach Boys' 1964 releases Shut Down Volume 2 and All Summer Long as heralding the album era, cites Pet Sounds as the first rock concept album on the basis that it had been "conceived as an integrated whole, with interrelated songs arranged in a deliberate sequence." The 100 Greatest Bands of All Time (2015) states that the Ventures "pioneered the idea of the rock concept album years before
1196-641: The Line , Julia Jacklin 's Crushing , Joe Henry 's The Gospel According to Water , and Nick Cave 's Ghosteen . Although concept albums have only been popularized and somewhat defined recently, the concept has existed far longer than rock. For example, Vivaldi's 'The Four Seasons', and Camille Saint-Saëns 'Le Carnaval des Animaux' (The Carnival of the Animals) are built upon the same idea of an overarching theme or concept, though they are not traditionally thought of as albums. Rock operas A rock opera
1248-550: The Moon (1973) and the Eagles ' Hotel California (1976)." In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Dark Side of the Moon at number one among the 50 greatest progressive rock albums of all time, also noting the LP's stature as the second-best-selling album of all time. Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), a semi-autobiographical story modeled after the band's Roger Waters and former member Syd Barrett ,
1300-595: The Mountain King , both released in 1987, stand some of the earliest examples of concept albums produced by a heavy metal artist. A year later, Iron Maiden's , Seventh Son of a Seventh Son , released in 1988, would become one of the most notable examples of a heavy metal concept album at the time. Around this time, progressive metal began taking form with artists such as Queensrÿche , Fates Warning , and Savatage. Shortly later in 1988, Queensrÿche would release Operation: Mindcrime , which would be considered one of
1352-567: The Pretty Things is "generally acknowledged as the first rock opera". Scott Mervis of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that the Who 's 1969 record Tommy was the first album to be billed as a rock opera. The album tells the story of Tommy Walker, a "deaf, dumb and blind kid." Tommy displays the titular character's experiences with life and his relationship with his family. Although
1404-445: The Who's Tommy is "popularly thought of as the first rock opera, an extra-long concept album with characters, a consistent storyline, and a slight bit of pomposity", it is preceded by the shorter concept albums Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake ( Small Faces , 1968) and S.F. Sorrow ( The Pretty Things , 1968). Author Jim Cullen states: "The concept album reached its apogee in the 1970s in ambitious records like Pink Floyd 's Dark Side of
1456-519: The album changed from a collection of heterogeneous songs into a narrative work with a single theme, in which individual songs segue into one another." Speaking of concepts in albums during the 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), because "overall impression" of an album matters, "concept intensifies the impact" of certain albums "in more or less
1508-524: The band's guitarist Pete Townshend denied taking any influence from S.F. Sorrow , critics have compared Tommy to it. The Tommy album developed into other media, including a Seattle Opera production in 1971, an orchestral version by Lou Reizner in 1972, a film in 1975, and a Broadway musical in 1992. The original album has sold 20 million copies and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame . Tommy would also go on to influence On and On ,
1560-556: The concept album "was originally defined as a long-player where the songs were based on one dramatic idea – but the term is subjective." A precursor to this type of album can be found in the 19th-century song cycle , which ran into similar difficulties in classification. The extremely broad definitions of a "concept album" could potentially encompass all soundtracks , compilations , cast recordings , greatest hits albums , tribute albums , Christmas albums , and live albums . The most common definitions refer to an expanded approach to
1612-412: The definition a bit, to where the album is the concept, then it is clear that progressive rock is entirely a music of concept albums—and this flows rather directly of Rubber Soul (December 1965) and then Revolver (1966), Pet Sounds , and Sergeant Pepper's . ... in the wake of these albums, many rock musicians took up "the complete album approach." Popmatters ' Sarah Zupko notes that while
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1664-476: The emergence of MTV as a music video network which valued singles over albums, concept albums became less dominant in the 1980s. Some artists, however, still released concept albums and experienced success in the 1990s and 2000s. NME ' s Emily Barker cites Green Day 's American Idiot (2004) as one of the "more notable" examples, having brought the concept album back to high-charting positions. My Chemical Romance ’s The Black Parade (2006)
1716-455: The field of classical music has adopted the idea of the concept album, citing such historical examples as Schubert's Winterreise and Schumann's Liederkreis as prototypes for contemporary composers and musicians. Classical composers and performers increasingly adopt production and marketing strategies that unify otherwise disparate works into concept albums or concerts. Since 2019, the classical music magazine Gramophone has included
1768-534: The first 'concept album' even though the songs were unrelated." Author Bill Martin relates the assumed concept albums of the 1960s to progressive rock : In discussions of progressive rock, the idea of the "concept album" is mentioned frequently. If this term refers to albums that have thematic unity and development throughout, then in reality there are probably fewer concept albums than one might first think. Pet Sounds and Sergeant Pepper's do not qualify according to this criterion ... However, if we instead stretch
1820-446: The first 'concept album', but Sgt. Pepper was the record that made that idea convincing to most ears." Musicologist Allan Moore says that "Even though previous albums had set a unified mood (notably Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers! ), it was on the basis of the influence of Sgt. Pepper that the penchant for the concept album was born." Adding to Sgt. Pepper ' s claim, the artwork reinforced its central theme by depicting
1872-408: The first progressive metal albums, and was also a concept album. Thus it could be argued that from the genre's inception, progressive metal has been a hotspot for concept albums, like its rock counterpart. Other notable progressive metal concept albums are Dream Theater 's Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory , Opeth 's Still Life , and Orphaned Land 's Mabool . In the 21st century,
1924-445: The four Beatles in uniform as members of the Sgt. Pepper band, while the record omitted the gaps that usually separated album tracks. Music critic and journalist Neil Slaven stated that Frank Zappa 's Absolutely Free , released the same day as Sgt. Pepper , was "very much a concept album, but The Beatles effortlessly stole his thunder", and subsequently Sgt. Pepper was hailed as "perhaps
1976-501: The genre is generally acknowledged to have been born". Writing in his Concise Dictionary of Popular Culture , Marcel Danesi identifies the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965) and the Who's The Who Sell Out (1967) as other examples of early concept albums. Brian Boyd of The Irish Times names the Kinks ' Face to Face (1966) as the first concept album: "Written entirely by Ray Davies ,
2028-566: The idea of creating a rock opera in the 1960s. In an early use of the term, the July 4, 1966, edition of RPM Magazine (published in Toronto) reported that " Bruce Cockburn and Mr [William] Hawkins are working on a Rock Opera, operating on the premise that to write you need only 'something to say'." Mark Wirtz explored the idea in a project A Teenage Opera , from which an early song " Excerpt from A Teenage Opera (Grocer Jack) " recorded by Keith West
2080-579: The introduction of the rock concept album. The author Carys Wyn Jones writes that the Beach Boys ' Pet Sounds (1966), the Beatles ' Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) are variously cited as "the first concept album", usually for their "uniform excellence rather than some lyrical theme or underlying musical motif". Other records have been claimed as "early" or "first" concept albums. The Beach Boys' first six albums, released over 1962–64, featured collections of songs unified respectively by
2132-425: The limits of their art form." Author Jim Cullen describes it as "a collection of discrete but thematically unified songs whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts ... sometimes [erroneously] assumed to be a product of the rock era." Author Roy Shuker defines concept albums and rock operas as albums that are "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical. ... In this form,
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2184-535: The mission at hand. The album was released in the spring of 1990 following the success of its two lead-off singles: " Doowutchyalike ", a moderate club hit, followed by " The Humpty Dance ", which reached No. 11 on the pop chart, No. 7 on the R&;B chart, and No. 1 on the Billboard Rap Singles chart. Sex Packets was released to positive reviews and eventually achieved platinum sales. Newsday noted that "as
2236-558: The other hand, said that rock music and opera are "both overblown, massive spectacles" that cover the same themes. Kiesewalter, who was originally not a fan of opera, did not think the two styles would mix well together, but his modernized operas with rock music surprised him with their popularity at the East Village Opera Company . The performance of these works on Broadway has also courted controversy; Anne Midgette of The New York Times called them musicals with "no more than
2288-439: The romantic—and in the end, middlebrow—self-consciousness of the artist seeps into hip-hop, Digital Underground turns it on its head, shuffling the goofy indistinguishably with the avant-garde." The album was re-issued on February 8, 2005, by Rhino Entertainment . In 1998, the album was selected as one of The Source ' s "100 Best Rap Albums". It is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die . The album
2340-441: The songs so that the lyrics created a flow from track to track, affording an impression of a narrative, as in musical comedy or opera . ... [He was the] first pop singer to bring a consciously artistic attitude to recording." Singer/pianist Nat "King" Cole (who, along with Sinatra, often collaborated with arranger Nelson Riddle during this era) was also an early pioneer of concept albums, as with his Wild Is Love (1960),
2392-500: The songs were supposed to be linked by pieces of music, so that the album would play without gaps, but the record company baulked at such radicalism. It's not one of the band's finest works, but it did have an impact." "Popular consensus" for the first rock concept album, according to AllMusic, favours Sgt. Pepper . According to music critic Tim Riley , "Strictly speaking, the Mothers of Invention 's Freak Out! [1966] has claims as
2444-469: The way Sgt. Pepper intended", as well as "a species of concept that pushes a rhythmically unrelenting album like The Wild Magnolias or a vocally irresistible one like Shirley Brown 's Woman to Woman , to a deeper level of significance." In the 2016 BBC documentary When Pop Went Epic: The Crazy World of the Concept Album , narrated by Rick Wakeman , it is suggested that the first concept album
2496-522: The worlds of high art and low art mix. In Russian music, the term zong-opera (Зонг-опера) is sometimes used, since the first Soviet-Russian rock-opera Orpheus and Eurydice was described with this term, though the term "rock-opera" was already known in the Soviet rock music circles. According to Fleming, rock operas are more akin to a cantata or suite , because they are not usually acted out. Similarly, Andrew Clements of The Guardian called Tommy
2548-598: Was accompanied in the mid-1950s with the invention of the gatefold , which allowed room for liner notes to explain the concept. Singer Frank Sinatra recorded several concept albums prior to the 1960s rock era, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955) and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely (1958). Sinatra is occasionally credited as the inventor of the concept album, beginning with The Voice of Frank Sinatra (1946), which led to similar work by Bing Crosby . According to biographer Will Friedwald, Sinatra "sequenced
2600-505: Was conducted by the band after the album's release and bassist Roger Waters reincarnated the tour twice; once in Berlin in 1990 to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall and again around the world from 2010-2013 , a series of shows that became the highest-grossing tour by a solo musician. In 1999, progressive metal band Dream Theater released their album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from
2652-465: Was released and became a hit song in 1967. However, the album for the rock opera was not released until 1996, and it was only fully realised and staged in 2017. Colin Fleming of The Atlantic described The Story of Simon Simopath (1967) by British psychedelic band Nirvana as an "early foray into the rock opera sub-genre". Neil Strauss of The New York Times wrote that S.F. Sorrow (1968) by
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#17330847340562704-434: Was subsequently popularized by traditional pop singer Frank Sinatra 's 1940s–50s string of albums, although the term is more often associated with rock music . In the 1960s several well-regarded concept albums were released by various rock bands, which eventually led to the invention of progressive rock and rock opera . There is no clear definition of a "concept album". Fiona Sturges of The Independent stated that
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