As 1999 wound down, the Onion AV Club put together its greatest article of all time: Least Essential Albums of the '90s. This was, as the article explained,
an unscientific assortment of ill-conceived experiments, earnest failures, and ludicrous cash-ins, but it's not a list of the decade's worst albums. It would have been easy to let loose on the grotesque excesses of the biggest, fattest, easiest targets, but this is trickier.After noting truly inessential albums in a variety of subcategories and genres, they named the single least essential recording of the entire decade: The Adventures Of MC Skat Kat and the Stray Mob, a compilation of tunes ostensibly sung by the animated cat from Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" video. The AV Club wrote:
The Adventures Of MC Skat Kat stands as the least essential album ever recorded by a sassy animated cartoon feline, surpassing even Garfield's 1991 album Am I Cool Or What? The rapping cat, who made his debut alongside Paula Abdul on the cheesy 1989 single "Opposites Attract," got his own 50-minute album a full two years later, allowing impatient Skat Kat completists the opportunity to hear him rock the mic on such tracks as "I Ain't No Kitty," "No Dogs Allowed," and "New Kat Swing."Every December since then (except in 2004, for some reason), the AV Club crew has similarly catalogued the year's "recordings with the flimsiest reasons to exist". I'm not a music geek, but I find these lists hilarious. Enjoy: 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000.
...So inessential, you almost have to hear it. One of the most bizarrely ill-conceived albums ever released by a major label, The Adventures Of MC Skat Kat & The Stray Mob is a product of clueless committee thinking and Milli Vanilli-style studio hackwork at its most cynical. Never has a mass-produced album been demanded by so few.
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