Hey folks!

Last week, I presented a difficulty with the inclusion of N*E*R*D’s album IN SEARCH OF… into the Best Album of 2001 tournament. The short version: the only qualifying version of that album, known as the Electronic Version, is not available on any U.S. streaming service and, far as I can tell, only exists on a stranger’s Google drive. I wanted to disqualify it from 2001, but, since that’s a heavy-handed move, I then wanted to auto-qualify the 2002 version (the “Rock Vesion”) for the eventual 2002 tournament. But before doing that, I wanted your feedback first. I gave you four options to vote for: a) disqualify for 2001 and auto-qualify for 2002, b) disqualify for 2001 and hold up on the auto-qualifying I mean let’s not go crazy, c) enter it into the 2001 tournament, or d) for “don’t care.” I also noted that while the results wouldn’t be binding, if there was a majority consensus, I would lean towards it. Here are the results:

So, out of 85 responses, 62 of you, 72.9%, said disqualify it for 2001 and auto-qualify it for 2002. Furthermore, a 15.3% of you (13) said disqualify it, so really 75 out of 85 are saying disqualify it. (Seven of you said enter the Electronic Version into the 2001 tournament and only three of you said you didn’t care. I honestly thought that category would hit double-digits, so color me surprised.)

Anyway, 88.2% of you said disqualify it and uh, that’s a pretty strong message. So that’s what we’ll do.

N*E*R*D, IN SEARCH OF…, the Electronic Version, is hereby disqualified from the Best Album of 2001 tournament. The 2002 Rock Version is still eligible for the eventual Best Album of 2002 tournament, and will likely be auto-qualified should it not qualify on its on terms.

This is really the nut of the problem. Sixteen people nominated the Electronic Version for 2001. How many actually meant the Electronic Version? How many were actually thinking of the Rock Version? How many were even aware of the two different versions of the album? How many did not vote because they knew the difference, and were saving their vote for 2002? If I didn’t say anything, how many nomination votes would the album have gotten for 2002? How many of those votes would actually have been for the Electronic Version? Put simply: how popular is IN SEARCH OF…, in terms of these different versions? I genuinely have no idea. (I’ve already messed this up by drawing attention to it, but I would guess that the album gets about 32 nomination votes for 2002. That’s just a guess, though.) If I’d had some idea of what the answers were to these questions, I may have gone about this in a different way.

The good news is two-fold: we will in all likelihood see IN SEARCH OF… again in the future, and we now have a open slot for another album, for a total of 7 open slots. How will they be filled? I plan to have an answer for you Monday. Stay tuned.

Thanks,

Kent