The Good & The Ugly: 2003

Welcome back to another piece in my expanding series, The Good & The Ugly. If you haven’t already tuned into my last installment about 2002 I dropped today, you can check that out here. There, I discussed some excellent music that would occasionally be muddied by some of the least interesting music I’ve heard in this series so far. In 2003, I had a gold mine of hits to choose from, spanning from Coldplay to 50 Cent. If I had found 5 more bad songs, I would’ve made this a list of 20. Nonetheless, here’s an extensive list of honorable mentions: 50 Cent- “In Da Club”/“PIMP”/“21 Questions”, Beyoncé- “Crazy In Love”/“Baby Boy”, Ja Rule- “Mesmerize”, Ashanti- “Rain On Me”, Norah Jones- “Don’t Know Why”, Eminem- “Lose Yourself”, Missy Elliott- “Work It”, Jay-Z- “03 Bonnie & Clyde”/“Excuse Me Miss”, Nelly- “Air Force Ones”, Monica- “So Gone”, Field Mob- “Sick of Being Lonely”, and Ludacris- “Stand Up”. I know, a lot of classics got left off. That’s how good this year is. With all of that out of the way, let’s talk about my first favorite in music.

Best: 50 Cent- “Wanksta”: Music has been at the center of a lot of my first memories. Some of my…