This week's top un-reviewed album is at #1 by R. Kelly, and I'm not going to review that for obvious reasons. Instead I'll drop down to #4 for the soundtrack for the film Waiting to Exhale.

If you know anything about me, you should be able to guess that I have never seen the movie, and as far as I know I have never listened to the soundtrack before. The soundtrack is full of heavy-hitters like Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton, Aretha Franklin, and Mary J Blige. Combined with the popularity of the movie, the album sold quite well, was reviewed positively, and won multiple awards.

I think I kinda sorta remember hearing a few of the songs off the album, but it's been years since I heard any of them. This is one of those albums that I can tell has quality music but I don't care about it. It does nothing for me so I can only offer a neutral opinion with no suggestion one way or the other.

If you were alive in 1995, you heard the song Gangsta's Paradise everywhere. The popularity of this song propelled the soundtrack to the movie Dangerous Minds to #1. The song made Coolio's career, although playing Kwanzaa-bot on Futurama was pretty great, too. I'm fairly certain I have never seen the movie Dangerous Minds, but I have heard Gangsta's Paradise many, many times.

None of the other songs on the album amount to much. I guarantee that you would not recognize any of the non-Coolio artists on the album. Gin & Juice by DeVanté is far, far inferior to the Gin and Juice by Snoop Dogg you're thinking of. A Message For Your Mind by Rappin' 4-Tay samples I Want You Back by The Jackson 5 and completely misses the mark, somehow having none of the joyous energy of the original song. The final song (which I suspect was played during the closing credits), This Is The Life, is a non sequitur. It's a ballad by two white women who were part of Prince's The Revolution band. There's nothing wrong with being female, white, or working with Prince, but none of those things match anyone nor anything that came previously on the album.

In summary, the album is defined by and entirely worth the value of Gangsta's Paradise, and the rest is worth forgetting.

Finally, check out this episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver from a few weeks ago. It's about law enforcement gang databases, and a connection to Gangsta's Paradise comes out of left field.

I have never seen the animated movie Pocahontas, therefore the #2 album this week is particularly meaningless to me. There are some movie soundtracks that have one or two hit songs that make big radio airplay. I do not recognize any of the songs off this album.

I'll make it short and easy: I don't care about this album, and I don't think you should or will, either.

I'm not going to belabor this. This week's album at #2 is the soundtrack for the 1995 buddy comedy Friday. I have not seen the movie, but the consensus seems that it wasn't horrible. The soundtrack is nothing special. Apparently the track Keep Their Heads Ringin' was a hit although I don't remember it.

You can skip this album.

Debuting at #1, we have another movie soundtrack. I've reviewed soundtracks before and in a few ways it's different.

As far as I can tell, all of the big songs on the album (Murder Was The Case, What Would U Do?) appeared on other albums released before this album. Previous chart-topping soundtracks featured songs only available on the album.

Another difference is the album is longer than the movie for which it's named. The movie is only 18 minutes long, while the album is over an hour long.

As I looked through the track listing, I took a double take at the artist on the 6th and 11th tracks, Jewell. I had to check it wasn't Jewel. Both Wiki pages have "Not to be confused with Jewel(l) (singer)." at the top for obvious reasons.

Overall, I find this album fairly boring. Like the Above The Rim Soundtrack I previously reviewed, most of this is typical mid-90s rap. I think this album can be left to history.

Rising to the #3 position, the Forrest Gump Soundtrack is made up of, except for the Forrest Gump Suite, entirely non-original songs. The movie covers 30 years of Forrest Gump's life, from 1951 to 1981, and the songs were chosen to evoke different periods of American history that compliment the on-screen action.

If you click on any of the various online music providers linked at the top of this post, you'll find that none of the links go to full and complete albums. For likely dumb licensing reasons the streaming albums are missing songs. It's dumb because most, if not all, the songs are already available on the streaming platforms, but just in other albums. For example, here is a playlist a user on Tidal made that looks to have all the songs in the movie (although the order looks to be a bit off). Furthermore, you can still buy the soundtrack on physical media (*) which indicates that the licensing agreements are still active.

I have seen the movie and I find it entertaining, and in particular, I think the music helps frame the different periods in American history Forrest Gump experiences quite well.

The album itself is a good collection of American music spanning the 30 year time frame of the movie. Most are genuine hits and there's no filler or pointless covers unlike other soundtracks I've reviewed before. Of all the soundtracks I've reviewed so far, this is by far the best. The only proviso to the album is that on its own, e.g. if the movie never existed, because the songs cover such a wide range of Americana, they are a bit scattered thematically. But as a way to recall the movie, if you want to do that, it works well.

(*) At the time of this writing, you can buy a cassette tape version for nearly $90! Compared to the $14.48 CD version, which is better in nearly every respect, that's quite a premium.

Peaking at #2 this week is the soundtrack for the animated movie The Lion King.

I'm pretty sure I did not see this movie in the theaters when it came out. I was a 14 year old and animated children's movies were too uncool for me (not that I was a very cool 14 year old, to be honest). As it happens, just recently I took my two children (tell that to my 14 year old self) to the re-release of The Lion King in theaters, which I think was the first time I ever watched the movie from beginning to end. I already had a pretty good idea of the arc of the story, both because of the films popularity, and also because it's based on Hamlet. Similarly, I have never watched Titanic, but because of its popularity I am pretty sure I know all the various plot points (also, the boat sinks).

The Lion King is a good movie that at only 88 minutes is shockingly short when compared to modern movies (the live-action The Little Mermaid is 135 minutes long!). The star-studded cast of this movie basically guaranteed the public's interest, and the execution of the plot, characters, and music propelled it to one of the biggest box office hits ever.

Watching the 30 year old film in the theaters it struck me how computerized animation has changed animated movies. The Lion King was hand-drawn, meaning that each cell had a limited amount of complexity. It's not practical to have to redraw complicated scenes hundreds or thousands of times, each at slightly different angles. When I look at modern movies, animators can design and place complicated 3D objects in the digital world just once, and the computer handles rendering that object for all frames. Obviously, this allows for much richer and detailed animated worlds, but there's something to be said for the restrictions that hand animation puts on movie makers — they need to find ways to make a visually meaningful frame some other way.

As a soundtrack, this album is fine. There are some catchy songs and they're fun to listen to outside of watching a movie. Soundtracks are always a bit jumbled because part of a movie soundtrack is to compliment what's on the screen, and that's obviously missing on a soundtrack. The Elton John versions at the end of the album are decent, he's good at what he does.

My final word is that the movie is worth seeing, and the soundtrack exists if you want it, but it's not essential.

Coming in at #6 is the soundtrack for the 1994 Film The Crow. The movie is infamous because the star of the film, Brandon Lee (the son of the famous martial artist and actor Bruce Lee), was killed during filming of the movie due to an improperly-prepared prop gun. The movie came out on May 13, 1994, but this album went on sale a few weeks before the movie came out. The release of the film propelled the album to the top of the charts one week from "now."

Combined with the notoriety of the movie, the album likely did well considering the strong suite of artists and songs on the album: The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, Rage Against the Machine, Violent Femmes, and Pantera. Looking a few streaming services, a fair number of the songs by these popular artists included in the album are among the top 10 songs played for each.

There are a few weaker songs on this album by less-well known artists, but that's okay, the good songs on this album are very good. I'm not sure I'd play this album as a whole much going forward, but the great songs are definitely worth playing again.

I don't think I've actually seen the movie before, and having done this review I think I will remedy that soon!

This week I need to drop down to #3 to pick a new album. This is the soundtrack for the film Above the Rim, a movie I have not viewed. It has a middling rating on Rotten Tomatoes so I probably won't seek it out. It also doesn't seem to be on any streaming service I subscribe to, which makes the effort too much, anyway.

Listening to the album I think there are only a couple reasons why anyone would have bought the album:

• Tupac Shakur starred in the movie and there are three songs on the soundtrack that he presumably made for the film that were not available on any of his albums.
• The only genuine hit off the album is "Regulate" by Warren G. and Nate Dogg. The stand-alone album by Warren G., Regulate... G Funk Era, with the song didn't come out until June 1994, so the only way to buy the song at the time was to buy this album. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think I actually purchased a copy of the Warren G. album largely for this song.

All the other songs on this album are forgettable. There's a fairly pointless cover of the Al Green song "I'm Still in Love with You." When I write "pointless," I don't mean it didn't fit into the movie (it may have and I'll never know), I mean that the cover doesn't do anything the original doesn't already do. I'll bet the cover was cheaper to license. All the rest is pretty standard mid-90s hip-hop – songs where the artist states their name and the label they're signed to, etc. Granted, for a movie soundtrack, it's probably okay having some more generic music so it doesn't distract from what's happening on screen or with any dialog.

My final words are that this album can be left to the dusty piles of history. If you want to listen to "Regulate," listen to Warren G.'s album. If you want to listen to Tupac, listen to his multiple acclaimed albums which have better songs than what he made for the film.