I remember listening to the album and staring out at what seemed like endless green. The listening pods were set up along the back of the library, which looked out into deep forest and overgrown grass. That’s what the beginning of Astral Weeks feels like to me. You’re still tethered enough to the waking world to relish the anticipation. The phase where you’re awake enough to realize that you’ll soon be in a dream state. It’s that space I really like where you’re almost asleep, but not quite. I had no idea who Van Morrison was, no idea what I was getting into. One day, when I was 16, I went and Astral Weeks was on. I was at the mercy of the library workers who preloaded the CD changers, and I would sit there with a pair of headphones on. That meant I could go to the library, sit in a little booth, and listen to CDs all day. 'I remember when a new branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was built at the end of my street. But that doesn’t mean artists should lose their responsibility for narrative-building, for crafting a sequenced arc of songs, not just a compilation with the occasional hit thrown in.' Now, I’m fine to let that go, I can acknowledge that the era of the album as physical object has waned. I guess I’m old school-I always love the physicality of a record. That doesn’t feel like an album to me.' He said, 'So you can just make a playlist of the 10 songs you like, and that’s your Drake album.' I thought, My job isn’t to make the Drake album. I was like, 'There are 25 songs here, and I like maybe 10. I was talking to a friend, another critic, about a Drake album-I think it was Scorpion-a few years ago. It opens with 'What Can I Do for You?' It then goes straight into the title track. One of my greatest pleasures is flipping to side two of Nightbirds-one of the greatest side-twos in music history. There are certain albums that I am desperate to show people. Of all the albums on this list, Nightbirds is the one I listen to the most. Even ‘Lady Marmalade’ is kind of about loneliness. The arrangements were deep in funk and had nice horns, but it’s also an album of sad songs. I adore Nightbirds because they found a sound that worked for them. LaBelle’s sonic impulses were all over the place. The other ones are pretty rough, but they’re rough for a reason. Nightbirds, for my money-and I think according to critical response, too-is the only good LaBelle album. I thought, Who are these Black women from outer space? I knew who Patti LaBelle was because my mother loved her. Patti is leaning with her face in her palm. When I was a kid, I saw a photo of LaBelle in their spacesuits on the wall of a friend’s house.

'I first encountered Nightbirds, not through the sound of it, but through the look of LaBelle. For CULTURED, the critic time-traveled back to three albums, and three moments in his life, that shaped him forever.

'There's Always This Year,' his forthcoming book about basketball and his Ohio upbringing, will be published early next year. Through several acclaimed collections of essays and poetry, Hanif Abdurraqib has established himself as a tender and incisive voice in contemporary culture.

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