What's the most demeaning way to shut down a friend who is trying to convince you of the merits of an album or athlete or restaurant or movie? You tick off as many more meritorious athletes or restaurants or albums or movies as you can, right off the top of your head. The premise or intent being to show your friend or whomever your debating that the object of their applause is not so hot, so much so, that I can name X amount of things that are hotter, without even giving it much thought.

That’s how this whole thing got started. The Hero and I were instant messaging each other, music came up (as it often will) and Hero begins extolling the virtues of Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere. It was an album that the whole Musicology Crew dug a whole lot, but Hero always seemed to have this special attachment and it reached a peak when he saw Cee-lo and Danger Mouse in concert with the rest of the Barkley crew. Hero's enthusiasm was seriously transmitting through the instant message box. Now, with many passionate people, who have found a new object to project this passion upon, Hero began with the hyperbole and it culminated with him saying some version of, "I think this might be the greatest album of the past five years."

What? Woa.

For my money, homeboy had taken it too far. So I met his passion with a similar dose of dismissal and incredulity. I told him I could count off a bunch of albums better than the Gnarls within at that time period. Hero said I couldn't name three. He dared me too. So the albums started pouring through the message window in type. I named about 12. Hero was dumbfounded. He called me negligent, irresponsible and just plain ignorant. I was dumbfounded. This argument couldn't be settled between the two of us. We had to bring the rest of the Crew in on the discussion.

I sent out an email with a list of album names and asked the Crew to tell Hero and me which of the said albums were better than St. Else. Everyone responded with a list of at least ten or more. As days went on and Hero began his crusade, others would respond with yet more albums they thought were either better than the Gnarls or at least debatable. Pretty soon the list was reaching close to 30 albums. But, Hero wouldn't relent.

We had to do something. We couldn't just whimsically list album after album that we thought was better than an album Hero deemed a masterpiece. After a while, we -- as The Musicologists -- always feel the need to reach some far-reaching, macrocosmic conclusions once these discussions get going. So, using that master list of about 30 albums, we wanted to determine which ten were the best and we all agreed to take some time and really listen to these, do some serious knowledge and submit individual top ten lists and then try to come up with a collective top ten list, a master list.

We say "do the knowledge" a lot. What that basically entailed, for this exercise, were hours of listening. We devoted whole weekends to analyzing these albums. It was a science, a study of music. It took Thesis close to two weeks to reach a level where he felt comfortable submitting his Top 10. My list was accompanied with about 4,000-word explanation. Then the back and forth commenced. And it wasn't a game, either. We're talking 500-word responses fit with name-calling, near unhealthy emotion and analogies that ranged from sports to existentialism to civil rights.

What follows this piece is what we agreed -- albeit through a begrudging consensus -- to be the Top Ten albums, released since the start of the new millennium up until the release of St. Elsewhere. We call it The New Milleni Ten.

They may not be the most popular albums and we're sure you won't agree with everything and might even be able to detect a collective bias. Who knows. What we do know is that these are the albums that we, The Musicologists, consider the greatest of the past six years and we feel confident and strongly that the list will hold up against any scrutiny.

You can also read our list of snubs. These were albums that featured some sort of significance or such a high level of excellence, that we didn't feel comfortable not devoting them some space. And we also encourage you all to read the Music Dude's column on what we deem to be a brand-new genre of music, a style and sonic experience that is burgeoning, evolving and amazing right before our eyes. We call it Bridge music -- America's first real, new movement since hip-hop of the 80s. Several albums on this list are of that genre or feature Bridge in its embryonic stage. It was this exercise that really crystallized the fact that we weren't witnessing a few musical aberrations, but a brand new steez. The welcomed addition of Bridge to the black music canon and the bevy of other albums dropped since 2000, which merited serious consideration, really highlighted that today's music is in much better condition than the dire straits that cynics, whiners and apocalyptics like to place it in. Black music is thriving, people. We even saw the hop make a comeback in 2006 with Fishscale, Game Theory, Food and Liquor and other efforts. And this is while we wait for Mos Def's third offering and the return of Jay-Z.

Ultimately, there's a lot to digest here, so take your time with it. But not too long, we already have next month's epic stewing in the pot.