The Top Ten List of Best Stoner Albums Ever

10. Black Sabbath — Black Sabbath (1970)
Best Track to Melt Into: “N.I.B.”
The first album ever to say, “What if we tuned our guitars to the sound of a coffin lid closing?” This is patient zero for all stoner music. Ozzy was still semi-coherent, the riffs were thick enough to get stuck in your teeth, and the band probably thought a wah-wah pedal was a kitchen appliance.

9.  The Chronic — Dr. Dre (1992)
   Best Track to Giggle Through: “Let Me Ride”
   This isn’t a stoner album — it’s the stoner album for anyone who prefers blunts to bongs. Dre basically turned gangsta rap into a contact high. Put this on and suddenly everyone in your living room smells like Snoop Dogg’s tour bus. Warning: listening may cause an irresistible urge to say “Fo’ shizzle” unironically.

8.   The Dark Side of the Moon — Pink Floyd (1973)
   Best Track for a Bad Trip: “Time” Mandatory inclusion.
   This record has sold more copies to stoners than laser pointers and blacklight posters combined. You haven’t really heard it until you’ve played it backwards during a solar eclipse while synchronizing it with The Wizard of Oz. It still won’t make sense, but neither do you.

7. Electric Ladyland — The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)
   Best Track to Fry Your Brain: “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)”
   This album sounds like Hendrix’s guitar took acid and grew a third arm. The solos are so long you’ll forget what song you started. Recommended dosage: one tab of LSD per side. Do not operate heavy machinery, including your own body, while listening.

6.   Bitches Brew — Miles Davis (1970)
   Best Track to Stare at Your Hands To: “Pharaoh’s Dance”
   If you can make it through this jazz freak-out without forgetting how time works, congratulations — you are too sober. Miles Davis took jazz, threw it into a bong, and coughed up something that still scares people at Pitchfork. This album is six hours long and none of it has a chorus.

5. Exile on Main St. — The Rolling Stones (1972)
   Best Track to Lose Your Shirt Over: “Tumbling Dice”
   Recorded while the Stones were tax exiles, high as giraffe lips in a French mansion. The whole album sounds like it was played from inside a couch cushion, but it’s perfect for stoned air-guitar sessions. This is what happens when heroin is listed as a co-producer.

4.   Surrealistic Pillow — Jefferson Airplane (1967)
   Best Track for a Flashback: “White Rabbit”
   An album that screams “It’s the ’60s!” louder than a Woodstock porta-potty. Ideal for that one friend who won’t shut up about “vibes.” Grace Slick basically hands you a joint through the speaker and whispers, “Follow the rabbit.” Next thing you know, you’re on Etsy buying tie-dye.

3.   The Velvet Underground & Nico — The Velvet Underground (1967)
   Best Track to Pretend You Understand: “Heroin”
   This is for the art-school stoner who thinks marijuana is “too mainstream.” Lou Reed mumbles, John Cale saws a viola in half, and Andy Warhol just stands there looking shiny. Play it at your next party to clear out anyone who isn’t wearing black.

2.   Sleep’s Holy Mountain — Sleep (1992)
   Best Track to Doom Out: “Dragonaut”
   A record so slow and heavy you can measure the riffs with a sundial. This album invented “stoner metal,” which is just doom metal but with more weed references and fewer showers. Play this while sitting in your car in a parking lot — you won’t even have to smoke anything to get contact high.

1.   The Grateful Dead — American Beauty (1970)
   Best Track to Smell Like Patchouli To: “Ripple”
   Nothing says stoner royalty like an album that convinces you that fourteen-minute jams are “tight.” This is the soundtrack to every dorm room tapestry, every parking lot nitrous balloon, every conversation that starts with “You just don’t get the Dead, man.” Warning: side effects include starting a jam band called “Cosmic Lettuce.”

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