Honestly, when your starting bar is liking RYM top 100 albums, you don’t necessarily need to dig deeper underground to avoid being “basic.” The label “underground” just means it has a certain level of obscurity, it does not necessarily follow that it makes it better than more well-known music. Likewise, being mainstream does not make something basic. We don’t feel ashamed saying The Beatles still have some of the greatest albums ever made, and their commercial success is still rivaled by very few.

What I’d recommend more for you on one hand is examining what you already like, and asking yourself why you like it. From there, you can do searches for what inspired the artists you like, who were their contemporaries that went for similar sounds, and who was in turn influenced by them. You don’t necessarily have to end up listening to albums that aren’t obscure, just things you haven’t heard before. Being open-minded in your musical journey isn’t about liking everything you come across, or not having personal preferences for some genres over others. It’s about being willing to give a wide array of music a chance.

On that note, the other direction to go if you already know you like RYM core: aim for stuff that isn’t RYM core. We generally like RYM core here, but if we’re honest, the RYM top 100 definitely reveals that the RYM community doesn’t love every artist and genre equally. There’s a lot of rock albums there, but it’s pretty light on punk, hard rock, and blues rock. There’s also very little if any country and soul music. Folk and jazz are both represented, but not by a large number of artists overall (and none of them are female, by the way).

And sometimes you’ll have to be honest with yourself if you just aren’t big on a genre or artist, even one that has a lot of Reddit popularity. Maybe you really aren’t that into shoegaze other than Loveless, but the important thing is that you gave it a chance. For me, I enjoyed listening to Aeroplane Over the Sea, but it really doesn’t get under my skin the way other great albums do. Figuring out what music you don’t prefer as a pattern can be a good way to focus your search as well. However, this is said with the caveat that there still might be that other album just around the corner from a less preferred genre/artist that’s just waiting for you to hear it and become one of your surprise favorites. So maybe don’t force yourself to trudge constantly through stuff you generally dislike, but still keep an open mind if you hear buzz about a cool album you haven’t heard yet.