You'll get no flack from me whatsoever! Never have a problem with people who aren't fans of a song or an album, and they'll only get blasted by me if they're d*cks about it or trying to convert other people to hating something... you don't sound like that, so no worries, haha.
I spent a while trying to reason out how I feel about all the albums, but honestly, I think your feel for PUTS - or any group, really - is going to depend on what you're looking for from your music. There are a lot of hip-hop heads who stick to the stand-bys, like jazz loops or rare breaks, and there are a lot of people out there who listen more to the flows... or think that one thing or the other MAKES it hip hop, and PUTS is a little bit of an oddity for a lot of people who are "looking" for things.
The fact is that they are two guys who just like playing with a sonic palette and drawing from a wide range of samples, and as they've gone on, their range has gone more and more broad. I don't mind it one bit. Stepfather, Fun DMC, and Highlighter are certainly more experimental than Carried Away and 12 Step Program, but I found they all get better with more listens.
I'm probably a horrible person to ask, though... I'm not a prolific hip hop listener, I'm an ecclectic who liks more organic-sounding material. I couldn't tell you the first thing about Kendrick or Run The Jewels or whoever else is on the scene right now, and most listens I give to other artists sound way too produced... the beats sound too computerized/computer-made to me.
