#he's shifting from folk to soul/r&b WHICH I LOVE FOR HIM

[dykeyfuckingway]

i didn't like the hozi er ep T-T

#he's shifting from folk to soul/r&b WHICH I LOVE FOR HIM #but i love folk......... #anyways im gonna go listen on repeat w the expectation that it'll grow on me <3 #scary tales

[septembersghost]

"ask me for one again soon please i need an excuse to share the song i almost posted instead of this bc i couldn't make up my mind 😄" I am asking!!! 👀

you cannot possibly understand the close personal love affair i have with this song. he recorded this song specifically for me actually 💕

first of all, the warmth and depth of the vocal here...how am i supposed to talk about that. how. the sincerity and the tenderness. (there are outtakes of him working on this song and finding the best approach to it, and i just!) the metaphor about love taking the rougher road but being more true for it. "how many hearts could live through all the winters we've known and still not be cold?" hello? because love has an ember that's never extinguished.

the title is a little gospely, a little folk parable, the song is secretly batb-style Romantic, hidden under the blues/country/r&b soul and mosaic of his artistry, and the razor-edge between the last of the 60s and dawn of the 70s, and yes i know how that sounds, but listen. listen. he's astonished by her because she's not afraid or ashamed, despite the fact that he's coming from this very imperfect place...and real, lasting love blossoming out of honestly seeing and cherishing each other. there's something sweet and almost kind! "love is a stranger and hearts are in danger on smooth streets paved with gold," all that is gold does not glitter! not all those who wander are lost! (okay, that's lotr, i'm allowed to mix my formative influence metaphors). love takes your hand and steadies you on the difficult path. love doesn't ask for everything to be perfect and easy and grand, sometimes it's a dusty little path that no one else would think is remarkable or special, but you know that it's real and true, and that's all that matters. the hope in it. love for you is like a religion.

this is a little hidden gem of a song, it's deceptively simple (things are happening in the instruments, but subtly, never above his voice. the opening guitar line and how it shifts, the strings coming in and used to underscore specific lines - "no matter how strong the wind blows" - the percussion. the backing harmonies. you can still hear raw sounds from the studio, he takes a shaky breath at one point which isn't evident at all in his vocal strength). it's not even three minutes long, and this is what it does to me.

#i could do this for every song on this album btw which is why i can't really write that post 😭 #the things happening on this record...the personal to him and the symbolic #i love it so much #the satins and lace and blue eyes imagery that's me. ask him. 😌 #as a point of reference this is how i usually interact with music and we've done a lot of literal discussion here #by nature of artistic intent and diaristic stories being told but i think the personal absorption/interpretation is still so paramount #and tbh the fandom discussions around midnights have inadvertently made me like the album less...? i'll come back around eventually i know #but anyway el exists in such a different sphere and that musical connection is so pure for me that it doesn't have those parameters #so it just frees my mind up to do this ^ and THAT'S part of what i mean about coming back to myself #no one cares about this sorry... the consequence of being asked!!! #true love travels on a gravel road #elvis presley #from elvis in memphis #i was a dreamer #without music life would be a mistake #music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent #anonymous #letterbox #bubble wrap around my heart #*

[the-gc-record-club-blog]

SOME NIGHTS I DREAM OF DOORS (OBONGJAYAR)

Selected by Calvvy

OBELLA’S TAKE

Favorite Song: Sugar

Spit Yo' Game / Talk Yo' Shit: To me this album is a love letter to the next-gen African diaspora (be that ex-pat first-gen, 1.5, second-gen, or beyond). There were these beautiful flairs of driving in the car with the Old Man listening to Hugh Masekala, and Ladysmith... Miriam Makeba, and Awilo Logomba... This is also how I know that music genres are obsolete; It's labeled as R&B/Soul which isn't wrong but there were also these amazing alternative, and folk, and house(?) vibes mixed in. The blend and the energy of the sounds were so sonically stimulating I couldn't put it down from the first song on the first listen. I've since dug through a bit of his discography and that Neo-diasporic sound-blend is this man's MO and tbh it's giving - he shouldn't let up!

Lit-mus Test: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

VANESSA’S TAKE

Favorite Song: Try

Spit Yo' Game / Talk Yo' Shit: It's a treat, maybe even a rare one, when your introduction to an artist is a project so thorough that you can't pick out a favourite song. In this case I think that's because in addition being to being an incredible singer and lyricist, Obongjayar comes across as many different artists rolled into one on Some Nights I Dream of Doors - but all of them are effective and they don't crowd each other out. I love how he seamlessly shifts between genres, intensity and even accents across the record. There are chords on the album that remind me of the Congolese lingala/rhumba albums that my dad used to play when I was a kid, while other songs make me think of Lagbaja and other contemporary Nigerian artists. So many songs tug at a familiarity for me that I really, really enjoy. It's pop, it's electro, it's Afrobeat to name just a few shades and he has the right to do all of it; I want to sing along, to dance, then I'm in my feelings, then it's over! In a tight 35 minutes? Love to see it and I love this album.

Lit-mus Test: 🔥🔥🔥🔥

OCHIENG’S TAKE

Favorite Song: Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me for a Fool)

Spit Yo' Game / Talk Yo' Shit:  I don’t think its a particularly novel thing to say that I love different, more creative artistic endeavors. But this felt like an honest blend of all Obongjayar’s different influences that melded together into a genuinely unique body of work. An artist is only as good as his reference, and I feel like the well Obongjayar is drawing from has puzzle pieces that fit together in a strange but natural way. The uniqueness combined with his experience (this being his second full length project on streaming not counting EPs) led to the creation very solid project with a lot of replay value.

Lit-mus Test:  🔥🔥🔥

CALVIN’S TAKE

Favorite Song: Tinko Tinko (Don’t Play Me for a Fool)

Spit Yo' Game / Talk Yo' Shit: I'd heard so many Obongjayar features that it was a treat to finally dig into a dolo project. On Some Nights, Obong (can I call him that?) has so many musical references that he successfully gets on record -- while many times it also feels like a very confessional and cathartic album. Heartbreak, triumph, mantras, nostalgia, and flossing are all there, making for a very unique and replayable mix. As deep as his bag is, the moments where it truly reaches the astral plane for me are when all these influences combine rather than sit next to one another. There's the hook to "Sugar", but then the whole of "Tinko Tinko" which is my favourite. The duality of threatening "don't play me for a fool" but ultimately breaking down to a "please don't play with my head, don't keep fucking with my head" refrain a few seconds later -- real songwriting!!! With doom doom doom drums and Michael Jackson gasps for the razzle dazzle. If those same lines were sung into Burna Boy's mic, I could see it breaking a festival ground in half; I have high apple pie in the sky hopes and well wishes that that same reality lies in Obonjayar's future.

Lit-mus Test: 🔥🔥🔥

#obongjayar #some nights i dream of doors #sugar #tinko tinko

[thejordipie]

in efforts to stave off boredom and to avoid doing dishes it is time to tell a STORY that's right! bunker down kiddos, it is s t o r y t i m e . This is a tale about ghosts, murders, and being abandoned in a moment of need and you bet your buttons it's not only all true, it happened to ME: It was the first night of moving, and by that I mean we had driven all freaking day and had only managed to get only 7 or so hours away, maybe. So we had split into two vehicles; the van, which Thing 2 had dubbed "The Man Van" since it housed The Father, The Brother, The Brother II and Dogs 1, 2 and 3. The Mother and the Me followed close behind in the suzuki that I tried to dub "Suzy" but it never quite caught on like " The Man Van". I do suck at naming things. Except for /my/ car, the SS Huckleberry aka Frankencar aka heart of my hearts and love of my life. But I digress. So Me, in the smaller car, watching Iron Man on my laptop (because that's just who I am (this week, lie in the grass next to the mausoleum i'm just a notch in your bedpost you're just a line in this song)) and I notice on the radio chatter (sidenote, it was legit radio chatter, we had walkie talkies we used to communicate across vehicles since this is The Olden Days and phones did Not Exist) that they're choosing a place to settle in for the night. This is a welcome plan for me, since I am good at one thing and one thing only, and it is Sleeping. So then we pull up to the motel. Now, couple things to know about me: 1) upon seeing this hotel, my Spidey Senses kicked in. I know I just said that I am only good at sleeping, but my spidey sense is nothing to turn your nose up at. This thing is freaky accurate. Some examples: the morning my grandma died, everything was off and felt a little hazy and I felt like I was supposed to be sad; this was before my Grandpa called to tell my mom. Another time, I was walking back from a wedding reception to my airbnb and every time I tried to turn down a specific road, I got sick to my stomach and so uneasy and every time I turned around and walked away, I immediately felt fine. Another time I was following a thunderstorm down a gravel road and the rain hit HARD and I knew if I didn't turn around something was going to Happen and I kept going trying to live my Twister Dreams (tm) and almost got stuck before I had the good sense to turn back and get myself out of that mudslide I was driving into. So when we pull up to the motel and my caveman brain starts yelling "NO TURN BACK" I am on edge and on guard from the start. 2) I am a Percy Jackson aficionado and, by extension, Greek mythology. And I think the place was called Osoyos or something else unintelligible and unpronounceable but my brain immediately snapped to "CIRCE" due to the similarities in spelling between "Odyssey" and this motel. For those of you that don't know, Circe is not exactly the b e s t host and a place that reminds you of her does not leave you with warm, fuzzy, "oh boy i can't wait to be willingly unconscious in there" feelings. I was not the only one to share these misgivings. Thing 1 and Thing 2 and Me the Perfect, tried to convince the Parentals to keep driving. The Fathbert got all "hURrrAHG we Stay HeRe" and started to bring all the things into the room. But even Mothership was sort of considering sleeping in the car to make sure none of the Unsavory Youths of the area tried to steal any of our loot. But Father and his, "HrAr hRUgH I deCiDe" mood decreed that we stay there. But here's the thing. The Parentals, Thing 2, and dogs 1, 2, 3 all had a room together. Thing 1 and I? a b a n d o n e d . They might as well have drawn a pentagon/pentagram/whichever one summons the devil on the floor and opened a portal to Outer Darkness and rolled us in. Because they got us a DIFFERENT ROOM. The mothership, still retaining a semblance of maternal instinct while father had clearly left his behind on the island we fled not 6 hours ago, walked us to the room next door. It felt much like a walk to the gallows must have. We opened the door and the musty air hit us. I was just about to make an excuse about seeing bugs in the bed and let's sue the place and leave, when I actually! saw! a bug! on the bed! Just! Jumping? It was jumping on the bed. Mother and Brother saw it too, and yet she made us stay, What did we look like, I wonder, the 17 and 14 year old BEGGING our mother to stay and not leave us while she backed out the room, swatting off my clinging hands and yelling that she loves us while she clearly proved the opposite. The door shut. Thing 1 and I stood alone. The decision was quickly made to not even bother brushing our teeth or changing into sleeping outfits; the sooner we were asleep, the sooner we were awake, the sooner we were leaving. I remarked that the place looked like the Bates Motel. Thing 1 straightened up, marched into the kitchenette and started opening cupboards and drawers at an intense speed. It wasn't until he started on the freezer/fridge that I asked what he was doing. "Looking for body parts," he says, while holding an opaque container he pulled from the otherwise empty fridge. Our eyes slowly drop to the closed lid. We stare at it for a moment, exchange a wide eyed stare with each other. He purses his lips, shakes his head, and then he puts it back in the fridge. I don't think we ever actually opened it. I promise something terrible was in it though, because the spectacular Spider-Dan (it's me, I am Spider- Dan-- I tried to make a play on Jordan and Spider-Man and that was the best I could do) was in full precognition mode. My teeth felt ridiculously grimey from a day of snacking and I eventually opted to brush my teeth while Brother watched the trailer for Psycho on his phone to compare my analysis of it looking like the Bates Motel with what footage he could find (in the end he agreed, and I'm to this day not sure if that counts as a win in that particular debate for me or not). Let me tell you though, I walked into that bathroom, toothbrush in hand, saw that clear shower curtain closed around the tub, and turned and walked back out. Thing 1 stood on the same spot I left him. He looked up from his phone where I can hear the familiar SCREE SCREE SCREE of the Psycho theme and says, monotonously and with very wide eyes, "Ahhh." I let loose a garbled giggle/scream and plucked up all the courage I pretended I ever had and marched back into the bathroom. But you folks better believe I gave that tub a wide berth lest I stumble upon the remains of whoever owned whatever organs were in that container in the fridge, and I kept the door open, and I brushed my teeth for maybe 7 seconds and I kept my back to the mirror so nothing could POP UP behind my shoulder suddenly. I come out of the bathroom, probably still foaming at the mouth with with toothpaste and Thing 1 and I stare distastefully at the beds. I lunge for the non-bug one but the brat gets there first so I tromp over to the other one, convinced I am about to become that outlier who should not have been counted and eat 10000000 bugs in my sleep in one night. I start to ask Thing 1 to turn off the light I left on in the bathroom in my haste to claim a bed since he's closest and our eyes meet again and a wordless communication that only siblings can understand is passed between us-- the light stays ON. Well into our teen years we may be, but we have been abandoned by our parents and not given any of the guard dogs for protection and dadgummit we are pretty sure we're about to be murdered and if anyone is going to judge us for sleeping with the lights on it is NOT gonna be Norman "Mummy's Boy" Bates as he chops us to bits. Brother/Thing suddenly yells, "OW" and I yell "AHHHH" and I start to think that this is it, this is how we go out, will people ever know how cool I was beneath this thick layer of lame. Then I yell, "WHAT??" because no further, "help I'm being murdered" sounds came from the corpse that used to be my brother. Instead he says, "It just.... felt like someone poked me in the eye." And I am so relieved that we are Not Dead, that I try to make a joke. It backfires. "Oh. Ha. Maybe it's the ghost of whoever stayed here last." We both start to laugh and then cut off abruptly and at the same time as the terror and potential truth to the statement sink in. The eerie silence of the sudden absence of uncomfortable laughter haunts me to this day. I got chills just typing about it. I normally cannot ever sleep on my back. I gotta be facedown like a starfish or I will not sleep. That night I lay flat on my back, ready to kick upwards (STREET SMARTS) at whatever entity tried to do me in overnight. I was closest to the door and the window which meant I was either a) gonna get eaten first or b) could make a better run for it while it ate Thing 1. I fell asleep contemplating whether or not he was worth saving; I had a spare brother after all, how many does one really need? As suddenly as I fell asleep, I woke up. And I slept with my glasses on, but they had shifted through the night, so I could see /something/ at the foot of my bed and I started to run through the whole, "here we go, take me quickly Death, I have a very embarrassing need to not annoy the neighbours with my screams and death gargles" thing again when I focused and realized it was just Thing 1. He only looked like he was hovering at the foot of my bed. He was actually stood at the door with his face pressed to the peephole. "What.... what are you doing?" I ask. He peels his face from the peephole and turns what can only be described as a wild and unhinged eyes on me. "Waiting," he says simply, and turns back to the door and smacks his face back to the peephole. I decided then and there that he got possessed through the night. Good bye brother, you annoyed me only most of the time, and your dry wit was appreciated, but I always said there could be only one middle child and here I am, still standing, while your soul has been devoured by a demon. C'est la vie. I do remember that the night before, it was determined we would be summoned to return to the car when the others woke up and had taken the dogs out, but I don't remember if he called or if they called but almost immediately after that exchange, he was on the phone to the Parentals. He made some noncommittal grunts, he nodded, said "Bye" and then left. LEFT. HE LEFT ME. You better believe I /SCRAMBLED/ outta that room. Swooped outta that bed, crammed my toothbrush in my backpack and jammed my shoes on my toes (not even on my whole foot! just the front half! I was walking like a bowlegged troll trying to keep myself from losing a shoe and lingering longer and still i was a proper speed demon!) and I was out. that. door. Now, seeing it all written down, I cannot properly capture the OOKY feeling that place gave me. And even now, years later, brother and I will mention the Eye Poking Guy of 105 and give short clipped laughs before meeting wide eyed gazes and looking behind our own shoulders. but anyway that's it, that's the story, night all

#storytime

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS 2020: 24/01

Mac Miller hasn’t had a #1 album since 2011, in the US or the UK, but his home country is most important here. The beloved Pittsburgh rapper made his debut with mixtapes, but his first studio album, Blue Slide Park, and his immature, fun-loving and careless attitude struck a chord with the general public, giving him a #1 debut album in America. Ever since, Mac Miller had been on a journey, with somewhat diminishing success  across his various experiments with acid-trip jazz-rap on Watching Movies with the Sound Off and Faces, funky soul and love-tinged R&B in The Divine Feminine, grandiose and genre-defying pop rap in GO:OD AM, as well as the melancholy synth-funk of Swimming. These albums had been successful, obviously, but never took him back to the reaches that he had debuted at. Tragically, on 7th September, 2018, Mac died of an accidental drug overdose, the climax of an addiction to substance abuse that had been troubling him for at least a decade, and that had been heavily documented in his music. I’m not saying that I was a massive fan of Mac Miller, but most of his music did very heavily resonate with me, especially Faces and my personal favourite, GO:OD AM. So, understandably, once producer Jon Brion released Mac’s astonishing and heart-wrenching posthumous album, Circles, earlier this month, I was very disappointed that Eminem, another white rapper who very much occupied a space in Mac’s audience, a space that you cannot deny existed, released a surprise album the same day called Music to be Murdered By, in which he spouts offensive nonsense that goes against everything Mac would have stood for, with gutter trash production, painful lyrics and staccato flaws, and arguably the most immoral decision made by Eminem, features a posthumous feature from late rapper Juice WRLD, who passed away due to a drug overdose last month. Yes, there are other hip-hop and pop artists who released albums that week, like Halsey, whose release date had been planned for months now and is clearly not taking away from Mac’s audience, as well as 070 Shake, who might not even chart, and Dreamville, a record label with a mediocre deluxe edition of a compilation album which again will not take from Mac’s chance at success, and at book-ending his career with a #1 as an evolved human, with more maturity, acceptance and most importantly, peace. Eminem’s album release is blatantly disrespectful, and out of protest and general apathy for this douche that I’ve been feeling for a long time, I’m not listening to the man’s album, or any of his songs. However, three of them happened to debut in the UK Top 40 this week, so I’m replacing them all with songs outside of the top 40.

ALBUM BOMB: Music to be Murdered By – Eminem

On 17th January, Eminem released his eleventh studio album, Music to be Murdered By. It debuted at #1 on the UK Albums Chart, becoming his ninth to do so, and features contributions from Dr. Dre, Young M.A., Royce da 5’9, Ed Sheeran, Juice WRLD, Skylar Grey, Black Thought, Q-Tip, Mr. Porter, The Alchemist, Anderson .Paak, Don Toliver and Slaughterhouse, minus Joe Budden. I’m disappointed in every single one of you. There are three songs from the album in the top 20, let’s go.

#17 – “Darkness” – Eminem

Produced by Eminem, Luis Resto and Royce da 5’9

It’s Eminem’s 46th(!) UK Top 40 hit, and sorry to switch up the structure and cover new arrivals first, but I’m not going to talk about this song, which was released with a music video from the perspective of the 2017 Las Vegas shooter who killed nearly 60 people, because of course it was, to “make a point about gun control”. Instead, I’ll talk about some random song outside of the top 40, hmm... how about “SUGAR” by BROCKHAMPTON?

#68 – “SUGAR” – BROCKHAMPTON

Produced by Jabari Manwa, Romil Hemnani and Chuks Chiejine

This is the first time I’m covering self-proclaimed hip-hop boy band BROCKHAMPTON on here, with what is probably their mainstream breakout hit after releasing three fantastic albums in the SATURATION trilogy and the middling but successful iridescence. This is from the pretty decent album GINGER, and correlating with the album it originates from, the song is only pretty decent. It’s definitely one of their most boy band-sounding songs, mostly due to the sweet, soulful hook delivered by uncredited vocalist Ryan Beatty, that works perfectly with the modest guitar pick-up, soon becoming a mantra, especially with that sweet harmonica in the background. However, Dom McLennon’s cheap Auto-Tuned verse is obnoxious, and there is a element of monotony to the mundane instrumentation, especially when the chorus starts to lose its lustre. Matt Champion is uninteresting and soon upstaged by bearface’s beautiful falsetto crooning, even though it feels incredibly out of place. Kevin Abstract’s bridge is cute, and I appreciate the reference to a previous BROCKHAMPTON single, “BLEACH”. Although, much like the hook, it runs its course, as does the meaningless bearface meander as an outro, which is droning and frankly makes the song feel a lot longer than 3 minutes and 25 seconds. It’s an okay song all things considered, and I do love the lyrics about youthful relationships that form strong bonds in later life, kind of like BROCKHAMPTON, especially after all of the struggles they have had to face since their debut, but sonically, this doesn’t do much for me. Sorry.

#12 – “Those Kinda Nights” – Eminem featuring Ed Sheeran

Produced by Eminem, FRED and D.A. Doman

I don’t want to hear a sex song from Eminem, or one from Ed Sheeran, let alone BOTH. These guys have so many top 40 hits in the UK they’re probably drowning in Official Chart Company data by now, so I won’t bother counting and I won’t bother reviewing; let’s listen to another boy band, shall we?

#46 – “BLACK SWAN” – BTS

Produced by Pdogg

There is more than one similarity here with BROCKHAMPTON though, as this is an emo-rap song with a pretty synth backdrop by a group of God knows how many guys crooning and rapping about love in heavily Auto-Tuned and processed tones. It’s almost like this was the perfect week for these two bands to appear. For context, this is the lead single from K-pop group BTS’ seventh album, I’m assuming from the artwork, and I quite like most BTS songs, to be honest, even if they very much suffer from the same flaws as most K-pop, some of their discography really flows effortlessly in comparison. Now, I obviously don’t speak Korean, but this seems very Westernised in the first place, with a Latin-infused acoustic guitar behind stuttering trap percussion and booming 808s. The BTS boys harmonise pretty fantastically over it as well, even if the rapping can sound somewhat awkward and off-beat, and in contrast to most K-pop, the transitions between verse and chorus are actually coherent, mostly because it just trades its guitar for a higher-pitched squeal and... yeah, sorry, I can’t say I like this either. There are some elements of this that are pretty sounding, at least, and it’s not offensively bad or anything, but I feel like this is just a second-rate rendition of much better emo-rap from catchy songwriters like Lil Peep, or even ILOVEMAKONNEN. For what it’s worth, the verse with J-Hope and SUGA on it is pretty nice, but that’s all I have to say, really. Honestly, it’s kind of disappointing.

#1 – “Godzilla” – Eminem featuring Juice WRLD

Produced by Eminem and D.A. Doman

Yup, you read that right. #1. Eminem’s tenth, Juice WRLD’s first. May the late Jared Higgins rest in peace, and I do feel somewhat petty replacing his song with another man who I know is up there with him, but I don’t regret passing on distasteful schlock from a man well past his prime, featuring cash-grab grave-robbery that even Drake would take offense to. I think it’s time to finally talk in depth about Mac.

FEATURED SONG: “Blue World” – Mac Miller

Produced by Guy Lawrence and Jon Brion

“Blue World” is far from the most introspective set of lyrics on Mac Miller’s posthumous album, Circles, but it is definitely my favourite track from the album, which is a 9/10 by the way. The production is handled by Guy Lawrence, one half of future bass duo Disclosure, and you can definitely tell, as it is a jarring intermission during the more run-down guitar soul instrumentals found on Jon Brion-produced tracks. That’s not to say the instrumental is bad per se, though, far from it; it starts with a sample of “It’s a Blue World” by the Four Freshmen, specifically just isolated vocals that drown out after playing for 20-seconds until a sample chop that is arguably catchier than the actual chorus, shifting the coherent blues of the Four Freshmen to muddled, confusing synth-focused messes, with slick percussion and excellent 808 bass creeping in, especially in the second verse, but it doesn’t detract from the sweet instrumental that very much sounds “blue”. The finger-snaps aren’t fake in this one, folks, and the bridge with Mac Miller meandering over the choir loop, over the already overwhelmingly bubbly production, which is quite minimalist in many places otherwise, is just a beautiful, grand moment, probably one of the best I’ve heard in popular music. Lyrically, Mac Miller is at peace, retrospectively rapping about the trials and tribulations of life like they’re nothing, in a calm, almost bored tone. The contrast is pretty fittingly “trippy”, which does add a subtle dark undertone to the song, which of course is always there through seemingly foreboding lyrics about his death that he saw as inevitable, although he was attempting to “turn around and do 180”, referencing Donnie Darko and constant failed attempts at picking his life back up and kicking the habit, only to be shot down once again. Of course, the morbid subtext of this is the car crash that he was involved in prior to the overdose, that changed his way of thinking and made him appreciate the more finer, subtle things in life. While the first half of the chorus is sweet and funny, the second half, despite taking no musical tone shift, is a desperate plead for the devil to spare him, and for him not to trip into the sin of drug addiction once again, after making such an effort to improve his life. On the first verse, he talks to himself, saying that he only makes music for himself, because, well, it’s the only thing he can really do to allow himself to express creativity through his personal struggles with mental health, and music gives him an avenue. After all of his friends supposedly leave him, he keeps a facade that he doesn’t worry, when in reality, he is conflicting with himself and ruminating on it. Whilst the official lyric seems to be “That’s rich”, I would like to believe my initial mondegreen as it could also work as an interpretation: “We ain’t even worried, we just laughin’-ass rich”: Mac Miller feels that his wealth and status has blocked him from all regular social interaction, and he can only laugh in response, ignoring his mental state for the sake of keeping up appearances. After the first refrain, he falls, and loses his mind in the second verse, detailing the “devil” calling him (This could be the voices in his head or even a drug dealer), but he is so used to fashionable life as an egotist that he feels like God when he’s being tempted by the devil, and he keeps his head on his shoulders, even if it’s just for the fans to know, or at least have the impression, that he’s okay. The bridge is awfully poignant and is almost talking to himself on Earth: If Mac could foresee Mac having the time of his life in Heaven, maybe he could have done something to reconcile his relationships or repair his mental state before it was too late. But, hey, he’s at peace. He’s not afraid of death, so why should we? It’s actually a pretty inspiring, uplifting single all things considered, and definitely one of if not my all-time favourite Mac Miller song. What a beautiful track. Rest easy, Mac. You too, Juice.

end of part 1

Top 10

Apologies for shaking up the format, but I did want to get all that nonsense out of the way before the regular programming, so to speak. So we know already that “Godzilla” by Eminem featuring Juice WRLD is unfortunately at #1 and I do not need to elaborate.

At number-two, at the runner-up spot, is “The Box” by Roddy Ricch, up three spots, and making a play for #1 next week because “Godzilla” definitely will not last.

Down two spaces to number-three is last week’s #1 is “Own It” by Stormzy featuring Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran.

To my surprise and excitement, the excellent “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd is up four spaces to number-four.

At number-five, down three positions, is “Before You Go” by Lewis Capaldi, but it might rebound due to the video.

At number-six, down three spots off of the debut, it’s “Life is Good” by Drake, then Future.

“Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa has unfortunately taken a tumble down three spots to number-seven.

At number-eight, it’s “ROXANNE” by Arizona Zervas, also falling down two spots.

We actually have a second new entry in the top 10 as well, which is “Ei8ht Mile” by DigDat and Aitch missing its chance at chart coincidence gold by debuting at number-nine. I’m honestly really surprised this debuted so high but I also don’t expect it to last, despite its consistently good streaming numbers. It’s from his mixtape of the same name, and it’s DigDat’s fourth UK Top 40 entry, first top 10 hit, and highest ever charting song, after “New Dior” peaked at #16 last week. It’s Aitch’s seventh UK Top 40 hit (And fifth top 10 hit). We’ll talk about it more in depth later.

Finally, Lewis Capaldi’s “Someone You Loved” is at #10. Go away.

Climbers

Our only climber here that’s notable enough is for Halsey, as the release of her album Manic has meant that “You should be sad” leapt up 11 positions to #26. I don’t think it’ll last, though.

Fallers

Well, this is a weird one. I set a number of spots fallen as an arbitrary limit to what songs I can talk about and consider “notable”, so most of the fallers here won’t get talked about, even if most of the chart as a whole has actually fallen at least a spot, including four-spot or three-spot drops for nearly the entire top 10 of last week. Our only big notable ones should be pretty obvious though: “Lose You to Love Me” by Selena Gomez loses the album momentum down nine spaces to #27, “South of the Border” by Ed Sheeran featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B flops down six spots to #30, the diss track “Still Disappointed” by Stormzy is actually still here to my surprise, down 15 spaces to #36 for obvious reasons, and “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles temporarily falls six spots to #39, but there’s a video soon so it’ll be rebounding well enough. There’s also a small collection of songs that are just 2019 leftovers making their way out; “bad guy” by Billie Eilish is down five to #28, “Vossi Bop” by Stormzy is down seven to #34, “HIGHEST IN THE ROOM” by Travis Scott is down seven to #37 and “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello is down five  to #40.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

There aren’t any returning entries this week but we have plenty dropouts. Selena Gomez’s “Rare”, despite being one of my favourites from Selena, is actually the first to drop out off of the debut at #28 last week, along with “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran featuring Justin Bieber out from #29, “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, etc. out from #36, “Outnumbered” by Dermot Kennedy out from #38, and “Turn Me On” by Riton, Oliver Heldens and Vula, all of which are just ending their second run as 2019 leftovers. By next week, we’ll be fully 2020... I hope. Anyway, here are some songs you should look out for below #40, that could easily reach the top 40 in the coming weeks. They’re not all good songs, but they’re not all bad either: “High Fashion” by Roddy Ricch featuring Mustard at #74, “Say So” by Doja Cat at #60, “Roses” by Saint Jhn at #55, “Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy at #53, “Suicidal” by YNW Melly at #50, and of course, “Good News” by Mac Miller at #45. Let’s talk about the non-Eminem new arrivals, which honestly don’t seem promising.

NEW ARRIVALS

#35 – “Me & You Together Song” – The 1975

Produced by George Daniel and Matthew Healy

Me and the 1975 don’t exactly get along. I hate the pretentiousness of some of the content, and Matthew Healy is one of the least likeable pop singers in recent memory, but I can’t deny some of the choruses and genuinely great songwriting that the band demonstrates throughout their discography, and “The Sound” is genuinely incredible. I appreciate the willingness to experiment as not enough mainstream pop does, but they never go too far into the deep end and stay in mostly boring pop-rock territory, which makes a lot of their songs feel either janky and awkward or just slow and dull. This is their third single from their upcoming album Notes on a Conditional Form after the last two failed, and apparently this is “music for cars”. Well, we’ll see about that. This is their ninth UK Top 40 hit, and God damn it, I like this one a lot. It’s a full-on 1990s British rock throwback, with elements of shoegaze, dream pop and of course Britpop fused together in one quick jangle-pop bop. It starts pretty abruptly with that really catchy, really pretty guitar riff, as well as some unexpected distortion that I’m just glad has made its way on the pop charts, to be honest, and then Matthew Healy comes in and actually sounds pretty great, with one of his sweetest vocal melodies in a long time. His cute, loveable vocal cadences make this love song feel so full of joy, delight and sunshine, and sure, it’s a bit too saccharine and perhaps overly sweet, but it’s also really freaking catchy, and you can’t deny how great the guitars sound in this. Healy’s vocals feel oddly lo-fi and definitely out of the focus on the mix here, making some of the lyrics basically incoherent, but a sincere declaration of puppy love has never focused on the poetic intricacies. Sometimes a repetitive, nasal mantra of “I’ve been in love with you for ages!” is all you need. Yeah, this is pretty great, and it reminds me of their earlier stuff, which was bubbly, bouncy and a lot more fun than what they tried to do afterwards, but this in undoubtedly a lot more refined. Looking at the lyrics actually, I love these too: Matty’s infatuated with a friend who doesn’t feel the same way, and he can’t properly get her to reciprocate that, but he seems okay with it. I love these mundane one-liners he drops, and honestly, they sound kind of like anti-humour. Here are my favourites:

I can’t remember when we met because she didn’t have a top on [The opening line. He doesn’t elaborate]

We went to Winter Wonderland and it was s**t but we were happy (Happy)

Oh, and there’s this whole tangent where he desperately tries to reassure the fact that he is NOT in fact gay, which is unnecessary but funny regardless. Yeah, I like this song a lot. Check it out.

#33 – “What a Man Gotta Do” – Jonas Brothers

Produced by David Stewart and Ryan Tedder

The Jonas Brothers are just a pop group now, alright? The novelty wore off pretty quickly last year so now Nick, Joe and Kevin have got to prove themselves as pop stars in 2020... and they’re doing it with a rock song apparently, our second in a row, and that’s a good sign. They performed this at the Grammy’s and I watched the performance on 4Music’s pitiful coverage; I wasn’t interested, really, but that may just be because it’s live so I don’t get to properly hear all of the intricacies of the Jonas Brothers. It’s their sixth UK Top 40 hit and yeah nevermind lmao

Okay, so admittedly the song is not terrible but it’s far from great. Nick Jonas’ falsetto is still hilarious, especially when half-mumbling over isolated guitar strumming, but I do appreciate the return to Disney-rock, especially the chorus, which is insanely catchy but a tad dry; in fact despite the elements of character in the song like Jonas Brothers’ natural lack of charisma, the generally awful lyrics and the overly quiet crowd chanting noises, I can’t find a single part of this song that is any different from a sub-par Disney villain song. Not one from Scar or any of the epic animated ones, no, the ones from their Disney Channel sitcom garbage. Also, I swear the Grammy’s version had, like, a climax? This just exists for three straight minutes. No more, no less. No Jonas, no Brothers.

#9 – “Ei8ht Mile” – DigDat featuring Aitch

Produced by Chris Rich Beats and WhYJay

This is a three minute drill song with 13 verses. Okay, well, those 13 verses are both very short, and there’s also not a single chorus; really, it’s just one really long verse where both DigDat and Aitch trade bars. The beat is kind of cool and menacing, as it’s mostly piano but has some brass inflections and they sound pretty sweet and Latin-influenced, almost? It sounds like a sample from a spy movie, kind of? I can’t really describe  it, or this song, as it completely lacks description. Aitch is void of personality, and DigDat is more energetic, sure, but his content isn’t there like it was in “New Dior”. None of these flows are interesting, and neither are the lyrics, and neither are the rappers. This is exactly what I expected though, to be honest. How the hell did this debut so high?

Put my money in bricks, not cocaine ones

Wh—So you just put your money in bricks? Do you invest in real estate?

Talk like your bad and you shoot like Kobe / Till you get left scar-face like Tony (Geez)

Uh—

I’m richer than all them opps, ask Sony (Ask them!)

Huh? Why?

Still washin’ up white like Persil

Okay, that’s kind of funny.

Big bro’s plugs are bald got a moustache; Breaking Bad

Nevermind.

Got a spin ting, no Beyblade / Pray they don’t lock me up like TAY-K

HUH

Conclusion

Sadly, I can’t give anything to BROCKHAMPTON, BTS, or Mac Miller, so I’m going to give Worst of the Week to Eminem. Not the songs, not the album, just Eminem. Best of the Week is definitely going to “Me & You Together Song” by the 1975, and I think there’s not really anything worth caring about here to award any Honourable or Dishonourable Mentions. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank, I’ll see you next week.

REVIEWING THE CHARTS 2020

[thejacketpocket]

Rain inside when it’s sunny out

As our species continues into not-so-slow march to extinction, here are some albums that set the mood and passed the time the best for me this past year.  Bandcamp links where applicable.

15. YG- Still Brazy

This was easily the most fun album of the year and it more or less opened with a biographical song about being shot. It’s also the album that has the Fuck Donald Trump song (highly skippable after the first listen), so there’s that. I was more taken with the way his hooks and chants run wide, gleeful circles around each other and how the elastic G-funk bass made summer driving a delight.

14. Kemper Norton- Toll

Based on the 1967 crash of an oil tanker off the coast of Cornwall—the biggest oil spill in UK history—this album sounds like something dark slowly washing ashore in wave after wave. It’s put together from bits of found sounds and ambient textures that are simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive, which occasionally piece themselves together into surprisingly affecting folk music. The net effect is incredibly lonely, and at times like a Belle and Sebastian album without all of the wonderful characters; just one person in an industrial world that’s slowly turning to rust.

Bandcamp link

13. David Bowie- Blackstar

I always expect this album to be a little more unbuttoned when I hear it—and I wish that it was the case—but it’s still more layered and complex than anyone could have hoped for (and has actually made me appreciate The Next Day significantly more). It’s an affecting, first-person narration of a man taking one last look around before abandoning modern life and material possessions and slowly disappearing back into the darkness of the forest. 

12. Eluvium- False Readings On

In what is surely the most fully realized work of composer Matthew Cooper, minimalist passages of strings, woodwinds, and piano are washed over by tape hiss and white noise, and angelic, operatic human voices advance and retreat, part Greek chorus and part gasp for air. Ostensibly an album inspired by themes of cognitive dissonance in modern society, it also serves as an elegy for civilization, sounding like a boat gently sailing toward the horizon, before finally falling off the edge of the world.

Bandcamp link

11. King- We Are KING

Three women reproduce the lush aesthetic of Al B. Sure!’s “Nite and Day” and slather it across an hour’s worth of brilliant songs (if something as fully realized as “Red Eye” or “Supernatural” had been on the Frank Ocean album it would have been ubiquitous), apply it to a no-budget “get in the van” career approach that’s somewhat rare in the R&B world, and fatten the album up with a down comforter’s worth of warmth and texture.

Bandcamp link

10. The Field- The Follower

The front half of this is probably the catchiest stuff Alex Willner has ever made; it’s repetition as pop, as earworms slip in and out, bobbing and sinking in the mix, and the overall compositions become so ingrained in your listening experience that you start subconsciously shifting the sounds around yourself. This is a fairly commonplace quality of such music, lifted here by the infectious nature of the two-and-three-note melodies and the spirited use of whispery vocal samples to effectively generate a ghost in the machine.

Bandcamp link

9. Conor Oberst- Ruminations

Who knows if this guy writes biographical songs or he’s just taking the piss, but this album sounds like the work of somebody who has had his ass kissed for a decade only to have everyone turn on him—which would not be far off from what actually happened to him. It’s a delightfully bitter, nihilistic, and thoroughly lonely album that also happens to contain his loosest and most immediately engaging songs in a decade. Note the fact that the kid who was once called a “next Dylan” has now made his most-Dylan sounding record yet in terms of presentation—all sparse guitar-and-harmonica kiss-offs—as a vehicle to chuckle sardonicly at the long-ago hype.

8. Miranda Lambert- The Weight of These Wings

Maybe her best album, maybe not, but certainly the best vehicle for her singing, with production stripped back just enough to make her voice sound glorious. The album maintains a consistent tone and general wit-and-wisdom vibe across a range of influences, as she tries on Nancy Sinatra's boots ("Pink Sunglasses"), Daniel Lanois' atmospherics ("Runnin' Just in Case"), or Patsy Cline's country soul ("To Learn Her"). Like most double albums, it could be condensed into a one-disc classic (leaning far heavier on material from “The Nerve” side), but it’s not like there’s any truly duff songs on it, either.

7. A Tribe Called Quest- We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service

I've just really missed the group hip-hop album, wherein a handful of MCs pass the mic back and forth—mid-song, mid-verse, mid-line, whatever—over the course of a full album, sounding like lifelong friends rather than brief business partners. There’s something idealistic about it, even if the album's MVP is not any of the MCs but the snare drum.

6. Not Waving- Animals

This is likely my most-listened album of the year, or certainly the one that fit my mindstate and routine in 2016 the best. With its highly catchy two-note melodies and impressionistic spattering of drums, it uses an industrial/punk ethos to sound broken yet alive in a particularly bracing fashion. In a broader sense, delving into Diagonal Records was probably my favorite musical anything this year as they had a lot of releases that I really dug (Powell, Nordic Mediterranean Organization, NHK yx Koyxen, Container).

Bandcamp link

5. Brandy Clark- Big Day in a Small Town

After a debut that didn’t quite do Brandy Clark’s songwriting justice, an extra sheen of production polish brings out the highlights in her compositions, confirming her as one of the best writers working—assuming this was not already confirmed—and a top-rate singer as well. Each song is a Russian nesting doll of melodies that uncork in ways that feel both surprising and inevitable, and her lyrics are flip, casually conversational, and a joy to memorize, say, and sing.

4. Julianna Barwick- Will

This fall, there was an Agnes Martin retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, which I found to be a profoundly moving exhibition. Many of Martin’s works in the show involve small, barely perceptible linework that assembles into patterns on white, cream, or oatmeal colored palettes. If you stand close to the work, you can see the artist’s hand, and get lost in her abstract forests of minimalist design. As you step back, these intricate patterns slowly fade to white, and the entire canvas become a single icy hue. This feeling of erasing yourself as a viewer is invigorating, and for me a much-needed sensation. That’s how I feel when I listen to this album, Barwick’s best since 2010’s masterful The Magic Place.

Bandcamp link

3. Cass McCombs- Mangy Love

This is an invertebrate album that squiggles into new shapes and colors every time you return it, wrapping itself in lush, Van Morrison-like arrangements or squirming away with Grateful Dead-like noodling. Perhaps the best lyricist working today, Cass’ oblique wordplay seemingly rearranges itself into new sentences with each listen, oscillating between storytelling and stream-of-consciousness, surreal and plainspoken, metaphorical and mundane. There’s an angry political heart if you want to hold up a stethoscope to the album, but you can also just settle into the instrumentation, the myriad details, and bits of wry, offbeat humor.

Bandcamp link

2. Solange- A Seat at the Table

I’m not the one to be adding more to what’s already been said about this album, but it’s the rare album to feel bigger than the sum of its parts, giving the impression of something other than an album: a totem of sorts. Discounting country music, “Mad” is probably the song I listened to the most. The second Lil Wayne verse is a heartbreaker every time, and the composition as a whole is therapeutic—a massage that bores deeper and deeper until it hits the spot that releases all of your tensions. The whole album is like that, really.

1. Danny Brown- Atrocity Exhibition

Danny Brown’s pitch-black worldview and performative anxiety felt more J.G. Ballard than Joy Division, but both fit the bill. No album sounded more like 2016 to me: manic, hyperventilating, lips curled into an inverted smile, arms flailing, running downhill toward the smoke and flames. It also cheered me up every time I listened to it.

#danny brown #solange #Cass McCombs #julianna barwick #brandy clark #the field #not waving #a tribe called quest #king #miranda lambert #conor oberst #yg #kemper norton #David Bowie #eluvium

[213hiphopworldnews]

The 50 Best Albums Of 2018

Uproxx Studios

In some ways, 2018 felt like the hardest year for music in a long time. There was huge loss — rising stars like Lil Peep, XXXtentacion, and Mac Miller all died way too young and, tragically, from drugs and violence, echoing the darkest moments of our culture on a national scale. Mistakes were made, transgressions came to light, plenty of people were dragged, roasted, and mercilessly mocked online, just for, well, trying to get through the year. That’s where the music comes in, though.

No matter how dreary and depressing things seemed to get this year, an outpouring of undeniable, unstoppable, and downright incredible music just kept rushing through the gates, carrying us all along on the power of a song, or the comfort of an album. In the spirit of music as medicine, here are the 50 albums that helped carry Uproxx Music staffers along in a harrowing year. It feels like creativity was high enough this year that 50 more could easily be on this list, too, but these are the cream of the crop, the best of the best, and the ones that made the final cut.

50. Mac Miller, Swimming

Warner Bros Records

It’s a damn, crying, awful shame that Mac Miller wouldn’t see the outpouring of love and affirmation he’s received in the wake of his death — almost as much as it is one that all that love seemed to have been reserved for his passing and not the album he left behind. Swimming, simply put, was Mac’s best work. It’s his lightest since KIDS, unweighted by the the melancholy he experienced as his career took off and left him feeling more and more isolated. It’s the most musically adventurous since, yes, his last album, The Divine Feminine, without the baggage attached to the nagging questions of inspiration that album brought with it.

Swimming is Mac, for lack of a better term, in the flow of things. He hadn’t figured everything out yet, but he had figured it that he didn’t have to. Assembling a squad of producers and musicians with Dev Hynes, DJ Dahi, Flying Lotus, and Thundercat, Mac laid down lush, luxurious soundbeds for his rambling, stream-of-consciousness raps to wind and wrap around and through on tracks like “Self Care,” “Ladders,” and “Conversation, Pt. 1.” With all that, the true tragedy of the loss of Mac Miller, however cliche it may sound, is that he was just getting started — and getting better all the time.–Aaron Williams

49. Tirzah, Devotion

Domino Records

Tirzah’s Devotion is “a slurry meditation on love and loneliness, as moody as wallpaper in Twin Peaks.” The genre-bending album expertly fuses R&B and electronic beats overlaid by Tirzah’s piercing lyrics, and culminates into a melancholic tracklist of musings on love, both wholesome and wretched. The record is produced by longtime collaborator Mica Levi, and the two make an inimitable match, as its tottering instrumentalism provides a flawless backdrop for Tirzah’s songwriting. It’s obvious that she’s the patron saint of earnestness and unwavering loyalty, even when it’s unreciprocated – especially when it’s unreciprocated – and that rarity instantly makes Devotion a treasure.–Leah Lu

48. Kyle, Light Of Mine

Independently Popular/Atlantic Records

On his cheerful major label debut album, Kyle is happily stuck somewhere in the middle between the awkward nerd and the suave rake, figuring out which aspects of each identity suit him best, and determining to use his own struggle as a beacon to anyone else who feels the same way. Maybe that’s why he borrowed the album title, Light Of Mine, from the folk gospel song that encourages its adherents to do just that — shine for the world, regardless of imperfection, in the hopes of leading the way to a brighter tomorrow.

That theme of “it all gets better” is easy to knock, but Kyle lives for that sort of thing. When he sings, “2016 hit me like a bag of bricks / 2017 switched up like ‘Ooh, it’s lit,” there’s probably not a soul on earth who can’t relate from at least some point in their lives. He sings about fumbling your way through love on “Playinwitme” and “Babies,” swerving between soaring confidence and optimism on “To The Moon” and shaky insecurity on “ShipTrip” and “iMissMe.” And in these moments, it’s one of the most honest and uplifting rap albums of the year. Kyle puts it all on the line: Who he was, who he is, and who he’s hoping we can all eventually be.–A.W.

47. Dilly Dally, Heaven

Partisan Records

Ever since Toronto stoner-punks Dilly Dally burst onto the scene in 2015 with the seething, screeching vocals of frontwoman Katie Monks on their debut album Sore, they’ve been turning heads in the rock world. The contrast between Monks’ inescapable wailing and guitarist Liz Ball’s classic guitar riffs made them a welcome addition to a still-thriving pocket of rock devotees and fans. But it was only recently that it became clear just how challenging the four-piece found touring to be.

In our profile on the band, Monks admitted there was a point where it looked like Sore was going to be their sole album. The grind of being a unit, of creating together, of living on the road — all of that took its toll. Fortunately for everyone involved, they got the band back together, and created the stormy, discordant, and deeply satisfying Heaven, a follow-up that is indeed fit for the pearly gates themselves. Full of catharsis, pain, joy, and blissed out, edge-of-existence guitar work, Heaven is a record that both raises their profile, and stands as a testament of how impactful battling to stay together against the odds can be.–Caitlin White

46. Kamasi Washington, Heaven And Earth

Young Turks

There’s a limited amount of bandwidth afforded to contemporary jazz music in the indie landscape, so it’s really saying something that Kamasi Washington has managed to stand out as one of the modern jazzmen that mainstream music fans pay attention to (although his association with Kendrick Lamar certainly helps). This doesn’t mean that the Los Angeles saxophonist is making music that’s inherently accessible: Jazz is often hard to approach as a casual fan, but Washington holds the door open for everybody with some grooves you can bob your head to and solos you can appreciate. Beyond that, though, there’s an absolute ton going on. To the jazz-ignorant (such as myself, admittedly), the genre can often come across as aimless or meandering, but on Heaven And Earth, it never feels like Washington is wasting time, or like he’s moving without purpose. Every sound is directed in a forward-facing motion, in all the myriad moods, emotions, and ideas he explores on his immense sophomore album.–Derrick Rossignol

45. Metric, Art Of Doubt

MMI/Crystal Math Music

Emily Haines has been in the business of misery for over twenty years, carefully sharpening all her personal gloom into sheer, searing rock songs that cut to the quick like no other — in large part, because they’re coming from a woman. The longevity of her band, Metric, hasn’t halted the Canadian rock quartet from undergoing a kind of metamorphosis on nearly ever album, and their latest, Art Of Doubt, is no different. This record restores Metric to their early glory, rivaling their 2009 hit record Fantasies in scope and accessibility; it’s a collection of songs about power, loss of control, grief, agony, and restoration.

And Haines’ crystalline alto never warps under the pressure of these intensive emotions, twisting instead, into something wise and fierce as the record unfolds. The group cites moving band member James Shaw out of his role as de facto producer and bringing in Justin Meldal-Johnsen for production duties as a major shift that helped restore melodic synergy, and that’s apparent all over the album. It holds together exactly like a record should, not a trace of doubt, even when the lyrics question everything on the planet — including the misery they contain. —C.W.

44. Interpol, Marauders

Matador Records

For 16 years, we’ve all known what to expect from Interpol, and the band’s latest album Marauder doesn’t radically diverge from that template. They’re still writing dark-hued post-punk songs with sneaky-funny absurdist lyrics. They’re still running at either a fast mid-tempo or a slow mid-tempo. They still wear incredible suits. But what’s impressive this time around is how much fun these guys — still a trio, because why bother replacing Carlos D? — still seem to have at finding new ways to explore the surprisingly resplendent contours of mopey goth-dude pop-rock.

This is, in a sense, a back-to-basics record: While Interpol is known for making pristine-sounding albums at a deliberate pace, Marauder was recorded live to tape, capturing the band at its rawest and sweatiest. (Relatively speaking, of course — those suits remain immaculate.) This feistiness provides a welcome edge to the ringing guitar and monotone vocals that are endemic to Interpol songs, underscoring the secret to the band’s enduring success — their vibrant, in-concert energy. Oh, and Marauder wouldn’t be a standout late-period Interpol album without some off-the-wall (and highly quotable) lyrics. (From “Party’s Over”: “Rock n’ roll b*tch I’m into it / I like to show you my stuff / Baby cheetahs the Himalayas / What’s got you startled umbilical.”)–Steven Hyden

43. Drake, Scorpion

Republic Records

I don’t know if “Drake fatigue” is a real thing, especially given the enduring, inescapable catchiness of “In My Feelings,” with its accompanying viral dance challenge and hilariously convoluted conspiracy theories. And, I might be a little more optimistic on that front than most, seeing subtle hints of creative growth on his mega-sized double album, Scorpion. After all, his empowerment anthems like “Nice For What” and “God’s Plan” were accompanied by suitably reflective, uplifting music videos courtesy of rookie video director Karena Evans. He spoke to his son on the introspective “March 14,” which turned out to be as personal a risk as creative. And in the album’s lighter moments, he seemed like he might finally be enjoying the trappings of fame, shedding the “suffering from success” demeanor of his Take Care album cover. Scorpion had some of the biggest moments of Drake’s career, and after a decade in the game — and almost half that time at the top — it’s impressive to think that, like the fine wines he’s so enamored with drinking, he’s still getting better with age.–A.W.

42. Charlie Puth, Voicenotes

Atlantic Records

Has anyone pulled off as epic of a rebranding in 2018 as Charlie Puth? Prior to this year, the “See You Again” singer made headlines for the ridiculous quotes he gave journalists (“I’m hungies!”) and his romantic exploits (Bella Thorne and Selena Gomez, though Selena tells a different story). But this year, Puth proved he’s “hungies” for more than just tabloid attention.

Voicenotes is a runaway critical smash. From the synths on “LA Girls” to the snaking bassline of “Attention,” every song on the album is immaculately crafted. Though Puth dips in and out of about a million genres — he has features from Boyz II Men and James Taylor, another “See You Again”-style weepie, and some yacht rock bangers — the album is also cohesive as a whole. Listening to Voicenotes, you get the impression that Puth is more confident than ever in who he is as an artist. For anyone who is still too distracted by Puth’s public image to open yourself up to his earworm bops, the man has some words for you: “You could either hate me or love me / But that’s just the way I am.”–Chloe Gilke

41. Lucy Dacus, Historian

Matador Records

The first time I heard the title track on Lucy Dacus’ Historian, I remember thinking lovingly about one of my closest friends, and then thinking about how lucky I felt to have someone in my life that came immediately to mind. “I’ll be your historian and you’ll be mine,” Dacus sings, over crescendoing synths. “And I’ll fill pages of scribbled ink, hoping the words carry meaning.”

Historian has been out since March, which feels like a number of eternities ago, but each song still rings just as poignant. Dacus doesn’t spend much time here pining over fleeting romances, perhaps because she knows that she doesn’t have much time to spend at all. Listening through the album feels like flipping through Dacus’ old journals, witnessing her experience moments of extreme rage to utter triumph to cutting pain. The record reminds us that really, all we have are our memories and what we make of them, and so we might as well write our own histories.–Leah Lu

40. Post Malone, Beerbongs And Bentleys

Republic Records

Post Malone’s Beerbongs And Bentleys is the Texas artist follow-up album to his No. 1 debut Stoney, and at the time of his new album’s release, his first record was still on the Billboard charts. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that his second album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1, broke streaming records, and garnered over 40 million US streams on Spotify within 24 hours. The double-platinum sophomore album from Posty is also home to his first No. 1 song, “Rockstar” featuring 21 Savage, followed up by his next No. 1, “Psycho,” featuring Grammy Award-winning recording artist Ty Dolla Sign.

Beerbongs And Bentleys is mostly carried by prominent features and A-1 production from Post Malone himself, Tank God, PartyNextDoor and London On Da Track. Although Post insists on separating his sound from hip-hop, it’s his adoption of the infectious trap-style triplet flow and harmonizing that makes the record worthy of repeat listens. And on his solo tracks — “Over” and “Stay” — he flexes impressive guitar playing skills. Filled with 18 spacey-sounding songs, Beerbongs And Bentleys thrives off fan popularity and doesn’t miss a beat.–Cherise Johnson

39. Mitski, Be The Cowboy

Dead Oceans

No one sings of devotion quite like Mitski Miyawaki. On Be The Cowboy, Mitski’s iconic and woozy fifth record, that devotion isn’t quite pointed at any one thing in particular. She’s not asking for much at all; even some mild lip-action will do. “Somebody kiss me, I’m going crazy,” she laments on “Blue Light.”

There’s no way to deny the loneliness that permeates Mitski’s songwriting on the 14-track slate, but she’s not exposing it with the intent of seeking sympathy – “I don’t want your pity,” she says outright on “Nobody,” arguably Be The Cowboy’s danciest and most pathetically relatable anthem. Instead, she’s purging it so that she can turn precisely into the thing she feels like she’s lonesome for — it’s what the album’s name implies, after all. In an interview with NPR earlier this year, Mitski attributed the record’s title to an old college friend she admired for the electric “cowboy swagger” he’d exude onstage: “Well, then if I wanna see it live then I should just be that cowboy, I should just be the thing that I admire.” On this album, she exudes enough swagger for all us wanna-be cowboys, and then some.–L.L.

38. Lykke Li, So Sad So Sexy

RCA Records

Lykke Li’s most defining characteristic is her unpredictability. Following a debut album that carried a hue of youthful innocence, her follow-up record found her declaring herself a prostitute on “Get Some.” Then for I Never Learn, a moment that seemed ripe for her ascending to the pop throne instead manifested itself as a Phil Spector-influenced record of weepy torch songs, a breakup album to rule over all other breakup albums. The only thing that felt expected about this year’s So Sad So Sexy was really the title, which got to the very core of what Lykke Li represents.

Well, actually that’s only half true. The other throughline you can draw in the work of Lykke Li is the continuous high quality. In 2018, it’s a little more hip-hop and trap influenced, a little smokier and distant, a little more weathered from past heartbreaks. It’s also her first album since becoming a mother, which manifests in the open-hearted anthem, “Utopia.” But be it in the gut-wrenching despair of “Last Piece” or the Aminé-featuring betrayal of “Two Nights,” So Sad So Sexy is another captivating chapter from a pop music chameleon who has found success down every dark alley she’s searched.–Philip Cosores

37. Foxing, Nearer My God

Triple Crown Records

This St. Louis emo band’s breakout album, Nearer My God,- doesn’t play by the rules of normal indie records, where humility is valued and wanton displays of ambition and artistic audaciousness are discouraged. In interviews, the band members talked openly about wanting to make their version of OK Computer, a grand statement that goes down in modern music history. While Nearer My God doesn’t quite hit that wildly elevated mark, it is one of the most satisfyingly “epic” indie releases of recent years, taking Foxing’s guitar-based songs and blowing them out with electro-R&B swagger.

While Foxing is primarily known in the underground punk scene for their energetic, near-messianic live shows, Nearer My God was the product of almost two years of studio experimentation, in which songs were put together, taken apart, and then reassembled (and then often taken apart and reassembled several more times). This resulted in thoroughly unexpected stylistic diversions like “Heartbeats,” which sounds more like M83 than The Hotelier, and the luminous “Grand Paradise,” in which punk guitars provide spiky counterpoint to Conor Murphy’s delicate falsetto. (Frank Ocean’s Blonde was a pivotal influence on Foxing during the making of Nearer My God.) In the end, it still sounds like rock music, but the wonder of Nearer My God is seeing Foxing expand the definition of rock to suit its own idiosyncratic purposes.–S.H.

36. The Carters, Everything Is Love

Roc Nation/Parkwood Entertainment

Jay-Z and Beyonce as The Carters presented their surprise album Everything Is Love as the ultimate ode to Black love and partnership. It’s not rare to hear Jigga rap about Black Excellence and championing the idea of keeping money within the community, and on Everything Is Love, Jay takes Bey along for the ride as she offers her impeccable Houston swagger and vocals echoing those same sentiments.

Everything is put on the table as they not only address personal struggles on the album — and that infamous elevator incident — they sing and rap about how they got through the good times and bad. “Summer” is the album’s jazzy, smooth introductory track heralding the notion of affection and appreciation between the married couple. The album’s lead single, “Apesh*t,” is quite the opposite — a hard-hitting, boastful trap song featuring recognizable inflections and ad-libs from Migos’ Quavo, who happened to help to write the Mike Will Made-It-produced song. As a couple, they initiate the “Apesh*t” with demands of getting their respect. Jay himself commands to be paid in equity for his art and brags about denying requests to perform at the Super Bowl. Everything Is Love‘s other tracks such as “Boss,” “713,” and “Friends,” continue to tell The Carters’ story as they want to tell it — through great production and catchy hooks. This is what love and war sounds like.–C.J.

35. Wild Pink, Yolk In The Fur

Tiny Engines

“I just really wanted to make something bigger in scope,” Wild Pink’s John Ross previously told Uproxx. “I think that obviously, ’70s rock is the heyday of rock and those records are enormous […] making more interesting textures and sound palettes or whatever, that’s becoming way more important to me.” There’s no questioning that Ross achieved a sizable sound on his newest Wild Pink record. The album opens with “Burger Hill,” a meditative track that keeps things tranquil and sets the stage for “Lake Erie,” a song that quickly blooms into a vintage-sounding, alt-country- and heartland rock-influenced atmosphere that seems as big as the titular body of water. It’s a challenge to sound classic without coming across as overly nostalgic, but that’s what Yolk In The Fur achieves: It borrows from a different time but is also timeless. It’s a breath of uncommonly fresh air that has ultimately established Wild Pink as not only a band on the rise, but an indie group that already has a damn fine record in its arsenal.–D.R.

34. Leon Bridges, Good Thing

Columbia Records

Leon Bridges‘ 2015 debut Coming Home was a stellar slice of reflective, throwback soul, like Sam Cooke preserved in amber and revived by the scientists from Jurassic Park. But, it also ran the risk of potentially pigeonholing the soulful Texan crooner. Fortunately, he took enough time off to live and evolve as an artist before returning, opening up his palette of styles and genres for his follow up, Good Thing, a transformative neo-soul masterpiece that more than lives up to its title.

Rather than sticking to the blueprint of husky, pioneering singers like Cooke and becoming nothing more than a gifted imitator, Leon steps into his own as a visionary innovator, incorporating blues country (“Beyond,” “Mrs.”), hip-hop (“Shy”), and even disco (“If It Feels Good”) to stretch and expand the definition of the spaces his smoky vocals can fill up. Bridges makes the transition from eye-and-ear-catching novelty to bonafide pop star, delivering “Bad Bad News” and assuring the listener that the “Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand” on head-nodding, toe-tapping bops and transcendent ballads. Good Thing is warm and comforting like home cooking, but it’s also worldly and expansive, building on the foundations laid by Coming Home to show that Leon is capable of great things as he grows as an artist and as a man.–A.W.

33. Snail Mail, Lush

Matador Records

Snail Mail’s debut album Lush graced us right at the beginning of a muggy, thick-with-desire, slow burn of a summer. “I’m so tired of moving on / spending every weekend so far gone,” Lindsey Jordan snarls on “Heat Wave,” a track saturated with angst and bare-bones longing. “Heat wave, nothing to do / Woke up in my clothes having dreamt of you.” Then the shredding guitar kicks in, signaling a descent into the level of infatuation where we finally, maybe somewhat pathetically, admit that we’re in deep. Jordan is only 19, but her songwriting has the type of brash wittiness that captures what it feels like to have a crush at any age. Jordan has gripping control over her voice and instrumentalism (she’s taken guitar lessons from Mary Timony of Helium), but she’s also got a stabilizing, tight-lipped charge over her emotions — Lush showcases a pristine, youthful handling of heartbreak, hiding close to nothing.–L.L.

32. Phosphorescent, C’est La Vie

Dead Oceans

After a five year hiatus from releasing new music, plenty of artists struggle to get back into the groove. Yet, on C’est La Vie, Matthew Houck and his revolving cast of musicians seem to have settled deeper into their preferred patterns as Phosphorescent than ever before. In the past half decade, Houck, along with his fellow band member and now-wife, Jo Schornikow, moved to Nashville and welcomed two children into their family, so there are plenty of songs filled with love and tenderness on the record.

But, there are also far-reaching tracks about the impact of time and age on a person (“C’est La Vie No. 2”), meditations on travel and foreign countries (“Christmas Down Under”), celebratory jingles that slyly, playfully embrace the trappings of fame (“New Birth In New England”), and a backward-glancing slow burners that reflect on just how quickly and easily things can change. And despite the time that’s passed, or how much things may have changed in his personal life, Houck and his band are still creating some of the most inventive and intelligent gossamer psych-folk that can be found anywhere in the world. While everyone else is concerned with measuring the change, this is a record that is content to sit and let it come, wave upon wave.–C.W.

31. Cat Power, Wanderer

Domino Records

When Chan Marshall, the mercurial songwriter who has delivered a number of indie classics as Cat Power, delivered her latest album to Matador Records, the story goes that there was some dispute about what it should sound like. “They said, do it again, do it over,” she told The New York Times, saying that the label was looking for hits and wanting her to sound more like Adele. It’s a baffling bit of feedback for anyone familiar with Cat Power, knowing that arena-level pop stardom was never in the cards, and it resulted in her leaving the label that had been her home for almost her entire career.

But listening to Wanderer, it’s a godsend that Marshall stuck to her guns and made the album that she wanted. It has some particularly trademark moments, including a cover of Rihanna’s “Stay” that falls perfectly in line with a tradition of reworkings of ubiquitous classics that she is largely known for. And, on the album’s closest thing to a potential hit, “Woman,” Lana Del Rey pops up for backup vocals to showcase how far-reaching Marshall’s influence is. But tying the album together is the song “Horizon,” a meditative and gorgeous vision that somehow has elements evoking both Nick Cave and Travis Scott. It showcases Marshall’s ability to draw from the pop canon while maintaining a distinctly contemporary bent, something that will never translate to Adele-level notoriety, but has carved out a rewarding and always laudable career for Cat Power.–P.C.

30. Grouper, Grid Of Points

Kranky

As Grouper, Liz Harris has been able to create a world that dwells in the grey so many of us call home. Grid Of Points, her eleventh album, is as delicate as a stained glass window, and diffuses the light in a similar way, drawing in muted, elegiac tones that lend her music a sense of reverence. Though it is by no means religious, Grouper’s music is spiritual. Spiritual, in that it is concerned with the spirit; barely registering lyrics lilt above melodies that the listener feels deep inside their body, below the bones and skin, where the soul resides, maybe.

Working over the span of just a week and a half, Harris layered austere piano melodies and porous vocal harmonies across seven tracks, which take up just 22 minutes. Yet, the resulting sparse record still registers as one of the fullest, most complete expressions of the year. In a world of overstuffed, deluxe versions, bonus tracks, and remastered artifacts, Grid Of Points affirms the need for negative space, the need for brevity, the preciousness of simplicity. It is a record full of grey, unyielding light, and an argument that not all lightness need be bright.–C.W.

29. Amen Dunes, Freedom

Sacred Bones Records

With Freedom, Damon McMahon pivoted away from the freak folk of previous Amen Dunes records and toward a sound influenced, in his words, by “really, really good mainstream music,” including Nirvana, Oasis, Tom Petty, and Aphex Twin. Freedom doesn’t sound like any of those artists, exactly, though you can recognize a common impulse to connect with music that’s a little more visceral and immediate. Working with the guitarist Delicate Steve, McMahon builds anthemic songs out of insistent, wiry guitars and relentless, motorik beats. While McMahon’s gaze remains fixated on the stars, Freedom isn’t a dreamy or torpid — the songs are always moving toward rousing climaxes, especially on the album highlight “Believe,” which builds from a murmur to a wave of Delicate Steve’s Edge-like guitar arpeggios. Freedom overall is grounded in ’80s radio rock. (The guitar-driven coda for the title track sounds almost exactly like the riff from Bryan Adams’ “Run To You.”) But McMahon is able to evoke the populist power of that music without slavishly imitating it. The result is an album that seems to already reside in your subconscious even as you’re hearing it for the first time.–S.H.

28. Mick Jenkins, Pieces Of A Man

Free Nation/Cinematic Music Group

Manhood, especially manhood as defined by the narrow scope allotted to it by the established tenets of hip-hop culture and rap music, is a funny thing. It’s funny in its peculiarity and its complexity, tangled and pinned to old ideas and new in constant conversation with one another — or in conflict. Maybe that’s what makes Mick Jenkins’ 16-song exploration of manhood so densely layered and engaging. Pieces Of A Man is mazelike and challenging as Mick wrestles with the implications of being a man — a Black man, a young man, an enlightened man — in hip-hop and the wider world, which often holds its own expectations and restrictions for us to confront, defy, work within, and struggle against.

Mick co-opts poet Gwendolyn Brooks on the calmly surveying “Gwendolyn’s Apprehension,” contemplates image and perception on “Plain Clothes,” and weighs the implications of America’s current crisis of conscience regarding men’s role in women’s traumas on “Consensual Seduction.” Throughout, he remains wittily ambivalent, consciously and carefully turning over each issue with the lyrical deftness and depth prerequisite to tackle such weighty subjects. He may not come to many conclusions by the end of the album, but perhaps that’s the point. Manhood is ever evolving; the minute you think you have it all figured it out, you’ve already been left behind.–A.W.

27. Jon Hopkins, Singularity

Domino Records

The goal of a lot of music is to tell a story, and a song can get a message across without a single spoken phrase. “I kind of see the arc of all five of my albums telling a continuing story,” Jon Hopkins previously told Uproxx. “Obviously that makes more sense to me, because they tie in directly to my own experiences and my own kind of evolution, but I think each one to me is very much the next part of the story, whatever the story may be.” And that story is continued on Singularity, his best album to date.

Stories are told because they’re the way we can best communicate a series of events or a moral message through spoken language. But sometimes, thoughts and feelings are too abstract to put into words, and that’s where Hopkins’ instrumental soundscapes can have an advantage over lyrical music. The album-opening title track, for example, evokes a sense of adventure and beginning better than poetic musings could. Alison Krauss may as well have been talking about Hopkins’ control over aural environments when she sang, “You say it best when you say nothing at all.”–D.R.

26. Oneohtrix Point Never, Age Of

Warp Records

Oneohtrix Point Never, AKA Daniel Lopatin, already has a career’s worth of experimentation under his belt, and even though “experimental” and synonyms thereof are among the predominant words used when describing his sound, he really expanded upon that in significant ways on his latest, Age Of. For one, he decided to prominently feature his own vocals on the record, something he hasn’t really done before, and it works out well. A notable example is “Babylon,” which comes across like a lovelorn Drake song put through an Aphex Twin filter: It’s off-kilter, but ultimately defined by its emotional core.

Lopatin has also tended to base his records on a genre, mood, or idea as a springboard into his creative explorations, although it’s hard to pin down a central theme on Age Of, because apparently, we’re in an age of a lot of different influences. “Same” is like a warped Björk song, “The Station” has a Latin flair to it, “Manifold” is a lovely little piano track with some synths for good measure, “Black Snow” is a sort of synthwave ballad, and the list goes on. Lopatin isn’t one to run in place, instead jogging through entire neighborhoods and even neighboring communities on his most ambitious record to date.–D.R.

25. Haley Heynderickx, I Need To Start A Garden

Mama Bird Recordings

Portland’s Haley Heynderickx knows that growth is no breezy task, but rather one that requires the dirty work of thorough pruning and patience. Her debut album is aptly named, then; I Need To Start A Garden as a declaration feels loaded with steely conviction. And Heynderickx has had quite the blossoming year, with a career kickstart from her own NPR Tiny Desk, an inaugural record release, and recent recognition from Stereogum as one of 2018’s best new artists.

Her success has been rightfully lauded – Heynderickx’s music is tantalizing and challenging, lyrics rife with stunning imagery that’s been compared to notable predecessors like Elliott Smith and Vashti Bunyan. On multiple of the album’s tracks, Heynderickx has a tendency to ruminate over certain lines, reciting them over and over again in a trance-like effort to remember. In the closing of “Show You A Body,” her lilting voice emerges from a muddled instrumental interlude to the sound of airy windchimes, like she’s taking a breath for the first time – “I am humbled by breaking down,” she repeats, and it feels like rebirth.–L.L.

24. Spiritualized, And Nothing Hurt

Fat Possum Records

Great art often hurts. Not just to listen to, but to create. That’s what makes Spiritualized’s Vonnegut-referencing album title a bit of a misdirection, because while maybe the pain subsides once the album is out in the world, from all reports, creating And Nothing Hurt was a taxing, nearly destructive process for Jason Pierce. He recorded most of the thing without a band, holed up in his home and in studios trying to make one person sound like dozens. It was such a process that after its completion, and even during the process, he claimed that it might be the last time he would put himself through it. Everything he has is right there spinning on the record, with nothing held back and saved for later.

The resulting album is something that stands up to a career of classics, where the pop music canon is consumed and shuffled and made new. Pierce’s toughest critic is himself because he desires this music to stand up to the music he’s inspired by, which just happens to be the best rock, blues, and soul ever created. And Nothing Hurts is a labor of love that feels like a gift on every listen, the orchestral swells reaching for the rafters and Pierce’s own weathered, broken voice tying things together with striking beauty. If this is indeed the last Spiritualized album, it’s a swan song of the highest order.–P.C.

23. Boygenius, Boygenius

Matador Records

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus want to be on a spaceship, traveling far away from their bodies and the earthly struggle to try and be heard. They want to “dissolve the band, move to Idaho,” blast their heartbreak into the sky, and repent enough to quiet a “difficult mind.” Put together, the three young singers echo one another’s desires and demands for something better, amplifying their voices larger than life and straight into outer space.

Boygenius is a confrontational, teeth-gnashing record, louder in six songs than most artists can get in 12 or 15. Their lyrics are piercing — we’ve come to expect that by now, since Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus are three of the biggest indie breakouts of the past few years, and we’ve seen their genius in their solo work. As a collective, though, they’re earth-shattering, and they’re unstoppable.–C.G.

22. DJ Koze, Knock Knock

Pampa Records

If DJ Koze (AKA Stefan Kozalla) sounds confident, it’s because he’s been around the block plenty of times before. He first got involved with DJ-ing and production in the late ’80s, when he was a teenager. He’s been active ever since, and it’s all led up to Knock Knock, his first full-length since 2013’s Amygdala. It would be fair to think that somebody who’s been involved with electronic music for as long as DJ Koze has might start to tire of it, but he previously told Uproxx that club music still excites him, saying, “I just try to concentrate on the positive and that still fascinates and electrifies me. When I hear a mysteriously good track, it gives me this fire.”

That passion shines through on Knock Knock, where he finds highlights within relative simplicity. The production is often tight and uncomplicated, and Koze uses his collaborators as instruments… quite literally with “Music On My Teeth,” on which José González contributes guitar to the sunny track. Knock Knock is a record that’s focused and, even though it runs nearly 80 minutes, not over-long, two boxes that electronic music is often unable to check off, but ones that Koze and his wisdom were able to pull off without any significant stumbles.–D.R.

21. Nipsey Hussle, Victory Lap

Atlantic Records

Nipsey Hussle was an independent stalwart, well-respected for exploits like making $60,000 off of his $1,000 album package. He showed how rewarding it could be to do right by the self. That’s why some people wondered what was up when he signed to Atlantic – but Neighborhood Nip was too smart for any label to get the best of him. He did exactly what he wanted with his latest album Victory Lap and simply invited Atlantic to the table to help his play. The album, true to the title, is a culmination of his grind and exemplifies that you shouldn’t automatically ignore major labels – if you can sign on your terms.

Victory Lap isn’t merely self-aggrandizing , as he kicks the kind of “Hussle And Motivate” energy that harkens to prime Jeezy. He and YG unite the colors and lay out their resume on “Last Time That I Checc’d,” and on “Blue Laces 2,” he’s dropping knowledge and telling us how he came from nothing. He and Kendrick Lamar chronicle their “Dedication” to the game that paid off for both of them. Nipsey even got Diddy to invigorate “Young N—-s” with the kind of motivational presence he’s known for. On Victory Lap, Nipsey gives us compelling glimpses of his against-all-odds grind and shares his triumphs to motivate the youngins.–A.G.

20. Camila Cabello, Camila

Epic Records

Camila Cabello is “emo.” When I saw her at ACL Festival this fall, Cabello must have described herself as “emo” half a dozen times, joking around with the hyped-up crowd before she made them cry with her (pretty emo) performance of “Consequences.”

Like her more punk-leaning emo brethren, Cabello feels things deeply, and has a sensitive, observational heart. When she’s in love, like on “Never Be The Same,” it’s rapturous. When her heart is broken, you can hear every ache through her vocal runs. Her emotion is big and dramatic, beautifully outsized even for pop, a genre that’s not known for its subtlety. Cabello doesn’t just have a crush — half of her heart is in “Havana.” She compares the hit of affection from her lover to “nicotine, heroin, morphine.” At a time when a lot of mainstream pop is getting quieter and more introspective, Cabello is here to remind us that there’s catharsis and power in belting your feelings. Call her bubblegum pop, call her emo. Whatever you call her, she’s genius.–C.G.

19. Pusha T, Daytona

GOOD Music/Def Jam

Pusha T’s Daytona kicked off the GOOD June of Kanye West-produced releases in raw fashion. The game hadn’t heard from Push in three years, and he rewarded our patience with thrilling pyrex poetics. Drake shots on “Infrared” aside, Pusha served us a hell of a lot of other quotables in just 21 minutes. Those who gripe that he only raps about drugs are ungrateful — because he consistently does it better than anyone alive at this juncture.

“If you know, you know.” From the moment that intro track begins Daytona, Pusha put us in the zone. It’s not just that clever lines like “we got the tennis balls for the wrong sport” deliver a rush of realism that’s unparalleled by other drug-oriented rhymers, he’s doing it while out-rapping the competition and delivering the 360 experience of the lifestyle. He’s flashy on “The Games We Play.” He’s pensive on “Santeria.” He brags about his simultaneous superiority on both the block and the booth on “Come Back Baby.” And he still gave us potent commentary on the rap game throughout “Infrared.” The combination of his imagery-rich lyricism, sharp wordplay, and Kanye’s arresting samples are undeniable. Daytona is simply one of the most polished displays of MC-ing this year.–A.G.

18. Kurt Vile, Bottle It In

Matador Records

Years before he was an indie rock legend in his own time, Kurt Vile was a struggling singer-songwriter in Philadelphia recording scores of psych-folk gems at home and distributing them by hand via homemade CD-Rs. His latest album, Bottle It In, feels like a return to the spirit of those times, compiling some of his warmest and most inviting songs laid down during an explosion of creativity in the past few years. The result is an album that reminds long-time admirers of his many strengths as a songwriter and guitarist, and acts as a handy entry point for newcomers, offering a kind of compendium for his career up until now.

There are catchy, concise jams (“Loading Zones”), witty stoner-friendly tangents (“Check Baby”), spacy Americana (“Yeah Bones”), and several long, hypnotic zone-outs like “Bassackwards” and the stunning title track. (There’s also a surprisingly straight-forward cover of Charlie Rich’s “Rollin’ With The Flow” that spotlights Vile’s burgeoning interest in country music.) Throughout Bottle It In, Vile displays the loopy humor and sneaky melancholy that have become his trademarks. At all times, he’s an affable presence, the kind of dude you’re happy to hang with for the better part of an afternoon.–S.H.

17. JID, DiCaprio 2

Dreamville

JID was a 2018 XXL Freshman, but he’s soon set to be a principle figure of hip-hop. His recently released Dicaprio 2 album showcased why. The tongue-twisting Atlanta artist showed off his mastery of flow, stretching and contorting his voice over a range of beats that run the gamut of vibes, such as the majesty of “Slick Talk,” funky jazz-hop of “Hot Box” featuring Method Man and Joey Badass, and the surging “Off Deez” with J. Cole, where the two try to rhyme faster than the speed of light.

But the Mac Miller-influenced Dicaprio 2 isn’t just about vocal acrobatics – the young Atlanta rhymer is spittin’ his ass off. He’s the total package on the project, showcasing impressive technical lyricism, slick wordplay, and sage-like lines like “I’m from East Atlanta like Gucci and Travis Porter / But my story is similar to the hare and the tortoise” on “Slick Talk.” He also drops incisive social commentary on the so-called “war on drugs” on “Off Da Zoinkys,” while “Skrawberries” is a smooth narrative of young love. He’s doing it all on Dicaprio 2, emerging at the eleventh hour with one of the best hip-hop records of the year.–A.G.

16. Troye Sivan, Bloom

EMI Music Australia

F*ck being the biggest “queer” pop star in the world, Troye Sivan is going to be the biggest pop star, period. His opulent, joyous Bloom is a sophomore album with the star-making power of a debut — no disrespect to his actual debut, Blue Neighborhood from 2015 — and it will be the record that soars into Sivan’s personal mythology as the one where the world began to understand what he has always known.

What do we know now? That Sivan is a force. He won’t be bound by labels and subgroups but is the kind of artist who is destined for fame so expansive it drops any pretense of gender, sexuality, name, or origin story. Like Michael, Justin, and Taylor before him, soon, he’ll just be Troye. From the aching elegance of “Seventeen” and “The Good Side” to the overwhelming sweetness of “Dance To This” and “Lucky Strike,” all the way to the soaring pop grandeur of the title track and “My My My,” Sivan hits every emotional note with his dreamy, unbridled songwriting.

Speaking of which, he has a co-writing credit on each of the ten tracks here, and did on every song off his debut, too. Though he’s undeniably beautiful, Sivan is not just another pretty face — even if his background as a Youtuber and an actor informs his impossibly polished, charismatic stage presence. He’s an artist in every sense of the word, here to claim the label “queer popstar,” and take it worldwide.–C.W.

15. Various Artists, Black Panther, Original Soundtrack

Top Dawg Entertainment

It’s only right that a movie as titanic as Black Panther received a blockbuster soundtrack. That’s exactly what Marvel pulled off here, as Kendrick Lamar executed his curatorial debut with the precision of a Killmonger kill. Kendrick saw to it personally that the album had the hits to match Black Panther‘s box office success, with his wondrous “All The Stars” collaboration with SZA, surging “Pray For Me” with The Weeknd, and “King’s Dead” banger with Future, Jay Rock, and James Blake.

But beyond the numbers, Kendrick augmented the beloved pro-Black movie with songs inspired by its major themes – and Africa. “Are you a king or you joking, are you a king or you posing?,” he asks on the title track, reflecting the qualms that T’Challa has on film. On “Seasons,” after Mozzy and Reason analyze the perils of systemic racism that Killmonger suffered through, Kendrick powerfully states, “I am T’Challa. I am Killmonger. One world, one god, one family,” converging the two character’s worldviews into the ideological dynamism that is Blackness.

Despite his mastery as an executive producer, he knew when to take a back seat and let a slew of talented South African artists such as Sjava, Yugen Blakrok, Babes Wodumo, and Saudi show their skills. Reaching out internationally is a royal mandate, after all.–A.G.

14. Soccer Mommy, Clean

Fat Possum

21-year-old Sophie Allison writes with such stunning acuity, it’s hard to believe Clean is the first album she recorded for a label. Its individual songs are great — “Your Dog” and “Cool” stand as pop-rock bangers on their own, and “Scorpio Rising” is a heartbreaker even if you don’t know the parts of the story that precede it.

But Clean is such a thematically cohesive album that it demands to be listened to in order. Allison meditates on “clean” as a metaphor for leaving someone, the myth of a “clean break,” and our hope that we might stain the people we leave behind. Apart from her DIY lyrical genius, Allison also has an incredible pop sensibility and ear for a melody. “Cool” has been stuck in my head since March, and it’s the best song about that feeling of half-jealousy, half-intrigue toward another woman since Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush.” With Clean, Soccer Mommy established herself as one of pop-rock’s most exciting up-and-comers, a songwriting legend in the making. Hell, she’s already made it.–C.G.

13. Beach House, 7

Sub Pop

There’s a moment on Beach House’s appropriately titled seventh album, 7, in which the band that had long built their aesthetic on mood and subtlety blasts off into the stratosphere. It’s about halfway through “Dive,” when the glacial keyboard tones give way to locomotive guitars and propulsive drums, reaching a tempo of panoramic rock that the band had never really hinted at previously. More than ten years into their career, and this Baltimore duo still has new tricks up their sleeve.

That’s part of what makes 7 so special, but not the whole story. One of the narratives for Beach House’s career has been their consistency, with some almost weaponizing that against them, finding their continual high bar a reason to paint their albums as indistinguishable. But the truth is that their moves have always been concentrated, carefully orchestrated, and deliberate. So, the decision to make an album in 7 that was not necessarily easy, or possible, to faithfully create live resulted in a record that’s easy to distinguish from the pack. They sound freer than the band has ever been because, in fact, they were. Dream pop, shoegaze, and psychedelic rock all live together in harmony on 7, reimagining exactly who Beach House is, at least until the next album.–P.C.

12. Saba, Care For Me

Saba Pivot

At just ten tracks, you wouldn’t think Saba’s second studio album would meet the critical criteria to compete with the longer offerings on tap in 2018, but actually, it presents likely the best argument for concise, compact, and cohesive sonic statements that there could be. When Saba’s cousin and crew member John Walt was killed at the beginning of the year, the Chicago rapper used that grief and despair to fuel his artistic fire, crafting one of the most intricate, thoughtful, and aware pieces of rap musicianship of the past 12 months.

It’s melancholy, as an album about the death of a family member would be, but also unexpectedly and suddenly joyful, by turns introspective and defiant as Saba waxes nostalgic about the life lessons he’s gleaned from his mourning and enduring survival — as well as the resultant survivor’s guilt that haunts tracks like “Prom/King” and “Heaven All Around Me.” But there’s also, in all that ruminating, an important lesson: Life goes on. Saba takes time to rebuke our modern addiction to social media on “Logout” alongside Chance The Rapper, arguing that we’re all wasting precious moments staring at screens, and takes a moment to appreciate his own skill and the work required in its maintenance and improvement on “Calligraphy.” As much as he looks back on Care For Me, it’s a forward-facing album whose most enduring message is to live in the now and savor every second.–A.W.

11. Robyn, Honey

Konichiwa Records/Interscope Records

Robyn is a master of putting words to complicated emotions. When you listen to her songs for the first time, you latch onto the joy in her cathartic vocals, the freedom in the synths. But there’s also a sadness underneath it all that unfurls further with each listen, as you get to know the songs better. Robyn takes you so deep inside her joy that you can see the loneliness at the heart of it. Or, maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s joy buried within loneliness.

In the eight years between Body Talk, her 2010 album, and Honey, Robyn lost a dear friend and close collaborator. The songs on Honey are a little quieter and denser than some of her old material, weighed down by this grief. “Missing U” and “Honey” build to that same Robyn catharsis, but her joy is less exalting and more like a deep exhale of relief. It’s the kind of album you need time and space to appreciate, a dozen listens to let the heaviness of the songs wash over you so you can access the sweetness inside.

And the sweetness is there. No matter how ugly things get, there is joy worth collecting from the world. A deserted dance floor has room to move. A broken heart still beats. A heart that has stopped beating might leave an empty space in its absence, but somehow, that space is never actually empty. Robyn herself says it best on “Missing U”: “Ooh, baby, all the love you gave, it still defines me.”—C.G.

10. Earl Sweatshirt, Some Rap Songs

Tan Cressida/Columbiar Records

Off-kilter, unconventional beats and introspective, stream-of-consciousness verses highlight the long-awaited return of the former Odd Future wunderkind who last blessed his fans with a full-length project in 2015 with I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Some Rap Songs is a cerebral collection of just that, clocking in at a concise 25 minutes and 15 tracks, where everything from the sample-heavy beats to the intricate rhyme patterns exists in service to Earl’s single-minded emphasis on transforming emotional turmoil into complex raps. From the first single, “Nowhere2Go” to the Navy Blue-sampling “The Mint,” Earl exhibits the complicated lyrical schemes that first garnered him attention on those early Odd Future releases.

On the song “Playing Possum,” he incorporates a recording of his father, South African poet Keorapetse “Bra Willie” Kgositsile, reading his poem “Anguish Longer Than Sorrow,” along with audio of Earl’s mother speaking about him. The song was meant to surprise his estranged parents as a gesture of reconciliation, but due to his father’s death earlier this year, stands as a tribute to the man who probably most inspired Earl’s love of the oral tradition. It’s a microcosm of the album as a whole; Earl venting his innermost thoughts in his favorite medium.–A.W.

9. The 1975, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

Dirty Hit/Polydor/Interscope

It would have been very easy for The 1975 to make a radio-friendly, watered-down album with all ears on them for the feverishly-anticipated A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. In fact, they are exactly the type of band that could have done so and done it very well. But as the Manchester four-piece rolled out the singles to their third career album, it became very clear that something else was in store. Instead, we have a rock band for the era of rock’s popularity recession, speaking to the moment that their art is released, be that lyrical references to Lil Peep, sonic references to Bon Iver, and an album construction that seemingly couldn’t come from anyone else.

And maybe that’s the most impressive part of The 1975 and this album, how utterly singular it sounds in the current music landscape. Massive singles that seem destined for TV syncs and hip playlists are spaced with emotional balladeering and experimental diversions. There’s even a robotic technophobic spoken word interlude that recalls another British band who did that same thing on their own mainstream-shunning third album, OK Computer. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is ultimately an album that strives to be a grand statement, that dares to mythologize while still presenting themselves as a millennial band that baby boomers could like. And the best part is that they succeeded.–P.C.

8. Cardi B, Invasion Of Privacy

Atlantic Records

Cardi B’s debut album, Invasion Of Privacy, remains one of the most talked about records of 2018. According to Apple, Cardi’s debut was the most streamed album by a female artist in a single week — with over a hundred million streams — and that was just on one streaming platform. It’s an impressive entry, forcing the industry to give Cardi B her props. Kicking off with “Get Up 10,” clearly inspired by Meek Mill’s “Intro,” Invasion Of Privacy is consistent and delivers more than what staunch music critics initially expected, that she’d remain a one-hit-wonder with her Billboard Hot 100 bop “Bodak Yellow.”

Songs such as the radio-friendly “I Like It” featuring J Balvin and Bad Bunny and the Kehlani-assisted “Ring” debunk this theory in whole. Other cuts, like “Drip” featuring Migos, “Best Life” featuring Chance the Rapper, and “Be Careful” are all solid numbers that demand Bardi get her respect. Furthermore, all thirteen songs off the multi-platinum Invasion Of Privacy entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts, as streams for the project reached the millions, and twelve of those songs got RIAA certifications. Shortly after the release of the album, Cardi announced her pregnancy on Saturday Night Live and vowed to not let that slow her down. Though she did pull out of Bruno Mars 24K tour, she made an incredible appearance at this year’s Coachella, and despite having to deal with her ongoing beef with Nicki Minaj (which is supposedly dead), Cardi B really came out on top in 2018 when a lot of people doubted her. Get up 10, indeed.–C.J.

7. Father John Misty, God’s Favorite Customer

Sub Pop

It was a relatively quiet year for Father John Misty, who decided after the tumultuous and all-pervasive press cycle for 2017’s Pure Comedy to let the music do the talking on God’s Favorite Customer. It’s also likely that Josh Tillman’s latest song cycle was simply too painful or awkward to discuss in the press — anguished ballads like “Please Don’t Die” and “The Palace” clearly are inspired by his own troubled romantic life. Not that it ultimately mattered — God’s Favorite Customer is more than capable of standing on its own as one of the very best, if not the best, release to come during Tillman’s staggering run of the albums in the past several years.

Anyone who blanched at the polarizing grandiosity and acerbic commentary of Pure Comedy had to be coaxed back by Customer, which offers a series of punchy, tuneful, and heartfelt love songs not far removed from his 2015 breakthrough, I Love You, Honeybear. And yet this isn’t just the sound of a gifted singer, songwriter, and provocateur deciding to play it nice and safe. Coupled with the nakedly autobiographical nature of the songs, Tillman has also deepened his level of craft, with songs such as “Disappointing Diamonds Are The Rarest Of Them All” offering both his sharpest hooks and most pointed observations about the fleeting (and yet still vital) nature of love.–S.H.

6. Noname, Room 25

Via Instagram

After dazzling the rap world with the pure poetry of her effervescent debut album, Telefone, Chicago rapper Noname returned from a two-year hiatus with the self-funded, coming-of-age project, Room 25. While her existing catalog had engaged audiences with its almost painfully diaristic honesty, her latest album adds a layer of bold confidence, the kind that only comes with experience and mastery.

To her credit, she’s more than earned the right to boast. Her pen game, already whip-quick and elegantly intricate, elevated in the two years between projects. Where on Telefone, her lyrics bobbed, weaved, and danced between the pockets of the jazzy, dreamlike production, on Room 25, she adds jabs and combinations, becoming proactive and proud on tracks like “Self.” Poetry can have punch, which seems to be the thesis of her new approach to her introspective style. Gone are the PG-rated “lullaby raps” of her debut, replaced by vital political and sexual statements of self-actualization. On “Blaxploitation,” she challenges listeners with poignant punchlines and declarations like “Put a thinkpiece in the rap song, the new age covenant.” If rap is just poetry put to beats, Room 25 is Noname’s unapologetic return to its roots, fertilized and flowered, providing a powerful new perspective on a genre that continues to grow outside the bounds of its established mandate of parties and bullsh*t.–A.W.

5. Ariana Grande, Sweetener

Republic Records

It’s weird listening to Sweetener now that Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson have broken up.

Grande was working on Sweetener for months before she was engaged to Davidson, but it’s impossible to separate him, and their quickly metabolized relationship, from these songs. (There’s a song literally called “Pete Davidson,” after all.) You can hear the way Davidson made her laugh on “Sweetener,” and how much it meant to her to be laughing again. You can hear Grande reasoning with herself on “R.E.M.,” in the way she sings “‘Excuse me, um, I love you’ / I know that’s not the way to start a conversation, trouble,” the way she repeats “wake up” almost like she’s telling herself that all of this is irrational. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. No one falls in love this fast!

Except, sometimes we do. Sometimes we’re surprised by the irrational objects of our affection, and we pursue them no matter how many people tell us they’re not worth it. They make us happy, which is worth something, especially when there’s not much sweetness in the world.

Sweetener was an incredible album when it was released in August. It’s immaculately produced. Grande has a killer voice, but she keeps it soft here, proving that she’s more than just a high pony who can belt. There’s care and love in these songs, in the writing, production, and obvious dedication. Sweetener was brilliant when Ariana Grande was in love, and somehow it’s even more brilliant now.

It’s weird to listen to “R.E.M.” now and to know that Davidson is making jokes at Grande’s expense on Saturday Night Live. It’s weird to listen to “Better Off” now that Mac is gone, and to bounce to “No Tears Left To Cry” and be reminded that the tears never stop coming.

But Sweetener is a monument to happiness and time spent together. It’s all the more brilliant for capturing those fleeting feelings, the sparkle of new love, bottling the feeling and making it shine brighter than its source.–C.G.

4. Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer

Wondaland Records

Whether or not you were already hanging onto cyborg popstar Janelle Monae’s (damn) bandwagon, or even aware of the alternate funk-cosmos she’s been quietly laboring over for many years now, the release of her third full-length album, Dirty Computer, thrust her career into such a state of hyperspeed that she was unavoidable in 2018. Luxuriating in a more down-to-earth aesthetic this time around, the spacey, ever-regal Monae makes room for the freaks, the geeks, and the outsiders on her triumphant opus.

Yet, there was probably not a more sumptuous album in 2018 than Dirty Computer; it reveled in sensuality and tenderness, claiming space, particularly, for Monae to make her own coming out statement of pansexuality, giving these songs a revolutionary feel even when they hover around the tiniest moments of intimacy. To openly express queer love is still a radical act, even more so at the intersections of gender and race. Still, Monae is fully aware of the statement she’s making when she spreads her legs in the video for “Pynk” claiming the power of the pussy with such easy elegance. It’s hard to imagine anyone finding a way to take offense.

Enlisting collaborators as varied and renowned as Brian Wilson, Zoe Kravitz, Grimes, and Pharrell, each is just another star in Monae’s universe, a galaxy she rules with as much queenly reverence here on earth as she did in her former galactical iterations. If there ever was an artist fit to take up the mantle of Prince, her former mentor, it’s Monae — a woman unafraid to be herself, and guiding the listener into a better version of their own character by the end of every song. —C.W.

3. Arctic Monkeys, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino

Domino Records

With 2013’s mega-successful A.M., Arctic Monkeys confirmed their status as one of the best and most popular arena-rock bands on the planet. Five years later, they returned with an album that boldly eschewed its predecessor’s dusky, riff-centric flexing. In the place of aggressive and sexy rock anthems, singer-songwriter Alex Turner penned a series of wild, weird, wordy, wacky, wayward, and thoroughly wonderful torch ballads about the slow apocalypse of modern life.

Slipping comfortably into a vampire’s croon reminiscent of David Bowie during his coked out mid-’70s “Thin White Duke” period, Turner ruminates on a range of bizarre obsessions — everything from The Strokes to Blade Runner to a rating system for interstellar taco stands — that somehow add up to a series of hilarious, stream-of-consciousness narratives. Musically, Arctic Monkeys dig up some new sonic reference points utterly divorced from chunky, snotty rawk songs they made their name on. (Dion’s infamously druggy and self-indulgent 1975 curio Born To Be With You was a primary inspiration — look it up, it’s just as wondrous and head-scratching as Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino.) A sci-fi concept album that satirizes vapid online culture by imitating its broken vocabulary, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino ultimately thrills because Arctic Monkeys stubbornly insist on being inscrutable at a time when pop seems more predictable and programmed than ever.–S.H.

2. Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour

MCA Nashville

Just a couple weeks ago, Kacey Musgraves took home the Album Of The Year award at the CMAs, a moment that was notable for many reasons. For one, she was just the second woman this decade to nab the honor, in a year where she was the only one nominated. That’s not particularly surprising considering how male-centric the commercial wing of the genre is, but Kacey was breaking down another door that night than just one for female representation. Golden Hour was also not a success at country radio at all, and she didn’t even service her singles to the format, despite the fact that many of the songs feel like they should be massive on the heartland airwaves in a perfect world. Country music’s oldest guard — as represented by the CMAs or radio — are the same institutions that caused Sturgill Simpson to busk outside of the CMAs a year earlier, as the awards usually fail to honor the brightest artistic achievements in favor of the most commercially popular ones.

All this speaks to the majesty of Kacey Musgraves’ latest album, a record that doesn’t need country music — or any genre’s — cosign to demonstrate its greatness. In it, Musgraves never paints herself into a corner, with a song like the masterful opener “Slow Burn” finding her smoking weed, disappointing her grandmother, and fooling around with boys without losing an ounce of the wholesomeness that comes through her sheer honesty and openness. It’s an album that showcases lyrical genius by updating country-western tropes for the 21st century on “Space Cowboy,” and can deliver a line about a sister in “Lonely Weekend” or a song about her mom in “Mother” that will make anyone with half a heart want to reignite their family’s group text.

Golden Hour is an open-hearted and good-natured instant classic that really doesn’t have any modern peers, coming at a time where that feels particularly novel and brave. Our own Caitlin White said that it felt like the first good thing to happen in 2018 and as the year comes to a close, it still feels like the year couldn’t top the pure joy that it brought. It’s nice that the CMAs recognize that, but with all the accolades still to come, it’s even nicer knowing that Kacey is just happy blazing her own trail, and probably blazing on the trail at the same time.–P.C.

1. Travis Scott, Astroworld

Epic/Cactus Jack

In a year with so much good music, whatever album topped our list had to be momentous. Travis Scott’s Astroworld was that, as the album rang true to its lofty title, set a new benchmark for trap music, and marked him as the biggest music-related story of the busy summer 2018. Scott became a rap superstar off of this album and he deserved to; the 17-track album was the rare long project that didn’t feel spotted with duds, as Travis was attentive to every drum pattern and beat switch. His A&R Sickamore says some of the tracks took as many as 50 sessions, and you can hear the results throughout the project.

As the vibes overseer of Astroworld, he single-handedly put to bed any notion of trap music not being a respectable music genre. He worked with music stalwarts like Stevie Wonder, John Mayer, James Blake, Earth Wind & Fire’s Philip Bailey, and Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker to shock the subgenre with a jolt of sonic nuance that other mainstream producers need to catch up to, frankly.

“Stop trying to be god” (for better) and Drake’s “I did half a Xan, 13 hours ’til I land ” from “SICKO MODE” (maybe for worse) jumped right into the cultural lexicon. Songs like “SICKO MODE,” “STARGAZING,” and “YOSEMITE” are simply unforgettable.

This one was for Houston. For DJ Screw, Swishahouse, Big Hawk, and UGK’s Pimp C, who was a classically trained artist who played four instruments. Pimp’s musicality played into the soulful foundation of trap music, and Travis carried on that legacy with Astroworld.–A.G.

source https://uproxx.com/music/best-albums-of-2018-ranked/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

[andrewrosswatson1987]

REVISIT: JAY-Z WAS THE DYNASTY ROC LA FAMILIA THIS DAY IN 2000

Jay-Z released his fifth album, The Dynasty:  Roc La Familia, which came out today (October 31) in 2000, released via labels, Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam. Originally aimed to showcase the upcoming artists (primarily Beanie Sigel) and producers (like then little-known Kanye West) on his roster, it made more commercial sense for it to come under the banner of solo album, title emphasis on Mafioso-esque family, one crammed with collaborations and more soulful production. This sandwiched In My Lifetime, Vol. 1 (1997); Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life (1998) and Vol. 3... Life And Times Of S. Carter (1999) between itself and classic debut, Reasonable Doubt (1996). Singles for this album were “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”, “Change The Game” and “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”. The album opens full of gusto with “Intro”, opening grave and dangerous.  Swaggering down inner city streets, waxing lyrical before the verses proper.  “The theme song to The Sopranos/Plays in the key of life on my, mental piano/Got a strange way of seeing life like I'm Stevie Wonder [latter’s Songs In The Key Of Life (1976)]” a lyrical stream of consciousness, somehow staying on point.  “Change The Game” is bouncing with chugging, muted guitar.  Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek weigh in, part of the R.O.C collective.  The hook, “Don't change the game for these hoes/Who plays the game like we supposed” locks you in, like a more tuneful Marilyn Manson.  Jay ends the track proclaiming, “Please repeat after me, there’s only one rule/I cannot lose”. “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” is, with that Pharrell and The Neptunes collaboration, a dancefloor filler with that descending staccato guitar.  “Ladies love me long like 2Pac’s soul” you could argue a nod to a deceased rap legend that never took particularly kindly to The Notorious B.I.G. protégé. Then you’re told the “Streets Is Talking”:  “Is he a Blood or a Crip/Is he that, is he this” a question indicating that the streets is talking.  Emphatically soulful, the instrumentation strutting with power and intrigue.  “How many times have I got to prove/How many loved ones have you got to lose” like defying expectations despite the mean streets he escalated from. “I lost my pops when I was eleven, twelve years old/He’s probably somewhere where the liquor is takin’ it’s toll/But I ain’t mad at you, dad/Holla at your lad” carries on from that particular narrative.  “I took trips with so much sh*t in the whip/That if the cops pulled us over the dog’d get sick, sniff/Smell me, n*gga/The real me, n*gga, minus the rumours/Holla if you feel me, n*gga” braggadocio and clever. “To know me is to love me, you see me, can't be me, hate this/F*ck you, I got guns like Neo in Matrix” some sharp lines from the deceptively clever Beanie Sigel. “This Can’t Be Life” is more sedate and mournful, a slow Kanye West track production, “…lets reflect”.  He takes a trip down memory lane with, “It's like ‘93, ‘94, ‘bout the year that Big and Mag dropped; and Illmatic rocked/Outta every rag drop, and the West had it locked”.  The times he struggled rather than the good times and accompanying boasts. Beanie has similar recollections to the backdrop of pained soul; more so Scarface, you could argue.  His booming baritone details, “God’s got open hands, homie/He in the midst, of good company/Who loves all and hates not one/And one day you gon’ be wit your son…it wouldn’ta been us, this can’t be life”. The sensual “Get Your Mind Right Mami” is a moody one for, it seems, sexy liaisons.  Again, the hook makes the song to some extent, “And I need gangsta girls, for my gangsta family”. Memphis Bleek and Snoop Dogg help out with the freaky rendezvous detailed in the track. “Stick To The Script” is full of strings, rattling rhythm and New York high rise drama.  Another memorable hook in, “Money over b*tches, n*gga, stick to the script/We cop, we flip, we re-up; get back on our shift”.  “You, Me, Him And Her” is more upbeat, with what becomes a bit of a signature production attribute in the form of high pitched female vocal.  It also has a jarring effect, somehow assisting the triumphal feel of the track. Beanie Sigel syncopates perfectly, riding the beat and pausing before resuming, again.  “Guilty Until Proven Innocent” is a moody R. Kelly collaboration declaring, “I thought this was America, people”.  “I ain’t tryin’ to collide with folk/But I don’t want folk takin’ Jigga for joke” like pent up anger.  “I’m not the snitch/I don’t go to the cops to get rich/I go to the block and pitch” like baseball with the heads of enemies.  “F*ck the white press, the block love us/hip-hop forever, B.I.G. is here, the soul of 2Pac hovers above us” another 2Pac reference, like no hard feelings.  The blunt “Parking Lot Pimpin’” is smacking emphatically, another sex track.  It leans to the side, belying the potential violence within, threatening whether overly or otherwise.  “Holla” is smooth and cool, a cocksure walk is pictured, amidst submerged funk and bass.  The self-help “1-900-Hustler” is a hotline themed track, like advice from Jay, Beanie Sigel, Memphis Bleek and Freeway.  The soul samples display a self-assured attitude, you’re getting advice from the best. The middle section sees callers put on hold. “The R.O.C.” has a lilt to it, daresay reggae.  On top of that rumbling piano.  Like death only ever round the next street corner. The feel of the prior track’s forgotten on teary eyed “Soon You’ll Understand”.  This is deathly tragic, high pitched soul vocal samples, replete with tinkling piano paints a picture of poverty and emotional damage.  “There’s better guys out there other than me/Like a lawyer or a doctor with a Ph.D” has Jay lamenting his ingrained ways, offering happiness in exchange for his own sadness. “Let him hold you, let him touch you; soon you'll understand” a hook eerie and haunting.  “Dear ma…and who wants to be the mother of a son who sold drugs/Co-workers saw me on the corner slingin’ Larry Love” him despairing of what he put the other woman in his life, his mother, through.  Seeming whistle of wind, like a cold, unforgiving winter unfolds. “Squeeze 1st” is a monstrous beat, electric and breaking street concrete.  Honestly, the verses are unremarkable and the hook is largely forgettable. The end asks desperately “Where Have You Been”.  It has a hopeless piano loop tinkling like the sadness of tears in an environment inescapable.  Jay and Beanie trade stories about their fathers, or rather lack of particular figure. The innocence of the child asking, “Daddy, where have you been” will break if you have a heart. This was proof Jay-Z could collaborate with and promote his collective and still put out a hit album.  He went into this not only principal songwriter, but was able to put his trust in the right people to deliver on the right tracks. This album particularly launched the solo careers of Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek. Seven tracks on here are excellent.  Links are the memorable hooks, plus surprising 2Pac references. Had this album not’ve worked out as it did, Jay-Z would’ve entered the decade with a lot of work to do.  “Intro”, “Streets Is Talking”, “This Can’t Be Life”, “Stick 2 The Script”, “Guilty Until Proven Innocent”, “Soon You’ll Understand” and “Where Have You Been” are said seven tracks worth revisiting.  Jay-Z’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia can be bought on iTunes, here.

#Jay-Z #The Dynasty #Roc La Familia #Stevie Wonder #Songs In The Key Of Life #Beanie Sigel #Memphis Bleek #Marilyn Manson #Pharrell #The Neptunes #The Notorious B.I.G. #2Pac #Kanye West #Scarface #Snoop Dogg #R. Kelly #Freeway

[tinymixtapes]

Column: Favorite Rap Mixtapes of July 2017

With a cascade of releases spewing from the likes of DatPiff, LiveMixtapes, Bandcamp, and SoundCloud, it can be difficult to keep up with the overbearing yet increasingly vital mixtape game. In this column, we aim to immerse ourselves in this hyper-prolific world and share our favorite releases each month. The focus will primarily be on rap mixtapes — loosely defined here as free (or sometimes free-to-stream) digital releases — but we’ll keep things loose enough to branch out if/when we feel it necessary. (Check out last month’s installment here.) --- VIK - Facts of Life [stream/download] There are a thousand Soundcloud users out there who want to be the next All These Fingers, YungMorgpheus, or Theravada, but like the Highlander, there can be only one. Anybody can fuck up a beat, you see? But it takes a measure of ingenuity to fuck up, in, out, on, and off that beat simultaneously. VIK does these things, and he raps under the name Comfy God. Look, I’m just telling you facts here. Facts of Life is everyman rap as a mostly wordless psychogeography, an anti-happening happening to occur on tape, that type of spontaneity so dope it makes you believe in destiny… and rewind. –Samuel Diamond --- Jonatan Leandoer127 - Katla [stream] Looks like someone’s been hitting the books lately. Ditching the Yung Lean moniker for his government name, Jonatan Leandoer127 opens his sophomore effort with an excerpt from Milton’s Paradise Lost. “Immediate are the acts of God, more swift Than time or motion,” he recites, stumbling over a few words. Producer Palmistry washes the missteps with swells muted strings — no drums needed. Save for the occasional flourish of cyborgian autotune, Katla bears little resemblance to Yung Lean’s back catalogue. You’d have better luck shelving tracks like “Hell Rain” and “Cathedral” in a playlist alongside Julee Cruise and Lust For Youth than you would next to cuts from Unknown Death or Warlord. Leandoer’s Swedish spoken-word poems are chanted with liturgical weight atop misty ambience, then strained through a compression filter as tinny as a Nokia Tracfone’s speaker. Imagine This Mortal Coil remixed by Moby or Oneohtrix Point Never grabbing hold of some Sinead O’Connor stems. File this one under “Future Folk.” –Jude Noel --- Truman Snow - TRUIYASHA [stream/download] I don’t know why Truman Snow isn’t Tiny Mix Tapes’ favorite rapper, but I can only assume it’s because I’m the one championing him thus far. Sorry, Tru. Let me put it like this, though: If you like Young Thug and Future, you should love Truman Snow. If you love Young Thug and Future, you should move to Norfolk, Connecticut, find Truman Snow and volunteer to mule drugs for him or something. He probably doesn’t even need that service, but it’s the thought that counts. And the drugs count too, so buy Truman Snow ALL the drugs, mule them to him, then buy them back from him. Don’t lend him your ears. Give them to him, like Van Gogh. He may have only released two mixtapes so far this year, but he deserves 10 spots on all our lists. –Samuel Diamond --- Godbody Jones - IN GOD WE TRUST [stream] Godbody Jones is an MC/photographer, from Memphis, Tennessee, but his art contains little of the grim aesthetic that have brought horrorcore rappers like Tommy Wright’s 10 Wanted Men and Geto Boys back into the underground spotlight. His lyrics may be typically nihilistic, the product of young frustration directed a crippled nation, but they soar over uniquely melodic beats on “Intro” and “Face It.” Jones has a confident, expressive voice with good range, which is practically a requirement for a successful 2017-era MC. On “Brightness Down,” he puts it all on display, gliding effortlessly between deadpan drawl and slurring vocoder runs. When Jones sings, “Are you down for a ride, or you down for a roll?,” dragging out the “roll” like a he’s skating a steezy rock to fakie, the head instinctually bobs along with him. “Coraline” is a standout — evidence that the Godbody has hitmaker potential alongside being a harbinger of doom. –al ghul --- Scallops Hotel - Over the Carnage Rose a Voice Prophetic [stream/download] If DJ Escrow’s Universal Soulja is the logical extreme of noise rap, a kind of “Coke La Rock meets Merzbow” alpha-omega point, then Scallops Hotel’s Over the Carnage Rose a Voice Prophetic could be described as alt rap on a similar trajectory; however, the tape’s loose assemblage of experimental one-offs, classic remixes, obscure collabos, and instrumental interludes has such a kid-in-a-sandbox vibe that such microgenre descriptors miss the point. If you want to hear a young mastermind at work, you listen to Milo, but if you want to hear that mastermind at play, working things out and having what sounds like an awesome time doing it, you listen to Milo’s side project Scallops Hotel. This is what a mixtape is supposed to be, but better. –Samuel Diamond --- DJ Escrow - Universal Soulja Vol. 1 [stream] “Lifted up.” Overdrive, reverb, and more overdrive, in layers like the roll of tinfoil I accidentally peeled unevenly and fucked up even worse trying to fix. Adlibs hollered as if over a heavy wind. A steady, violent burn. “Dipping T-shirts in blood and that.” The “fucking exclusive” WeTransfer link already expired; “you’ve got to get a new connect, find a new plug.” A PROLIFIC DEAMON with nothing to prove, Escrow lacks the easygoing temperament of a Blue Iverson, though I think some of the latter’s cheaply synthesized strings are hiding somewhere, flayed beyond recognition, in his jagged brush. Clearly the spark to balance the cool of right-hand-man Babyfather, his gift to the melting world this July was a mixtape with texture to match the brain-baking heat. The long, empty days of summer can grow around you like a husk; stay alert. “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” –Will Neibergall [pagebreak] --- Knxwledge - HEX.10.8_ [stream] The L.A. producer Knxwledge slips a new set of beats onto his bandcamp page on a rigorous schedule (just in time for our Monthly Mixtape Roundup, it would seem). Each of these tapes — about 15-20 minutes in length — sells for $10.88, so artists claiming there’s no money in purchasing music should hit this dude up for some tips, because his beats are hotter and come in more flavors than LaCroix nice-smelling carbonated water. They are not, however, simply nice-smelling water. There’s a delightful crate-digging, compilation quality to them. Knxwledge sorts his beats into different series, the names of which often change (HEX used to be “Hexual_Sealing”). Some songs on HEX.10.8_ end abruptly, others, like “dordie_” and “issaparty_,” are simply heavily side-chained early Millennium R&B. It’s usual Knxwledge fair, the sort that has made him a superstar in the lofi beats scene. When Soundcloud goes to the great silicon server in the sky, taking all its 2-cent producers running circles around “Blue in Green,” at least we can safely hold onto the knowledge that this Stones Throw schxlar will keep us supplied with the essentials. –al ghul --- MIKE - May God Bless Your Hustle [stream/download] I hesitate to even include May God Bless Your Hustle in this column, because although we should be well beyond that whole album vs. mixtape / high vs. low art bullshit, I fear it remains embedded in the back of our minds, but since I’m going in hard this month anyway, let’s get it. MIKE’s is a young voice and an old soul helping each other make the most of each day and night. May God Bless Your Hustle, easily his most complete, cohesive, coalescing project to date by my summation, might well be called a new kind of hustle altogether if it didn’t feel so damn familiar. Not derivative nor redundant, but well-informed and engaged, it’s like natural syndicalism. It just makes sense. –Samuel Diamond --- Ski Mask the Slump God - YouWillRegret [stream] “I’m not lyrical, but I’m lyrical,” said Ski Mask the Slump God in an interview with Power 105.1’s DJ Self. “I just like saying stuff to make people say ‘wow.’” You’d be hard pressed to find a better quote that could serve as the Broward County emcee’s artist’s statement — like Lil Uzi Vert admitted to his fellow XXL Freshman Class panelists in 2016, he eschews narrative to focus entirely on “getting in the booth and making it sound good.” On his official debut LP, Ski Mask trades in his usual samples of cartoon theme songs for gothic compositions trimmed with church organ and detuned synths. Despite sharing a blown-out bass tone with fellow members of Florida’s Soundcloud scene, he bears more of a resemblance to early-80s minimal wave acts like Oppenheimer Analysis and Solid Space than his geographical neighbors. The drastic timbral shift pays off: with more room to breathe, Ski Mask’s zig-zagging, triple-knotted flows are clearly on display from all angles. The long-awaited “Bird Is The Word” is queasily dissonant, pairing a heaved delivery with creeping chords. “Gone” is ethereal enough to fit next to BeeDeeGee and Holly Herndon on a 4AD compilation. “Adventure Time” still sounds as ahead of its time as it did when dropped on Boxing Day, seven months ago. Even at his least gimmicky, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who sounds as fresh as Ski Mask the Slump God does on YouWillRegret. Don’t sleep. –Jude Noel --- Dizzy SenZe - Hueman Vertigo [stream] The problem with nostalgia and novelties is that they can get old quick. I’m not naming names, but maybe, just maybe, there are more than a few throwback rappers du jure who wouldn’t have been given the time du jure when their style was actually hot. Plus, this being New York, I could literally walk down the street, point to a person, and get a verse doper than most of what’s sent my way by the PR goons who flood my inbox daily, but I digress. To America, Dizzy SenZe may be New York to a fault, but it’s no fault of her own. When you’re this good at what you do, it’d be foolish to do otherwise. Dizzy does the Bronx justice simply by doing herself. This is how it’s done. –Samuel Diamond --- Trouble - 16 [stream/download] Like a thief in the night, Trouble has seized the next spot in line. Finally. Since 2011, he’s been perpetually on the verge of a breakthrough, a walking renegade whose show-stealing features simply couldn’t translate to sustained popularity when it came time to drop his own shit. Starting with last year’s Skoobzilla, that might finally be changing. Trouble’s greatest strength is his versatility, and he’s wasted no time adapting his style to the ever-evolving rap zeitgeist. Remarkably, 16 is just a teaser, collecting a handful of tracks that evidently won’t make Trouble’s forthcoming album EdgeWood. Given the quality of 16, that’s a very good sign. EdgeWood will be entirely produced by Mike WiLL Made-It, with Drake and The Weeknd headlining an already impressive list of features. Fool me once, etc., but if 16 is any indication, then Trouble’s coming for real this time. –Corrigan B --- Warhol.SS - 3200 [stream] Warhol.SS arrived at his namesake through Basquiat, the genius artist/celebrity who practically invented the nature of hype, rising in the public eye at a Migos pace, before dying from a heroin overdose with Cobain expediency. His paintings now sell for eye-watering suitcases of money. We’re talking over 550 lbs in $100 bills. Basquiat was admittedly with Andy, or maybe, like many of the King of Pop-Art’s hangers on, he sees the association as a conduit to success. 3200 is compiled of Soundcloud tracks (probably a smart move, considering the platform’s uncertain future). Warhol’s flow is amusing off-kilter on “Mac Up” and “In The Field,” as if the dude is jumping around in the booth while he records. He sounds like a less nihilistic Chief Keef, riding explosive sub bass like he held the engineer at gun point and made him turn it the fuck up, levels be damned. “Bag it 2” pairs this King Kong kick to some bouncy 8-bit synths — it’s by far the standout on a tape that shows progress. –al ghul --- Secret Museum of Mankind - The Masculine Dignity of Mountain Tribesmen [stream/download] Das Racist was a delusion of grandeur turned actually grandiose. Kool AD’s solo work, on the other hand, is more like a grand delusion. Dude is rapping so much and recording so many of those raps, his catalog basically amounts to a transient’s travelogue, if that travelogue was the direct transcript of an inner-monologue. Long story short, the man is logging some serious time in booths. Secret Museum of Mankind finds that wanderer work ethic in a kind of supergroup setting, with freestyles so hifalutin they ought to be engraved in metal slabs and stuck on walls for future passersby. Kool AD + Quelle Chris + these other dudes x Steel Tipped Dove = historic bruh. –Samuel Diamond http://j.mp/2h9ujGs