10. The-Dream - Love King
Even a slightly lackluster album from The-Dream can still handily take the spot as my favorite R&B release of the year. It doesn't feel as fresh as Love/Hate did, nor connect to an emotional depth as vivid as Love vs Money's but it's still a sonic tour de force(!) from one of the most consistently genius songwriters in the game. It also still has "F.I.L.A.," current frontrunner for best The-Dream song OF ALL TIME.
Forget is an exquisite album, the kind where depending on the week you'll have a completely different song or hook stuck in your head all damn day. George Lewis Jr.'s singing first reminds one of Morissey on lead single "Slow," but his voice becomes unmistakable in the course of an entire album. Every song has its own soulful heart, stocked with gorgeously vibrant instrumental passages coloring in the spaces in-between (producer Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear probably had some hand in that). It's incredibly crafted, a quiet classic.
For the second year in a row, an oft-delayed, oft-hyped album from a rap veteran descended from the heavens (/ascended from development hell) and blew damn near everyone away. It's weird that at this point people still have to be reminded that Antwan Patton can rap his ass off and craft a brilliant album- as if Speakerboxx wasn't already proof enough- but whatever. There's some pretty gross misogyny on the album that undermines the poise and virtue of Big Boi's art for me (not that that's new for Big Boi/music/Earth), but Sir Lucious remains an album worth fighting for and being amazed by.
Cosmogramma is a thoroughly engrossing and inspiring experience. 2008's Los Angeles was the work of an exceptional post-Dilla beatmaker while Cosmogramma is the transformative vision of an avant-garde acid jazz composer. It's a truly incredible step forward technologically and compositionally. Thom Yorke even shows up for a tender-voiced guest appearance and gets chopped to hell and assimilated into FlyLo's onslaught of pulsing machinery. For some reason, I keep wanting to use the word "masterstroke" in particular when describing this album. So I just did!
Even if you were a fan of, you know, that one song, you probably didn't expect Das Racist to come as hard as they did this year. Hell, even if you were a fan of DR's first mixtape this year Shut Up, Dude you probably didn't expect the extensive refinement of Sit Down, Man. The album is ripe with forays into weirdo electro-pop, old-school NY-type bangers, and anything else DR can get their hands on to show you how truly versatile they really are. There's a uniquely impressive(/impressively unique) array of producers and guests on Sit Down, Man but they're only support beams for the exceptional force of Heems and Vic's personalities.
Crystal Castles pulled a lot of lame shit in-between releases (throwing tantrums at other people's expense, plagiarism) and I was like so ready to be through with them but thennnn they dropped CC II, an improvement on their awesome first album in every way. It manages to feel both soulless and deeply emotive, with some of the most affecting vocal distortion I've ever heard stretched tautly across the album's throbbing gristle. It's beautiful, searing, and awesome.
Chillwave is so 2009. Or whatever. But natural talent is (batman) forever and Chaz Bundick has plenty of it. He's eons more soulful than his glo-fi counterparts, and perhaps even the most diverse. "Fax Shadow" rides a syrupy Dilla-eqsue vibe, while "Minors" soars high on synths airy enough to make M83 stutter. Sonically, most of the album lies in-between these two high points. The lyrical content is overwhelmingly melancholy, but the music is so joyous and smooth that you can't help but smile big through the heartbreak. No album this year stimulated as many of my pleasure centers as this one did. Pause.
The idea of creating a worthy proper follow-up to an album like Illinoise seems impossible. Well, unless we're counting The Avalanche (I really love The Avalanche. Have you heard The Avalanche? I love The Avalanche!). Either way, Sufjan definitely felt the immense pressure these past few years, giving some of the most depressing interviews ever. And just when it seemed all hope was lost, he unleashed The Age of Adz, a truly exhilarating opus fueled by oodles of crippling frustration and self-doubt. I know I'm not alone when I say that when I first heard "I Want To Be Well" I ran it back 3x immediately and got goosebumps every time. I don't want to waste all my epic adjectives before I get to MBDTF but The Age of Adz is a towering achievement from the man who is easily the most fascinating figure working in indie(!) music today.
A lot of parts of my brain told me to put Thank Me Later at 3 and The Age of Adz at 2. It makes sense: Sufjan and Kanye are two of my three favorite artists (s/o Boards of Canada!), who have provided me with endless wells of hometown pride, and who both released magnificent, extravagant albums of neuroses run wild that solidified all of their doubt and excess into the artistic achievements of their lives thus far. But I straight up did not listen to any album more than Thank Me Later this year. It's just a really dope album, Drake knows his strengths and plays to them perfectly in a debut that pinpoints its goals and handily picks them off. It's got club bangers, it's got rap-a-thons, it's got For The Ladies joints that the dudes rock with, it's got the best Jay-Z verse of the year. The pacing is perfect, the production is crisp and inimitable, and everything is set just right. Men lie, women lie, but play counts don't. You know?
1. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye is actively shaping culture more than any other musician working right now. Shit, any artist that can leave songs as blatantly awesome as "The Joy" and "Take One For The Team" off of his album has to be in some kind of otherwordly zone. His rapping is better than ever (or at least, as consistent as it was on previous high-point Late Registration), and since picking up production tricks-of-the-trade from Jon Brion, his compositions have gotten even more grandiose. The most outstanding songs flourish in the spirit of the worldbeating genre-meld that Michael Jackson perfected in his prime but with the bitterness and confusion of his mid-90s turmoil. Feeling this shit.
Kanye West - Lost in the World
thank you for having a good discussion on this topic
Posted by: dr dre studio black | 12/13/2011 at 01:31 AM
who have provided me with endless wells of hometown pride, and who both released magnificent, extravagant albums of neuroses run wild that solidified all of their doubt and excess into the artistic achievements of their lives thus far.
Posted by: free picks | 01/21/2011 at 04:18 AM