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The Daily Best: Best Albums of 2012: Frank, Taylor, + More
Last year, silky rapper Drake stood atop many critics’ lists for best album of the year. But 2012 was all about R&B crooner Frank Ocean. From Ocean’s ‘Channel Orange’ to Fiona Apple’s avant-garde stylings and Taylor Swift’s power-pop anthems, here are The Daily Beast’s best music albums of the year.
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1. Frank Ocean—Channel Orange
The 25-year-old New Orleans native turned the homophobic hip-hop world on its head when he posted an open letter to his Tumblr account back on July 4 describing his first great love—with a man. And buzz was initially soft on the sultry R&B crooner due to his association with the demented alt hip-hop collective OFWGKTA. But Ocean’s debut album, Channel Orange, a moody meditation on life, love, and loss in the City of Angels, managed to transcend sex, race, and genre. It’s an impassioned, tender, and grandiose R&B saga featuring heartbreaking ballads that touch on unrequited love (“Thinkin Bout You,” “Bad Religion”), religious symbolism (“Pyramids”), and much more. It deserves its rightful place alongside the best Prince and Stevie Wonder albums. A new classic.
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3. Kendrick Lamar—Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City
Like Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar Duckworth—or just Kendrick Lamar, as he’s known—is 25 and just coming into his own as an artist. After releasing four mixtapes and an independent album, the Compton native’s first studio album, good kid M.A.A.D. city, was released on fellow Comptonite Dr. Dre’s Aftermath label to near-universal acclaim. Lamar combines the lyrical dexterity and introspection of Tupac with the levity, catchiness, and quotables of Lil Wayne, over atmospheric beats courtesy of Dre and Co. It’s a despairing yet beauteous concept album about struggling to make ends meet on the streets of Compton that warrants repeat listens. And “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe” could have very well been the new YOLO—if Lamar had decided to go the acronym route.
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5. Fiona Apple—The Idler Wheel…
OK, the full name for the latest LP from tortured chanteuse Fiona Apple is this: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. Phew. It’s the singer-songwriter’s first album since 2005’s Grammy-nominated Extraordinary Machine, and the hiatus has done her a world of good. While The Idler Wheel is no easy listen, after a couple of spins, you’ll be rewarded with one of the more strange, avant-garde, and beguiling albums of the year. Shifting from frank, spare ballads to melancholy, jazzy ditties, Apple cements her status as one of the most singular songbirds of her generation.
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7. Taylor Swift—Red
At just 23, country singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has become a full-blown pop star with her fourth studio album, Red. Allegedly inspired by her messy breakup with actor Jake Gyllenhaal, it’s an uneven LP that nonetheless contains a diverse array of infectious tunes, from U2-esque rock ballads (“State of Grace”) to sing-along anthems (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”) to the pop-dubstep hybrid “I Knew You Were Trouble,” which is arguably the best pop song of the year.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-and-more.html
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