Goon and Blackheart Great albums! So is Amethyst too

I'm so happy that 4 Walls is on your list!!

So. Fetty is one of the most exciting mainstream breakouts we've had in a while and I stayed progressively more hype for his album as he kept rolling out hit after hit after hit. What we ended up with was entirely too long, incredibly samey, and reliant on help from Fetty's hometown friends maybe to a fault, but the dude still can't help but make these qualities come off as anything but super charming. It might be better suited for listening in short bursts than it is for the full long play but with such a winning formula it's hard to complain about too much of anything so all I can say is he did good.

The most consistent rapper ever came back with like his third or fourth different project in a year + not like I heard all the others all the way through but I'd still bet on this being the best. Such a classy vibe all around, I mean until you hear some of the **** that actually gets rapped out but we're used to that by now.

i dialed the right number
but i still couldnt get through

(#thingsthatdrakewouldsay)

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Haa so when she said mixtape she really meant MIXTAPE, but it's ok I'll take what I can get. The concept of a whole set of songs dedicated to our use of...phones, and calling people is a little weird as we get to the point culturally where we're not even using those things for their intended purposes anymore as much as we are for all the other things we've taught them to do, but it works really well as something to tie it all together thematically, where every track is a different variation on the one concept. And on the mixtape side of things, a great way to acknowledge so many other different people and things (u don't have to call, it's ok squirrel) and at the same time like the iconicness of some her own moments from the past. So you can't say that nothing ever good came out of Hotline Bling after all (you already couldn't say that).
I will have more to say about the 3k song.

Ol' Macky Boy is literally not in a position where we should be feeling bad for him in any way, so the fact that he's made himself as sympathetic as he has is his mysterious accomplishment #1. But he's gotten better as a rapper, as a curator, as a personality too, so maybe it's just an overall thing and it does make sense. And his ears are pierced, so that's a good thing. This album is still way too long though.

The easy line of comparison would be "Disney Princess," which is kinda funny for how unlikely it was that someone rocking that aesthetic would come up and release one of this year's acclaimed albums, but well. The production on this album is soo ornate and detailed, but at the same time there's some little thin, cheap quality about it I can't put my finger but it goes to make everything feel just a little unstable + mask the sinister feeling that's creeping . Like when you go to your grandma's house or something and she got all these big ass complex flowers all over the place but you know they fake and also there might be a dangerous animal hiding behind them. Anyway yeah Nat's voice is something totally different and it brings out the best out of all the songs here. My Baby Don't Understand Me is what it's really all about.

Fetty

Fetty's album was too long for me.
Erykah, Mac, and Disney Queen Natalie Prass

I never once played it all the way through but I came around to hearing all the songs, it is much more of a shuffle and go kind of exp'

Fetty has good songs but yeah I haven't listened to the album yet either

Natalie Prass tho

Fetty's album was such a dud. Way too high imo (shouldn't be on any lists)
Literally Trap Queen 20 times over (ft. Monty)

almost got 522'd for a second there
how scary would that have been

For all its simplicity it's kind of tricky to break this sound down into one descriptor but I mean basically..."edm" bangers of the COLOSSAL variety. These are songs that start maybe in the middle range of whatever giant spectrum we're measuring on + go up and up and up and up until they crash through the ceiling and it doesn't matter that you saw it coming from a mile away because it's a group experience + that's part of the fun. Like if you combined his Yeezus prod work with all those corny Avicii singles I love the **** out of, so good.

Ha two producer ones back to back. I think you should check ya head if you didn't come around to loving Uptown Funk by some reasonable chunk of time into its run at the top, but then also leave some room to check it again and make get into its home album that flew very much under the radar after it had to sacrifice itself so the song could fly. There's a lot of cool stuff here from a lot of cool talent, and it works as a timely update of the ~sound he's generally been known for while still keeping distinctive and I gotta say, kinda flirty.

but i was up in the velvet goldmine
and you put my feet back on the ground
a peace of mind is a lot to ask for
these silly days
but we got it made

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Seee I didn't see it coming until I heard that first single, + then I most definitely did see it coming. I'm not a big Killers fan although they r cool sure, but that shouldn't be an obstacle to anyone's entry here as this is much more of a Jepsen/Swift/Chvrchy move towards big shiny 80s Vegas pop than it is towards anything else he's previously worked off of, and it's exciting. In such a GOOD year for music it maybe wasn't so awesome comparatively in the world of American chart pop so he should feel good about rising above where he did, I just know my sister feels so nice and so proud.

OK queen Fetty, Natalie and Erykah right outside the top 50. Stop copying me.

Where have I been? This is some good stuff.

Mac surprised me by pulling a Drake and so did Erykah, her mixtape is quality stuff. I love jamming to Dial
Brandon and Ghostface too I like Twelve Reasons To Die II a little more for GFK, but Sour Soul was nice.

Brandon Great picks from that album. Diggin' Up the Heart is definitely overlooked!

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I switched 48 + 49 at the last minute but LMAO I was dying at this being the literal opposite of the album talked about below. Thugger's just a ****ing screwball who I don't have time for on most occasions, but this mixtape~album worked enough as a digestible 13-song encapsulation of his wacky appeal. I always saw the comparisons a lil bit, but I would just get confused because what made peak era Lil Wayne god to me was the mile-a-minute avalanche of metaphors, similes, onomatopoeias, any other figures of speech you could name me, and how it was all wrapped up and slowed down into a cadence I could still find quotable lines in to try to recite back on the bus to school the next day. It wasn't... the mumble. And that's what Thugger was to me. But he's more than the mumble, and if it took my dumbass roommate (luv him) to make me realize that "Young Thug is actually really underrated as a lyricist, dawg! *listens to 80 Riff Raff songs*" then I thank him. but yeah he's funny as ****, not even like I think he's trying to tell jokes because it really seems like he just goes and goes without thinking about this **** for more than 1 second, but just the **** that comes out of him... "First I'll screw ya without these pliers, baby / I might dap ya like, 'good try,' baby" and he's just on to the next totally random nonsensical line that'll only start to make you laugh on the 5th listen just like that. But it bangs too. It might bang on the low key but it bangs. I recommend.
Not as much as I recommend the string of classic Wayne tapes #RIPYoungMoneyCashMoney because those contain such a large amount of the best rap music ever made, but yes I recommend

Well, the lead singles tell you a little little bit. Last time around it was Feedback, the biggest bop in all of life, and that album ended up trying to do a lot of things? Idk it's been a while. But then 7 years on we get the quietly brilliant No Sreeep, and the vibe is a little different. It's not really trying to do as many things at once; it takes a second to settle into its groove but once it's there it just is, and it's less concerned with making sure everyone likes it. And that can extend to the rest of the songs on Unbroke too, but not everything's the same (it's not another sex album!!!). Cuz it has been 7 years and after removing herself from the industry a tad Jan does come back to a different, more esteemed place than she left off at some ****'s gone down elsewhere too so she doesn't have time to **** around with you. I love how musically it sounds like such a precise update on so many of the different sounds she touched on during her early years but in equal part a statement on all these modern trends we have running through the different sectors of R&B that she herself has informed so much, of that it all just wraps around to its own very unique consistency. lol. There's just so many areas where things could have devolved into corniness and they never do because of the freshness of the actual sound and because you can spot the genuine well meaning in her delivery, and it's just sweet, this was a nice surprise.
and that's my legacy post

i can hear you grind your teeth
when you're laying fast asleep
i think i'm the one i need

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This was not ~thinkpiece-inspiring in the same way...others have turned out to be this year (i hate myself) but I still kanged out to it! Emp' definitely adds an interesting new voice to the conversation of all the indie girls already making noise; she sings about a lot of familiar personal and social 'issues' but the way she does it is never preachy or pretentious. Her voice is interesting too, kinda quirky in a Björk x Lana del Rey way + very good at either expressing the emotion she wants to show orr hiding the ones she wants to be ambiguous about! Also the production is like its own crazy things, I rly don't know what kind of instruments she made use of for a lot of the songs here! Everyone listen to How Do You Do It

Yes I love these two. Empress slays. Queen of not being extremely pretentious.

Dammn. Your legacy post on Janet was a thing of beauty

Thugger

unbreakable is good. doesn't feel forced

cn't see your picks but i assume they're good

We will get to the ~group that kinda sPON'D them down the line a bit (actually did Pond come first??) but what makes this band not come off like direct competitors to T to the I for me is how unafraid to be different and weird they are. Like this **** is really weird. Maybe not in little isolated clips, but once you get into just the vastness of it, the lack of hooks, the lack of anything that repeats at all, some of the vocal techniques going on, some of the song titles... But there is definitely still a Pond sound floating over the whole thing, and I mean it's a good one check it out.

cash out from a hen
i yell 'duck'
past tense through a fence, i'm passed up
backstage, tell 'em to bounce and round 'em up, then
move em out

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Madlib is always good for whatever he's trying to do, really, but in comparison his team-up with Freddie Gibbs last year, this time around he is lacking for anyone with like 1% of that level of intensity on the mic. But it works out still, with more room for the samples to flow around while Med + Blu + all the great guest rappers just kinda... chill. If you don't care about underground rap then I mean I don't think this will be the stuff that sways you but if you need a fix then I didn't find anything else all year that does the job better.

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This was another one I wasn't really expecting anything from but through all of his sleaze Ty is actually packing a ton of musical talent and he makes use of it to build all these sounds that are just ****ing huge. Free TC goes on longer than it should but within it there's a ton of stylistic diversity and also some emotional gut punches w/ all its references to his brother in jail that's named after. The urban pandering stuff is amazing but the real surprises come when he just decides **** it and goes for the sky. I coulda foreseen the Kanye collab but you just gon put him on the track and let him chill there for 2 seconds and go and move on? I think that speaks to the level of confidence on display more than anything else, so thank you very much Demi

I love Fetty Wap's music (or at least the singles!) so I need to check out that album in full