AOTY. It's voted by many professionals in the industry; which surely must be in the hundreds. That's far more important than the "professional" opinion of 25 critics.

AOTY

People aren't aware of metacritic scores.

And surprisingly enough, those critics are even more biased in their picks than the Grammy panel.

Well, in both cases only 1% of the albums become classics so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As a musician, 90+ Metacritic seems better to me, since Grammy's are trash.

Here's another example, look at Arcade Fire. They are adored by critics, debut album scored a 90. Guess what? The most impactful thing that happened to them career wise was the AOTY win in 2011. Whoever says that critic scores mean more is full of it. Their have been plenty of critically acclaimed albums that have long been forgotten. Frank Ocean and Kanye would rather the AOTY over the other, and so would your fave.

Kanye called it the Super Bowl of music, and he's one of the most critically acclaimed artists of the decade.

Album Of The Year.

AOTY by far

This.

You only say that because your fave is incapable of winning any. Very transparent.

And obviously winning AOTY. If someone offered literally any artist an AOTY, but in exchange they'd never get higher than 10 on metacritc ever again, you can be damn sure that every single artist would take that deal.

Both are stupid and pointless. It should come down to your own personal taste not what strangers tell you. But at gun point, I'll take AOTY