7. Rihanna - ANTI Rihanna might be the most charismatic person on the planet, and Anti is her first album to recognize that said charisma is her greatest strength. The music within is all over the place: she moves from dancehall to stoned soul to grimy trap-pop to Tame Impala-style psych without blinking, relying on her force of personality to hold everything together. The result is an album that creates and ignores trends instead of chasing them. Rihanna’s stardom has been inarguable for a solid decade at this point; Anti is the first album that does her justice.
6. Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
5. The Range - Potential
4. Angel Olsen - My Woman
3. Mitski - Puberty 2
2. Solange - A Seat At The Table
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1. Frank Ocean - Blonde Frank Ocean has become pop music’s leading ascetic, a less-is-more devotee who’d rather let his melodies do all the talking. Released after four years of increasingly interminable hype, Blonde finds Ocean leaving behind the rich arrangements and narratives of 2012’s Channel Orange in favour of radical simplicity: little percussion, few guest stars, lyrics that are both stunning and impossibly opaque. “Nights” is a multi-part suite — like Ocean’s own “Pyramids” — given an acid bath and stripped to spare parts; “Solo” and “Godspeed” are breathtaking modern hymns. (They’re queer, too, and so deeply felt they make a song like “Forrest Gump” sound cloying.) If Channel Orange made Ocean a star, Blonde confirms that he’s a singular figure.
Top 10 albums of 2016
1. Blonde, Frank Ocean
2. A Seat at the Table, Solange
3. Puberty 2, Mitski
4. My Woman, Angel Olsen
5. Potential, The Range
6. A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead
7. Anti, Rihanna
8. Freetown Sound, Blood Orange
9. Emily’s D+Evolution, Esperanza Spalding
10. Il, Jean-Michel Blais
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