Lol I switched em at the last minute. BWET brings in a lot more ideas but it could benefit from some trimming IMO while Sucker's bad moments are mostly limited to one song in particular and the album as a whole just works as a more enjoyable listening experience for me.
Part of me loves Sucker, the other part is underwhelmed. I love all of BWET just not the album itself. (w/e y'all already read my feelings about it) But still, they help make up a great ~best of~
Top entry from an act that as far as I know I hadn't heard a song from prior to 2014. Atlas grew on me all year but it was an enjoyable listen from the start, packing a lot of really really catchy guitar melodies up against this kind of back-and-forth strumming that keeps every song feeling like it's always in motion. The lyrics mostly talking about growing up out of a suburban environment and reflecting on relationships as they age with you, and for whatever reason those are things that connected to me a lot this year (see: Boyhood!) And then bringing everything together is the lead singer's voice, which IMO captures exactly the right balance between longing and optimism -- I could listen to it on repeat, just like I could (and did) this album.
KEY TRACKS
AZEALIA BANKS @AZEALIABANKS · Jan 2
No one can defeat Catty Noir.
The kind of debut that arrives fully formed, with a defined sense of what it wants to sound like (and in this case, look like) and put together with enough skill to reach that accomplish these goals no problem. twigs doesn't want to be grouped in with the other "alt-R&B" kids, but however you want to label her, it's clear that she does a great job of taking in some of the most interesting musical components of that contemporary movement and condensing them down into something that balances the minimal with the complex, the abstract with the direct. 'Two Weeks' (always going to be tied to its video) might sit as my biggest "OH ****" moment in music this decade — it's not every day you catch the birth of an icon — but even crazier, she manages to one-up it in the context of the record just 2 songs later with "Pendulum," a track worlds smaller in terms of scope, honing in on loss and the ensuing VOID rather than lust. What kind of the two most prevalent emotions in my life? Theatrics are appreciated, but she doesn't need em.
KEY TRACKS
AZEALIA BANKS @AZEALIABANKS
Lol I look like such a doofus, but I was so happy to find this baby coconut on the beach the other day…
I find music without words difficult to really get at verbally, but it's even tougher with FlyLo whose work over his last 4 releases has sounded completely out of another dimension. This time around he's exploring The Great Beyond, The Life After This One, conjuring some very...spectral imagery through his most jazz-based arrangements to date. There's heaviness to it, but also humor and whimsy, and in its most transcendent moments it brings the two together; if Kendrick Lamar hadn't earned his stripes with the decade he was already having 2010-2013, he's done it with "Never Catch Me." Death isn't something that's easy or fun to talk about, but Stephen Ellison has made it a conversation worth having, and if I ever needed to just go somewhere else for 38 minutes this last year, You're Dead! was there for me.
HEAVENLY... ONE MIGHT ALMOST SAY.
KEY TRACKS
AZEALIA BANKS @AZEALIABANKS · 1h 1 hour ago
Someone said my teeth are so white, that each one of my teeth has white privilege. *facepalm*
Yesss. Continuing with a criminally awesome and underrated album run dating back to her 1999 debut, Kelis delivered this year riding the funk throwback sound better than pretty much anyone else. Using food as an introductory gateway to other human essentials like love and such things is an idea I can get behind, and beneath the Tasty exteriors of every single track here lie a lot of genuinely sweet and touching moments. Been using this word a lot, but the CRISPness of the production job here (one of the members of TV on the Radio gets the credit) really helps these arrangements pop and the songs hit home; 13 tracks and all of them are GREAT. Just as much of that though is Kelis's voice; it doesn't sound the same as it did 10 or 15 years ago, but she has a newfound huskiness that in my opinion lends her...aural credibility and adds some sentimentality to these songs about living and learning. She has nothing left to prove, but from my perspective Kelis is more inspired and having more fun now than she ever has, and it's fantastic to hear.
KEY TRACKS
AZEALIA BANKS @AZEALIABANKS · Dec 29
After I put a hex on the gov't & get reparations, do you think Canada will let us buy a piece of land so we can be lil' black Luxembourg ?
I updated the OP with everything.
Top 3 should be tomorrow/today (1-4), still ummmmm, working some things out but I'll post it at all once when it's ready.
And then I don't know EXACTLY how I wanna do songs, but there will def. be a another list for those following the current one.
And then my 100 favorite respective tracks/singles/don't know + albums of the decade so far 2010-2014, so more coming for sure stay tuned 4 it.
Uhh so again, each album in my top 3 is like God level for me and choosing between them was seriously the hardest thing ever, lol.
I think I went through every permutation I could on my way before settling on the one I had been planning on right before I started the countdown.
Charli is great!
I only checked out the latter like 2 weeks ago but I've already racked up loads of plays for it.