I probably have not listened to this straight through since the day after it leaked and I dnt rly plan to. BUT, as meh as this album's replay value might be, as obnoxious as the persona of "Lady Gaga" has become, as flawed and inherently pretentious the concept of 'artpop' is, as hilarious as it is to watch her fans suffer as she fails to live up to commercial expectations, the man behind the aura packed a ton of individually strong pop songs into one album, surprising me more than any other disaster in pop this year. Do What Ur-into is better than every BTW single and nothing on here is worse than the 4 or 5 songs making up the lowest tier of that album (or its album cover), so, yeah, there's also that.
1 more I forgot about. The 197 consists of some British lads who remind me of early Arctic Monkeys, but poppier and not as obnoxiously British. The music here is p straightforward but with both flair and depth to it that makes it again accessible while continually satisfying. 'Chocolate' is kinda starting to climb the charts in America as we speak, it would be yummy for that to blow up here and stuff.
Donut underestimate the power of Nayvadius D. Hendrix. Ignoring its status as a successfulish ~comeback for Veteran Ci, this is one of the most confident + triumphant sounding albums I heard all year and you have to imagine a large part of that has at least some relation to Future's penis. Of cawz the record is just lean and its songs are strong all around, a lot of diversity on display and also the way F rescues it from the throes of tired 90s R&B nostalgia by squeezing all the liquid out of it and letting it drip around his trademark shimmering coils.
This is not per se an "album"; this is a mixtape. Big ****ing deal. Anyway, Cassie Ventura has a lot of swag. (just look at her smoking weed brandishing an AK47 on that cover! so edge) Without ever really full out rapping, she has a way of hanging over these (bomb azz) beats that overshadows pretty much all of her collaborators here. That's even impressive in like a couple of cases. There's m.A.A.d city interpolation on I Know What You Want too that always catches me out of nowhere, so that's also pretty cool.
Soo this is a flawed album. 'That Girl' borders on being a waste of space, 'Mirrors' sounds like it was scientifically engineered in a laboratory to be the perfect pop song which is fine for some cats but I could never fully dig it the same way for that reason plus you can tell a lot of the songs are about Jessica Biel and Jessica Biel only and that's a buzzkill. But the MOST common criticism of #JT2013 had to have been that he failed to come out with a song this year under 37 minutes and I don't see that as a bad thing. It's nice to see an artist on his level not play it safe yeah, but on top of that he manages to pack so much into 10 songs while giving everything he tries room to air out, and the overall project is better for that. Even with no effective third sequel to Cry Me a River. I didn't bother w 2 of 2.
The songs on this album are p much all super catchy and good. They take a simplistic sound and nail it, that's their thing. It suffers a bit mainly when the male vocalist takes over from the female just bcuz of what a firecracker she is, but DIVERSITY can be a +. Not the only time it happened this year, but nice to see a promising upstart act carry over their hype to a worthwhile debut. O and I like the cover art.
Having 'Royals' get old on me fast enough for me to assume she would be Lana del Rey pt. 2 if nuthin more only to listen to her album and find the song that topped the Hot 100 for months and months not even in its top half was another nice surprise for me in 2013. Everything kinda works on a few diff. levels here where the pop songs pop but she really does have something to say that isn't annoying or preachy. Trying more not to think about how that she's 2 ****ing years younger than me and doing..... wut she is doing.
It is a testament to the power of Rocky that this was allowed to happen on the scale it happened on. But oooooh **** did Ferg do dat this year. 'Trap Lord' is not the most consistent thing in the world tbh but he offsets that and more with HEAT of his delivery on the album. You get a lot of bangerz and while some more of the real n true variety i.e. Shabba on the other hand you have some really dark and insightful heavy hitting stuff juxtaposed against the same types of beats i.e. Hood Pope, and it's complex, it's unnerving. Ummmmmmm ya he good
Another good 2013 discovery, basically some v Sade-esque quiet storm, right down to the guy(!)'s voice. Intimacy would I guess be the word here and they get a lot of mileage out of all the different ways they find to look at. It was fitting for me this year what with all the crazy and frequent sex I had.
At first I thought the alb cov was creepy but now I like it. Um this was a standardish pop house album to me that didn't sound as revolutionary as some from the critical world would have you believe, but the beats are really tight and don't let up at all over the course of an hour. The songs themselves are smartly written — when the bangerz come, they come — and the album is dopely paced. It's cool 2 how Disclosure make use of so many guest vocalists but still manage to carve out a sound so uniquely Disclosury.