What a fantastic pop alber + I think my most played of the year excluding sth else in my top 10. What I Like abt Charl is the the way she injects so much attitude, lyrically and through the production - which can get grimy in parts but like with an explosive bubblegum sheen on top of it - to what would otherwise be just a collection of really catchy pop songs. She is not a great songwriter but there's a conversational tone to her words that makes even some of the trippier stuff here work. Lot of cool tricks with the production also such as the Gold Panda sample on 'Clark (Ha Ha Ha),' love that.
I never could deal with the Arctic Monkeys before. I think I used 'obnoxiously British' as an insult towards another band in this thread but good god the yAMs were like the epitome of that until they decided to go American and take influence from OutKast with this release not coincidentally making their bestonly good record through doing so. Anywayz these songs are primarily concerned with sketchy events of the night (hence the am), but the vibe of them is v unusual for such subject matter, guitars going all over the place from grunge to twang and many of the beats having a hip hop southernplayalisticallidacmuzik feel to them. Kurt Cobain would be proud.
As bomb as I thought Janelle's first album was and for ALL the ground it tries to cover over the course of 18 tracks, the years revealed it to be not as spectacular as I may have thought even with its 1/2OutKast feature. Her sophomore goes for a more timeless approach and is all the better for it. Her vision is so obvs defined and it's visible from the way she blends the modern with her influences; just look at the list of guest features. Even with her focus narrowed sonically there is still sumth on here for EVERYONE. In addition there's also the continued storyline of that android carrying over from her debut and EP release, and while I kinda see that as a load of ******** I guess it does make sense if you wanna follow + the interludes are pretty funny, so.
No one did minimalistic hedonism better this year than A$AP Mob and Yeezus and Pusha T, and obvs Rock did it best seeing as none of the others were able to scrape this list. Same thing I said about Abel Tesfaye applies here re: Rakim properly EXPANDING his mixtape sound to meet the raised stakes of the major label world. Rather than numbing his vibe down though this leaves a lot of room for him to wild out and experiment, resulting in one of the weirdest mainstream hip hop effs we've seen in modern times. Like for every banger (lot of thoze, don't forget) there's something Radiohead could have made if they grew up on the streets of Harlem. The testament here is that I played this the **** out more than any other release in recent memory and nothing on it has down anything but grow me. Just don't bother with 3/4 of the deluxe tracks.
Well this was a long time coming. I donut fully understand her label's worries of a 'positivity' excess here bcuz the album itself sounds very heavy and politically charged while p much its entire rollout process post-Bad Girls seemed like a whirlwind of negativity. If you can however get past that, it becomes clear what a BEAST of a record our girl banged out here. Like I said, the political aspect gets clearer and clearer with more listens but there's also an undeniable spiritual side present to contrast that. M.I.A. has improved markedly as a lyricist too but of course you can still choose to ignore all the above as the BEATS here are most simply hard as ****, good enough to keep anyone coming back. Every song just so good ugh. M/a/y/a\ was kinda just **** but woop woop look who came back with powa.
Not the only OFT-delayed album to materialize this year when I thought all hope had been lost (see #6 ) but this was prob the truest realization of my highest expectations beforehand if that makes sense. You can tell Pusha Ton studied up a bit under Yeezus, from the art design of the whole project to the selection of beats (I mean, track #1), but this here is obvs much more lyrical as he is luckily not as bad of a rapper as Kanye. The great part is that as hard as this record goes, it is extremely inviting nonetheless with hooks over hooks over catchy melodies that reveal themselves over time. Radio-friendly but certainly not generic, like he's taking over the world on his own terms.