Keep It Going Louder in conjunction with the Slam Zuckert Institute of Cultural Opinions Present…
The Best Albums of the 2010s
“If you disagree, fight me”
#25 – This is Acting
by Sia
“And I don’t care if I sing off key / I find myself in my melodies / I sing for love, I sing for me / I shout it out like a bird set free”
A bold and jarring pop album that offers more songs that will put a fist in your gut than will play at a club, This is Acting is a stark reminder of the songwriting and vocal talent of the elusive Sia. Comprised mostly of songs Sia wrote initially for other artists, she shows off her incredible voice while consuming us in her mysterious and upside down world of pop-superstardom where the singers hide behind a giant wig and their back-up dancers are out front, few in numbers, decidedly unsexualized, and performing song-length modern dance routines. With the help of some luscious production from Greg Kurstin and Jesse Shatkin (and one delectable Kanye West beat), This is Acting is a beautiful and bold album that plays as well at a music festival as it does alone in your room.
Ideal Listening Setting: In a car on a road trip with someone who doesn’t mind you belting out the lyrics out of tune, and hell, maybe they’ll even join in (for Cheap Thrills at least)
The Hits: “Bird Set Free”, “Reaper”
#24 – My Krazy Life
by YG
“I’m from B-P-T / West Side, West Side, West Side, West Side”
A smashing counterpoint to Kendrick Lamar’s good kid mAAD city, both albums tell the story of a kid from Compton growing up. But while Kendrick is all superego, YG is pure id; no regrets, no remorse, seize the day and make the most out of the cards you were dealt. While Kendrick meditates on the influences that create crime on “The Art of Peer Pressure”, YG skylarks his way through his home invasion song “Meet The Flockers” like it’s carefree day at the park. Kendrick asks if he’s real, YG asks who do you love? The music itself is crisp and tight, all but four songs were produced by minimalist king DJ Mustard, and YG makes the most of the beats giving us a strong of danceable and quotable songs that can play anytime from the pregame to the after-party. YG adds his story to the long list of great Compton albums, while it may not have the intellectual or emotional heft of his contemporaries Kendrick or Vince Staples, it sure as hell is fun.
Ideal Listening Setting: Early on a Friday night when you’re looking to get into some trouble.
The Hits: “Left, Right”, “Who Do You Love?”
#23 – w h o k i l l
by tUnE-yArDs
“The worst thing about living a lie is just wondering when they’ll find out”
A beautiful cacophony of lo-fi indie pop, Merrill Garbus took her tUnE-yArDs project to the next level with her 2011 album w h o k i l l. A truly unique album, it sounds like she raided an second-hand musical instrument shop and played everything she found until it started to break apart then looped it all together. Her voice bobs, weaves, dips, and dives across all the tracks, navigating us through her wonderful chaos. Songs to uplift you and confuse you at the same time, w h o k i l l is a distillation of the less-is-more ethos if the less also included a music box falling down the stairs.
Ideal Listening Setting: Open dance at a modern art show.
The Hits: “Gangsta”, “My Country”
#22 – Islah
by Kevin Gates
“I used to to tease you ’bout your feet, we would laugh and we’d giggle / And havin’ breakfast on the beach you don’t know how much that meant to me”
Kevin Gates raps like he is trying to scare away a mountain lion, snarling over booming and dark beats his gravelly voice gives him a unique sense of gravitas that he’s maintained throughout his career.. A master hook-man, Gates hasn’t stopped with the classic drugs and jewelry boast songs but he matches that with a surprising amount of vulnerability, both about his station in life and his relationships with women. On “Pride” and “Post to be in Love” he talks about the difficulties of fighting through the tough exterior he’s been building for so many years to express affection and the difficulties of realizing a relationship might not be what it seems. A thoughtful and introspective album that has it’s fair share of radio-ready singles, Islah is peak Kevin Gates, perhaps one of the most underrated voices in rap this decade.
Ideal Listening Setting: While plotting your revenge.
The Hits: “Really Really”, “2 Phones”
#21 – El Mal Querer
by Rosalía
“Aunque no esté bonita / La noche, ¡Undivé! / Vi’ a salir pa’ la calle / En la manita los aros brillando”
Hands down my favorite Spanish-language, Flamenco-pop album of the decade that’s based on a 13th century Occitan novel, not even close. If you understand Spanish, Rosalía’s adventurous El Mal Querer is an epic journey through a toxic relationship, if you don’t then it’s still a powerhouse vocal performance that incorporates all kinds of cool pop aesthetics, most notable the nuevo-flamenco from Rosalía’s native Spain. Still a relatively new release, this feels like the kind of album that could start a flamenco trend in the US with some knock-off singles and maybe some rap songs with over the top flamenco hooks. It already may be starting to coalescing around Rosalía as she’s recently collaborated with with J. Balvin and James Blake. Even if El Mal Querer ends up only being nuevo-flamenco 15 minutes of fame in the US, it is a powerful and dazzling album that will hit you deep even if you need to navigate over to our friends at LyricsTranslations.com in order to understand what she’s singing.
Ideal Listening Setting: Driving through the desert to win back a lost love
The Hits: “Malamente (Cap. 1: Augurio)”, “Di mi nombre (Cap. 8: Éxtasis)”
#20 – Wounded Rhymes
by Lykke Li
“You’re my river running high / Run deep, run wild”
Those Swedes sure can make the hell out of a pop album. Maybe it’s the omnipresent cold that encourages dancing for warmth, maybe it’s constantly high ranking on the Global Happiness Index… whatever it is Sweden has made a habit of dominating the pop music world from ABBA to Robyn to Max Martin and beyond. Lykke Li may not have rocketed up the charts as high as her predecessors but Wounded Rhymes is a mesmerizing and beautiful pop epic that started a 3-album run cementing her as one of the leading purveyors of interesting and original pop music this decade.
Ideal Listening Setting: A long autumn stroll in the Swedish countryside.
The Hits: “Youth Knows No Pain”, “I Follow Rivers”
#19 – Finally Rich
by Chief Keef
“These bitches love Sosa, O End or no end / Fucking with them O boys, you gon’ get fucked over”
Hate it or love it, Finally Rich is a seminal Chicago hip-hop album. In between the young, druggy consciousness of early 2010s Chance the Rapper and not-yet-completely-insane megalomaniac bombast of Kanye West, Chief Keef burst onto the scene with a blasting string of song that confounded a city and put drill music on the map. It’s tempting to overanalyze every line of every song, when Keef raps about hating being sober is that just his excitement to party or does his current life conditions weigh down on him so heavily that facing the crushing reality sober day after day is too much to bear? By naming an album that came out when he was only 17 years old “Finally” Rich was he making a statement about the modern obsession with the acquisition of wealth or just noting that he’s always wanted to be rich and now he is? Regardless of the answers to those questions, or even the question if they’re worth answering in the first place, Finally Rich shook Chicago and the hip-hop world with the haunting and hypnotic beats of Young Chop, the dead-eyed ruthlessness of Chief Keef’s lyrics, and the reckless joy that comes from bouncing with a mass of your friends yelling out a chorus of Keef’s creation.
Ideal Listening Setting: At your house with a whole bunch of shirtless dudes
The Hits: “Love Sosa”, “I Don’t Like”, “Hate Bein’ Sober”
#18 – Carrie & Lowell
by Sufjan Stevens
“I should have wrote a letter / And grieve what I happen to grieve”
If you’re favorite song off Come On Feel the Illinoise was “Casimir Pulaski Day” and you’ve been yearning for a whole album of that sweet, sweet melancholy, boy do I have a treat for you! After a brief adventure into electronic-folk, Stevens returned to his acoustic roots and delivered the somber and beautiful Carrie & Lowell. Inspired by the death of his mother, Stevens looks inward and yanks out some of his most personal and soulful material to date. Accompanied by his always-excellent composition and arrangements, Carrie & Lowell will tug on your heartstrings, tickle your eardrums, and hopefully convince you that it’s for the best that Stevens ditched that whole 50 state thing.
Ideal Listening Setting: In front of a fireplace on a snowy evening
The Hits: “Death with Dignity”, “Should Have Known Better”
#17 – Yeezus
by Kanye West
“I am a god / So hurry up with my damn massage / In a French-ass restaurant / Hurry up with my damn croissants!”
Funny how looking back at Yeezus, an album which included a song called “I am a God” and another where Kanye rapped about popping molly in luxury hotels and Instagramming his watch while the Nina Simone sample sings of lynchings, one thinks: “It was a simpler time for Kanye.” Professing his religious intentions years before anyone would think to take them seriously, Yeezus is an industrial rap symphony that draws from everyone in Kanye’s orbit at the time. Rick Rubin! Daft Punk! No I.D. and Charlie Wilson bring back the Old Kanye™! A glorious romp through a drug and ego fueled warehouse party where everyone is wearing $1000 dollar ripped t-shirts, as every Kanye album, Yeezus finds Kanye at a specific place and time where he’ll shine like only he can then walk away and never look back.
Ideal Listening Setting: Right before a party that you’d like to get a little too excited for.
The Hits: “Hold My Liquor”, “Blood on the Leaves”
#16 – Summertime ‘06
by Vince Staples
“I ain’t never ran from nothin’ but the police”
I saw Vince Staple perform at Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago one summer and for his whole 40-minute set he did not say a single word outside of the lyrics to his songs. He walked on stage by his lonesome (not even a DJ) then a beat started, he rapped, then after the beat ended he started out into the crowd wordlessly until the next beat began. He did this for 9 or 10 songs then just walked off stage; the crowd ate it up.
So is the mystique of Vince Staples; outlandish in his introversion off-records but fearless on a track, bringing you inside his dizzying vision of the world. As Staples raps over a selection of woozy and lively beats, mostly from the legendary No I.D., he gives the album a sense of cutting through a smog-filled LA day. His songs like a portable oxygen tank that can either give you a breath of fresh air or shatter a store-front window.
Ideal Listening Setting: A hot summer night perched on your front stoop with enough friends to slightly intimidate passerbys.
The Hits: “Norf Norf”, “Señorita”
#15 – Days Are Gone
by Haim
“But if I was to say I regret it / Would it mean a thing?”
In 2007 the three Haim sisters, Este, Danielle, and Alana, decided to merge their musical aspirations and start a band. Their first gig was at a Jewish deli in LA and they were paid in matzah ball soup. The next six years were spent on a variety of musical projects, both separate and together, all culminating in their wonderful pop-rock debut Days Are Gone.
An album that is immensely fun and never takes itself too seriously, the Haim sister sing about love, loss, and relationships all while never losing their sunshine-in-a-bottle charm. Every song feels like it could be host to a poorly choreographed summer camp talent show dance in the best possible way. An album that drips with joy while never forgetting the harsh realities of even the most carefree lives, Days Are Gone keeps its feet firmly planted on the ground while it reaches out for the sunny summer sky.
Ideal Listening Setting: In the park for a family picnic.
The Hits: “The Wire”, “Don’t Save Me”
#14 – Anxiety
by Autre Ne Veut
“I’m counting on the idea that you’ll stay alive”
Autre Ne Veut is not afraid to bear his soul with the utmost seriousness, through production that sounds like a one-man-band bought a synth and moved to Williamsburg (I mean this as a compliment) he pours his heart into every song delivering odes to love, loss, and family in a howling and powerful falsetto (also a compliment).
Quick digression: Autre Ne Veut is the stage name of Arthur Ashin whose name (sorry I can’t help myself) sounds like what the attendees of the The Playa Haters’ Ball would call one of their compatriots who gets into tennis. Again, I profusely apologize, end of digression.
Anyway, a powerful album that can be as jarring as it is uplifting Anxiety will lull you into a trance then shake you right out of it with an errant horn or well-placed squawk. Tender and heartfelt, loud and vulnerable, Anxiety holds out its hand and hopes we join it in its cathartic release.
Ideal Listening Setting: Anywhere you can go falsetto without someone complaining.
The Hits: “Counting”, “Ego Free Sex Free”, “Play by Play”
#13 – The Electric Lady
by Janelle Monáe
“They be like, ‘Ooh, let them, eat cake’ / But we eat wings and throw them bones on the ground”
The queen of musical science fiction strikes again with The Electric Lady, Suite IV and V of Monáe’s Metropolis series. Don’t worry if you’re feeling lost in the dystopian android narrative, the adventures of The Droid Rebel Alliance, The Droid Control, and The Get Free crew serve as secondary to the vast musical prowess of Monáe on The Electric Lady. A euphoric collision of genre, Monáe takes elements of hip hop, soul, funk, and rock and molds them into a celebration of love, rebellion, justice, and dance.
Ideal Listening Setting: In your lab building a robot that will smash the patriarchy and lead us to a glorious new imperfect future
The Hits: “Q.U.E.E.N.”, “Electric Lady”
#12 – Bon Iver & i,i
by Bon Iver
“I waited outside / Then you took me in the room and you offered up the truth”
What a decade for Bon Iver. From recluse Midwest folk enigma to G.O.O.D. music hook man and back again, Bon Iver has rode the wave of the 2010s with skill and grace and put out two more excellent albums (my apologies to the good-not-great 22, A Million) that brought fresh life to the Bon Iver sound. Wistful and full of soul, Bon Iver stays closer to the classic For Emma, Forever Ago sound while i,i reins in some of the wildest experiments on 22, A Million and grounds them in the folk model that has served him so well. Listened to Bon Iver feels as nourishing as a big bowl of soup from grandma and Vernon & Friends don’t look to be slowing down the gravy train anytime soon.
Ideal Listening Setting: In a cabin in the woods on a lazy autumn morning
The Hits: “Holocene” [Bon Iver], “Hey, Ma” [i,i]
#11 – Treats
by Sleigh Bells
“The permanent thought of you has never bothered you / You’re gonna have to, have to, have to / Set, set that crown on the ground”
If I allow the cover art to prime me, Treats sounds like the jocks trashed the metalheads’ instruments and as an act of righteous rebellion the cheerleaders teamed up with said metalheads to win the school talent show broken speakers and all. As genres collapsed into each other in the 2010s metal was one of the big influences, seeping into hip hop, indie rock, and delightfully J-pop (please check out Babymetal if you’re curious). No one made better use of the harsh and heavy sounds than Sleigh Bells who delivered a raw and profoundly unique debut LP in Treats. Teeming with overpowering riffs, glowing distortion, and hypnotizing chants, Treats is a noise-pop masterpiece that brought the joy of head-banging to the people.
Ideal Listening Setting: Fixing bikes in a grease-stained shop with a bunch of tattooed men and women
The Hits: “Crown on the Ground”, “Tell ‘Em”
#10 – Shrines
by Purity Ring
“Get a little closer, let fold / Cut open my sternum, and pull / my little ribs around you”
Purity Ring is a gift to those who love to creatively categorize bands. Their combinations of sublime vocals and haunting synth-pop production is the perfect opportunity to go scrambling to your thesaurus and dig up the most lovely of adjectives. Pitchfork’s Mark Richardson referred to them as “dubbed-out retro-futuristic indie pop” and their genre subcategories on Wikipedia include Synth-Pop, Trip Hop, Dream Pop, and Witch House. I would really love dig real deep into a Witch House wormhole right now but let’s just stick to Purity Ring.
Any way you amalgamate the musical descriptors, Shrines is a glowing and masterful debut from Purity Ring. The lyrics are spooky and poetic; Megan James’s voice is erie yet comforting, like if Adele was possessed by a rapscallious demon; and Corin Roddick’s production feels like it’s shooting out of a magic wand, shimmering as it explodes on beat and then drifting off into the either. A bold and original musical idea executed to perfection, Shrines still sounds fresh even as their sound wormed its way into the mainstream.
Ideal Listening Setting: In a warehouse on a woozy weekend evening.
The Hits: “Crawlersout”, “Fineshrine”
#9 – To Pimp a Butterfly
by Kendrick Lamar
“I’m at the preacher’s door / My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow but we gon’ be alright”
Rarely does an album come along that so personal and intimate while also being such a cultural touchstone. Lamar battles institutional racism and internal demons song-to-song and even line-to-line; never afraid to wrestle with his own flaws. Lamar’s monumental To Pimp a Butterfly may have been a classic even without the inspired musical experimentation and his head-spinning lyrical abilities.
Explosive and introspective, radical and reflective, “Alright” became a refrain for protests around the country while the “The Blacker The Berry” drew criticism from the same group of activists. In a decade when at any given point ten-thousand rappers claimed to be the king, the hip-hop philosopher poet supreme Kendrick Lamar knew that tracks speak louder than tweets and let his albums cement his status as rapper of the decade.
Ideal Listening Setting: En route to a protest.
The Hits: “Alright”, “King Kunta”
#8 – Modern Vampires of the City
by Vampire Weekend
“Oh, sweet thing / Zion doesn’t love you / And Babylon don’t love you / But you love everything”
Vampire Weekend is likely either the coolest or lamest band of the 2010s, I still can’t tell. Bursting onto the scene as an Ivy-bred, four-piece, guitar-lead, pop-rock band they quickly morphed into something much more and continued their streak of vigorous and engrossing albums with Modern Vampires of the City. Harnessing the best of Koenig’s vocal prowess and Batmanglij’s tight and wily production, our journey through the album bring us new themes and sounds at every turn, never letting us settle in. Focused and expansive, Modern Vampires is Vampire Weekend at their peak, delivering an album grounded in their platter-sampling influences and spinning them all to fit into one beautiful musical collage.
Ideal Listening Setting: Riding one of those park bicycles with the wicker basket in front down an unpaved country path with a lover.
The Hits: “Diane Young”, “Ya Hey”
#7 – Acid Rap
by Chance the Rapper
“Even better than I was the last time baby / oo oo oo oo I’m good”
Before 2013, there was only Kanye. Sure, there were Common and Lupe and Rhymefest but pretty much from the moment Kanye broke out in the early 2000s when you thought of Chicago hip-hop from anywhere outside of the Midwest, you thought of Kanye. After 2013, a new holy trinity emerged with Kanye as the aging genius slowly descending into madness, Chief Keef as the ruthless aggressor, and Chance as the city’s Great Hope.
Acid Rap is as beautiful and relentlessly fun as a summertime Chi at its best all while not ignoring the issues that plague the city, many exacerbated by the same weather. Chance reflects and refracts, celebrating the reckless joy of youth while never letting go of the losses that have haunted his past. Musically bold and lyrically wise beyond his years (except for that one line on “Favorite Song” which is pretty awful…thankfully he stopped performing it pretty soon after its release, but still, damage done), Acid Rap brought a new vision for Chicago hip-hop and painted a picture of growing up amidst beauty and trauma. Turning pain into hope, joy into beauty, and sharing it all with the community.
Ideal Listening Setting: Summertime on a blanket in the park with enough friends, food, beverages, youthful energy to feel like the day will never end.
The Hits: “Juice”, “Chain Smoker”
#6 – The Bones of What You Believe
by CHVRCHES
“The way is long but you can make it easy on me / And the mother we share will never keep our cold hearts from calling”
Jam packed with nothing but big, bright, shining bangers The Bones of What You Believe is a synth-pop masterpiece that strips away all the irony and pension of shoe-gazing indie music and delivers genuine, vulnerable, and truthful pop songs that play just as well in arenas and music festivals as they do alone in your bedroom after a stressful day. The songs mostly follow familiar pop formulas in their structure (verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus…) but the structural predictability allows for CHVRCHES to go all in on the wild and lush layers of synths, expansive percussion, and powerful vocals. A profoundly fun album that leaves you something to chew on as the lyrics forever linger in your memory, The Bones of What You Believe is a near-perfect pop album that hits with the force of Scottish supernova.
Ideal Listening Setting: Sunrise while on a road trip.
The Hits: “The Mother We Share”, “Gun”, “Recover”
#5 – House of Balloons
by The Weeknd
“He’s what you want / He’s what you want / He’s what you want / He’s what you want / I’m what you need”
When the The Weeknd first emerged in late 2010, we didn’t know much about him. Just that he was from Canada, had a co-sign from Drake, and made woozy pop-R&B that sounded like Michael Jackson just went on the Lil’ Wayne diet. Now nine years later, we know a lot more about our good friend Abel Makkonen Tesfaye and his 2011 debut still feels as shrouded in mystery and intrigue as the first time it pulsed through my dorm room speakers.
House of Balloons is an entrancing album, a journey through a non-stop life of parties, drugs, sex, and endless nights on city streets. A triumph of hedonism, Tesfaye’s piercing and beautiful voice leaps back and forth across beats that feel like they were produced by an angel and engineered by a demon. Sensual and startling, the songs grip you somewhere primal and don’t let go. What results is an album that knows you try to live a moral life, but sometimes, deep down, you need to make some bad decisions and enjoy them to the fullest.
Ideal Listening Setting: In the living room of a downtown 30th-floor apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows with a “special friend” at 3am after just getting back from a long night on the town..
The Hits: “The Morning”, “High for This”
#4 – Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
by Big Boi
“It is I, the B-I-G, the B-O-I / Me oh my, ears to the street and eyes to the sky”
Big Boi has always been perceived as second fiddle in Outkast to Andre 3000 but listening back it’s clear that he provided the foundation throughout Outkast’s music that allowed for Andre to spend his time coloring clouds and exhaling magic. Big Boi brings all of his musical wisdom and lyrical dexterity to every track on Sir Lucious, front to back every song hits like a sledgehammer with enough features to keep things lively without ever overshadowing the master of ceremony. “Shutterbug” is a booming club song with a perfect vocoder backing, “You Ain’t No DJ” bring Andre 3000 on as producer for a beat that sounds like C-3PO drunkenly stumbling through a xylophone/laser gun shop and features the perfectly off-kilter Yelawolf, “General Patton” heaps on a heavy dose of Southern braggadocio, and “Shine Blockas” feel like a Cadillac ride through the pearly gates.
Filled with the pent-up energy of a rapper who hadn’t had a proper album in 7-odd years (my apologies to Idlewild), Sir Lucious is extraordinary start to Big Boi’s second act as a solo artist and an end to the notion that Outkast was anything less than a perfect partnership.
Ideal Listening Setting: Cruising on a summer Sunday in your 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, six woofers and four amps
The Hits: “Stutterbugg”, “Shine Blockas”
#3 – good kid, m.A.A.d city
by Kendrick Lamar
“Okay, now open your mind up and listen to me, Kendrick / I am your conscience, if you do not hear me then you will be history, Kendrick”
The legend of Kendrick Lamar had been building for a while. Young K-Dot from Compton had been putting music out since 2004 and was steadily on the rise; opening for The Game song, featured in Jay Rock videos, a low-budget “Empire State of Mind” freestyle (“Compton State of Mind”, naturally) that got some traction, and eventually his first release of the 2010s, Overly Dedicated, which caught the ear of Dr. Dre. After Section.80 got some buzz it was time to set Lamar loose on the world, with Dr. Dre and top Dawg as executive producers Lamar gathered an all star team of producers (Sounwave, Hit-Boy, Tha Bizness, Just Blaze to name a few) and created a classic.
The songs are lush and dense, musically Lamar was able to wrangle the team of producers into his cohesive vision for how his story fits together. The bombast of “Backseat Freestyle” melds perfectly into the pensive “The Art of Peer Pressure”, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” sounds like a house party submerged in bottle of liquor and flows right into the holy waters of “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”. Even a subpar rapper could get away with a solid album this well produced and thought out, but of course, we wouldn’t be this high on the list if Kendrick was even just good. On every song Kendrick spits sharp, complex lyrics with mind-bending ease. Contorting rhymes and barbs to fit in every crevice on the album, his ungodly skill raises each song to the level of a Talmudic text that will be picked apart and argued over for generations to come. Bold and experimental in both it’s musicality and narrative, good kid, m.A.A.d city is a coming-of-age classic that brought King Kendrick to the people. Long live the rapper of the decade.
Ideal Listening Setting: Driving your parents car through the streets of the city you grew up in
The Hits: “Swimming Pools (Drank)”, “Backseat Freestyle”
#2 – Norman Fucking Rockwell
by Lana Del Rey
“There’s things I want to say to you, but I’ll just let you live / Like if you hold me without hurting me, you’ll be the first who ever did”
After careful review, I’m 99% sure that this isn’t just a case of recency bias and Norman Fucking Rockwell is actually the second best album of the decade. Part of it might be the surprise of the album; every other artist on the list I was already a fan of previous to their album or I had no preconceived notions going in. Lana Del Rey has been hanging around for most of the decade and I had heard songs from her previous albums (thought they were okay, nothing special for the most part). It wasn’t until the waning months of the decade that she sealed the decade with her bombshell album and from the first notes it put a powerful spell on me that I have not yet been able to escape.
Most impressive is how good every song is, this isn’t just an album with a single good idea that flows up and down, each track has some classic musical moments and the lyrical zip that feels universal and also 2019-specific at the same time (“Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news…”). The album starts with the one-two intro punch of “Norman Fucking Rockwell” and “Mariners Apartment Complex” then fades into the 10-minute opus/thesis statement “Venice Bitch”. What follows are the groovy “Fuck It, I Love You”, the mind-boggling Sublime cover “Doin’ Time”, and the tender “Love Song”, which would have been a strong enough start to carry the album, but it’s really just getting warmed up.
Incredible, the back half of the album is even better than the first. The tantalizing “Cinnamon Girl” rolls into the aching “How to Disappear” then”California”, a brutal ode to the distance in relationships, both physical and emotional. “The Next Best American Record” and “The Greatest” are a testament to freedom and desire and closing out the album are “Bartender”, “Happiness Is a Butterfly”, and “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – but I Have It”, a haunting trio of songs about female desire in an age of increased empowerment and danger. There aren’t any big musical innovations, no grand experiment in style or form, just the tightest songwriting this side of 2010, powerful vocal performances by Del Rey, and Jack Antonoff’s most inspired and cohesive production to date.
A sprawling yet intimate album, Del Rey’s brutal sincerity is irresistible and unstoppable. In an era where technology almost demands overproduction, she wisely resists the temptation and instead gave us a 70-minute distillation of her greatest musical and lyrical talents, meditation on love, desire, relationships, and the pains that come with striving for greatness in this nightmare we call reality.
Ideal Listening Setting: Alone on the back deck of an empty house overlooking a large body of water where boats leisurely sail and softly rock to and fro.
The Hits: “Cinnamon Girl”, “The greatest”, “How to disappear”, “Happiness is a butterfly”
#1 – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
by Kanye West
“Can we get much higher?”
Can I talk my shit again? From the return of the flow in POWER to the tantalizing trail of bread crumb bangers that was G.O.O.D Fridays to Kanye, Pusha T, and a team of ballerinas at the VMAs, even before the album dropped it almost seemed foretold that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy would be the album by which all other Kanye albums are measured.
The most important hip-hop rapper of this century at the peak of his musical powers, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a symphony of chaos that blew the lid off the music world and forever changed what a great hip-hop album could and should be. The pinnacle of collaboration, no one since has taken such a wide array of musical talents and smashed them together with such success. Every song is an explosion of musical energy, beautiful and scathing, perfectly melodramatic; rarely will an album try out something new on every song and stick the landing every time.
Many artists would be grateful to have just one transcendent moment on their album, Kanye has maybe a dozen including turning Bon Iver into a hip-hop hook man, putting Pusha T’s sizzling verse on “Runaway” before the extended vocoder solo, bringing Fergie back from the abyss for a verse on “All of the Lights”, having The-Dream singing behind Elton John later in the song, and of course Nicki Minaj’s “The Queen has Arrived” moment on “Monster” where bodies Kanye, Jay-Z, and Rick Ross with the verse of the decade.
2010 was a time of transition for Kanye, the 2000s soul-sampling, Benz-and-a-backpack Kanye was fading away but the slavery-was-a-choice-we’re-worried-about-his-mental-health Kanye had yet to rear his head. Perhaps they didn’t fade into each other but have been locked in an eternal struggle,
building each other up just to tear each other down as the nature of Kanye’s fame and the winds of pop culture changed. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy exists in a single moment, Old Kanye and New Kanye together like the yin and the yang, Icarus with a mic and Sisyphus on the beat, balanced in perfect harmony for one perfect album.
Ideal Listening Setting: On top of a Hawaiian volcano with the sun rising over the horizon and your soul’s connective tissue with the space-time continuum expanding and contracting until it has encompassed your physical body, all of your past mistakes, and all your future glory.
The Hits: “All of the Lights”, “Runaway”
Slam Zuckert is a municipal bureaucrat. He sees a lot of movies and reads a lot of books and sometimes writes about them. His favorite movie is There Will Be Blood, his favorite mathematician is Georg Cantor, and his least favorite mathematician is Leopold Kronecker.
Keep it Going Louder 