Join The Daily Sun’s Arts & Entertainment writers as they count down the 50 best albums of 2016, releasing 10 new albums every day.
50. Horse Lords — Interventions
Courtesy of Northern Spy Records
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Horse Lords — a four-piece avant-rhythms band from Baltimore with more creativity than they’ll ever know what to do with — have been specializing in freaking us all out since 2012, but Interventions is their first release which brings it all together into one coherent vessel you can really dive right into. Maybe it’s because they’ve finally said goodbye to anything resembling rock music; maybe it’s because they’ve figured out how to make that flitting groove stick around from start to finish. Either way, Interventions’ mind-busting polyrhythms and brain-zapping dissonances no longer sound like Pere Ubu outtakes or Steve Reich scraps. Every second on Interventions sounds just like Horse Lords.
— Troy Sherman
49. Travis Scott — Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight
Courtesy of Grand Hustle Records
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On his sophomore effort, Travis Scott introspectively reflects on his formative upbringing in Missouri City and eagerly contemplates about his future. Incorporating infectious hooks, head- bobbing cadences, and his signature digitized ad libs, the tracks form a collage of the veteran crooner’s erratic and charismatic personality. Likewise, high-profile guest appearances, from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Kid Cudi, André 3000, 21 Savage and others add sonic diversity, but Travis himself never feels overshadowed; it is his record through and through, and whether he is somberly musing over his lover in “goosebumps” or audaciously rapping about his squad in “outside,” he brims with confidence and swagger on each track. All in all, Travis leaves no room for worry on Birds; he soars high amidst the tribulations, going the only direction he knows how: Straight up.
— Zachary Lee
48. Wet — Don’t You
Courtesy of Columbia Records
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Something about this Brooklyn trio of Kelly Zutrau, Joe Valle and Marty Sulkow opening up a space for us to muse about the different layers of isolation and separation we come to experience makes the process of listening to their album painful but much-needed. Far from other obscure albums bemoaning life’s little difficulties, Don’t You opens itself up in a dark loveliness that will consume you from within, from “It’s all in vain” straight through “You’re the Best.” The album stops time even as you walk on with the lamentations of Zutrau’s voice and a bare-bones synth that refuses to give you the support you so desperately crave the more you listen.
— Jessie Weber
47. Vince Staples — Prima Donna
Courtesy of ARTium Recordings
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Vince Staples hates boxes, and he keeps breaking out of them on his 2016 EP Prima Donna. Accompanied by a 10-minute music video as strange, inventive and thought-provoking as Lemonade, Prima Donna sticks close to the central topic of Staples’s 2015 album Summertime ’06: the fear and anxiety of growing up in a gang territory. Its sonics, however, push in new directions. Producers DJ Dahi and No I.D. return with ominous and unstable tracks, but it’s James Blake’s work on the frenetic and unsettling “War Ready” that is most memorable.
— Jack Jones
46. Nice as Fuck — Nice as Fuck
Courtesy of Love's Way Records
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Jenny Lewis doesn’t give a fuck if you think she’s corny. She never has, but on the self-titled debut album by her new indie supergroup, Nice As Fuck, Lewis is truly carefree and defiant of expectations. The album feels and sounds like a gorgeous, funky whim. It’s lyrically and instrumentally skeletal and playful as hell; light, grungy, guitarless, drum-based, funk and punk-infused, with only occasional synths. Lewis borrows from the attitude of Stevie Nicks, and slogan-shouting of the riot grrls. Instead of her usual intimate stories, Nice as Fuck’s lyrics are pleasantly amorphous on “Door” (“And if you believe in peace in love / in the message, in the message above/You shouted ‘don’t close the door’”), politically outward-looking on “Guns” (“I don’t wanna be afraid/Put your guns away…crisis is not ISIS/Spilling our own blood”), playful on “Cookie Lips” (“Are you even still alive?/I think I just got ghosted by cookie lips”), with a hint of feminist guts on “Runaway” (“I am a runaway, runaway… In the graveyard/I got nothing for you boy”). Nice as Fuck finds itself in moments of simple, sincere mantras, political plea, romantic humor and a few feminist fuck-you’s; also serving as a testament to the fact that any words, no matter how goofy or vague, sounding mesmerizing through Jenny Lewis’s harmonies.
— Jael Goldfine
45. Scrop — Ilegal
Courtesy of Scrop
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Eugenar Palacios, better known as Scrop, is a force to be reckoned with. Surprising fans with an album in June, he released self-scathing songs that read off more like desperate confessions and pleas for forgiveness than anything else. The hyper-romantic, bravado rapper splits apart word by word the ways in which he’s tricked and lied to others, and how he’s found the truth that sits behind all the rest of it. His penultimate track, “No quisiera irme,” is a crushing ballad of hope for those who have been forced to leave Caracas and the rest of Venezuela, calling for them to remember the country that they love. Ilegal is riveting, and mature, and marvelous.
— Jessie Weber
44. León Larregui — Voluma
Courtesy of León Larregui
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Contrasted against his surrealistic 2013 album Solstis, Mexican artist León Larregui delivers more abstract truths about love and life with a touch of psychedelic substance on Voluma. The new musical and lyrical directions make Voluma the perfect soundtrack for lazy, deep, Saturday afternoon thoughts on just about anything from skinny love to present-day society’s consumption by technology.
— Viri Garcia
43. Joey Purp — iiiDrops
Courtesy of Joey Purp
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Joey Purp never intended to start a career in rapping. Growing up alongside Chicago’s SaveMoney crew (Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, et al), it happened anyway, and with iiiDrops he makes his case as the best writer of the bunch. Raw talent and charisma round out the project’s rough edges, and you might miss its lyrical subtleties by virtue of how easy rapping seems to come to this relative rookie. At a time when every try-hard out there seems to be aiming for rap stardom, Joey Purp gleefully undercuts them all with writing as culturally observant as it is perversely funny.
— Chris Stanton
42. Told Slant — Going By
Courtesy of Double Double Whammy
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Four whole years ago (a goddam eternity in a world where underground/indie bands cycle in and out of relevancy about as fast as the sun sets over Brooklyn), Told Slant released Still Water, an unrefined collection of bedroom yelps, frantic drumming, shoddy confessionals and unraveling compositions which only got better and more grueling the sadder you were. It was excellent. But with so much time passed and so many expectations riding on a new release, the only question that droves of basements kids could muster in the days coming up to June 17 was, “What’s Going By gonna be like?” The answer was a bit more polished, a bit more mature, a sliver more complete. At its core, though, rests the same hopefulness, the same bursting-out, the same pathos which typifies everything Told Slant has done. When Felix Walworth groans, “Isn’t this silly and aren’t you beautiful” over and over and over again, the words (like so many others on the album) come from a place of such authenticity and depth that they don’t just evade corniness; they sound like a hymn.
— Troy Sherman
41. Sia — This Is Acting
Courtesy of Monkey Puzzle Records
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As with any Sia album, This Is Acting was an emotional, uplifting journey from start to finish, containing songs to overcome any type of emotional distress from heartbreak to anxiety, and others to just make you feel good. This Is Acting features sounds similar to those in Sia’s 2015 1000 Forms of Fear, yet the lyrics show contrast with an equal amount of emotion.
— Viri Garcia
40. BTW — Wings
Courtesy of Big Hit Records
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Wings not only broke the misconception that male K-Pop groups are just about pretty boys singing about puppy love. The album also progressed from the darkness involved in toxic love, to breaking free and featured a solo track by each group member. The album thus included rap tracks, solo ballads and songs where the seven BTS members collaborated as usual.
— Viri Garcia
39. Jordaan Mason — Form Less
Courtesy of Funeral Sounds
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“Are you hoping to have/a crisis of faith in your front yard/for all of your neighbors to see/your new complicated sexual identity?” This is how Jordaan Mason ends “They Harmonize,” the solemn opening track on the Toronto-based musician’s solemn 11th release, Form Less. The album seems to play out very much like that “crisis of faith” which they sing about: throughout its 11 short, sparse tracks, Mason lays themself absolutely bare, divulging everything except what secrets manage to hide behind the rare jutting monoliths of their opaque poetry in an otherwise desolate landscape of longing and confession. From track to track, Mason is accompanied by little more than a coy guitar here, an undulating electronic pulse there, and the effect is invariably chilling. To say that 2016’s most convincing meditation on personhood came in the form of a quiet independent Bandcamp release might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but it isn’t. Once you’ve listened to Form Less, you’ll realize that it isn’t at all.
— Troy Sherman
38. The Fall of Troy — OK#3.2
Courtesy of The Fall of Troy
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The title OK#3.2 isn’t a joke. Progressive post-hardcore trio The Fall of Troy decided to not just release their first album in seven years (OK), but also a different mix of that album (OK#2), an instrumental version of that album (OK#3.1) and an instrumental version of the different mix of that album (OK#3.2). It’s a mouthful to describe but, ironically, the takeaway from OK#3.2 is that less is more. Stripping away singer/guitarist Thomas Erak’s vocals allows listeners to focus on the group’s intricate, thrashy compositions. In an album in which the recently reformed group explores new sounds and modes (see: the reggae-inspired breakdown in “401K,” the plodding intro to “Love Sick”), Erak’s often superficial lyrics are not missed.
— Shay Collins
37. Adult Jazz — Earrings Off!
Courtesy of Tri Angle Records
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Just half the length of 2014’s still-mesmerizing Gist Is, Earrings Off! is certainly a transitional release for Adult Jazz. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of just as much praise as its predecessor; in fact, Earrings Off! is in some ways a beast so different from Gist Is that it seems a little perverse to talk about them in the same breath. Gone are the sprawling, endless dirges and seascapes of incomprehensibility. Earrings Off! is more about concision, about iteration and revolution (in the literal sense). Listening to it is like turning around a star in your hands and letting it seep slowly through your fingertips. Where once they succeeded despite an unruly proliferation of ideas, here Adult Jazz makes do with just a few fragments recycled into a disorienting oblivion. The result is a captivating irreconcilability between their music and meaning which finally matches singer Harry Burgess’s aimless shrieks. Earrings Off! is certainly one to sit with.
— Troy Sherman
36. Daughter — Not to Disappear
Courtesy of 4AD
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The shock in these tracks is not that Daughter is ruminative, or filled with angst — this shouldn’t be news to anyone. But the stand-out comes here in the form of levels of desolation unexpected. Elena Tonra, Igor Haefeli and Remi Aguilella have crafted an album that continuously teases you into vulnerability, much like the lyrics admit to feeling, before dropping you into an expanse of sound that leaves you feeling breathless and beaten. Even as the album wanes off, Tonra is still telling you, only half-believing it, that you’ll figure things out. You have to wonder who she’s actually talking to, as Haefeli’s guitar whispers out sweet nothings and Aguilella drums on, dreamlike.
— Jessie Weber
35. Drake — Views
Courtesy of Young Money Records
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Views is lyrical and personal. It is Drake at his best, championing his type of hip-hop without compromising for shallow “hype” songs just for the sake of hype. When Drake sticks to his style, that’s when he gets the coveted Billboard spots and critical appraisal – Views is case and point.
— Andrei Kozyrev
34. Tim Hecker — Love Streams
Courtesy of 4AD
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So much music in our world asks nothing of the listener — no commitment or engagement, no demand to follow the performer deeper into the world they create for us. But at least Tim Hecker’s still here, speaking to us in forms both pure and distorted. Love Streams is a typical release for him in terms of style, yet it stands among the popular releases this year as a testament to music’s ability not just to make us dance and sing, but also to overwhelm us in a wholly unique intensity.
— Stephen Meisel
33. Miranda Lambert — The Weight of These Wings
Courtesy of Vanner Records
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For an hour and a half-long double album, Miranda Lambert’s The Weight of These Wings feels remarkably short. The album’s sense of brevity comes from the simplicity of Lambert’s tracks, which are so clever in their Southern wit and so dead-on in their straight-to-the-point riffs that it’s damn near impossible to not replay every one. The Weight of These Wings is also a wide-ranging album musically, home to both synthed-up indie rock tracks like “Pink Sunglasses” and roots-y anthems like “Highway Vagabond.” Lambert never sounds out of her comfort zone, though, and how could she when she’s delivering biting turns-of-phrase like, “If you use alcohol as a sedative/and ‘bless your heart’ as a negative”?
— Shay Collins
32. Angel Olsen — My Woman
Courtesy of Jagjaguwar
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Few vocalists are able to make words sound as bleak, and yet, as vibrant and bloody as Angel Olsen. On My Woman, unending images and sensations of a violently unrequited love are delivered to us in Olsen’s warm bleary, spacey warble, backed by scuzzy guitar. There is a new desperation, acridity and weary intensity to My Woman, that we haven’t seen before from Olsen — reminiscent of a scorned, indie-rock Lucinda Williams. On the standout track, “Shut Up Kiss Me” Olsen, with hair-curling ferocity to her lilting voice, shouts in a voice-broken staccato “We could still be having some sweet memories/This heart still beats for you/Why can’t you see?” commanding the subject of her frustration over and over again, to “Shut up kiss me, hold me tight.” The album tracks a heartbroken mind: from Olsen’s declarations to never give up on a love on “Never Be Mine,” and “Give It Up,” to interrogations of a lover’s psyche on “Heart Shaped Face,” to her quiet surrender on “Pops.” The album ends with the bludgeoning lyric: “You can go on home/You got what you need/Take my heart and put it up on your sleeve… I’ll be the thing that lives in the dream when it’s gone.” Needless to say, heartbreak suits Olsen.
— Jael Goldfine
31. Elvis Depressedly — California Dreamin’
Courtesy of Run For Cover Records
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Elvis Depressedly have long excelled at building sad, hazy worlds in their songs. With lyrics like “Cop poet/pig blood corporate day dream/delusions and murder fantasies” and “I prayed to leave my body/and become an angel’s guillotine,” the lo-fi duo also prove themselves to be subtle poets on California Dreamin’. Released as a compilation with 2013’s Holo Pleasures, California Dreamin’ attests to Elvis Depressedly’s growth. There’s no obvious jolt when the release jumps three years between “Thinning Out” and “Angel Cum Clean,” but the new tracks are even further distilled into potent thoughts that stay always a bit out of reach. As Mat Cothran sings on “Holo Pleasures (California Dreamin’),” “Trust the mystery, you’ll never solve everything.”
— Shay Collins
30. G.L.O.S.S. — Trans Day of Revenge
Courtesy of Total Revenge Records
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To call this album a call to arms almost seems like a platitude. Trans Day of Revenge was a fucking explosion. Even at this point less than six months after its release, the album’s history is almost mythic: a little-known trans-feminist hardcore band from Olympia whose name stands for Girls Living Outside Society’s Shit releases a relentless album the same day (as if by some fucked up twist of fate) that the country is learning about the Orlando massacre. Their message (which they inject mercilessly into an album that stretches a scanty seven minutes) is summed up by the first words Sadie Switchblade screams on the opening track: “When peace is just another word for death / it’s our turn to give violence a chance!” But a band burning so hot and saying so much couldn’t possibly have lasted much longer than the total 15 minutes (including their 2015 demo) which they had a chance to put to wax: after notoriously refusing a $50,000 major label contract, G.L.O.S.S. announced their breakup hardly two months after this monumental release. Before that happened, though, a friend of mine said to me casually, “Isn’t it crazy that we live in a world where bands like Downtown Boys, PWR BTTM and G.L.O.S.S. are all even able to exist at the same time?” I agreed with him then, and I agree with him even more now. We need a whole lot more bands like G.L.O.S.S. Fast.
— Troy Sherman
29. Andy Stott — Too Many Voices
Courtesy of Modern Love Records
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Andy Stott knows how to use silence. The most breathtaking sections on the Manchester-based producer’s Too Many Voices are those where Stott brings everything to a brief halt. A microsecond here, a fraction of a measure there — soundless. And then, like some chromatized tgardener, he shovels crisp clumps of sound back into the voids where they weren’t. The effect is truly ethereal: silence becomes an instrument, a sound itself, blending in seamlessly with a soundscape that in the hands of lesser producers would have overcome it. All this isn’t to say, though, that there’s not a lot going on in Too Many Voices — that little liberation of silence makes all of Stott’s bent-up techno compositions float that much more freely, making Too Many Voices one of the most buoyant and spacious albums of the year.
— Troy Sherman
28. Frankie Cosmos — Next Thing
Courtesy of Bayonet Records
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Next Thing sounds the way blushing feels. It sounds like a boy choosing someone else. It sounds like standing in the corner at a party. It sounds like your skirt ripping in class. It sounds like being interrupted. It also sounds like the text conversation with your best girl friend. It sounds like figuring out how not to care about that boy anymore. It sounds like smiling and laughing and driving around and being ok.
In a feminist music moment of girl pride and power, songwriter Greta Kline, unblushingly makes female shame her subject: claiming and probing it, inviting it out of the bedroom into the broad daylight, instead of subordinating it; trying to figure out what it means.
The warm, velvety album is a balance between Kline’s blunt, piercing meditations on shame and sadness: “You make me feel like a fool / Waiting for you” (“Fool”), “When I know I’m not the best girl in the room / I tell myself I’m the best thing you can do / do I belong, do I belong?” (“Too Dark”), “Am I still so sad? I guess that’s pretty lame” (“If I Had A Dog”) — and declarations of resilience, embodiment, joy and delight: “Some day in bravery / I’ll embody all the grace and lightness” (“Embody”), “It all make sense now thanks so much / good by forever, what the fuck” (“Is It Possible/Sleep Song”), “You change, I change / hooray” (“Tour Good”). In the vast emotional range she imbues the album with, Kline insists upon the keeping the messy inextricability of shame and pride, sadness and joy, control, power and disempowerment unrelentingly, irreducibly in view.
— Jael Goldfine
27. The Avalanches — Wildflower
Courtesy of Astralwerks
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Sixteen years in the making, The Avalanches’ Wildflower stitches thousands of samples together into a lovely, kaleidoscopic dream sequence. Though the album self-consciously calls back to the mood of the sixties, Wildflower is actually as contemporary as they come: a piece of art that reappropriates pieces of culture as diverse as hip hop, flower-child psychedelia and obscure television to create a journey that feels both universal and personal.
Though almost entirely created from other sounds, Wildflower incorporates new verses from rappers like MF Doom and Danny Brown. Their contributions fit nicely into the album’s wide-open expanse — take a song like “The Wozard of Iz,” where Brown’s hard-nosed verse about going to prison segues into a gorgeous string section. Despite its utopian vibe, the song — like Wildflower as a whole — is tinged with poignancy and nostalgia.
Wildflower is a self-contained world, with songs that bleed seamlessly into each other. The entire thing can be enjoyed as an uninterrupted piece of music. As such, it functions both as personal escapism and a communal party, a blissed-out journey you’ll wish you could stay on indefinitely.
— Max Van Zile
26. Teen Suicide — It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot
Courtesy of Run For Cover Records
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Teen Suicide, a band that once released a compilation titled rarities, unreleased stuff and cool things, seems to thrive on curiosity and ambition more than discipline. “did u know I have always approached writing records as “drawing specific worlds” ?” frontman Sam Ray asked me in a Twitter convo back in April. (Yes, I’m poorly trying to name-drop.) Thankfully, all of the group’s irreverence and creativity came to a head in It’s the Big Joyous Celebration, Let’s Stir the Honeypot. In just over an hour, the Maryland quartet explores garage rock, emo, experimental lo-fi and folk punk sonic worlds, putting their melancholic spin on each of them. It’s the Big Joyous Celebration is an irreducible album, one that grows weirder and more emotionally powerful with every listen.
— Shay Collins
25. NAO — For All We Know
Courtesy of RCA Records
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Albums are expected to be events more than ever today. They have narratives both internal and external, they arrive through surprise releases or with accompanying video projects, their songs are expected to express a range of styles that make a statement about the artist’s hybridity (think Lemonade, Pablo, ANTI, Blonde or many of the other major releases of this year). For All We Know is a refreshingly unpretentious collection of songs. There’s not a ton of stylistic variety across the album’s 18 tracks: for the most part, they stick to a formula of slinky funk grooves and sweet, sly vocals. This isn’t an album that demands much of you, or feels like a homework assignment; it’s one that you can put on and jam out to for 50 extremely enjoyable minutes.
— Jack Jones
24. Car Seat Headrest — Teens of Denial
Courtesy of Matador Records
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After years spent honing his sound through free Internet releases, Car Seat Headrest frontman Will Toledo went major-label with a debut album that builds proggy, epic jams from the base components of Nineties-style emo rock. Long suites like “Joe Gets Kicked Out of School” and “Cosmic Hero” tend to develop into epic crescendos — but the lyrics are always deeply felt and personal, often dealing with Toledo’s experiences with depression.
Few recent bands have brought as much ambition to indie rock, but Toledo never lets his songwriting obscure the emotional punch of his lyrics. On the opening anthem “Fill In The Blank,” for instance, he sets the tone for the entire album: “I have a right to be depressed / I’ve given every inch I had to fight it.” The confidential, honest tone makes Teens of Denial relatable, and Toledo’s songwriting chops make it violently catchy; the result is one of the most thoroughly engrossing debuts in recent memory.
— Max Van Zile
23. Slime Girls — Tapioca
Courtesy of Slime Girls
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What started out as the score for a short anime film turned into one of the sweetest, weirdest and most unabashedly energetic and fun releases of 2016. LA’s Slime Girls (aka Pedro Silva) has specialized since 2012 in making video-game music from the heart, but it’s Tapioca whose charming fretfulness (in turns bouncing off the walls and bottled right up) doesn’t dip or falter one bit. Equipped with the best-titled songs of the year, no contest — “3000 unread messages & a cherry slushie,” “just be yourself my dude” — Tapioca is meant to be listened to when you’re looking down at your phone and walking around in the sunlight. I swear, it’ll give it some meaning.
— Troy Sherman
22. Solange — A Seat at the Table
Courtesy of Saint Records
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A Seat at the Table, Solange Knowles third album, is a unique masterpiece, opposing musical conformity while serving as a monumental and unconventional contribution to the black movement, and its history and culture. Knowles truly conveys a radical but honest message underlying her soft and wise lyrics; audiences will feel a vast array of emotions as Knowles confers her deeply resonating narrative of the struggles and melancholies of black womanhood in America. A Seat at the Table’s lyrical ingenuity along with its varying sound of funk, soul and melodies reminiscent of the seventies offers a transformative experience into an untravelled, alternative dimension. Knowles’ metaphorical lyricism-”Now I don’t want to bite the hand that’ll show me the other side, no-but I didn’t want to build the land that has fed you your whole life, no,” from “Don’t You Wait,” and “Well it’s like cranes in the sky-sometimes I don’t wanna feel those metal clouds,” from “Cranes in the Sky” induces depth in thought that transcends music. A Seat at the Table is easily the best album of the year that everyone must listen to.
— Janelle Odionu
21. Danny Brown — Atrocity Exhibition
Courtesy of Warp
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As low-brow as he might try to convince us he is, Danny Brown is a smart fucking dude. At risk of sounding like an asshole, I’d say that what he does on Atrocity Exhibition is straight up postmodern. Take the opening song, “Downward Spiral” (and yes, that is a Joy Division reference, just like the album title): over a Krautrock sample so deep even Faust would say it’s too obscure, a disinterested beat bounces off the walls with its shoulders slumped while Brown raps about the usual fare — lotsa drugs and a threesome the night before where he had to “stuff it in soft.” But all the usual braggadocio is just masking a degree of ultrapersonal fear, claustrophobia, paranoia — and guilt that you’d be hard-pressed to find on any other rap album from 2016. If you can manage to squeeze past the thin fragments of conventionality and nestle deep enough into Atrocity Exhibition, you’ll come face to face with an album whose confrontation with genuine terror doesn’t just justify the Joy Division parallel; it might really scare the shit out of you.
— Troy Sherman
20. Sturgill Simpson — A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
Courtesy of Atlantic Records
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A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is a tight album, clocking out at nine songs that altogether last 38 minutes. However, in less than half the time of a number of different albums that made our Top 50, Simpson covers vast ground. The album opens with “Welcome To Earth (Pollywog),” a full-throated, earnest-as-hell address to a newborn son that plunges into a raucous soul anthem. Simpson and his band then go on to offer up placid folk songs, thrashy country jams and a beautiful take on Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” When Simpson played the album end-to-end at the State Theatre in October, the whole upper balcony was a throbbing sea of Realtree camo, plastic cup beer and pure joy.
— Shay Collins
19. Sammus — Pieces in Space
Courtesy of Don Giovanni Records
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As with any great opening track, “100 Percent” lets us know right out of the gate what kind of album we’re in for. Without hesitation, we get an attack-line just bursting at the seems with pointed spite and internal rhymes: “Your parents are a red herring for your merits / I’m embarrassed by the lyrics that you parrot.” From here, Sammus only ups the wordplay-ante, getting more and more intricate with her phrasing till a coruscating peak on the ostentatiously tongue-twisted eighth track, “Headliner” (“I’m GI Joe they Cobra / Fe-fi-fo I’m growin’ though / Keep on flowing / Over dope beats and my peeps hella deep like the Coppolas”). The great part, though, is that nowhere on Pieces in Space do we get empty lyricism — when Sammus is hurling her phrases, she’s hurling them for a reason. Tearing down every stigma you can conceive — those against black gamers, black academics, women gamers, women academics, women rappers (in all of which roles Sammus, a.k.a. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo grad, excels) — and wearing her Nerdom on her sleeve like a medal the whole time, Sammus gave us not only her most fully formed album yet, but a disc worthy of this top-20 spot on any publication’s list, Cornell-ties or no.
— Troy Sherman
18. Kendrick Lamar — untitled unmastered.
Courtesy of Top Dawg Entertainment
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Three years after good kid, M.A.A.D city, Kendrick Lamar produced such a vast body of work that it could not fit into one album, no way. Instead, we got the masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly and then — the dream of all die-hard fans of any artist — unrefined tracks of pure creativity that did not make the cut for commercial release. Yet, if it wasn’t for the album’s aesthetic — the title is untitled unmastered, no less — no one would have dared call these “leftovers.” While it is appropriate to point out the record’s musical accomplishment, Kendrick’s soulful storytelling is music in its own right. Oscillating between stirring and calming, the disorienting ability of Kendrick’s lyrics is brought to the forefront in untitled unmastered. This is an intimate work, the result of Kendrick’s intense contemplation on the state of race and identity in America and the world, with due respect to his beginnings and the roots of the genres he adopts, such as soul and jazz. By releasing this album, Kendrick Lamar showed how much he treasures his admirers. We, on our end, treasure him as well.
— Andrei Kozyrev
17. Death Grips — Bottomless Pit
Courtesy of Third Worlds
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Up to now, Death Grips’ music had been more of an acquired taste and took some getting used to. Bottomless Pit is the type of album that is suitable to show your friends without scaring them away, but it keeps its hallmark edginess, especially with frontman MC Ride’s rugged rap style. The album’s lyrics go from badmouthing hipsters to describing what it’s like to be feeling just, “Eh.” Just as with previous albums, Bottomless Pit is meant to be abstract and slightly chaotic. But it’s still a masterpiece full of stacked guitar riffs, jerky percussion and bubbly synthesizer sounds.
— Viri Garcia
16. Katie Dey — Flood Network
Courtesy of Joy Void Records
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Foreboding, anxiety-inducing noise pop? An imaginative, unresolveable merging of the personal and the technological? The kind of music computers would make if we made them self-aware and then stressed them out with metaphysical questions? How the hell do you even begin to describe Flood Network, the debut LP from noise-pop experimentalist Katie Dey? Flood Network is undoubtedly a meditation on computers and computing (see: the album’s title, the interlude tracks “f 1-8,” the emphasis on glitching), but Dey experiments not as an end in-and-of-itself, but to craft unnerving, heart-wrenching tracks like “Only to Trip and Fall Down Again” and “Debt.”
— Shay Collins
15. Esperanza Spalding — Emily’s D+Evolution
Courtesy of Concord Records
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Esperanza Spalding does not produce the simple, infectious music that you sing along to in a long car ride. Instead, Emily’s D+Evolution is filled with rich, layered sounds and unexpected turns that flow into deliberately crafted melodies. Spalding’s voice is expressive and warm, exuding just as much meaning in her tone as in her words. Here, her vocals mix with the array of sounds for a cohesive experience that tells the story of Emily, a muse based on Spalding’s middle name and her past life experiences. Emily’s D+Evolution cannot be pigeonholed into a single genre; it occupies a space somewhere between jazz-rock, pop, R&B and funk which results in a background unlike any other for the emotions she conveys in her songs.
— Ryan Slama
14. Blood Orange — Freetown Sound
Courtesy of Domino Records
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Dev Hynes’ third album is, as they always are, a work of art. Following on the heels of “Sandra’s Smile,” released last year, Freetown Sound is an expression of the endless and endlessly tiring ways in which it’s difficult to live as and express pride in being a person of color, particularly in the United States. The scope of the tracks stretches from “Hands Up,” a frank navigation of the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, to “By Ourselves,” an homage to black women creating a support network for each other and searching for their daughters to have more public figures who look like them. Some tracks feel like memories, some painfully fresh and some too whimsical to tell. But Hynes’ latest album is a show-stopper and much more at a time when the country will soon have to come to terms with systems of oppression it’s been simultaneously enforcing and refusing to acknowledge.
— Jessie Weber
13. Rihanna — ANTI
Courtesy of Roc Nation
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ANTI is the album Rihanna finally made because she wanted to—instead of for the sake of her brand, royalties, position on Billboard Top 40 lists and shelves of VMA trophies. For ANTI, Rihanna split from her longtime label, Def Jam; executive producing the album and contributing almost all of its lyrics.
Rihanna’s artistic autonomy is palpable on the album—she imbued herself in it. It’s chaotic, unexpected, edgy and ambitious in it’s quality and style, flippantly almost teasingly transitioning from sexual, throbbing big-beat bangers (“Work,” “Sex With Me”), dark, fuzzzed-out moody tracks (“Woo,” “Desperado,” “ Consideration”, “ Kiss It Better”) and raw, voice-cracking R&B ballads (“Higher”, “Love on The Brain”). Absent is the polished pop coherence of her previous Unapologetic, Talk that Talk, Loud and Rated R. ANTI is intense and playful; intimate and complicated, with bolder and more explicit Caribbean musical influences than it seems she’s had the freedom to explore before. It certainly isn’t completely out of Rihanna’s wheelhouse. Her bad-bitch-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude and aesthetic still drips from every track (even the most vulnerable and emotional) but it’s less easily consumable and readable, and more compelling and satisfying than anything I’ve ever heard from her before. Without giving Kanye too much credit, ANTI is Rihanna’s Life of Pablo—erratic, surprising, resisting expectation, with moments of confusion and of total brilliance, and ultimately a total fucking joy to listen and dance to.
— Jael Goldfine
12. The Hotelier — Goodness
Courtesy of Tiny Engines
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Maybe in a few years we’ll look at the critical furor of a so-called “emo revival” as the creation of a bunch of nostalgic, obsessive former Hot Topic patrons like myself. At least, that’s what I speculated before The Hotelier dropped Goodness back in May. Goodness is undoubtedly an emo album par excellence (by which I mean it was created by early-twenty-somethings unabashedly poeticizing their feelings of regret and nervousness). The Hotelier, however, both reminded listeners of the scene’s emotional power on “Two Deliverances,” “Goodness, Pt. 2” and “Sun,” and toyed with many of the genre’s long running forms, incorporating spoken word introductions and interludes and manipulated drum tracks. Overall, Goodness is an ambitious, shameless, experimental album that proves that emo may be closer to its start than its end.
— Shay Collins
11. Noname — Telefone
Courtesy of Noname
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Most rap fans first caught wind of Noname (then known as “Noname Gypsy”) on “Lost”, a standout track from Chance the Rapper’s 2013 breakthrough Acid Rap. On a cute but otherwise one-sided slow jam, Noname’s spoken word verse tapped into whole new dimensions of love, hope and depression, deservedly earning the rapper buzz and prompting more than a few Google searches. But much like her pseudonym, the artist herself remained a mystery, limiting her social media presence while occasionally dropping a guest verse here or a solo track there. Three years later, her first full-length arrived, and its intro track alone makes good on the promises of “Lost,” radiating with the soulful optimism so unique to Chicago’s current music scene. Backed by a team of mostly homegrown talent and longtime friends, Noname delivers a 10-song statement that ends far too quickly.
— Chris Stanton
10. Bon Iver — 22, A Million
Courtesy of Jagjaguwar
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Undoubtedly Bon Iver’s most difficult album, 22, A Million is borne of an acutely taxing set of events which seem to have set Justin Vernon on a path to destroy convention. The tracks range from dream-like wanderings to a drunken thrashing that you actually have to struggle to hold onto. Vernon isn’t at all concerned with holding the listener’s hand here; the aim to please is all but blown out and this is the result. This album is a challenge to go through, not only for its meandering lyricism and an emotional instability that reaches through a looping base and into distorted falsetto wailings, but also because, even at its core, even at its worst, it’s exquisite. And sometimes it’s difficult to understand when you need to turn away from something so brilliant, it appears to be self-immolating.
— Jessie Weber
9. Pinegrove — Cardinal
Courtesy of Run For Cover Records
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On Bandcamp, Pinegrove tag all of their music with the label “Language Arts Rock.” The fact that they’re the only artists on the site to do so speaks volumes: among the countless aspects of Cardinal which blasted the group out from pleasant obscurity into subterranean stardom, the deeply thoughtful lyrics of vocalist/guitarist Evan Stephens Hall are paramount. With turns of phrase ranging in style and emotion from literary and heartrending (“I saw Leah on the bus a few months ago / I saw some old friends at her funeral”) to witty and playful (“I was totally nervous to go to Japan / I tried to travel once, I lost my keys”) to millennially hopeless and confused (“we had some good ideas but we never left that fucking room”), Hall situated himself as a kind of plainspoken wordsmith to rule in a scene so tied up with pithy phrases and erudition. But Pinegrove aren’t only practitioners of the Language Arts: once you digest the lyrics, you’ll realize that Cardinal is simply brimming with the types of tight-knit, tumbling post-country jams which rank it among the best rock n’ albums in recent (or maybe even distant) memory.
— Troy Sherman
8. Mitski — Puberty 2
Courtesy of Dead Oceans
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Mitski’s lyrics make me want to cry and drive really fast and trust myself and my experiences. She is a master at taking the small, mundane moments that make up who we are as we negotiate the messy, frustrating business of love and dread and being broke in your twenties, and pairing them with an awesome cathartic crash of noise and beats and at turns sharp and fuzzy guitar. The contrast of her dry, stoic wit, with the spectacular, chaotic crescendos and lush soundscapes she crafts calls for your full fucking attention. Get yourself a good pair of headphones, a desolate landscape, and a refusal to be simply sad, or angry, or happy.
The fat, unexpected blare of saxophone on “Happy” paired with “I sighed and mumbled to myself, “again I have to clean” is one of the strangest, and best moments off the album. Puberty 2 is not as even as Bury Me at Makeout Creek, but when the range of experimentation pays off, it pays off big. “I will go jogging routinely, calmly and rhythmically run/and when I find that knife sticking out of my side/I’ll pull it out without questioning why” is the kind of lyric that cuts you open and makes you wonder why you even bother listening to anything other than Mitski (pro tip: don’t). Your Best American Girl is a masterpiece, the crown jewel of the album, but here I refer everyone to columnist Jael Goldfine ‘17’s loving review of it. With lyrics like “I wanna see the whole world/I don’t know how I’m gonna pay rent,” this album left me feeling drained, exhilarated, steely- ready to fight like hell for happiness in this big weird bleak world. We feel her stretching and inhabiting every part of her remarkable voice, at once intimidating and inviting you to sing along.
— Allison Considine
7. Anderson .Paak — Malibu
Courtesy of Steel Wool Records
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While Anderson .Paak (don’t forget the dot) operates in a distinctly post-Kendrick musical landscape, his particular blend of soul, funk and hip-hop is all his own. After a long career struggling to get by in backing bands – not to mention a stint working the soil at a marijuana farm – the multi-instrumentalist finally made it big with six (!) guest spots on Dr. Dre’s 2015 career retrospective Compton. Released way back in January, Malibu presents .Paak’s many facets in all their 70s-inflected glory, ranging from soft, soulful ballads (“The Bird”) to extended funk breakdowns (“Parking Lot”). The 30 year-old’s life struggles provide the bulk of Malibu’s lyrical inspiration, but the tone is triumphant, and .Paak’s pleasantly scratchy vocals lend the album a vibe as summery as its title.
— Chris Stanton
6. A Tribe Called Quest — We Got It From Here… Thank Your 4 Your Service
Courtesy of Epic Records
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Recorded as key member Phife Dawg was dying of a lifelong battle with diabetes, We Got it From Here is not only a moving elegy for Tribe’s core lineup but a trenchant assessment of American racial and cultural affairs. Songs like “We The People” and “The Space Program” are desperately needed; this is protest music, crafted by some of hip hop’s earliest luminaries. Sonically, the album is warm and complex. Q-Tip’s perfect ear for beats allowed him to stitch together a quilt of sound that bounces from sample-based boom bap to the classic jazz inflections of Low End Theory-era Tribe to psychedelic experimentation. It’s simply shocking that, after such a long period of inactivity, the band came back this sounding this vital.
We Got it From Here… ends with “The Donald,” and “Donald” refers to both Phife (“Don Juice”) and our new President-elect. This lovely song, like the album it concludes, both looks forward into an uneasy future and backward to a friendship between musicians that spanned a lifetime. This album is essential hip hop, as inviting as it is anxious, as conscious as it is fun, and absolutely whip-smart. Their career couldn’t have ended better.
— Max Van Zile
5. Beyoncé — Lemonade
Courtesy of Parkwood Entertainment
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Do I honestly have to write a blurb explaining why this album deserves to be in the top 5? We call her Queen Bey for a reason. This visual album is 11 chapters of hurt, jealousy, pride, humility, and love. More than anything, love. The journey in this album is unique and commonplace by the same token—it’s backbreaking, and takes you far from home, but always brings you back home and into the same person’s arms. Lemonade is something else entirely from your XOvers Spotify playlist, so don’t kid yourself. It’s spattered with the poetry of Warsan Shire, women holding photos of loved ones shot by the police, the complexities of broken and unbroken families, landscapes by turn metallic, lavish, and endless. The visual album mirrors its tracks in an unbounded array of breadth and depth. Gaudy mansions, filled with discourse about self-sacrifice to the gods in search of fidelity give way to fields on fire, busses lined with middle fingers, baptism and destruction, modesty and sexuality embodied in lyrics, in dress, in movement. Beyoncé’s search for unforgiving anger, limitless apathy, and an endless space to be filled by man’s attempt at steady love has to give way, in the end, to the final notes of forgiveness, resurrection, hope, and at last, redemption. In the end, her path leads her back to where she began, enlightened, transcending, and still willing to bare the ugly moments to those who listen.
— Jessie Weber
4. Chance the Rapper — Coloring Book
Courtesy of Chance the Rapper
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How does a mixtape become fourth rated on a list of the best albums of 2016? Chance’s Coloring Book serves as a work of aural art in a time where childhood has been forgotten. Through the lullaby-like melody of “Same Drugs” to the defiance against the authority of music corporations in “No Problem,” Chance transports listeners to a simpler time to teach lessons about the complex relationships between time and friendship, maturity and love, and individuality and mainstream success.
The mixtape mainly serves as a transition in Chance’s life from drugs to religion, with the former being a common theme throughout the songs. The chorus’ outright praise of the lord in “How Great” and “Finish Line/Drown,” coupled with Chance’s more personal dealings with religion in “Blessings,” color a picture of an artist’s journey from an adolescence of addiction to a newfound solace in beliefs of a higher power.
— Jonvi Rollins
3. Jamilla Woods — HEAVN
Courtesy of Closed Sessions
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It’s a special time in Chicago music. A young crew of rappers and singers are leading a new wave of soulful hip-hop that is both socially disruptive and irrepressibly positive, and their albums are often role calls for the rest of the scene. As columnist Chris Stanton ’17 observed, we almost could have made a top ten albums of 2016 purely by Chicago artists. Of course, most of the attention this year has gone to Coloring Book by Chance the Rapper, who has emerged as the city’s leading light. The most urgent and heartfelt album from this scene this year, however, was Jamila Woods’s HEAVN. Woods came to popular attention by singing the hook on Chance’s “Sunday Candy,” a soul-rap about loving one’s grandma that somehow managed to be more sweet than sappy. HEAVN more than fulfills this early promise; it’s both fantastically listenable and uncompromising in its exploration of racial and gender politics. From gorgeous ballads (“Stellar,” “Lonely Lonely”) to fiercely political statements about police violence and systematic misogyny (“VRY BLK,” “Blk Girl Solider”), HEAVN reflects the terror and confusion of this year in the country better than any other album, without sacrificing the possibility of redemption through awareness and compassion.
— Jack Jones
2. Kanye West — The Life of Pablo
Courtesy of GOOD Music
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“This is a great year to be a Kanye West fan,” declared Yeezus himself at the Saint Pablo Tour stop in Buffalo, NY. In the time since, Donald Trump was elected President and Kanye (maybe?) endorsed him before cancelling the remainder of his tour and checking himself into a hospital for what appears to be paranoia and severe depression. Before that, it already seemed like a messy year for Kanye fans, as diehards bent over backward defending his (sometimes indefensible) statements from every manner of hostile critic. Recent revelations seem to have finally reminded everyone that there’s a real person at the center of all this.
The Life of Pablo, Kanye’s seventh and messiest album to date, arrived before this media storm reached full force. While inconsistent and lacking the bold direction of Yeezus or MBDTF, the album is a career-spanning testament to each of Kanye’s distinctive eras. “Ultralight Beam” recalls the transcendent gospel of College Dropout, while the maximalist pop of “Waves” and “Famous” (bam bam dilla, bam bam) harken back to Graduation’s stadium ambitions. Featuring a host of game-changing artists whom Kanye has influenced over the years, Pablo is a reminder of just how much the guy has given us. Get well soon, Kanye.
— Chris Stanton
1. Frank Ocean — Blonde and Endless
Courtesy of Boys Don't Cry
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Just look at how the man toys with us. After countless misleading posts, false release dates and features on other albums that only served to remind everyone of his conspicuous absence, Frank Ocean finally seemed poised to release his second album in late July, four years after channel ORANGE. Except it wasn’t an album; it was a live stream of him in warehouse tinkering around. Then it turned out it was a contract-ending, Apple-exclusive “video album,” which was really a collection of demos played over a video of him building a staircase. This was Endless, released on August 19, and it wasn’t even the new album. The actual album came out on August 20, and is called either Blonde (its name in iTunes) or blond (the name on the cover). Each development only revealed more layers, more questions, more things for fans to mull over and try to decode.
This would all feel almost inexcusably manipulative if Frank Ocean wasn’t still one of the most gifted and compelling artists music has ever seen. He makes music that seems both effortlessly stirring and full of perfectionist, painstaking effort. While a collection of demos rather than a proper album, Endless is full of some of the most strange and elegant music Ocean has made: “Alabama,” “Slide On Me,” “Rushes To,” and particularly “Rushes,” which may be the most elliptically beautiful song he’s made. Blonde itself is a tour de force that resists summary. Like channel ORANGE, it’s made up of scenes and stories that add up to something more than just a collection, and it veers from dazzling experimentation with vocal effects and instrumentation (“Nikes,” “Future Free”) to stunning, spare balladry (“Solo,” “Self Control,” “Godspeed”). Famous guests come and go, but they all contribute to the album’s theme rather than taking moments in the spotlight. And Ocean hovers over the project like an omnipresent, multi-faced deity. His elusivity is galling to fans, but it serves his music well. His songs feature his unmistakable voice and sonic experimentation, but they’re also kept at an arm’s-length from the artist himself, and as a result they’re about much more than just Frank Ocean.
— Jack Jones