2015 was a great, busy year for me. My second son, Daniel, was born, I started two bands, I wrote a lot and I worked a lot. Ultimately, I didn't have as much time as I would've liked to listen to music, but that's a minor complaint -- I heard a ton of music, I just didn't listen to each record many times. I feel like I could take another year to digest these albums and maybe offer a slightly more coherent reflection or accurate ranking of them. But, to paraphrase
Lorne Michaels, you don't finish your year-end list because it's ready, you finish it because the year's over. I made a
Spotify playlist with one favorite track from each album, so that hopefully you can click through that and find something you might enjoy as much as I do.
1. Beauty Pill - Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are
I've been waiting a few years to call this my album of the year -- I got to listen to an early mix of the album (in surround sound!) in 2012, and I knew back then how amazing it was going to be. I've been a fan of Chad Clark and Devin Ocampo since their short-lived '90s Dischord band Smart Went Crazy, and it's been fascinating to hear them both move onto other projects and eventually arrive at something as musically and lyrically ambitious as Beauty Pill's second album, The kaleidoscopic arrangements, with the talented 5-piece band and guests fleshing out Clark's electronic demos, sound incredible, and the funny, strange lyrics that wrestle with racism, mortality, dreams, and awkward interactions with baristas. Getting to talk to this band, and
write about this album at length, was one of my best professional experiences in 2015, in addition to the joy of finally having this album at home to listen to anytime I want.
2. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar's verse on Big Sean's "Control" was a chest-thumping announcement of his quest for rap greatness, in which he mentioned 11 contemporaries by name and several of them interpreted it as a diss. The confidence in that verse made it sound like Kendrick was ready to drop an album that week, but instead, over the next 18 months he released a lot of subpar guest verses and "i," a song about self-esteem that many heard as a cheesy crossover attempt. At least, that was before "i" was put in proper context on
To Pimp A Butterfly as the flipside to "u," the low point of a platinum rapper's crisis of self-confidence. At a time when you might expect the guy to be basking in the afterglow of
good kid, m.A.A.d city's success, he was making an album in which other voices are often heard jeering things at him like "don't tell me they got you on some weirdo rap shit" and "you ain't no king!" It reminds me of
De La Soul Is Dead, the album revealed that De La Soul to be a lot more restless, angry, and funny than they were on their universally acclaimed debut. I was kind of a
good kid agnostic -- it was down at #20 on my year-end list in 2012. But
Is Dead is my favorite De La Soul album, and
To Pimp A Butterfly is my favorite Kendrick Lamar album. Getting to see several songs from the album
performed in concert for the first time was a bonus.
3. Jeremih - Late Nights: The Album
I loved Jeremih's 2009 self-titled debut back when nobody was really checking for the guy beyond "Birthday Sex," and I feel vindicated that 6 years later, people were clamoring for his long-delayed third album (even if they didn't really buy it once it did finally arrive). The long, infamously mishandled advance campaign for the album finally ended this month with dismal sales, but really I was just happy that he finally got to release something. Really, I would've been happy with "Planes" and "Don't Tell 'Em" and any old songs he had lying around to pad out the album, but instead there's top shelf material like "Pass Dat" and "Oui," an amazing Twista guest verse, and ample evidence that Jeremih is not just a unique voice but a strong songwriter coming into his own.
4. Heartless Bastards - Restless Ones
I love when a band that's been making good albums for a while just gets into the right studio with the right producer and everything just clicks. I've liked previous albums by Ohio's Heartless Bastards, but
Restless Ones just leaped out at me as the one that really made the band sound amazing, particularly drummer Dave Colvin, who just lets loose all over the album with these huge grooves and creative fills. Credit goes, probably, to producer John Congleton and the El Paso studio Sonic Ranch for giving Erika Wennerstrom's voice and songs the surroundings they've been waiting for.
5. Vince Staples - Summertime '06
Most of the unusually large number of high quality major label rap albums released in 2015 can be attributed to artists getting enough clout to basically go off and make whatever album they wanted without much label intervention.
Summertime '06 is something else entirely -- a young rapper with a little bit of fame from a loose affiliation with Odd Future but not really on any kind of career track with a lot of commercial potential. And yet here we are, with Def Jam releasing his 2-disc debut album, largely produced by label exec No I.D., and it really seems like a label that hasn't given a damn about artist development in decades nurtured a kid into making his masterpiece. Staples got a lot of attention this year for being more funny and interesting than the average rapper on Twitter and in interviews, but that doesn't mean he's better at that stuff than music, it just means people aren't listening to this marvelous album enough.
6. Rae Sremmurd - SremmLife
Swae Lee and Slim Jimmy were 19 and 20, respectively, when they burst onto the radio last year with "No Flex Zone." And since then the duo, particularly Swae Lee, have proven their worth with an avalanche of great hooks and rubbery, dexterous verses on their debut album, which yielded 5 hit singles, as well as various guest appearances. But there are still some skeptics, including famous radio personalities, who keep trying to cram Rae Sremmurd into their reductive idea of the 2015 version of Kris Kross, a duo who were 13 when their one ghostwritten hit topped the charts decades ago. But honestly, it's not that hard to see these guys in the context of actual contemporaries who got famous around the same age, like Travis Porter or even Migos, and appreciate the unique twist that Rae Sremmurd has put on the swag rap tradition, with Mike WiLL Made It stepping up to the plate with the best collection of beats of his life.
7. Dawn Richard - Blackheart
I will love Dawn Richard forever for her contributions to Diddy-Dirty Money's
Last Train To Paris, one of my favorite albums of this decade. But I continue to be amazed by her solo career, which keeps surpassing my expectations. The sound she perfected on the
Armor On EP and
Goldenheart had kind of run its course by the time she parted ways with producer Andrew "Druski" Scott, but I didn't know if she'd make something as great without him. But
Blackheart is a whole quantum leap forward, maintaining her ear for sad melodies and danceable beats but twisting everything inside out with structurally unpredictable suites and gorgeously strange soundscapes.
8. Future - DS2
The prevailing sound of Atlanta used to get passed like a baton to someone like Lil Jon or Lex Luger for a couple years at a time, but since Mike WiLL Made It's hot streak, there just seems to be this teeming hive of creativity, London and Sonny Digital and the tireless Zaytoven all working hard and nobody breaking out as a clear #1. Most of Future's 2015 releases have been shorter projects that let one particular producer dominate the sound -- Zaytoven on
Beast Mode, Southside on
56 Nights, Metro Boomin on
What A Time To Be Alive (and Mike WiLL on
Ape Shit whenever it drops). But
DS2 is my favorite partly because it's more of a team effort, from Metro and Southside and Zay and Sonny all having multiple credits, often collaborating on the same track. They're all playing around in the same overall aesthetic, but bring their own twist to it, and you never get any overkill of, say, Southside's siren beats like on
56 Nights. It reminds me a little of how Jay-Z had Kanye and Just Blaze and Bink all together on
The Dyansty and
The Blueprint, where it was more about getting a particular sound from multiple sources than the usual modern rap album quilt of incompatible styles.
9. Janet Jackson - Unbreakable
Janet Jackson's three albums between 2004 and 2008 seemed like a panicked tailspin, as she released albums more frequently than she ever had before in a futile attempt to reclaim superstardom, even doing an album without Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. So it's refreshing to hear her back with Jam & Lewis, 7 years later, sounding so well rested and serene, at piece with her legacy and ready to add to it with sumptuous slow jams and offbeat experiments that revisit the vibe of her '90s masterpieces
The Velvet Rope and
janet.
10. Rico Love - Turn The Lights On
Scumbag soul is in vogue these days, and while a lot of the buzz was around the misanthropic R&B of albums by Ty Dolla $ign and The Weeknd, I got more mileage out of the solo debut by the hitmaker writer/producer Rico Love. He doesn't come off as much like a sleazeball as he did on the 2013 hit "They Don't Know," though he still does goofy little rap verses with a Ma$e flow on most songs. But the production is just fantastic and there's a real emotional weight and sadness to a lot of these songs that I think is missing from the new macho antihero strain of R&B.
11. Jazmine Sullivan - Reality Show
A lot of middle-tier music stars hang onto fame these days with cable reality shows, especially R&B singers. But Jazmine Sullivan is just at home, watching those shows and writing funny, finely observed songs inspired by unscripted soap operas. I think this album kinda got a lot of the praise that Sullivan's last record, 2010's more musically adventurous
Love Me Back, deserved. But she remains a powerhouse vocalist with an interesting perspective as a songwriter. and this album has a few stunners.
12. Young Thug - Slime Season 2
Young Thug didn't release a solo project all through 2014 as he became the year's breakout star, and I think the first of his three 2015 releases, the good but oddly low energy
Barter 6, got a little inflated by the pent up demand for an album. Instead, I think the two
Slime Season mixtapes he released in quick succession a few months later satisfy that demand more fully, especially the second one, which engineer Alex Tumay helped mold into a cohesive, well sequenced collection after so many of its songs had been carelessly leaked in various states of completion.
13. Kane Mayfield - The Return Of Rap
Kane has been one of the funniest people I met him in 2008, a couple years after he moved to Baltimore from Long Island. And he recently moved away from Baltimore, after releasing
an album that felt like the culmination of everything he'd been building toward in his years recording and performing here, all these sharp observations about the world presented as funny, conversational verses over warm, funky production.
14. Sun Club - The Dongo Durango
I have a lot of artists from Baltimore on this list, as I do every year, and a lot of time they end up being people I know in some capacity or have interviewed or worked with, and I hope it doesn't come off as namedropping or trying to push my friends on you -- Baltimore is genuinely full of amazing musicians and I don't even make room for any local records on my year-end lists unless I think it's absolutely justified. It's just a small town, though -- I've been admiring Sun Club from afar for a while, enjoying their EP last year, and then rooting for them as they signed to a big label, ATO Records, and released their debut album last month. And then without knowing it, my band booked a show with a weird guy named Albert Bagman who turned out to be a member of Sun Club, so I got to meet those guys a little and tell them that this record is great. They have this really exciting mix of impressive musicianship and songwriting chops with a total absurdist attitude that keeps their songs careening in these unpredictable directions.
15. Miguel - Wildheart
Kaleidoscope Dream was a tremendous album partly because of the balance between lithe, radio-friendly R&B and the edgier guitar-driven direction Miguel was headed in.
Wildheart is a less interesting or varied album because he's completely arrived at the sound he was transitioning toward on
Kaleidoscope Dream, and somewhat predictably, it resulted in him struggling to score radio hits the way he used to with ease, while critics have remained enamored with him.
Wildheart still has some really great songs and amazing vocal performances, though, if anything it just suffers from bad sequencing -- one of the few albums I liked this year that I listened to on shuffle mode more often than not.
16. Sara Bareilles - What's Inside: Songs From Waitress
Adrienne Shelly wrote and directed a lovely, sweet, dark, memorable movie called
Waitress shortly before her tragic death nearly a decade ago. A stage musical of
Waitress won't be opening on Broadway until 2016, but singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles has already released an album of the songs she wrote for it, and even as
a fan of her previous records, I'd say it's by far her best album. She just nails all the unusual shifts in tone and combinations of dark humor and sentimentality that were in Shelly's film, even Jason Mraz voicing the male lead on a couple of songs doesn't hurt the album too much for me.
17. War On Women - War On Women
I've been a fan of Shawna Potter and Brooks Harlan since their previous band Avec, and I worked with Potter on some music that's going to be coming out soon. But I'm still just amazed at how much they sharpened the knotty, brooding sound of Avec into War On Women's political hardcore, with almost every song on 2012's
Improvised Weapons EP and this year's self-titled full-length tackling issues of rape, reproductive rights, and differing schools of feminism with searing anger and wit over ear-splitting riffs.
18. Meek Mill - Dreams Worth More Than Money
Summer 2015 for Meek Mill was one of the most surreal up-and-down periods in any rap career in recent memory -- he scored his first #1 album and first #1 radio hit, but in the middle of that he picked a fight with a much bigger star, Drake, and lost. Badly. Meek is one of my favorite rappers of the past 5 years, and it's bittersweet to read
this piece I wrote just after
Dreams Worth More Than Money was released, knowing what was to come and that he might be headed back to jail in 2016. But I still stand by that piece, and I think
Dreams is a dope record and
If You're Reading This is trash and even the pretty undeniable outcome of their beef doesn't change that.
19. SiR - Seven Sundays
Right now, Inglewood R&B songwriter SiR is kind of under the radar, slowly stepping into the spotlight this year co-writing Jill Scott's hit "Fool's Gold" (co-produced by Baltimore producer
D.K. The Punisher, who I interviewed this year) and guesting on Jay Rock's
90059. His solo album
Seven Sundays is the kind of gentle, introspective record that doesn't seem like it's poised to turn him into a mainstream star, but it definitely deserves a cult fanbase, and to get him some more work as a writer.
20. Brett Eldredge - Illinois
Country radio is currently as stiflingly, and contentiously, dominated by male artists as it's ever been, and the worst part about it is that most of the guys clogging up playlists aren't even very good singers. But Brett Eldredge has emerged as one of my favorite new voices in country since 2012's "Don't Ya," the first in a string of #1 singles he's been enjoying. His voice just has this burly warmth, and his album has a nice sprinkling of variety without going for scattershot crossover experiments like his recent tourmate Thomas Rhett. In summary, Brett Eldredge's
Illinois is the best album to ever bear that title (suck it, Sufjan).
21. Boosie Badazz - Touch Down 2 Cause Hell
The perennially underappreciated Boosie got a hero's welcome in 2014 after he came out of 5 years in prison. But once he got back to releasing music that was even more somber and wounded than what he'd been making before 2009, he went right back to being underappreciated.
Touch Down 2 Cause Hell, his first album for Atlantic, is, along with the mixtapes
Life After Deathrow and
Thrilla, Vol. 1, a great run of new music that digs deep for stark, sincere songs like "Sorry," but just as before, few outside of Boosie's core fanbase have really taken notice.
22. One Direction - Made In The A.M.
Last week, One Direction officially began their big ominous hiatus, which either means the end of the group or a fairly long break, after 5 albums and 5 years culminated in the tumultuous 2015 in which Zayn Malik left the group and they
lost a sales war to Justin Bieber. All of One Direction's albums sound like they've been expertly engineered to exploit the feelings of the group's passionate fanbase, and
Made In The A.M. capitalizes on that weary, worried sense of something coming to an end with an avalanche of bombastic power ballads. But the album also features some of One Direction's jauntiest, most playful and deliberately Beatlesque music to date, and puts an interesting cap on the last few years of world domination.
23. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Surf
While Chance The Rapper's actual first solo project since 2013's Acid Rap appears to be right around,
Surf became a fun, odd chapter in his unpredictable career: a rapper on the precipice of serious stardom decided to put his own record on hold to play a supporting in his backing band's weird trumpeter-led jazz odyssey. Really, the record isn't that strange -- there's a lot of (uncredited) guest stars and some really big hooks -- but as a de facto star vehicle for Chance, or just as a hip hop album, it can be hard to digest. I recommend just sitting back and enjoying the ride and letting Surf throw every haunting instrumental interlude and delirious mood swing at you that it wants to.
24. Butch Walker - Afraid Of Ghosts
I'm a fan of Butch Walker mainly for the fast, funny and catchy tunes he's churned out on his solo albums and for various pop stars and major label bands. So a fairly somber downtempo album produced by Ryan Adams is not necessarily something I would've wanted from him, but the album's heartbroken songs about the death of Walker's father give the record an undeniable emotional heft.
25. Dwight Yoakam - Second Hand Heart
Although he may not be the star that he was in the '80s and '90s, Dwight Yoakam is just incredibly consistent at what he does, and his voice has held up well for a guy who's pushing 60. And his last few records have gotten into a real sweet spot of beautifully dry production and a band that just hammers away with a ton of energy even on the midtempo songs.
26. JuegoTheNinety - Abandoned Mansions
Last year's
Sonny September CD was one of those Baltimore rap tapes I hear every now and again that blows my mind and has me marveling at the depth and variety of talent in the city. Juego has a taste for seasick, claustrophobic beats, mainly produced by DATA and Killer Bee, and he stretches his voice in unpredictable directions, but unlike a lot of people we could politely refer to as 'weirdo rappers,' this dude can really fucking write and can really fucking flow, and songs like "When I Was A Boy" are just a tour de force from a guy who clearly has already really figured out what he wants to do and is ready for you to love it or hate it. Check it out on
Soundcloud.
27. Future - Beast Mode
56 Nights was the very popular Future tape with the intriguing backstory about DJ Esco getting locked up for 2 months abroad with a hard drive of all of Future's unreleased music. But, as he explained later on the song "Kno The Meaning," "that's when I did
Beast Mode," the other mixtape that he put together during Esco's ordeal. And to me, that's the most interesting part of the story. And
Beast Mode's bright, relaxed production by Zaytoven (still making bangers 10 years after Gucci Mane's "Icy") is, to me, a lot more interesting that Southside's endless variations on the "Fuck Up Some Commas" beat on
56 Nights.
28. Jason Derulo - Everything Is 4
Even though Jason Derulo released my favorite pop song of 2015, "Want To Want Me," he's the kind of ephemeral, eager-to-please Top 40 singer who you don't necessarily expect good albums from. But Everything Is 4 is thoroughly enjoyable, from incredible would-be hits like "X2CU" to a duet with K. Michelle, "Love Like That," that positions Derulo as a credible R&B singer for the first time in his career. Even the weird song featuring both Keith Urban and Stevie Wonder is more entertaining than bad.
29. Among Wolves - Separation And Other Loves EP
Among Wolves has been one of my favorite bands in Baltimore for years, I'm really in awe of their songwriting and their band chemistry. And because Baltimore is such a small town in some ways, I've gotten to know the guys a little bit, and last year when I needed a practice space, they offered to let me use theirs. So I occasionally cross paths with them in the space, and get little updates on what they're up to, and I knew they were working on an EP, but it was a pleasant surprise when it showed up online a few weeks ago, and I love it like everything they do. I wish it was another full-length album, but I know those things can take a while, and this is good for now.
30. Mac McCaughan - Non-Believers
Over the last 25 years, Mac McCaughan has written and sung hundreds of songs, virtually all of them released by either Superchunk or Portastatic. And then, for whatever reason, 2015 was finally the year that he released an album under his own name. It doesn't seem like a particularly personal album, at least beyond the extent that most of his music feels handmade and heartfelt and a direct result of whatever's going on in his life, but the gauzy synth sheen over uptempo songs is at least an aesthetic he hasn't quite done on any previous album, and it works well with the expressive croak his inimitable voice is aging into.
31. Kacey Musgraves - Pageant Material
2013's
Same Trailer Different Park was such a perfect debut album, that presented Kacey Musgraves and her sound and her persona so completely over the course of 12 songs, that it didn't leave much for a follow-up to accomplish. So Pageant Material is in no way a disappointment, but it's also just doomed to never be more than the 2nd best Kacey Musgraves album, particularly since it lacks a little of the biting pessimistic edge that made
Same Trailer one of my favorite albums of the hardest year of my life. But the dry humor and
32. Jess Glynne - I Cry When I Laugh
I wouldn't call it an "invasion" or anything, but the last few years have been probably the best time for British stars to cross over to the American charts in decades. But it seems like it helps to be a heartbroken balladeer like Adele or Sam Smith, because for whatever reason, Jess Glynne's historic run of #1s in the U.K. didn't really translate across the pond. Maybe her upbeat soulful house sound is a little too British, I dunno, but
I Cry When I Laugh is a tremendously enjoyable album that I wish had the kind of ubiquity here that it has at home.
33. Teedra Moses - Cognac & Conversation
Teedra Moses released one great album of cosmopolitan R&B,
Complex Simplicity, back in 2004. Then her label, TVT, imploded, and she landed on Mayback Music Group for a couple years before that went south, and she finally got around to releasing her second album independently.
Cognac & Conversation is a refinement of a sound that was pretty refined to begin with, with Moses making the most of her very specific vocal comfort zone and very particular vibe, and I wish it hadn't gone even further under the radar than
Complex Simplicity.
34. The Water - The Place To Be
The Baltimore instrumental duo The Water have been a favorite of mine since the first time I saw them play a show -- a few years ago I even invited them to perform at my 30th birthday party, and everyone loved them, even my dad. 2012's
Scandals And Animals ran through their early live repertoire, and when that happens it's always interesting to hear how a band builds up a new repertoire for their second album. And
The Place To Be continues to move the basic building blocks of what James and Dan do into some interesting new shapes, varying tones and tempos enough to get away from simple loud/soft cliches of post-rock (even though they do those really, really well, especially live). Check it out on
Bandcamp.
35. Damond Blue - Blessonz
Damond Blue is a rapper that I took note of over a decade ago, when he was a promising teenager on the Baltimore battle rap scene. But honestly, I've seen a lot of talented kids over the years that don't keep at it, and it's been really gratifying to see Blue grow up and reinvent himself and become a major presence on the city's rap scene. Blessonz was supposed to drop a few weeks after my
2014 interview with him was published, and things being unpredictable in independent music as they often are, the album took about 8 more months to finally surface, but it really came together nicely, with features from Bun B and Fat Trel and a lot of Baltimore talent. You can listen to it on
DatPiff.
36. Puff Daddy - MMM
Sean Combs had already redefined popular music a few times before he made
Last Train To Paris, which is a complete masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. So I've been very curious to see what he does with this supposed last push he's making as a solo artist, reverting to his old moniker Puff Daddy for a sequel to 1997's
No Way Out. But along the way to that record, he dropped a mixtape that's as good as most albums being released, with a hodgepodge of old Bad Boy buddies (Lil Kim, Jadakiss, Styles P.) and newer stars jumping in the mix (Big Sean and Travi$ Scott, both of whom are very unwelcome on the inferior new version of "Workin'"). The plush, cinematic vibe of Last Train is hanging around more than I thought it would, particularly on "H.M." and "You Could Be," but even the harder-edged rap material is a little fresher and more interesting than I expected based on earlier singles like "Big Homie."
37. King Los - God, Money, War
In 2005, a Baltimore kid named Los came over to my old apartment on Pratt Street for an interview, and by then he was already friends with Sean Combs, but nobody really knew who he was yet. And it's been thrilling to watch from afar as he's made these huge strides, doing things no other rapper from Baltimore has ever done.
God, Money, War was released by RCA Records with zero promotion, essentially as a retail mixtape to build buzz for 'the real album' to come, which is pretty funny when you consider this record has fucking R. Kelly on it, but that's the state of major label rap these days. Since the album was released, he's performed on Hannibal Buress's show on Comedy Central, and appeared on mixtapes by Puff Daddy, Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa all in the last 2 months. Every time I think Los has peaked, he just keeps climbing higher, so I'm excited to see what 2016 holds for him.
38. Eric Church - Mr. Misunderstood
Eric Church is far too popular and acclaimed to name his albums things like The Outsiders and Mr. Misunderstood, and even sending a single to country radio with shoutouts to Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy isn't as daring as he probably things. But the chip on his shoulder sure seems to help him write great songs, and he continues to here with "Record Year" and "Mistress Named Music."
39. Halestorm - Into The Wild Life
Jay Joyce might be my favorite producer working today, or at least my favorite one who puts microphones in front of instruments and amps, and he works primarily in country, producing albums this year by Carrie Underwood and longtime collaborator Eric Church. But this year he branched out and produced the third album by Pennsylvania hard rock band Halestorm. And the difference was immediately clear to me -- in fact I noticed how great the production was before I checked the credits and realized it was someone I was already a fan of.
40. Trunkweed - Trunkweed Live, Man
About a year ago, I saw Trunkweed play in a basement in Baltimore and thought they were fantastic. The studio album
Days Of Haze had the songs I heard at that show, and was pretty great for that reason, but didn't quite have their live sound, so I was pretty happy when a live album materialized on
Bandcamp a few months later.
41. Fall Out Boy - American Beauty / American Psycho
After a brief mid-career sales dip and hiatus, Fall Out Boy are back in the rarefied air of the handful of acts that could be considered biggest rock bands in popular music. And a lot of times it seems like they achieve that by constantly reaching outside of rock to stay relevant -- performing with Fetty Wap and Thomas Rhett at award shows and remixing their current single with Demi Lovato and so on. But
American Beauty / American Pyscho (which, according to Pete Wentz, is surprisingly a hat tip to the Grateful Dead and not Sam Mendes) is a full-on stadium rock record, even with the occasional drum machines and synth horns than pop up, with the band embracing their
Pump-era Aerosmith rebirth as Top 40 darlings and still managing to be utterly themselves in all the odd lyrical turns and bratty energy.
42. Diamond Youth - Nothing Matters
Diamond Youth are a Baltimore band that I don't know much about but their record just sounds incredible, like dude is kinda crooning over these riffs with a surf rock-style guitar reverb, but the whole thing still has a lot of punk propulsion.
43. The Honest Mistakes - Get It Right
A couple weeks ago, The Honest Mistakes played their 'final' show in Baltimore, before Chris and Joylene packed up their family to move to a far corner of Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, they released one more album of snappy, earnest power pop. And whether or not they had any clue it might be their last album, it definitely plays that way now, opening with "This Is Where I Gave Up" and closing with "I Am The End."
44. Scarface - Deeply Rooted
It's kind of shocking that Deeply Rooted is the first album Scarface has made since turning 40 -- it seemed like he's been a world weary 40-something for decades. He keeps talking about walking away from rap entirely, and then he makes another album with that booming godlike voice and those smooth, booming N.O. Joe beats and I'm just glad that he's still around.
45. Estelle - True Romance
I dunno why Estelle bothered to name her album
True Romance when another British star, Charli XCX, just did that 2 years earlier. But this record was really something special, and I say that as someone who never really fucked with "American Boy" or any other records from her commercial peak. Aside from a guest role on Empire that briefly got "Conqueror" some buzz, this album really did nothing, didn't chart in the U.K. or in America, and it's a shame, she landed on a really interesting dance-inflected sound with some great production.
46. Jay Rock - 90059
A couple years ago, Top Dawg Entertainment seemed to be making moves to set up all 4 members of Black Hippy with viable careers, with Jay Rock making up for the years between solo projects with great guest verses that sustained his buzz, But in 2015, it seems like only Kendrick Lamar matters and everyone else has suffered from TDE's bad ideas, especially Jay Rock,
90059 had the dumbest, most mishandled album rollout I've ever seen, with a "we'll move the release date up the more people preorder" scheme that backfired horribly and resulted in an awkwardly timed release with dismal sales (even Ab-Soul's These Days..., the label's previous biggest fiasco, sold more). And it's a fucking shame, because Jay Rock made a really good album and nobody cares.
47. Fetty Wap - Fetty Wap
As I said in
my year-end Fetty Wap essay, people who derided his album for actually featuring all the old Soundcloud tracks that made him a star are maybe missing the point that this is what debut albums used to be: a document of a new artist making the songs that put them in the spotlight. He's got the rest of his career to go in the studio with big stars and superproducers and try to sustain this moment, but
Fetty Wap is a fun, imperfect snapshot of a kid from Paterson, New Jersey and his crew stumbling onto a sound that the whole world wanted to hear.
48. Young Thug - Slime Season
I didn't like the first
Slime Season quite as much as the second, starting it off with an old-ass record like "Take Kare" was a weird move. But it's still a lot stronger than
Barter 6, and has some great songs on it, including the big breakout hit "Best Friend" and maybe my favorite song he released all year, "Thats All."
49. The Bird And The Bee - Recreational Love
The Bird And The Bee is still just a clever little indie pop duo from L.A., but in the time since they last released an album, Greg Kurstin has become an immensely successful producer of chart-topping hits like Adele's "Hello" and Kelly Clarkson's "Stronger." And it's kind of refreshing to see him still put his talents to use on a small project like
Recreational Love when he could be off making millions, but I get it, because there's a coy charm to Inara George's songs that brings out a funky, offbeat side of Kurstin's sound that he doesn't really get to show in his outside productions.
50. Emmylou Harris & Rodney Crowell - The Traveling Kind
Back in January, I spent 2 days working at D.A.R. Constitution Hall in Washington for rehearsals for an all-star Emmylou Harris tribute concert. It was an incredible night that gave me a new appreciation for an artist I'd previous only casually admired, and they filmed it all, so I'm kind of impatient that it hasn't shown up yet as a TV special or a DVD or anything, hopefully it still will. But Rodney Crowell performed a lot that night, and a few months later he and Emmylou released their second collaborative album together, and it's pretty beautiful and brings back memories of that night.
