
Every year I list my top albums in early to mid December, and almost every year a late release makes me go back and assess where it fits in the lineup. So this year I decided to hold off until 2009 was FULLY over to give my list of the year's best music. Thus, the best however-many-albums-I-could-think-of for 2009 in descending order:
25. Marsha Ambrosius - Yours Truly\
In a year that seemed chock full of somewhat disappointing (to me) releases from female vocalists, Marsha Ambrosius released a hell of a "mixtape" album that helped me regain some faith in the future of R&B.
24. MSTRKRFT - Fist of God\
Not every track is a homerun, but the ones that are absolutely melt faces. Listen to the John Legend track "Heartbreaker" and try not to booty dance right where you sit. It's impossible.
23. Lady GaGa - The Fame Monster\
Far too short to be a real contender for BEST album of the year, but I'm in the camp of music fans who believe GaGa is good for music in general. "Bad Romance" may be one of the best track ones of the decade, though.
22. Greg Street & Glasses Malone - 2010\
DJ Greg Street of Atlanta put together a mixtape of his favorite Dr. Dre beats and got underrated Cash Money rapper Glasses Malone from Watts, Calif., to rhyme over them. If that sounds like a good idea to you, rest assured, your instinct is correct.
21. Trackstar the DJ - Keep On: The Influence of the Last Poets\
A masterfully mixed compendium of Afrocentric spoken word and the hip-hop and other music it inspired. If you've never heard the Last Poets do their thing, this is a fantastic (and free) introduction to their exciting, thought-provoking and just plain provocative art.
20. Blaq Poet - Tha Blaqprint\
Blaq Poet is a fine rapper, really a skillful lyricist, but the reason this album is even here is that legendary producer DJ Premier shifted his beatmaking efforts into high gear again, and that alone is worth the price of admission. To wit, the album comes with a second CD of just the instrumentals.
19. Hollyweerd - Candy 4 Kleptos\
What would happen if Parliament Funkadelic had a vinyl baby with Goodie Mob? I think Hollyweerd answers that question. They really need to get an official release out.
18. Finale - Pipe Dream and a Promise\
Though Finale is from Detroit, his funky beat selection and swaggerish flow hearkens back to the busy, bustling Motown-era Motor City more than the current, gritty, decaying Detroit. This was one of the more quietly consistent and enjoyable hip-hop albums in 2009.
17.ODB - Message to the Other Side\
It's easy to forget in the midst of all the arrests, drug charges, jail time and everything else that Ol Dirty Bastard was basically a music and drama nerd. The dude may have been all kinds of crazy and thuggish in various ways, but his ear for beats was impeccable, he loved to sing on his tracks before that kind of thing was common, and his rhymes always had an entertaining and melodic cadence to them. This mixtape/album/DVD brings all that flooding back to the forefront, and it's an excellent reminder of why ODB was so beloved in the rap community.
16. Pill - 4075 The Refill\
Pill has a sound steeped in the stutter-step Southern style of his Atlanta home, and for those who care about this sort of thing, Pill is about as thoro as it gets, Adamsville, Fort City, the Pink Block. His home couldn't be any more gutter and his music reflects that. Plus he turned the world on to the phrase "goin' ham," which means to go crazy; to wreak mayhem and chaos; to lose one's mind. He got the Internet goin' ham.
15. Flaming Lips - Embryonic\
If the Flaming Lips at their most weird are too weird for you, you may like "Embryonic." If Flaming Lips at their most accessible and radio-friendly reek too strongly of sell-out, you may like "Embryonic." Might this become the seminal, definitive Flaming Lips album? I admit I'm not a big enough Flaming Lips fan to tell you for sure (they're too weird for me).
14. DOOM - Born Like This\
The newly minted DOOM (formerly Metalface Doom, among other monikers) drops a disturbed and delightful collection of songs featuring a title track crafted around a section of a Charles Bukowski poem. If that doesn't get your freak flag flying, I don't know what will.
13. AC Newman - Get Guilty\
My favorite member of the New Pornographers (and possibly one of my favorite ginger-haired frontmen of all time along with Spoon's Britt Daniel, who's really more of a strawberry blond) puts out his follow-up to one of the best pop albums of all time, "The Slow Wonder," and although "Get Guilty" isn't as instantly captivating as its predecessor, it's a grower.
12. Snoop Dogg - Malice in Wonderland\
A surprisingly focused and tuneful effort from the hip-hop legend-turned TV star/youth football coach. I'm glad to see Snoop still has tricks up his sleeve that help us forget the more dud-tastic entries in his catalogue. "Doggy-Fizzle Televizzle" shouldn't have been cancelled. Just sayin'.
11. Stat Quo - Status Report\
Atlanta brings us a pretty wide range of rap talent, from Outkast to Soulja Boy, from Goodie Mob to Shawty Lo, but Stat Quo, in my view, may be the most consistently good, consistently thoughtful, consistently entertaining rap act from the city. He should be way more popular than he is.
10. Wale - Attention Deficit\
Wale's brilliant blending of D.C./Baltimore Go-Go beats and sounds with his breathless lyrical cadence makes for some seriously catchy stuff. This is the album, but all of his mixtape efforts from the last year have comparable displays of skill and irrepressible rhythms.
9. Ian Kamau - September 9 Mixtape\
Ian is a reedy-voiced "conscious" rapper/poet from Toronto, which is definitely NOT a formula for mainstream success. But great googily-moogily does this two-part free mixtape deliver the goods. If you don't like his voice, that may be a deterrent, but if you like his voice, his beat selection, lyricism and subject matter are all masterful.
8. Them Crooked Vultures\
A supergroup that somehow perfectly combines the signature sounds of its representative artists. The legendary John Paul Jones brings the rambling, complex Led Zeppelin groove, Josh Homme seems compelled to one-up his senior rockmeister with mathematically advanced time signatures and some of the most "technically challenging" material of his career, and the top Foo Fighter, Dave Grohl, adds his high-octane and high-fun percussive style to every track. If you're a fan of hard rock music, this should be on your shelf/iPod/Zune/etc.
7. HISD - The District\
The Hueston Independent Spit District is like what would happen if you took Jurassic 5 and Tribe Called Quest and smashed them together in a particle accelerator deep under the scorched soils of Houston. It's funny, it's poignant, it's inspiring and, most importantly, the beats knock.
6. Skyzoo - The Salvation\
My favorite rapper is Nas, and even though Sky's style is almost nothing like Mr. Jones', I keep thinking Skyzoo could be the next Nas: Unbelievable storytelling skills, a flow that never seems to waver and a NYC pedigree.
5. The-Dream - Love Vs. Money\
This was the album where I realized R&B can be saved. Auto-tune or no, radio play or no, dirty lyrics or no, as long as people like The-Dream are making music and having fun doing it, I think we'll be OK.
4. Rashid Hadee - 808s & Hadee\
Kanye's "808s & Heartbreak" was an unabashedly slapdash album; it was a response to several things going on in music and in Kanye's own life. That any of the tracks are even good speaks to Kanye's musical talents, but the album does SOUND slapped together and inconsistent. Enter fellow Chicagoan Rashid Hadee, who chose Kanye's lovelorn opus as the first experiment in his "Chopped Not Screwed" mixtape series. Picking each "808s" track down to its elemental essence, he builds it back up in his own image with shuddering, earth-shaking, powerful mastery. It bares no real resemblance to the original work, but it arguably transcends it. And best of all, it's a free download.
3. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix\
The Parisian power-pop trio adds just a pinch of this-n-that to the recipe that made them worldbeaters. If it ain't broke, it don't need much fixin', and that's precisely the notion Phoenix apparently operated under in making "Wolfgang."
2. 14KT - Nowalataz LP\
A mindful homage to J Dilla's "Donuts" that somehow manages to nearly match the original's exuberant excellence. Instrumental hip-hop in its highest form.
1. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest\
This was the album where Grizzly Bear realized they'd make a really great Doo-Wop/Barbershop quartet, but neither of those things are really in style in 2009, so they added some of their patented ethereal sounds and subject matter and put out an album that frankly kicks their prior effort, "Yellow House," to the curb and back ... and "Yellow House" is a great album.
It bears mentioning that as of press time, Jay Electronica and Just Blaze are in the lab putting the final touches on Act II or whatever exactly Jay is calling his first official LP. It's expected this year, but two Christmases ago I thought Jay was dropping an album, so I'm not sure what to think. When it happens, though, it will be the top album of whatever year it is released in (though Spoon may have something to say about that in 2010). It also bears mentioning that since it's technically been released as a single in 2009, "Exhibit C," available at the link above, is fairly easily the best song released in that year.