I.N.A.G.W.

Pressing forward. Just passing by.

     I received a call one morning in December that I’d never forget. Before I even picked up the phone I already knew the news. My father has passed away. The time spent between hearing the first ring and my decision to answer the phone was the most cluster fucked my brain had ever been. On one hand I’m telling myself keep it cool, on the other hand I’m sorting through flashbacks, on the other hand I’m thinking about everyone else, on another hand I’m figuring what I’m going do next, and on another hand I’m wondering when I’m going to actually answer the phone. This is an unfortunate situation, I only have two hands. 

     Answer the phone, listen, take it in, enter emotions. It’s tragic really. The past 4 months have been the worst. In the past 4 months my father passed away, my grandfather passed away, and I ended a relationship with someone who I thought would stick around for the long run. For the past 4 months I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself. Of course I have friends around, but once I’ve been hit with a streak of painful events, this sort of irrepressible masochistic behavior takes control of me. But I can’t help it. How can I? Once the room gets dark, it takes a while for most people to find the light switch, especially if the individual is not used to the room.

     I’ve taken this time alone to follow the cliche depressed lonely person standard. Go to the bar, drink a lot, make things worse with my ex partner (pardoner), making extreme spontaneous purchases, and whining about things to everyone I know to get people to feel sorry for me. I’ve become a specific character just acting out a role I’m forced to play. I’m that one guy in the movie that sits at the bar on shot number 10, smoking a cigarette, telling the bartender my life story. At one point it clearly stopped being about actually being depressed, and started becoming a character that I wanted to be. I wanted to find out just how deep I can make this hole. 

     I’ve learned something during one of my lonely drunken states. Well first of all let me just say that I hate talking about the intricacies and the philosophies of life because I sound like some college freshman preaching to high school seniors at a Starbucks… with no shoes on while wearing a DOWN WITH BIG CORPORATIONS t-shirt as I hug my Mac Book… like an asshole basically, but I’m going to do it anyway. The gradual progression of my life has been divided by the life changing events in my life. It’s not by what year it is, but by extraordinary occurrences that pin point exactly where I’ve grown. Times like moving to Arizona, traveling to different places and experiencing things, meeting certain people, joining the Navy, deaths in the family, and the end of certain relationships. I’ve always measured my growth by age, but when I list out all the notches I have under my belt, it paints a clearer picture. 

     So I’m gonna take one step back here, take one good final look at these past four months and pocket this mother fucker. This wasn’t supposed to be some cheesy feel good story about me for you to read. This is just documentation, a contract for myself to move on. This is where I look back and vomit at how disgustingly hard I tried to be the “dark corner, lonely, I’ve-got-issues, cool-but-sad” guy. I’ve graduated from that. That’s one notch under my belt.

     Thanks Josh, for finally discontinuing your cry baby phase and finally growing up. Thanks for this totally emo tumblr blog post too, LOLLLL.

The Top 40 Tracks of 2011 [#20 - #1]

Okay the final 20. Enjoy.

20) JAMIE XX / GIL SCOTT-HERON - TAKE CARE OF U

Jamie XX does such a great job of adding to this song. It feels more complete and smartly compliments Gil Scott-Heron’s voice without taking away from it. The song itself is great and probably deserves to be higher on a top 20 list, but unfortunately for it, there were many others that deserved higher spots.

19) SBTRKT - WILDFIRE FT. YUKIMI NAGANO

It’s spaced out. Much like how The XX’s 2009 debut album was. Different sound, but similar in that they sound was spaced out. Right in the middle of all this space though is the wonderful Yukimi Nagano, all that room for her to showcase her voice. It’s easily the center of attention in this song, and it propels it to the 19th best track of 2011.

18) TECH N9NE - WORLD WIDE CHOPPERS

Tech N9ne’s series of “chopper” songs have always been impressive but this time it has gone off beyond the epic scale. Featuring chopper style rappers from different parts of the world and even some big names from the U.S., the feature spots on this track contains a worldwide all-star cast ( Ceza (Turkey), U$O (Denmark), JL (KC), Yelawolf (Alabama), Twista (Chicago), Busta Rhymes (New York), Twisted Insane (Kansas City), D-Loc (California)). It’s going to be hard to top this one. He should just end the series here.

17) WHITE DENIM - STREET JOY

For some reason this reminded me of Kings of Leon. Not the sound, but the song itself did. Probably because when I first heard “Sex on Fire” I thought, “this song should really be more popular.” And it was and it grew to be one of the most overplayed songs… ever. This one has less of a chance, but the dream like instrumental and well sang lyrics and song structure would be the reason this song gets played at American Eagle and Starbuxxx. 

16) IRON & WINE - YOUR FAKE NAME IS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

7 minutes long and not one minute boring. The song starts off with groovy funk saxophones before Sam Beam’s voice enters in one of his more uptempo songs. Then throw in the funky guitar interlude and back to Sam singing. This is part one of the song and even though the song is still good with just this alone, it wouldn’t have been this high without its part 2. The song slows, and almost turns into a completely different song. Same lyrics, new feel. From funky to somber until it gradually grows into a massive grandeur of a song.

15) RADIOHEAD - LOTUS FLOWER

;

This is Radiohead being Radiohead.

14) JAMES BLAKE - LIMIT TO YOUR LOVE

It’s easy to cover song… kinda. But it’s difficult to cover a a song and just make it yours. That’s what James Blake does to Feist’s “Limit to Your Love.” Now, it’s very difficult to say his version is better than Feist’s because Feist’s version is also very good, but one can make a strong case for James Blake’s version. The lone piano and Jame’s Blake’s voice go well together and then the earthquake bass that comes after is like the icing on the cake. Wonderfully done James.

13) PJ HARVEY - LET ENGLAND SHAKE

Like The Clash’s legendary song “London Calling,” PJ Harvey’s “Let England Shake” is what England sounds like. The sound of this song goes perfectly well with her singing lyrics of a future apocalypse.

12) GIRLS - VOMIT

This 6 minute song grabs you from the beginning and doesn’t let go for the whole 6 minutes it plays.

11) M83 - MIDNIGHT CITY

M83 does this… alllll the time. He makes songs that belong in epic movies. The climax scenes or the finales, he does them and does them well. 

10) MELANIE LAURENT - EN T’ATTENDANT

You make recognize her as Shoshanna from Quentin Tarantino’s “INGLORIOUS BASTERDS.” 

09) AZEALIA BANKS - 212 FT. LAZY JAY

She went to college and obviously majored in COOL. This is probably the coolest song of the year. Azealia Banks has no fear. She’s confrontational, uncensored, raw, despite her cute little girl image. The song does an incredible job of transitioning from music style to music style.

08) MR. MUTHAFUCKIN EXQUIRE - THE LAST HUZZAH FT. DESPOT, DAS RACIST, DANNY BROWN, & EL-P

Like Tech N9ne’s “World Wide Choppers” minus the fast rapping. The looping beat hypnotizes you to listen, and each and every rapper brings something different and unique to the song. It’s difficult to not listen to the whole song, it’s something new throughout the whole track. The beat isn’t distracting but it’s effective and forces you to listen to every word these weirdos are saying.

07) LANA DEL REY - VIDEO GAMES

Tragic song. Do the words “video games” make the song feel less serious? Regardless, the tragic song about trying to impress someone to make them love you but the feeling not being mutual is at it’s best here in this song. Lana’s voice is big, and requires attention. The song is pretty.

06) DJ SHADOW - SCALE IT BACK FT. YUKIMI NAGANO

Yukimi Nagano… again. This time, instead of out doing the instrumental track, DJ Shadow was able to create an instrumental that would ride with her vocals and compliment her. This is the instant feel good song of the year.

05) CULTS - GO OUTSIDE

It’s simple, get off your computer, stop writing in your blog about the best 40 tracks of 2011, stop watching youtube videos, and go outside. Only problem with me is though I’ll end up just having a cigarette and walking back inside. This song more than most though makes me want to go outside. It’s bright, it’s sunny, it’s fun.

04) THE WEEKND - LIFE OF THE PARTY

This song truly is meant to be played loud, and honestly I was lucky enough to hear it for the first time played at maximum volume with loud bass. If you listen to this song any other way, it may ruin it for you. The song itself feels dirty, you can label this under “songs for strippers to get naked to.” Most can describe the progression of the song to go from “calm” to “upbeat” but it’s better to use “seductive” to “raunchy.” 

03) TYLER THE CREATOR - YONKERS

Yup, the best rap song of the year. The slaughter house beat to compliment Tyler’s deep demonic rapping voice, and the lyrical horror to complete the triad. Tyler commands you to listen, and you really don’t have a choice once the track starts playing.

02) GRIMES - VANESSA

Ah yes, finally. How special. This is a step forward for music of this genre. The retro sound is great, but it’s just imitation. Grimes takes all of her retro influence and makes it new rather than an imitation of the past. Hip, and cool, I found myself listening to this song on repeat for a long time.

01) THE WEEKND - INITIATION

What was The Weeknd’s intentions with this song? Let’s talk about lyrics first. The main part of this song, The Weeknd sings:

I got a test for you 
You said you want my heart
Well baby you can have it all
There’s just something that I need from you
Is to meet my boys
I got a lot of boys
And we can make you right

…

If we take this literally, i’m pretty sure we’re all thinking he’s saying “if you want to be with me, you have to have an orgy with all of my guy friends.”

Hell maybe he does want us to take it literally. But no, The Weeknd likes to sing about drugs and “boys” is his metaphor for “drugs.” Odd yes. 

Now with that put to the side let’s get into the most important part of the song. The pitch change of his voice. The most obvious thing. It’s incredible. The Weeknd craft’s a beat to fit this innovative work masterfully. You have to appreciate what he’s done here. It’s neat.

And… I’M DONE!

Just remember this is all opinion, so don’t get all angry about LMFAO not making this list. 

The Top 40 Tracks of 2011 [#40 - #21]

I really didn’t want to do this one but it gives me a good excuse to push back my top albums of 2011 list. I know what you’re thinking, “did it have to be 40? Are songs 21-40 good enough that you had to make it a top 40?”

YES! Yes mother fucker, in fact I only wanted to do a top 20 but there were too many good songs to be left out of a list such as this. There still are songs that deserve recognition from this year that won’t be on this list. 

Anyway, here they are, the gorgeous fwoty.

40) FOSTER THE PEOPLE - PUMPED UP KICKS

Does this song really need a youtube? It’s played everywhere, if you haven’t heard it, I’m sure you live under a rock. They play it at grocery stores for crying out loud. Look, it’s easy to argue against this song being good because it’s overplayed everywhere: Starbucks, Albertsons, Hollister, you name it. But the first time you heard it and you played it over and over again until it got (dare I say it?) MAINSTREAM! 

39) THE ANTLERS - I DON’T WANT LOVE

The Antlers aren’t exactly making the world cry tears of sadness anymore like they were on their incredible 2009 album “Hospice,” but they took everything that made Hospice as emotional as it was and brought it to a more upbeat (if you can even call it upbeat) tempo. Same elements of raw emotion, less sad face.

38) GHOST TOWN DJ’S - MY BOO (BALAM ACAB REMIX)

Weird. The nostalgic 90’s radio hit alone gives me the warm and fuzzies, but Balam Acab drags it, lo-fis it, and modernizes it, and makes it cool to listen to again. No really, I would blast this with my window down as I pass by a highschool. I will not be ashamed.

37) LYKKE LI - I FOLLOW RIVERS

36) CURREN$Y - THIS IS THE LIFE

Is it the beat that makes this song? Or Curren$y? Considering it’s difficult for me to decide I’m just gonna say that they both compliment each other well. Curren$y’s mixtapes really just mesh together, it’s a bit odd to hear a stand out track. This one catches your attention.

35) DRAKE - TAKE CARE

YOUTUBE UNAVAILABLE BECAUSE FUCK YOUTUBE

I don’t hate Drake. As much as it sounds/looks like I do, I don’t. It’s just easy though. Despite this song being about 30% Jamie XX & Gil Scott-Heron’s song, which is called “Take Care of U,” Drake doesn’t completely ruin it. In fact he doesn’t ruin it at all and he twists it around and adds to it to make it… his own. It’s the best track on the album.

34) THE WEEKND - THE MORNING

The Weeknd is a machine. Superb production, catchy chorus, lyrics not cheesy… everything that makes an R&B song bad, this song avoids. It’s like an R&B song you can listen to with your guy friends without feeling very gay.

33) GANG GANG DANCE - GLASS JAR

11 MINUTES!!! WHAT IS THIS? FREEBIRD?!

No, and yes I thought the same exact thing whilst listening to the opening track of their new album “Eye Contact.” I have a problem, see I can’t watch the Lord of the Rings even though it’s a good movie because of how long it is. That is not this song, but I know that’s what you were thinking. The song doesn’t really get going until about halfway through and I thought “why don’t they just cut the whole beginning of the song?” So I did it myself. Doesn’t work, the build you get before the thick of the song adds to the goodiness of this track. It’s a really good upbeat track.

32) TORO Y MOI - STILL SOUND

A pioneer of the “chill wave” sound. The perfect combination of smooth and funk with a spoonful of summer. The bass line and the laser sound effect is what makes this song, and keeps it playing in your head for hours after you’ve heard it. Recommended you listen to this song whilst wearing an afro wig.

31) UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA - HOW CAN U LOVE ME

I didn’t plan for this song to come right after Toro Y Moi, it just worked out like that. From one funk song to another, the two would go well in a playlist together. It’s time machine and it takes you back to the 70’s. “How Can U Love Me” is carried heavily by the upbeat dreams where as Toro Y Moi’s “Still Sound” was carried by the bass. Both great songs to move to. I don’t dance but I was able to do a little nerdy shoulder shake to this number, A-HYUK!

30) ZOLA JESUS - VESSEL

I’ve been following Zola HAYZOOS (naw, Jesus) since the beginning. Her improvement is dramatic with every release. This song follows the same Zola formula she’s been on, empty auditorium, echoey lonely vocals, haunting gothic atmosphere.

29) AARABMUZIK - STREETZ TONIGHT

Okay. Yes. This song is heavily sample based. BUT THAT’S OKAY! aarabMUZIK actually improves the song by adding bright city lights, a sprinkle of rain, and a hip club scene. 

28) MOGWAI - SAN PEDRO

No lyrics needed. Just listen.

27) HOLY OTHER - TOUCH

Odd combination here of groovy haunting music. It works though, it works really well. It’s upbeat without being dance party upbeat. Perfectly acceptable to listen to this song at a funeral.

Not really, but you know what I mean. I hope. Don’t play this song at a funeral.

26) JET LIFE - 1ST PLACE

Finally. Well close enough. We all want a Young Roddy mixtape. Instead we get a Curren$y, Trademark, and Young Roddy mixtape which is not bad whatsoever. All verses are on point, supported by Curren$y’s (non traditional non r&b) catchy hook compiled of words of bad assery, all backed by a silky smooth typical Curren$y type beat.

25) EMA - MARKED

I love EMA. In fact I’m kinda dissapointed in myself for only putting one of her songs on this list. It makes me feel better though knowing that EMA - The Grey Ship would have been #41. If you just listen closely it’s not difficult to find the beauty in this song. The pretty buy shaky imperfect vocals, the squeals the guitar strings make when she changes chord, the tragic lyrics, and the minimalism. This song is raw.

24) JAY-Z & KANYE WEST - NIGGAS IN PARIS

If the Grey Ship is #41 then Watch The Throne’s “Otis” is #42. To me this was the stand out track of the album. Not into the whole “cray cray” thing that everyone is saying now but regardless this is a hard hitting pop song. IT GET’S THE PEOPLE GOING! I’ll leave off with the best line of the track:

“Prince Williams’ ain’t do it right if you ask me,
If I was him I would have married Kate & Ashley”

23) JAMES BLAKE - THE WILHELM SCREAM

This is Beyonce’s favorite song of 2011 and how could you blame her. James’ voice is great and the atmospheric feel to the song takes you elsewhere, and for added effect let’s make the song silent at the beginning and then epicly loud towards the end.

22) LITTLE DRAGON - RITUAL UNION

Yup, I’m a Yukimi Nagano fan. She is the main core of this band and she’s proved that she can do it by her self not once, nor twice, but thrice times! 

21) PANDA BEAR - ALSATIAN DREAM

Real soundtrack to a fake movie

I wish I got more into film, I could make a really good movie. I really believe this. Movies are too expensive to make though, so I’ll stick with movie posters and compiling soundtracks. Here’s a soundtrack to my goth suspense thriller movie STAY AWAKE.

Download it here.

Yukimi Nagano, Little Dragon, and the definition of COOL

___

What the fuck is cool these days? Justin Bieber is cool. He wears cool clothes, and has his own line of perfume (lol srsly.) He has cool hip hair and makes cool hip music and the ladies love him. 

But on the other side of town, in an art gallery full of hipsters… in Sweden… uh…, is another cool. 

Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon is making her presence known. In 2010 she was featured on Gorillaz “Plastic Beach” album on the songs “Empire Ants” and “To Binge.” She was also a feature spot on Dave Sitek’s (TV on the Radio) solo project Maximum Balloon on the track “If you return.” But regardless of being on both albums, I’m pretty sure she really started getting noticed in 2011, when she was featured on SBTRKT’s single “Wildfire”

Yukimi Nagano’s voice is smooth, silky, and cool. It’s not really easy to earn the word “cool” as an adjective for a singing voice. There’s simply no describing how it’s cool, it just is. It’s fit for background music at the Korova Milk Bar or something. 

Later on she did more quality work with DJ Shadow on a song called “Scale it Back” and then later on her and the rest of the band released their quite overlooked album “Ritual Union.”

My Top 11 Rap Albums of 2011

11 because I wanted to talk about The Game.

11 The Game - The Red Album

Honestly, if another rapper made this album, it would have been better. To be completely honest with you, this album had a lot of potential. The Game is just a cheesy rapper to me. I don’t like how he worships Dr. Dre like an ex-gay lover that he’s still in love with. Looking up to him is one thing but every damn album it seems like The Game is writing love letters to him. The Game name drops a lot also. Can’t you rap without throwing another rapper’s name into your song. It Seems like his tactic to get other people to listen to his music is if he’s mentioning other rappers in his songs. He also says a lot of stupid things. All musicians have stupid lyrics but The Game more than most. All that aside though the album is solid, in fact it’s great. Rough, raw, and flow is on point. The feature spots are wonderful, Tyler the Creator fits well nicely in the album and production is nothing short of nice. But really, the album had potential to be #6 possibly #5 on this list. Whatever, this is The Game’s best album since the Documentary.

10 J.Cole – Cole World: The Sideline Story

“It’s easier if I just paste this review here:

The production is hit or miss, although the extent to which Cole does it himself is impressive. “In the Morning” is incredibly smooth, and “Rise and Shine” just kicks ass. “God’s Gift” has a great beat as well, although it would do well to be placed elsewhere on the album. But Cole gets greedy, and outdoes himself. His overdramatic piano has always been a staple, and it worked well when it was the major element. Throw strings in there willy-nilly, as Cole does throughout the entire album, and the music loses its grounding. The perfect example is “Lost Ones.” Lyrically, the song is devastating. It’s one of the best explorations of abortion I’ve ever heard, in music or not. But Cole puts in too much sound, especially the dramatic orchestral shit he goes to twenty times too often on the album.

Cole is talented, but he needs to let himself realize it on his own terms. Cole World wasn’t the classic I wanted. But it’s good. Cole is still Cole, even when he tries too hard.”

-Trap Yates

Pretty much somes up my thoughts.

9 Tyler the Creator – Goblin

Tyler the Creator has had himself quite a year this year. The low deep voice to go along with dark evil and brutally honest (mostly exaggerated) lyricism, and all that to go to a beat that sounds like it was crafted in a slaughterhouse. These ingredients mesh well together. People like things that go well together. I did like the mixtapes he put out before releasing Goblin and I thought GOBLIN is going to be incredible. Maybe I hyped it up too much. The album starts out with what I expect to hear from Tyler the Creator but after awhile it becomes old and tired. But not so much for it to be a bad album, just enough for me to sigh and wish he’d switch it up just a little bit. The album is unique, and comes fully loaded with shocking and controversial lyrics (maybe a bit too much, like he does it solely to bask in the negative reaction.) Overall it was a solid effort, underwhelmed but I’m so into Tyler the Creator that even being left underwhelmed this album is still one of the better rap albums released this year.

8 Childish Gambino – Camp

The album has it’s ups and downs, most of the downs are songs that are waaaay too poppy for me. I mean some of the songs sound like they should actually be labeled pop songs instead of rap songs. Like the one rap verse in “Friday” Rebecca Black. The thing that gets me about Childish Gambino is his delivery. At times it’s on point like in “You See Me.” Other times it sounds a bit cheesy and his voice starts to squeak. But regardless, Childish Gambino, or Troy from Community (lol) is a talented rapper. It’s not hard to see that, it’s obvious he’s doing it because he likes rapping and not for any other stupid reason some rappers might have.

7 Drake - Take Care

Drake hyped this album up a lot. The hype leading up to this album was just about equivalent to that of Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” last year. Drake is good at creating nice sounding melodies, and hooks, but when he raps for a long time that voice starts to get annoying. It’s not a good rapping voice, which is why mid-rap when he starts to sing (or tries to) I thank him. I feel like on this album he takes not just a page, or even a chapter, but a whole damn book from up and comer THE WEEKND’s bookshelf. When THE WEEKND released that first album… EP… whatever it was, “House of Balloons,” Drake came out praising the guy. Turns out he liked him enough to pretty much bite his style and release an album with his style before THE WEEKND can even release a proper LP.  At least Drake was nice enough to have the guy on a couple of his tracks though. THE WEEKND’s style is so good though, and Drake bites it well. Close, personal, emotional, and the atmosphere (mostly THE WEEKND’s style) just ties it all together. It’s a pretty album, not exactly what we’re used to hearing when describing a “good rap album” but Drake is a softy, but that’s okay.

6 Jay-Z & Kanye West - Watch The Throne

Now how can you go wrong here? On one end we have the Legendary Jay-Z and on the other there is Kanye West who, last year, released a classic rap album. Bad promo maybe, but no this album was heavily promoted. So really you can’t.  The album is great on many levels, production is top notch (anything less for Kanye would be disappointing.) Jay-Z is rapping well, not like Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint well, but definitely better than his lazy tired sounding effort on Blueprint 3. He sounds like he’s actually trying. Kanye’s rapping is improving, we’ve already learned this from hearing MBDTF, he continues this trend here. For a side project this album does well. With all that promo, the gold packaging and the title though you’d expect this album to be the greatest rap album ever made, well it’s not even close, but it’s good enough to make my top 6.

5 Lil Wayne - The Carter IV

Fresh out of jail, it’s the self-proclaimed BEST RAPPUH ALAAAAV! After The wonderful Carter III, Weezy Fornicate Baby (lol) hit a slope. It’s not like it’s hard to slip after releasing a classic album that is Carter III, and a handful of classic mixtapes beforehand. A simple above average effort would be seen as horrid after following a masterful effort. During this fall though, it seems like he just stopped caring and released (oh god) REBIRTH. Granted, it was his experimental “rock” album, but after crap, you don’t put out crap with a capital C and corn bits. But there was hope. No Ceilings was a great mixtape and I Am Not A Human Being was in my opinion incredibly underrated and a great EP by Lil Wayne. The Carter IV is a great album. Production is great, and although Lil Wayne is not up to where he was when he was rapping on… oh let’s say… Dedication 2, he’s holding his own for coming right out of jail and (sadly) off the Nyquil.  More metaphors (good or not) than I’d like,  but he does what he does best, punch lines, and the emphasis he puts out when he raps. Also he has the best rapping voice ever in my opinion.

4 Tech N9ne - All 6’s & 7’s

Tech N9ne is multi-dimensional. There’s the dark sadistic Tech N9ne (Anghellic, K.O.D.), there’s the beasty rough rhyming rapper, there’s club hits Tech N9ne, and theres the Tech N9ne that likes to get personal and emotional. All 6’s and 7’s reminded me a lot of Everready (his best album in my opinion.) A lot of people were introduced to Tech N9ne by Everready and it did a good job of introducing him too. It was equal parts personal, perverted, club banging, and dark without scaring away new listeners. All 6’s and 7’s is similar in this aspect. Tech N9ne seems to be going off a lot more than usual with his machine gun style rhyming, and the flow and lyricism, you can just tell that this rapping thing just comes easy for him. Tech N9ne is gaining popularity as well and depending on what you like this could be a good thing or a bad thing. Like Bone Thugs ‘N’ Harmony, I wasn’t really into Tech N9ne rapping to (excuse me I’m not a professional beatmaker but) amateur sounding beats.  I was happy to hear the production get better and also his guest spots are a lot more well known (Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes, Twista.) Is this album better than Everready? In my humble opinion, no. Everready was perfect. Is this one of Tech N9ne’s best albums? It’s up there, and it’s the 4^th best rap album of 2011.

3 Yelawolf – Radioactive

AW LAWD! Where do I start? The heavy southern accent, varying subject matter of songs, rapping voice, the chopping, production, flow, the urgency. Now that Yelawolf is under the limelight and signed to Shady Records, it’s time for him to put out an album that a lot more people will be hearing. Not only does this album do Yelawolf justice but it shows his heavy evolution from Creek Water Muzik to Trunk Muzik and now here… in Radioactive. There’s variety, you have your rough rowdy rap tracks (Get Away), Your club hit (Hard White, Animal), the pop song (Let’s Roll), and your emotional personal song (The Last Song.) All I’m saying is this album is incredibly good and get’s a lot of rotation in my… er… itunes. Also, if you can put Kid Rock on your rap song and make it sound good without being cheesy, you must be doing something right (for Kid Rock to sound right.)

2 Curren$y - Weekend At Burnie’s

Curren$y is going on a music spree right now and you may not even be noticing it. He’s releasing more official mixtapes, EPs, Albums right now than anyone and none have failed to disappoint; a perfect combination of releasing a strong quality and quantity. Weekend At Burnie’s doesn’t stray from what Curren$y is used to doing. Smooth mellow production, lazy slow flow. What makes a good rapper to me is when a rapper doesn’t sound like he’s trying to hard rap, when a rapper makes rapping sound easy, and natural. Curren$y makes it sound as easy as talking, and it fits snug and tight with the beat. This is easy listening, it’s easy to close your eyes and get lost in this album.

1 A$ap Rocky - LiveLoveA$ap

What a surpise this album turned out to be. There’s a lot to say about this masterpiece and I’m going to try to fit it all in a small paragraph. Let me start off by quoting A$AP Rocky himself:

“They say I sound like Andre mixed with Kanye//

Little bit of Max, little bit of Wiz, little bit of this, and little bit of that//

Get off my dick//”

It’s true. A$AP Rocky is easy to compare to a lot of rappers but it’s never just one, it’s plenty. The influence comes from all angles. After my first listen of this album my first thoughts were “this is the album Tyler the Creator SHOULD have made.” Oddly enough, as new as Tyler is, it’s easy to compare A$AP Rocky’s sound to Tyler’s. The most important thing about this album (not to take away from his rapping whatsoever) is the production. The beats (a majority created by Clams Casino) are not your normal rap beats. They’re gorgeous. It sounds like a Four Tet song with a rap drums added in. Along with the beats, A$APS voice is altered to have an echo, and it’s not annoying. In fact it blends it beautifully with the beat.  I could go on forever but I’ll cut myself short and end it with this: If there’s one album you listen to all year, rap, or rock, or whatever the fuck, let it be this album. It’s different in a good way. The perfect mix of pretty and gangster.