2015 Reviews
Abra — ROSE (Awful)
With R&B on the verge of a golden age, it’s fitting that in 2015 the best label (Awful) in the genre is a leftfield, ragtag group of misfits. Abra, who stole the show on Father’s “Gurl” this past March, emerges as a powerhouse with ROSE. Worthy of nightclubs where people actually know how to dance, ROSE is a brilliant case study in the less discussed corners of 80s R&B.
Arturo O’Farrill — Cuba: The Conversation Continues (Motema)
We may have not had a very politically timely jazz album since the 70s, but here we are. The increasingly prolific O’Farrill witness the raising of the U.S. flag at the re-opened Embassy in April this past April is back with a long, triumphant set with his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. If the mainstream press kept a few more eyeballs on jazz, Cuba could be revered as a celebration asThe Disintegration Loops was an elegy. As it stands, it’s a particularly emotional few days at the office for a unique stalwart in the world of orchestral jazz.
Ashley Monroe — The Blade (Warner Bros. Nashville)
If “Weed Instead of Roses” from Ashley Monroe’s 2013 sophomore album,Like a Rose, is indicative of country music making any U-turns, fans of Kacey Musgraves’ live and let live philosophy will eventually find the wonders that lie in Pistol Annie solo projects. Sure enough, Monroe’s third studio album,The Blade, is half as crass and twice as good. It’s not a subdued approach by any means and the album has hits for days. Never mind that country radio has been increasingly unkind to its fringe lady stars. While Vince Gill and Justin Niebank helm this release and Chris Stapleton and Miranda Lambert float on its outer edges, the revelation here is Monroe improving tenfold as a writer.
The draw on The Blade is the austere stuff. The title track is searing in the deliver of its chorus of the title track, but her drawl does just as much at the beginning of the verses of standouts “Bombshell” and “From Time to Time”. She has the chops to fit a traditionalist niche with ease, yet never completely abandons the wayward, daisy child persona that enamored fans of her last album. The vaudevillian, honky-tonk stomp of “Winning Streak” shows that her tongue-in-cheek ways are still intact. The Blade is a well-rounded gut punch and one of the year’s strongest singer-songwriter efforts.
BeatKing — Houston 3 AM (self-released)
Last year belonged to Houston rapper and producer BeatKing. He made waves with a full-length collaboration with Gangsta Boo, formerly of Three 6 Mafia. However, his best look in 2014 was his own solo tape, last summer’sGangsta Stripper Music 2. While his aesthetic is purely post-Mike Jones, and a sea of voices flooded that release, BeatKing’s larger than life personality shone through. This music to strip by was punctuated by his incantations and raps that were either barks or in a double time flow. He was bogus enough there to send Jhené Aiko a DM to say he’s killin’ it and voice his disdain for skinny women by calling a group of them “Bong Thugs.” His latest mixtape, Houston 3 AM, is a sorely needed injection of fresh ideas in the wake of February’s tepid Club God 4.
The atmosphere around BeatKing’s best work paints the strip club as a semi-religious experience with the modus operandi being consumption, throwing a new wrinkle in here and there. So it’s jarring for him to talk about what other people are doing in strip clubs with the detail and matter-of-factness of a Jerry Seinfeld monologue. It’s an anecdote that comes after the Silkk the Shocker flip “That Ain’t My Thot” describing a patron giving all of his money to a stripper that curves him. BeatKing also screws up his routine on the title track and re-appropriates the X-Files theme into a song about flexing on his ex. It’s this type of constant creativity that keeps BeatKing from becoming a shtick. What’s more is that his last four releases are some of the most fun rap music to surface in the last 15 months.
Boogie — The Reach (self-released)
Boogie in a nutshell: a gifted rapper with latent neo-soul tendencies and a chip on his shoulder the size of Mars. His latest, The Reach, is an extension of his brand of ego raps, complete with references to Internet hijinks, reality checks, and fatherhood. He’s at his best when he’s faced with a conundrum that’s complicated by the presence of his child (who says a prayer on “Make Me Over”). Like any dad worth their salt, he’s insufferable when he talks about work. He makes up for this with sense of humor, wordplay, and storytelling, which are are unassailable.
Breaking Benjamin — Dark Before Dawn (Hollywood)
Considering Ben Burley’s status as a known eccentric, it’s hardly any surprise that he would be the person in rock music with a weird disease. Now that he’s copped to his medical problems, it’s a bit heartwarming to see that this is the band the hard rock kids went out to the stores for. Burnley has put his personal troubles to the forefront of his band’s music for well over a decade now, though he’s failed to build on those themes by writing songs that advance past sophomoric poetry. Nothing changes this time around. As such, Dark Before Dawn is a document of the aging process of a rock band that was lousy in the first place.
Chief Keef — Bang 3 (Glo Gang)
A couple weeks ago, the City of Hammond, Ind. shut down Chief Keef’s hologram via-hologram at Craze Fest, which the promoters encouraged festival-goers to donate to the family of his recently deceased associate, Capo. Chief Keef is the latest of Midwest rappers to relocate to California. In the case of Keef, it seems to be more a matter of taking refuge than a change of scenery, as he currently has outstanding warrants in Illinois. A figure, which to some, represents the violence tied to Chicago’s hip-hop scene, was cut off calling for an end to the violence. Days later, Keef released, Bang 3, a release teased before the previous five projects (Back From the Dead 2, the ill-fated Gucci collaboration Big Gucci Sosa, Nobody, Sorry 4 the Weight, and loosie collection Almighty DP). It’s his California album in that he refers to the change of scenery for one track and gets back to doing Chief Keef stuff. At a concise 48 minutes, it’s his best set since the masterful Finally Rich. Like many a-celebrity rapper forced into cabin fever, he proves a more capable hand at making beats, although his productions buried on Bang 3, which is what most projects that can afford three Zaytoven beats should do. Mac Miller appearing on “I Just Wanna” to ruminate about being a bored millionaire turns out to be the high point of the album. Glad to see Malcolm’s enjoying that Blue Slide Park money more than we enjoyed the album.
Chris Crack — Public Domain 4 (self-released)
This year has been particularly good for a small sect of of Chicago rap that at different times will take cues from New York street rap, Atlanta trap, and various incarnations of soul. It’s a good storm to hit for Chris Crack, a grimy emcee that hardly bears resemblance to some of Chicago’s en vogue. Standout releases by peers Tree and Vic Spencer, together and apart, set a context for Chris Crack’s good, but not great mixtape Public Domain 4 to exist in as supplementary listening. The two, in fact, are frequent collaborators of his, appearing here. They hardly take any of the attention from Chris Crack, who just doesn’t stop funneling real shit through his trademark snarl.
Czarface — Every Hero Needs a Villain (Brick)
Some tough cuts here, certainly. The supergroup of Inspectah Deck, 7L + Esoteric are just good enough to catch a few pairs of eyeballs out of their target demographic. But the pink elephant in the room is that the realm comic books are no country for young men. It’s disappointing to come to that conclusion, considering that Czarface seemed so in touch with the changing face of the New York underground the last time around. Now? Bring on the 20-year-olds rapping about Dragonball Z and Cowboy Bebop.
Dr. Dre — Compton (Interscope)
In April 1987, The Los Angeles Police Department, under Chief of Police Daryl Gates launched Operation Hammer as a response to a drive-by shooting at a birthday party. The initiative, derived from gang sweep policies from the 1984 Olympic Games, was a large-scale roundup of gang members. The height of the operation was in 1988. In one weekend that April, police arrested 1,453 people in South Central in one weekend. On August 1 of that year, a large-scale police raid amounted to in act of terrorism, while only yielding “fewer than six ounces of marijuana and less than an ounce of cocaine.” Eight days later, N.W.A. released their debut album, Straight Outta Compton: an irreverent collection of party anthems with its pointed rally cry front and center. The album’s highly publicized biopic dropped last week and is the likely reason for their elusive producer Dr. Dre to drop his first album in 16 years. There’s an unprecedented austerity to the proceedings and it works to the strengths of his players. Lead by Dre, Kendrick Lamar, and Hellfyre Club B-teamer Anderson .Paak; Compton goes back and forth between socially relevant commentary, rap game elitism, and Hall of Fame speeches.
To attribute the surfacing of Dre to the times would be to play the same card often played with D’Angelo’s re-emergence last winter. While it makes sense given that The Chronic and Straight Outta Compton include reactionary rhetoric, the release of the movie and Dre’s stamp of approval are more likely reasons he released the album last week. It turns out that Andre Young’s co-sign on his own work is better than any of ours. Aside from the relative unknowns here, of which there are more than enough, Dre lovingly curates his past and present. Kendrick Lamar is smashing everything in sight. Eminem comes through with his best track with a female vocal accompaniment since “Superman”. Xzibit appears on his biggest stage since Pimp My Ride. Snoop Dogg takes a break from the breezy, funky production he’s been known to pair up with as of late to deliver unfiltered condescension. Cold 187um, who worked on Eazy E’s infamous EP, It’s On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa, appears to befuddle an entire couple of generations that don’t remember (one of the best West Coast rap albums ever) Above the Law’s Livin’ Like Hustlers. The Game announces his presence as an OG in less than two-and-a-half minutes more than he did by actually saying it on his last three albums. Ice Cube is even inspired on standout track, “Issues”.
Reading Compton as a scrapbook of Dr. Dre’s illustrious career yields predictably impressive results, but what’s missing are various pieces of the West Coast hip-hop tradition that Dr. Dre was instrumental in ushering in. What he brought to the table was impressive, but it’s easy to think about those we lost:Eazy-E, Nate Dogg, 2Pac for starters. Eazy-E is salient because Dre mentions him multiple times on Compton. It’s well-documented that the two didn’t end on good terms. There’s also Nate Dogg, whose hooks were an unforgettable part of The Chronic and 2001. He died in 2011 and was recently a posthumous feature on Warren G’s EP. There’s 50 Cent, who is on the “Mo’ Problems” side of the equation and Kurupt who is plenty active but happens to not be on this album for a reason beyond me. DJ Yella and MC Ren aren’t here, possibly because Dre doesn’t think they’re good enough. And these are just the big names, I’ve gotten to. Dr. Dre’s career on record has been a family affair. It’s fitting that Compton looks backward because of the context Dre relinquishes it into. Not only a movie that appreciates him and his group’s contribution to the world of music, but a nation that has been hesitant to change what made five young black men from Southern California feel alienated in the first place.
Of the big names here, Dre’s only one, excepting Kendrick Lamar, intent on addressing these issues. It results in the album’s two best tracks, “Deep Water” and “Animals”. Incidentally, it’s Anderson .Paak that makes these tracks special, simulating drowning with his voice on the former track and providing the soaring hook on the latter. He’s at the forefront of a new generation, likely the last, of contributors to Dre’s empire. The other here is DJ Dahi, who produced Drake’s “Worst Behavior”, but was also a key prong on the team of producers No I.D. employed for Vince Staples’ excellent Summertime ‘06.
As expected of a reflective work of the older artist, Compton comes with some altered perspective. While the political ire of his earlier works remains intact, this album knows better than to celebrate gang violence. Life is too short to be mad at each other and nothing drives that home when close friends die with both parties still mad at each other. There’s no bachelor yelps of bitches not being shit but hoes and tricks, either. But nobody told this to a few of Dre’s guests, of course. Sure, there’s Eminem’s rape bar. It will certainly looked at as a dated stain on an otherwise great verse. Of course that’s on an audience that looks at something as atrocious as rape as something trendy, that could be considered passé. In a way, that reaction worse than how Eminem, who likely isn’t raping anyone these days, is merely saying it to troll listeners as usual. More gross is the murder skit at the end of “Loose Cannons”, which still does not approach the sociopathy of something like “Kim”, nor does it feel quite rooted in horrorcore.
For all the talk about the past, Compton manages to capture Dre sounding fresh, yet unrecognizable. The production is modern, worlds away from G-Funk. In fact, closer “Talking to My Diary” is a jazz number. Frenetic drums are all over the place. The DJ Premier-assisted “Animals” came from his sessions from Russian producer BMB Spacekid. Compton shares the subdued vibe of its predecessors, but that’s about it. On the mic, Dre is hardly recognizable at times. As it turns out, it’s a different path to the same destination. He’s still getting the best out his collaborators and again, spins a cohesive album out of it. That the game has caught up to him proves inconsequential. If this is a send-off, it’s a fitting one. Dre may have not fixed the world, but he leaves the game with his city rich in musical lineage, releasing better music than anywhere else.
Don Trip — Godspeed (Don Trip)
Memphis rapper Don Trip never appeared to be on the fast track to stardom. But for awhile, he had a great chance for modest major label success. Those days have come and gone without a major label release. His deal with Interscope and his notoriety petered out slowly like errant fireworks. But Don Trip is nothing if not persistent and true to a self-professed screw up with a hustle hard mentality, he released the album himself.
Don Trip’s last six years yield a story that should be echoed on taller platforms. There’s “Letter to My Son”, the Cee Lo Green featuring song that gathered Trip a lot of the attention that lit the initial fuse of his solo career. His gift as a writer led to aforementioned Interscope deal and a writing credit on the Diddy Projectors’ 2010 masterpiece Last Train to Paris. His best work, however, came in a duo with Cash Money expat Starlito as Step Brothers. Those successes culminated in two very good solo mixtapes and a 2012 XXL Freshman nod.
Don Trip is independent again and has been for a couple of years now. There’s less eyes on him than there are on Troy Ave until him and Starlito form like Voltron and drop another Step Brothers project. Similar to fellow Memphian DJ Paul releasing the Da Mafia 6ix album in March, the existence of Godspeed is a minor miracle. This may bring to mind stories of great hip-hop and indie rock albums that were made on major label time and money, ultimately released after both parties have severed ties or as unauthorized bootlegs. Emergency & I and NoYork! serve as examples of both cases.Godspeed is not that album. The closest he got to making that album is Guerrilla and Help Is on the Way, the latter featuring looks as good as Danny Brown in the midst of a stellar run of features and Jeremih interpolating Guy fresh off of his acclaimed nocturnal mixtape. Instead, Godspeed is over an hour of dead serious Don Trip and the good and bad that comes with the territory.
Trip beating this drum until his hands bleed pays off. The title is self-explanatory to fans: Godspeed is a response to help never arriving, despite being on its way a couple years ago. Trip recalls his family having to the other side of town to combat the embarrassment of coming home to see their things on the curb and the ugly side of having been busted out cheating. It’s worth the price of a few throwaway tracks, lame boxing metaphors, and a C-rate take on Ab-Soul’s “Terrorist Threats”. Having that much time with very few features could have gone much worse for Don Trip had he veered to close to his inner-Big Sean. It may be the Don Trip Interscope would have wanted. But if that’s the case, it’s precisely why they didn’t work out in the first place.
The Foreign Exchange — Tales From the Land of Milk and Honey (Foreign Exchange Music)
A couple falls ago, The Foreign Exchange released Love In Flying Colors: a predictably excellent affair from rapper-ternt-sanga Phonte and French producer Nicolay that used collaboration to present a mining of 70s and 80s pop that remains refreshing an entire album cycle later. The follow-up, Tales From the Land of Milk and Honey, fulfills the house-cleaning prophecies of its predecessor. It’s a fleshing out of the artistic vision the two had worked. The physical manifestation is a full band, now featuring vocalists Carmen Rodgers and Tamisha Waden (Carlitta Durand and Shana Tucker also reprise their bit parts from Flying Colors) and multi-instrumentalist Zo!. While there’s much ado about mature relationships and adulthood here (their music is both praised and derided as “grown man” R&B), Milk and Honey is also the band’s most exuberant album to date.
Milk and Honey floats, especially with regards to the choruses, where Love In Flying Colors soared. It’s funky in the sense that new wave was, with proper nods to disco. Of course, none of the fare on this album could pass for proper dancefloor music on this side of “Diamond Girl”, but The Foreign Exchange are quite self-aware, keeping their cool as they go for it anyway. It’s as close to good cleaning-the-house-on-a-Saturday-morning music as we’re getting in 2015. It’s the happy ending for a summer in which remembering Giorgio Moroder with only scant mentions of Donna Summer blew up in all of our faces.
Future — Dirty Sprite (Epic)
If Future’s latest run of mixtapes have proven one thing, it’s that Black Twitter is the most effective cult following to have at the moment. In April, a Twitter phenomenon #FutureHive came about. Officially, it was a Future fan club that was a tongue-in-cheek play on #BeyHive. Instead of playing bishop to anyone disparaging the Queen Bey (you know, like an actually beehive), #FutureHive was less about people than making hilarious memes. While this could actually have turned into a discussion about how we perceive masculine personalities as easygoing and hilarious and young female fans as rabid bitches, animals, the hive devolved into a draining phallic discussion of whose fandom was the biggest. Informally, it called into question whether people liked Future’s music or Future memes. The answer was a resounding yes.
The memes were often great, but so were the mixtapes that preceded them — Monster, Beast Mode, and 56 Nights. The tapes came off the heels of Future’s engagement with Ciara that bore a child and an ill-fated attempt at conventional pop stardom. His exceptional output and eventually his viral stardom made his rough croon one of the bells and whistles than have made rap so wonderful in 2015. Along with appearances on lower stakes works — As I mentioned in a previous article, two of his best hooks this year are on Young Scooter’s Juggathon — Future has stood out on major label releases such as Vince Staples’ Summertime ’06 and Meek Mill’s Dreams Worth More than Money. This combination of sensation and prolific excellence were the perfect storm for Future to drop a studio album. In a seven month stretch that has seen Kendrick Lamar and Drake release studio albums, it could be reasonably argued that Dirty Sprite 2 has been the most anticipated album this year. More a proper sequel to the worst of his latest trio of mixtapes, 56 Nights, than 2011’s Dirty Sprite, Future’s newest full-length doubles down on the searing intensity of his post-Honest output. The results are predictably strong: a hyper-detailed look into the psyche of a post-relationship bender turned run worthy of ’99 DMX and ’03 50 Cent.
Future’s endeavor works because he’s a hit machine on his own terms in 2015. It’s appropriate that Drake’s Nayvadius impression on “Where Ya At” is album’s lone listed feature, considering how many songs in the last five years could be credited to Future (feat. Future). Like Drake’s previous release, Dirty Sprite 2 is a parade of a studio album with a mixtape vibe. It even comes with DJ drops to boot. Equally as important to his formula as his status as “X-factor” would be the crack team of producers he’s enlisted. The key players here are executive producer Metro Boomin along with Southside, Sonny Digital, and Zaytoven. The last three have their moments — the sped up Tom Waits fare of Zaytoven’s “Colossal” is a highlight — Dirty Sprite 2 is Metro Boomin’s 81 point game. The frenetic drums on “Freak Hoe” lie under a science fiction vibe to keep the album’s midsection from going tepid, which is an encore from the blaring “Groupies”, the murky low end of “I Serve the Bass”, and the spare “Thought It Was a Drought”.
Last year’s Monster presented emo Future: one in between everything that went wrong in his 2014 and what went right in his 2015. In between massive pop moments were the bare confessions of “Throw Away” and “My Savages”. This time around, he’s just as candid, but this time like an older cousin that spares nobody’s feelings and just doesn’t care. Sure, there’s the line about how Epic Records inadvertently played Dr. Frankenstein on “On Serve the Bass”, but he also exposes half a mind to go “Real” on Russell Wilson (“Bitch you ain’t gon’ get no extra points pullin’ no faggot move”) and tells tales of a sexual deviate in designer clothes. It’s not surprising to find that despite social media being impossible to divorce from his latest run, his relationship to it is to find groupies. This is planet Earth where money allows space for the eccentricities of the rich. Those lucky enough to experience that know that it comes with the agency to force those quirks on other people (Donald Trump anyone?). In that sense, Dirty Sprite 2 is a victory lap — the upside to taking everything that comes with all of these millions.
For all of the hype, Dirty Sprite 2 isn’t a project as strong as the highlights an informed listener could cull from his last three releases. That’s unrealistic to ask from Future or any rapper. Only one rap release from this year would top such a compilation. No, this album simply succeeds by taking it’s place with the three releases by bearing witness to a star in a profound zone. To put it like that makes it sound anticlimactic, but so were the ’96 Bulls.
The Internet — Ego Death (Columbia)
This past Spring, the inevitable dissolution of Off Future was made official. The group dynamic was always an easy place to start in past discussions about The Internet, an R&B outfit consisting of Sydney Bennett (a.k.a Syd tha Kyd), Matt Martians, and their touring band. Bennett naturally grabbed fleeting attention from the media by virtue being the lead singer and an open lesbian before 2012 in Odd Future’s rowdy boys club. She made it clear from the beginning that she did not exist to satiate critics of the the group’s antics — as a matter of fact, she slapped bitches. While she had the skill and the personality of a lightning rod, her and Martians kept a relatively low profile in the years following, considering who their associates were.
With apologies to Domo Genesis, The Internet were the only one of the group’s middle-tier acts to make music nearly as compelling as Odd Future’s unholy triumvirate. The pairing of Martians and Syd tha Kid has always been formidable and their first two albums were solid efforts from a couple of kids that amassed a handful of brilliant flashes. Their third and best album Ego Death, The Internet prove to be the rare background act in a collective to continue making compelling music after the training wheels come off.
Ego Death does not read as ambitious on paper — an electro-infused Vanguard-lite propping up stout love songs — save for the features, but Bennett finally sounds like a star delivering every line, complementing her band at every turn and outshining all of her more famous guests. The difference is her pen. The acts of sex and verbal commitment are always in the air. Syd opts to to focus on the two-way cat and mouse game that precedes any answers one way or the other. She does her fair share of propositioning and speaks as a masterful a tactician doing so. Just as much time is spent explaining why her guard is up. Both approaches boil down to her being a horny 23-year-old with a couple of nickels to rub together. Props to her for getting enough miles out of that big idea to sound like a confident star for an entire album. I think I’m gonna like Odd Future all grown up.
Jessy Lanza — You Never Show Your Love (Hyperdub)
This not-quite-single-not-quite-EP showing from Jessy Lanza is a Hyperdub / TEKLIFE cross-pollination I’m surprised didn’t happen sooner. Lanza is a more intriguing vocalist than a lot of the pop singers than grace the last big, passable vocal house album of memory, Disclosure’s Settle and it her incantations of the song’s title show it. “You Never Show Your Love” is hypnotic in a way that recalls Baths’ “Ocean Death”. I’ve spoken before on the Rashad / Spinn dynamic, and interestingly enough, the track is a Spinn & DJ Taso production, while Rashad handles the remix on the flip side. With the two having appeared on stage and on record as this double helix, the real treat is hearing these two take on different interpretations of the same track.
Kacey Musgraves — Pageant Material (Mercury Nashville)
Kacey Musgraves had all of the makings of a polarizing figure by the end of 2013. Leave it to her to finally unlock the achievement with a substantially better follow-up. Unfortunately, the media took that cue to make themselves the story, as they tend to do with their crossover stars. If anything, Pageant Material is a reminder to be wary of outgroup members positing A as the antidote to B.
On the other hand, there’s the actual album, which is an improvement on her mutation the saccharine country of her acclaimed 2013 album Same Trailer, Different Park. She wears the moral compass that has made fans of pop critics on her sleeve. To let the standards tell the story, it’s a firm second to the heart. Yet she’s still finding universal truths and reducing them to hooks like any creative worth their salt. I can attest to that much: the black sheep of my white trash family taught me the finer points of minding my own business.
Kool Keith / L’Orange — Time? Astonishing! (Mello)
It’s been stinkers for L’Orange since last year’s excellent The Orchid Days. I can’t fault you for passing on this because of how stale the Jeremiah Jae collaboration was, but Time? Astonishing! is a change of fortune for one of L.A.’s best hip-hop producers (no small feat in itself). Kool Keith provides an absurdist concept of a guy that travels through time, but isn’t imaginative enough to do anything cool with it. Anyone familiar with the work of either of these two know that this in both of their respective wheelhouses. It may be the best we’ve gotten from Kool Keith this millennium.
Lil’ B / Chance The Rapper — Free (self-released)
This mixtape of based freestyles is the most charming release from either party in over a couple years. The inherent flaws in the form also harbor the raw honesty that made parts of 10Day, Acid Rap and Lil’ B’s speeches so heartwarming.
Meek Mill — Dreams Worth More than Money (Atlantic)
Major label rap as a whole has been riding a streak of great albums and mixtapes since the end of last fall. While the conversation definitely starts with usual suspects (Kendrick, Drake, Nicki, Future etc.), even the rollout for Big Sean’s tepid Dark Sky Paradise had an air of a veteran rapper more focused on crafting a great product than talking about it. It’s a fair climate for Meek Mill to unleash Dreams Worth More than Money on a fan base that’s good at going to the store. While Dreams Worth More than Money is a big step up from his previous work, Meek Mill only manages to tie together what others contribute to this potluck, rather than serve the main course.
For instance, Drake would have spit quotables over the piano/synth/drum interplay of Mr. Bangladesh’s wacky production on “Classic”. He proves it too on “R.I.C.O.” by simply being more compelling than Meek Mill. Other guests come onto Dreams Worth More than Nightmares and do likewise — think Oxymoron but less weird. It’s a strong effort from Meek Mill. He has some moments where he’s the compelling one. Look no further than “The Trillest” for proof of that: he’s technically sound and full of the gravitas that lines most of the album’s highlights. The next three tracks he gets to himself are midly entertaining, yet uncreative takes on old hits and new hip-hop idioms. Dreams Worth More Than Nightmares is certainly what a template major label album sounds like in 2015 (A great Future feature? Hello.). The question is does Meek Mill deserve credit for making that album? Perhaps, but he surely does get props for not ruining a perfectly okay rap album. It’s harder than it looks.
Migos — Yung Rich Nation (Atlantic)
The public glossed over the release of Migos’ major label debut, largely because Drake was doing a thing. It didn’t help that their latest mixtape was like pulling teeth to get through. Young Rich Nation is a mostly good set of Migos songs, which we have more than enough of at this point. “Dab Daddy”, “Pipe It Up”, and the Young Thug-assisted “Cocaina” are excellent, but are too little too late in the summer of “Classic Man”. With every release since YRN, it’s much more clear that Quavo outshines the other two and we’re just counting the days until he goes solo. The tragedy is that Atlantic didn’t drop this last fall before the Migos unleashed Rich Nigga Timeline.
Miguel — Wildheart (RCA)
Alright guys. Enough with the Prince comparisons. The grown sex talk is there in spades and Miguel can fart out masterful pop music for days, but he’s nowhere near the weirdo Prince was.
In the scope of contemporary R&B, everyone likes him, but he’d be more people’s favorite if it weren’t for Frank Ocean. His latest, Wildheart, might win more fans for the coat of purple paint on his sexy loner persona. But Miguel’s biggest victory is an R&B album that plays to the strengths of the genre. Wildheart lies in an overtly artistic but not avant-garde or experimental grey area between rock, soul, funk, and hip-hop. It’s a milieu where the vocalist isn’t required to have all-time great chops to hang with the best. Moreover, the man can hop on electro-funk production without sounding like a copycat.
And in a genre that prides itself on love language, Miguel is the best around not named D’Angelo. Other than the most lovelorn sap that “Coffee” offers, Miguel is either to the point or dishing out digestible metaphors. They often feed into his knack for delivering deadpan filth without being lewd. Unlike singers and rappers who use sexual conquest as a trophy to dangle in front of fuckboys, Miguel would rather bare his fangs to espouse that his dick so bomb, he’ll be making someone walk with a gangsta lean.
He falters slightly when he lists the ways in which he’s different from everyone, finishing with the trite question, “what’s normal anyway?” In 2015, it’s quite normal to have trouble fitting in. It’s a sentiment that has its place on Miguel’s bona fide California album and a lazy vacation from his subversive takes on G-Funk/hell and gangsta rap. This also comes from the place that thought of “I want to fuck like we’re filming in the valley.” Take the strokes of genius with what you’ll politely call outsider art.
Quelle Chris — Innocent Country (Mello)
With his third strong outing in a row, Quelle Chris has become nothing short of an unsung stoner rap touchstone of this time. His cathartic raps are given a touch of deliberate lifelessness by partner-in-crime Chris Keys. Stick around long enough for the trip to fall off the rails with “Drugfest TooThousandToo”, as every alt-rapper needs a “Breakdance Beach” in their catalog.
Sleaford Mods — Key Markets (Harbinger)
Over the past couple of years, British duo Sleaford Mods garnered notoriety for their man-shouts-over-loops act. The man in question is Jason Williamson: a thick-accented, foul-mouthed man whose moves are to yell diatribe and halfheartedly sing a chorus. While Sleaford Mods have existed since 2007, the project found some coherence around the release of 2013’s Austerity Dogs, after Andrew Fearn took over the production duties. Then came 2014’s masterfully sequenced, Divide and Exit, which carried a similar lo-fidelity vibe, but some of the duo’s most massive hooks and hilarious lines. By the end of last year, they were long-assigned the persona of punk savants. In fact, reviews of Divide and Exit often read that they were about as punk as music got in 2014. Indeed, Jason Williamson was calling out people with fake accents and copping to masturbating in people’s toilets, but the very notion sounded like it read from a press release that you know the duo were too apathetic to write themselves. Their latest release, Key Markets, doesn’t stumble into punk ethos, but a bit of tidying in the low end shows that the duo were dangerously close to being a diligent post-punk act the entire time.
Tame Impala — Currents (Interscope)
Even before the rollout of Tame Impala’s third album and first for Interscope, Currents, Kevin Parker had been bracing the media, his fans etc. for a stylistic shift from a rock template to an electronic one. It’s tourism, which is to be expected from Parker physically and musically these days. The topic of tourism is a soft spot in electronic music, and he isn’t ingratiating himself in those circles by copping to being inspired by dance music’s more theatrical side than anything that has to do with Stonewall or Warp Records. Currents indeed fails when read as dance music or even as a moment when a great rock band gets tired of playing rock. However, it succeeds as a Tame Impala album: a work refracting the surface levels of its influences through the band’s sound to stumble upon an exceptional mutation. In summary, there will be no shortage of electronic music fans wringing hands over Currents because it sounds like fucking Tame Impala.
Parker can get away with the so-called electronic move because he has a vice grip on atmosphere and his pop sensibilities. In fact, Currents is a shift further into Kevin Parker’s wheelhouse as a vocalist and player. It’s a testament to the adaptability of his pleasant falsetto and world-class bass playing that Parker pulls off this successful gambit. Not surprisingly, the band emphasizes groove as much as the other two qualities. It’s the backdrop for Tame Impala’s breakup album, a thriller chock with prom pastiche — at least before prom was the tidal wave of well dress barely legals mashing their private parts together that we know and love.
While machines factor heavily into Currents, it’s Kevin Parker’s voice doing the heavy lifting. Night driving stomps “The Less I Know The Better” and “The Moment” are watermarked by inspired ventures into his upper register. His voice drifts through “Yes I’m Changing” and “Eventually”, with the latter punctuated by leviathan snares. Parker’s vocals also keep the otherwise meandering shuffle of “Let It Happen” on course. When all of the worst possibilities of his entire approach surface on “’Cause I’m A Man”, his voice is even bigger. The consistent presence of Parker’s voice jives with the band’s rhythm section’s tendency towards pop structures. Tame Impala never run too wild on Currents because that would be out of step with the album’s pop-informed mission statement.
Unlike other albums where big rock bands decide the sandbox they’re playing is one-dimensional, Tame Impala’s go electronic moment is not a grand statement teetering on self-indulgence. There’s no major revelations on Currents that need influence rock going-forward, despite there being no shortage of bands currently following Parker’s lead. Nor is it in a class with Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — it’s actually the worst Tame Impala album by a small margin. The band simply slides into more After Dark fare on what could have wound up sounding like a bad Caribou album based on how Currents was first described. Earlier this year, Parker was an active participant on Mark Ronson’s Uptown Special, a proper disco tribute in capable hands that had room for the interested Parker, Mystikal getting his James Brown on, and a massive hit that brought out Bruno Mars’ best qualities. Currents comes from ideas similar to the ones that birthed Uptown Special, albeit filtered through Tame Impala and lacking Ronson’s superior knowhow. Parker can talk about listening to the Bee Gees high on coke and shrooms in these interviews all he wants, but the final product is a fine approximation of what we could have had if Todd Rundgren had a fleeting interest in Italo disco 30 years ago.
Thundercat — The Beyond / Where the Giants Roam (Brainfeeder)
Thundercat was wise to have Flying Lotus produce his latest batch of songs. He even goes as far as to peek through the void as Ellison did on his last full-length. There’s no doubt that this is some of Thundercat’s best work, but did it have to be this short? Maybe he’ll get back in the lair with the Captain and strip this one for parts or flesh it out.
Tyga — The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty (Last Kings)
Most, if not all, of Tyga’s career highlights are more of a result of him being in the right place at the right time. While there’s more of those than expected, none of them are here. It’s the front runner for rap’s most inessential release of this year.
Vic Spencer — VicTree (self-released)
VicTree scans as a fun one off from Vic Spencer and Tree, two Chicago rappers behind two of the city’s best rap releases the year to date, The Cost of Victory and Trap Genius, respectively. Rather than a conventional post-Throne best of both worlds move, VicTree a friend dropping by another’s house. It’s a Vic Spencer project that features Tree providing his patented soultrap production and guttural vocal takes — a move that embraces a quirky, hyperlocal idea that more rappers ought to set their sights on.
Like Mic Terror’s recent collaboration with TEKLIFE, Spencer avoids coming off like a carpetbagger by going straight to the sound’s source. It’s a good fit: While Spencer can’t replicate Tree’s howl, he shares a similar no nonsense approach, coupled with a keen sense of dark comedy. Give these two enough time and this approach could work as a LP.
Vince Staples — Summertime ’06 (Def Jam)
Vince Staples’ first full-length for Def Jam sticks to his mission statement: eschew the glamor of gangbanging in favor of brute force honesty at all times. Not quite a concept album or coming of age story, Summertime ’06 is a detailed account of various points of his life and how they apply to him now. He takes mental notes on everyone from his fans to civilians in his neighborhood. Occasionally, the figures in his stories are brought to life, becoming powerful devices by going about their daily lives. Elsewhere, they hold titles and live accordingly or they’re people who exist for the sole purpose of Vince Staples calling bullshit on them.
The act of gangbanging sans glamor in music takes the appearance of sex without pleasure. But sex, although presented with consequences, is the most enticing aspect of Summertime ’06. While boasts about stick-up kid life are devoid of irony, Vince Staples delivers them with the urgency of a productive worker mired in a dead end job. It’s the stress that leads him to make a suicide pact, coming full circle to the Unknown Pleasures-referencing cover art. He sings about being taught how to be a shooter in lieu of manhood, and the raps are the post-adolescent recollections of a PTSD sufferer.
Guests vocalists swim around Vince Staples like sharks, lending a voice to existing temptations or echoing the intensity of his setting. Kilo Kish’s interpolation of “The Candy Man” on “Dopeman” is weird enough to sit next to Cibo Matto’s rendition. Future’s howling like a siren on “Señorita”. Earl Sweatshirt mutters in an uncredited appearance. Hardly any of the guests are actually rapping, but calling your attention to what Vince Staples is saying. It’s a daunting task to do virtually all of the rapping on a double album but he has more than enough to say — the album concludes with him in the middle of a sentence.
This dark imagery of the author is mirrored by the production, handled mostly by a team of Clams Casino, DJ Dahi, and executive producer No I.D. The production fulfills the same role as the features. When Vince Staples assumes the microphone it’s sparse. Piano keys and heavy bass aren’t on the album to serve as an homage to some classic record. They’re included to sound cool and let Vince Staples do the rest of the work.
The rookie-vet pairing of Staples and No I.D. works because it provides an original voice the necessary guidance to be more than a guy who spits real shit over Drumma Boy’s 808s. The result is a great top-to-bottom rap album. What’s more is that it manages to be weirder than works from top-of-mind rappers who have set out to cross-pollinate genres. Vince Staples is not the antidote to any particular trend in rap. He’s merely a voice of reason meant to exist in the ecosystem. Rap needs people to play that position and Pusha T turns 40 in two years.
Warren G — Regulate…G Funk Era: Part II (G-Funk)
A year too late, as the powers that be have decided that the originalRegulate… wasn’t secretly a classic last year. The best part of those proceedings was Bomani Jones’ rant about how Warren G gets credit from regulating despite not actually doing anything but get robbed at a dice game. Instead, Nate Dogg posthumously made Jones’ Homie Hall of Fame. Indeed, three appearances from zombie Nate Dogg are all that need be heard here. While the two were close friends, and I wholeheartedly endorse any use of Nate Dogg’s unreleased vocals, I must ask where this was on Compton?
2 Chainz — Trapevelli Tre (self-released)
FKA Tity Boi occupies a peculiar space on the trap continuum. If Gucci sits at its center, 2 Chainz is directly to his right: a similarly prescient figure who briefly transcended into pop stardom that miles with the side of trap that sits closest to traditional rap music. In his career’s second wind, he’s become a punchline rapper par excellence. The key is his delivery, which makes lines like “she got a big booty so I call her big booty” work. As it turned out, he’s the same guy on his mixtpaes on his albums, which is particularly why a 2 Chainz album doesn’t work. This was further shown by B.O.A.T.S. II, an album from a pop star that critics and fans alike tried to like, but never listened to again after the album’s rollout. Compared to its predecessor, the failures on that album were refreshingly spectacular. On “Netflix”, for instance, we learned the Fergie rapping trick wasn’t working twice. So it goes, for 2 Chainz, who will periodically produce those albums. It will be okay, because he gave us one of the best pop singles in the last several years.
By comparison, Trapevelli Tre is a breezy affair. He throws lines up against the wall to see what sticks, and it works more often than it has any right to (“Bust on myself like Plaxico”). There’s a couple of Zaytoven beats, Young Dolph and Kevin Gates show up, and Zaytoven handles a couple of beats. There’s a track from the perspective of his unborn son, which quickly becomes vehicle to brag and boast. It’s satisfactory work, which is about the best that I’ve come to expect from him in this large of a dose. 2 Chainz has found a solid balance between not flooding the market and managing to have a handful of people still paying attention. Even if he never has a hit again, his personality is enough to make every release a must-listen.
