The following is the first of a three part series about rap, R&B, and article-appropriate club music mutations in 2015. Links may be NSFW.
As the year comes to an end, writers race to meet deadlines, talking about the year that will have passed on the other end of the holiday season. Cynicism about the exercise is warranted as the lists look the same as ever, but it appears to come from a place of posturing and differentiation. As capitalist as this sounds, list season is nothing if not a nifty little consumer guide for the informed connoisseur and poser alike to have in their pocket computers just in time for Christmas. Me, I’m silly enough to buy into the idea of informed purchases because there’s a magic that comes with the physical package (better sound quality, too!). Don’t believe me? Flip through the booklet that comes with the CD release of RiFF RAFF’s 2014 album, NEON iCON. I mean seriously, there’s a picture that looks like a focused picture of Sébastien Tellier’s Sexuality cover art inside of an hourglass. For the writer, it’s a time to wax poetic (let’s stop saying this next year, by the way) about the music that served as the backdrop for a tiny sliver of their lives. This series is a little bit of both: a haystack of vignettes about releases that stuck out this year and a list of my favorite hip-hop & R&B releases from THIS YEAR (sorry D’Angelo) for your consuming pleasure at the end.
The release of Freddie Gibbs’ Shadow of a Doubt could have marked the end of the collective attention span with regards to music. Major label artists releasing music as late as the holidays makes sense from a financial standpoint, despite what hand-wringing about throwing off year end lists. We’re in a peak buying season and major labels are willing to part with the work of misfits because tax write offs are magical. Covering it all is a perpetual dragon chase—prompting publications to create a de facto calendar that runs from December to November.
With all of the mixtapes, albums, EPs, mini-albums, albums that are called mixtapes, soundcloud and bandcamp gems, it’s easy to get lost in the sauce. You’re not up on everything and I’m not up on everything. The guy I did a podcast with in college isn’t up on everything. Even Dan Vesper on the opposite side of BGM’s rap office isn’t up on everything. As a collective Internet, though, we’ve come to a consensus that Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Drake are our most important emcees. I’m not here to dispute that, what I’m going to do over the course of this three-part series is write through the big and little rap and R&B things I’ve observed this year. At the end of it, I’ll give you that sweet, delicious list of albums and mixtapes that I hope you stream, download, and buy to your heart’s content.
The impending release of Rae Sremmurd’s debut album SremmLife was looked at callously as 2014 wound down. Their singles cornered just enough of the market from under Bobby Shmurda’s “Hot Nigga” in the preceding summer that an album release was warranted. While Shmurda, it turned out, got played by the industry, dancing for suits behind closed doors, only to get the cold shoulder from Epic Records in return when faced with serious jail time. The Mississippi duo, however, had been taken under the wing of the massively successful Mike Will Made It. Even if the album were merely “No Type” and “No Flex Zone” with a ton of filler and the release would have been its own modest success. Instead, SremmLife gave Rae Sremmurd’s initial run the legs of a centipede. Although the album dropped on the first industry release date of this calendar year, I still listen to it somewhat regularly. A side effect of Rae Sremmurd’s success has been an increased profile for Atlanta collective and EarDrummers labelmates Two-9, a group founded in 2009 by Key!, who has since departed the group but himself was featured on Father’s breakout 2014 single “Look at Wrist”.
At the end of 2014, Danity Kane’s post-breakup reunion album and the second installment of Dawn Richard’s heart trilogy managed to miss the radar entirely. The last time I could remember Danity Kane being a topic of household discussion was when “Damaged” was on the radio. Richard is the closest to breaking past the anonymity of being a “Making the Band” group member and she’s done it on the strength of resume building. Her contributions as a writer and vocalist on Dirty Money’s 2010 classic Last Train to Paris are vast and her solo career has juggled the conceptual and the fantastical expertly. This past winter’s Blackheart is the chief accomplishment of Richard’s post-Last Train output. Playing up mythological warfare, Richard (currently known as D∆WN) churns a rally cry or an epic battle out of whatever subject matter at hand. The left turns (the middle of “Calypso,” essentially every time the vocoder comes in) and the exasperated choruses (“Warriors,” “The Deep”) make a potentially goofy affair into a thrilling one. Through the writing of this article, it remains the year’s best album. It should be noted that in its shadow was the return of Jazmine Sullivan’s manic musings—itself a triumph of writing and R&B’s time-honored tradition of pettiness.
Rap traditionalists flocked to Joey Bada$$, Lupe Fiasco, and to a much lesser extent, Isaiah Rashad associate Tut. The release of Lupe Fiasco’s Tetsuo & Youth was refreshing in the wake of his last pair of releases for Atlantic. It was Joey Bada$$ that rightfully won more ears with B4.Da.$$. The album wasn’t superb and it came shrouded in the tired 90s hip-hop narrative that’s followed him since the release of 2012’s 1999. Still, there’s room to work with here. Joey Bada$$ is a tremendously talented rapper that will only go as far as his production takes him. He won’t put anyone’s beat next to Dilla by blessing it, but he’s associated himself with producers with increasingly leftfield interests. Pro ERA’s Kirk Knight was blatant in professing his affinity for Sun Ra on his own album and Raury will eventually break out of his cardboard cutout of Andre 3000 phase. Hell, Lee Bannon started in left field and has still managed to trip over his feet to find himself artistically. Chuck Strangers and Samiyam (Brainfeeder) produced some of the album’s weirder stuff on the album’s back half. The blanks are filled with enough Dilla and Preemo and Statik Selektah to invite stale talk about the 90s. Joey Bada$$’ biggest problem is the knee slappers that start with his name and permeate into his album title and lame conceits like “Hazeus View.” He’s thoughtful and intriguing enough of a personality that it’s not surprising that he has gotten the looks he has over the last couple of years.
As January was giving way to February, minor victories had transpired in rap and R&B. Awful Records had gotten off to a good start with releases by Ethereal and Abra and Chicago everyman Vic Spencer dropped his best project to date with The Cost of Victory. Even a Mike Jones mixtape found an audience of some substance. Convicted pussy crook Mystikal imitated James Brown better than Kendrick Lamar would a couple of months later on a Mark Ronson album that featured mega hit “UpTown Funk!” and a glimpse in the direction Kevin Parker would go on Tame Impala’s Currents. Open Mike Eagle’s EP to start the year, and later, his collaborative album with Serengeti as Cavanaugh were good enough to be welcome contributions to the ether, but ultimately inessential. The liner notes had been surprisingly busy for a notoriously slow time of the year.
Hungry eyes, waiting for another big release to hit pay dirt honed in on another middling Lil’ Wayne mixtape, Sorry for the Wait 2, Future’s Beast Mode, and Chief Keef‘s cheekily-titled Sorry for the Weight.
The stories here outweigh the music as it pertains to these mixtapes. The previous spring, Wayne had announced the title of his final album, Carter V. Around the same time, the details regarding Young Thug’s signing to Atlantic Records and his relationship with Birdman and YMCMB surfaced. The two took opposite trajectories the rest of 2014. “Lifestyle” happened, followed by Young Thug and Birdman’s outstanding collection with Rich Homie Quan, Tha Tour Pt. 1, under the Rich Gang banner. It’s during this time that Young Thug planned to call his next album Tha Carter VI as an homage to his idol, saying “Wayne did 1-5…I’m going to do 6-10”. The two released a single, “Take Kare”, that was originally meant as a single for the next Rich Gang album. It ultimately ended up on Slime Season.
Last fall, Wayne’s singles were flailing and he announced the album was being pushed back. Eventually, he announced that Cash Money refused to release it. What followed were a slew of careless mixtapes that are not the work of the present day Peyton Manning or Kobe Bryant figure fans and critics alike would have you believe. A re-worked version of Sorry 4 the Wait 2’s “Used To” stood out on Drake’s retail mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, the next month. The fallout between Birdman and Lil’ Wayne would make Young Thug’s release cycle less cute and more shady. Ten days after April’s release of Young Thug’s Barter 6, shots were fired at Lil’ Wayne’s tour bus. Young Thug’s tour manager Peewee Roscoe pled guilty to the shooting in November and was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Incidentally, these hijinks were more noteworthy than any verse he spat this year (even “M’s’”).
More bountiful years were had by Chief Keef and especially Future, two stars that spent the lion’s share of 2014 maligned for reasons that had more to do with headlines than music. Both of their runs started last autumn, Keef with a sequel to Back from the Dead and Future with Monster. Keef’s Sorry 4 the Weight was a self-proclaimed warm up and one of the more forgettable outings in his discography. Bang 3 and Almighty DP 2 were two stout rap releases that were deserving of the sequels they would get in less than a year of their release. The takeaway from eight releases in roughly a year is the partnership of Keef and North Carolina producer DP Beats. In the case of the former, his cheeky adult persona has moved on from a past that still hasn’t forgotten him, even his roadblocks are on the creative side these days. He really has glo’d up.
Nayvadius Wilburn was not nearly as prolific as Chief Keef, but he did win a reputation for being quick and consistently on point. This distinction was unfairly garnered (56 Nights, What a Time to Be Alive), but there’s at least three albums worth of great Future material that has surfaced since “Pussy Overrated”. January’s Beast Mode turned out to be one of the 2015’s best mixtapes of the year on the strength of Zaytoven and Future operating near their creative apexes. Monster had won your average rap fan back into his corner with the gripping drama of “Throw Away” and “My Savages”. Beast Mode won a pocket of critics back in time for the agreed-upon favorite “March Madness” from March’s 56 Nights. The latter, named for DJ Esco’s 56 night stay in a Dubai prison, had secured the hipster vote. July’s DS2 would become one of the true crossover hits of a summer he had indeed earned the right to own. That album was everywhere on the Internet and real life in the two months following its release, garnering universal acclaim in cars and at parties everywhere.
At the time, none of these things compared in size to a surprise Drake release. February’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was the first of a few high profile 2015 rap mixtapes that weren’t really mixtapes. Drake’s retail mixtape muddied up the project/release/tape/album vernacular online. “Know Yourself” and “10 Bands” were huge, but this release has the feel of another entry into Drake’s always updating content cycle.
The most 2015 thing If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late had to offer was his barb at Tyga (“You need to act your age and not your girl’s age”). We had a lot of fun at Tyga’s expense at 2015. Even the gems of his rap career were built of the backs of others. YG passed up DJ Mustard’s “Rack City” beat and this year’s Fan of a Fan: The Album was good in spite of his contributions. When he’s not rapping like a poor man’s ScHoolboy Q, I could listen to him rap for an hour straight and immediately forget what his voice sounds like. More than his disappointing rap career, it was his predatory relationship that made it so fun to watch the man get sonned over and over and over again.
Between If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late and the next major album, a slew of disappointments (Young Dolph, THEESatisfaction, Juicy J’s sequel to Blue Dream and Lean) and pleasant surprises (Chop Squad’s Johnny May Cash) went largely unnoticed by the general public. Notable records were the fleeting genius of Future Brown’s self-titled debut that only seemed to exist on the Internet and Ghostface Killah’s unsatisfactory collaboration with Toronto jazz-hop outfit BADBADNOTGOOD. (Name a good Wu-Tang album in 2015 that wasn’t Ghost’s Twelve Reasons to Die sequel. I’ll wait.) Chicago emcee Tree’s Trap Genius was a high-water mark in his already fine career.
The rollout to Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise oversold his improvement. Hall of Fame was one of the worst major label rap albums of the last five years. The follow-up was a step in the right direction by default. Sean still retains his worst trait: a tendency to rap against rhythm, which isn’t inherently a bad thing. It often comes memeworthy, which is disappointing because he’s proven that he does have good flows in his arsenal. For what it’s worth, one of the biggest blessings this year was watching him say “the pussy is the tightest” on national television.
Cannibal Ox released their first album since 2001’s super-classic The Cold Vein. Fans of the niche Cannibal Ox and Definitive Jux occupied in those years rightfully tried with this album, with the consensus opinion that it was hogwash. One could only have envisioned Blade of the Ronin to be this year’s Piñata, an annual reminder that if stellar beats and rhymes are still capable of reaching a zenith that almost completely evades the real hip-hop talk. Unfortunately, the beats were terrible and the rhymes weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Fans of CanOx may have missed very complete rap releases such as Heems’ Eat Pray Thug and the second installment of White Gzus’ Stackin & Mackin series. Ratking even released a formidable EP that I’m sure nobody reading this has listened to because fuck BitTorrent. (Note: Ratking members Wiki and Sporting Life released free projects this year and they’re great.)
These days, the smut peddlers du jour are Awful Records, a collective and label with a strong grasp of history that culls from local oddities and the Internet alike. Label boss Father’s an easy sell: “Look at Wrist” was one of the best singles of last year. Hardly a niche act these days, his songs are anthems for precocious, digital native couch potatoes of the early-2000s that grew up and did boss shit in a post-Gucci dystopia. While virtually all of the Awful personalities have proven compelling, it’s Abra, who is apparently getting looks from majors, and Alexandria (and by extension, Ethereal) that scan as the collectives most. For her part it was Abra that won the 80s pop games this year, simply by channeling synth loops into something powerful and original on ROSE. Even after a year and a half of visibility, the stable of Awful are difficult to keep up with for non-devotees: Richposlim’s output could potentially reach the level of his hilarious Twitter account and Slug Christ is certainly a demented resurrection of rappers that writers tried to make happen yesteryear. Ethereal and Archibald Slim are accomplished produced as this point and need be acknowledged as such. If 2015 has proven nothing else for the best rap collective and most exciting indie label of the last decade, we learned that they are here to stay.
It’s a cause for celebration that we knocked off the PBR&B nonsense once and for all this year. The real thing has always beat half-assed bedroom acts with good marketing dollars behind them. Acts once stuck with the PBR&B tag have either reached a bigger audience, gotten even weirder, or were punched down whether fair or unfair or just plain rude. For fans ans that didn’t completely jump shark to the wealth of excellent R&B albums the traditionalists and the pop stars dropped, Smurphy and Nao offered music twists and turns without the hollow tendencies that came about in this awful misstep in the awkward dance that is indie’s conversation with club and pop music.
While Justin Bieber’s transformation to boy pop star to young adult R&B singer was complete by Journals, I can’t resist but look at his redemption arc as a turning point for a press once hung up on all indie everything to pretend to grapple with more pop music and more of the real thing. It’s clear that Biebs aspires to egotistic sociopathy, but the songs were so good that even Hannibal Buress couldn’t sink his battleship. “Where Are Ü Now” was tempting to view as a win for Jack Ü: a well reception for an EDM iconoclast and his hip trojan horse. While Skrillex and Diplo Present Jack Ü was very good, among the year’s strongest EDM albums, it also happened to be the horse he rode in on. As for Bieber’s roast, the real loser was Ludacris, who managed to acquire less wins than “What’s Your Fantasy?” partner Shawnna this year. Da Mafia 6ix finally released their album to crickets, owing to deaths and departures. The album itself was better than anyone expected in the circumstances (Gangsta Boo’s departure, Lord Infamous’ death) and DJ Paul is possibly the only person in music with a modicum of credibility who could not only get away with working with Insane Clown Posse, but get a hot song out of it. In October, Koopsta Knicca was removed from life support after suffering a stroke and a brain aneurysm three days earlier. He was 40. Da Mafia 6ix’s 2013 mixtape Da 6ix Commandments stands as a late victory for one of hip-hop’s most influential groups ever.
You can stream DJ Paul’s mix for NTS radio here.
If the biggest rap album of the year wasn’t DS2, it was certainly Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Strands of jazz, gospel, funk, and L.A. beat scene history are woven into the devil and God raging inside of Lamar himself. It was my favorite rap album this year, but there was an overwhelming feeling that any informed music listener or critic had to like it. While countless words have been dedicated to this album, its lasting impact this year has been felt in the reception of the hands in the pot. As with Yeezus, the music writing community was certain to talk up the players on To Pimp A Butterfly. Arca, and to a much lesser extent Gesaffelstein, were let behind the gate in these post-Yeezus years. Likewise, Lamar’s saxophonist Kamasi Washington put out a behemoth of an album that received previously unattainable high marks from critics.
The same attention was not afforded to Knxwledge, the producer of To Pimp A Butterfly’s best song. I blame the sect of tastemakers who all but admit that being kin to Dilla and Madlib has been uncool since 2006. His own album, Hud Dreems, is the crown jewel of a run surpassing that of worthy contemporaries, such as L’Orange and Apollo Brown. Elsewhere, Robert Glasper continues to be discussed with a hushed reverence by critics at large and Thundercat managed to squeeze one of the best releases of the year into less than 20 minutes. (Upon agreeing upon this last point, a friend and I have wondered aloud: Is Thundercat an R&B artist?)
The takeaway from To Pimp A Butterfly as it pertains to Kendrick Lamar the rapper is that it’s where Kendrick Lamar becomes a band a la Blondie or Kanye West.