My Favorite Albums of 2017

17 albums for ‘17

2017 was a pretty interesting year for music — after long waits, we got new albums from Taylor Swift, Jay-Z, and Eminem, with mixed critical receptions: no major publication listed any of those records at the top of year-end lists, though each album was pretty good.

It was the first year that hip-hop/R&B overtook Rock as the most popular genre, and Atlanta solidified itself as the current capital of hip-hop with Future, Migos, and Young Thug all reaching new heights of mainstream success. There were tons of upstart teenage rappers popping up out of the SoundCloud fold, some with unfortunate troubling legal histories who saw success in spite of those histories, and generally lots of outlandish personalities, face tattoos and occasional prescription pill habits.

As our attention spans dwindle with each passing year, our collective patience and consequent ability to sit through an album wanes, and the art of the album is too often lost on us (and I include myself in this). Track order, buildups, recurring motifs and callbacks are impossible to appreciate without giving your attention, undivided, to an album. I’ve found as life gets busier and the cascade of mobile notifications — what’s new on Reddit or for the next game of HQ — keeps piling up, unplugging and enjoying an album front to back is as good a cure for daily distractedness as a meditation practice.

Here are the albums that I most enjoyed in 2017 — I recommend you try putting your phone on ‘do not disturb,’ place it down across the room, and try listening to one of these albums, uninterrupted, from start to finish, and see if the experience resonates for you.

I tend to write a lot (read: too much) when I start talking about music, so tried to keep it brief. Hope you enjoy some of these thoughts, and more importantly, hope you check out some of the music, either things you had forgotten about or you hadn’t heard yet and are compelled to check out. The links are for Spotify, unless otherwise specified. Enjoy!

17. Blanck Mass — World Eater (listen)

This is a weird album in a genre I admittedly don’t generally give a lot of attention to/have some trouble describing, but might describe as an Electronic Noise album — the opener begins with a melody that sounds like it comes from a music box before industrial sounds comes in in double time and things get more intense from there. Rhesus Negative is a track perfectly suited for running (or riding a motorcycle) through a city at night. It’s definitely a weird album, but more accessible than most Noise albums I’ve heard.

16. Tom Rogerson & Brian Eno — Finding Shore (listen)

I’ve been enamored of Brian Eno since I was first introduced to him in college through a History of Electronic Music class (thanks Columbia — that was really cool of you to offer that as legitimate college course 😎) and heard Music for Airports. On this album, Rogerson plays minimalist piano (almost Philip Glass-ian) and Eno’s production is light at times, but is always exactly what it needs to be for the track: he plays incredibly well with the source material to create a nice analog and digital balance. They craft an ambient album that was one of my favorites to lie down on my couch and listen to in the dark.

15. Big Thief — Capacity (listen)

This record could probably be described as folk rock, and the production on it is alternately very crisp and also full of ambient sounds. The vocals and lyrics are what really grabbed me with this album — it feels intensely intimate, like the lead singer has invited you into her home to describe some very personal things. Her use of recurring characters and the stories woven throughout this album make it ripe for many repeated listens, and I imagine there’s still a pretty rich tapestry here that I still have yet to fully discover.

14. Future — Future (listen)

It turns out I’m definitely in the minority, but I liked this album more than HNDRXX. Future came off to me as going harder on this album, and Draco, Mask Off, POA, and Rent Money all would make a Future greatest hits album for me. Admittedly, one of Future’s greatest strengths, his prolificness, also presents a struggle: creating songs that stand out as sufficiently different from each other. This was a good album with solid production throughout (Future chooses beats very well, imo), though if he took the best dozen to fifteen songs from this and HNDRXX, he arguably could have had a classic 2010s rap album.

13. Kelela — Take Me Apart (listen)

Kelela has one of those voices that makes you stop and listen when you first here it drop in a track. Not many people have the confidence to start their album with an opening track that clocks in at 5:39 (Kanye, with Say You Will on 808s, immediately comes to mind, and Ultralight Beam was also 5:20), but Frontline leads the listener through several phases, both musically and atmospherically with the walk out to the car at the end. This whole album is full of rich, R&B melodies that gave it a lot of replay value for me, and has some callbacks to elements of 90s R&B that I really appreciated.

12. Neil Cicierega — Mouth Moods (listen on Soundcloud)

This is a weird album. But it’s also a pop art masterpiece. Neil Cicierega made one of my favorite mashup albums that’s very different than just about anything I’ve heard, but something that I’ve thought a lot about trying to capture: an era within a musical composition. On this album, his samples of late 90s pop songs and pop culture create this kind of world that you’d imagine someone who grew up in the 90s and on the Internet would create when trying to capture that era. It’s both hilarious and thoughtful, and there are enough layers here that it warrants repeated listens to fully grasp. It won’t be for everyone, but for people who do appreciate it, I think you’ll get a lot out of this.

11. Sampha — Process (listen)

As far as debut albums go, this is an incredible one — Sampha’s voice is incredible, his lyrics perfectly suit the mood he builds on the piano, and the production is impeccable. It’s no surprise that this won the Mercury Prize, and these 10 tracks are some of the most cohesive of any album this year while not getting repetitive. Highlights for me included Blood on Me, which was a top track of this last year for me, with the subtle vocal stab that they loop under the pre-chorus, and then also (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano, which on first listen was pretty quickly clear would be the type of song that would stick with me for a long time.

10. SZA — Ctrl (listen)

SZA creates a track unlike almost anyone else out today — she croons over smooth segments of beats and then finds ways to punctuate her melodies in the creases of the instrumental. Her take on modern romance/gender dynamics explored through takes on monogamy, constant texting, and acknowledging that we all tell ourselves stories to make ourselves feel better about our actions (or lack thereof). There’s also a pang of sadness mixed with her self-assuredness that floats throughout the album, and this tension is what I found myself coming back to each time I listened through it.

9. Jay-Z — 4:44 (listen on Tidal)

There’s no playbook for the type of album a 47-year-old rap legend should make, let alone his first in a tumultuous four years during which, by all appearances (and effectively confirmed on this album) he cheated on his wife and nearly blew up his family. I’ve been listening to Jay-Z since I was 12, and I had no idea what to expect from this album, but I listened through it three times on a train from New York to Vermont and knew it’d make my top albums of the year. No I.D.’s production stands out as exceptional, and Jay’s ability to craft a story that’s not exculpatory or a levied defense, but rather an admission and apology, without being heavy-handed. The guest features (Frank Ocean, Damian Marley, Beyonce) work superbly well, and Jay’s ability to craft a cohesive album has never shone through so well (or at least comparably as well as American Gangster.

8. St. Vincent — MASSEDUCTION (listen)

It’s hard to describe this album, but I think I’d call it a manic pop album with punk influences — St. Vincent still has the elements of industrial drums and crunchy guitars in parts, but the melodies and hooks are pop while lyrically addressing losing someone, drug dependencies, and general themes of escapism, places changing, and running away from things. She’s a great songwriter and her skills are on display throughout this album, whether crooning over minimal piano on Happy Birthday, Johnny or belting over the industrial drums of Fear the Future, she demands your attention and compels you to listen.

7. Migos — Culture (listen)

No rap group had a better year than Migos. From Bad & Boujee hitting #1 to Quavo showing up on everyone’s tracks to the Internet’s unquenchable thirst for anything Offset & Cardi B, their 2017 started with this album, and appropriately so. From their ad-libs to their interviews to their Instagram presence, they had their finger perfectly on the pulse, and this album is an excellent reflection of that: from the opener with DJ Khaled to grabbing a Lil Uzi Vert verse for Bad & Boujee and a Gucci verse for the standout Slippery, this album managed to continually deliver over the course of nearly an hour. Culture is the rare record that you could put on at a party and play front to back and not need to skip through songs.

6. Mike Skinner (The Streets) — The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light (listen)

I didn’t see anyone mention this collection of songs on any end of year lists, and was surprised to see generally these tracks weren’t getting critical acclaim in line with what I thought they deserved. Maybe I’m biased and it’s just me, but I really enjoyed these: Mike Skinner officially retired The Streets moniker a couple years back, but then quietly started posting tracks under this title earlier this year. While not a traditional album, in the age of music as a living work of art (see: Kanye’s release strategy around Life of Pablo, where he’d change lyrics and upload new versions to streaming services), it makes sense that artists would have collections that get periodically updated. I’ve listened to The Streets since high school, and he/they’ve been the soundtrack for many walks around New York, London, and San Francisco.

Mike Skinner’s way of looking at the world is often pretty different from mine, but his tracks do often make me think and provide a nice window into his life that I always appreciate. Having not heard him on anything new in 5+ years, I really appreciate about hearing him talk about life in a world with Instagram and endless text messaging. Recommended tracks here are You Get All the Luck When You Don’t Give a Fuck, Broken Hearted in the Sun, and Your Wave God’s Wave God.

5. 2 Chainz — Pretty Girls Like Trap Music (listen)

I’d always appreciated 2 Chainz’s features and his reinvention post-Playaz Circle, but I hadn’t ever had one of his albums resonate with me before this one. With PGLTM, he delivered a great album — he alternately delivers punchlines, great flows, and varies his content and beats throughout to keep it interesting. All the features he’s done over the years really pay off here, too, as he calls in favors to get Gucci, Migos, Drake, Nicki, Swae Lee, Pharrell, and Monica on here. The production and beat choices here are on point, too, with Good Drank being one of my favorite (albeit simple) beats since I first heard it at the end of 2016. This album didn’t get the love I think it deserved, and 2 Chainz delivered a really high quality record with this one.

4. Lorde — Melodrama (listen)

I never cease to be amazed how good Lorde is. Pure Heroine’s ability to capture all kinds of poignant feelings I had as a teenager was uncanny to me, and especially so in doing so in ways that didn’t just fall back to familiar tropes. Following that debut up with an album that didn’t recycle themes but still kept some of that essence of capturing feelings of the time was a tall order, but Lorde did it with this album. Outside of the context of the album, Green Light didn’t resonate with me at first, but works well as an album opener and setting up the theme of closure from a recently-ended relationship. The production that Jack Antonoff lends to the album is some of my favorite of the year, and Lorde’s melodies and songwriting are on point throughout. Through just 11 songs, she lets the listener in to see a slice of her life delivered through a variety of tracks that are both cohesive but strong enough to stand on their own. Liability was one of the best-written songs of the year, and this entire album has had very high replay value for me.

3. Mount Eerie — A Crow Looked at Me (listen)

The art I enjoy the most is what moves me the most: whether it be emotionally or in making me think, that impact, whether positive or negative, is how I often judge art. As such, some of my favorite movies are things that friends find very depressing or tragic, and while I do have that same experience, I really appreciate the ability of art to have that kind of impact on me.

I’ve never heard an album that’s had as strong an emotional impact on me on first listen as this one. It’s not an exaggeration to say that if you listen to this album in a certain mindset, you very well may burst into tears midway through (or, at least, tear up). I heard this album without knowing much more than it being critically acclaimed, and I’d like for you to experience it that way, too, so won’t say much more about the specifics of it. I do recommend you give it a dedicated, uninterrupted listen. It’s one of the more moving albums I’ve ever heard.

2. Vince Staples — Big Fish Theory (listen)

Vince Staples continues to be the most interesting man in hip hop: his interviews, tweets, and insights are my favorite of anyone in rap today, and artistically he’s created great work over the last several years while also changing his sound pretty substantially and maturing quickly. After last year’s Prima Donna EP, I was a little worried whether he was doing okay — lots of references to the pressures of fame, suicide, and seeing visions, which, while it made for incredible art, had me a little concerned about how he was doing.

This album didn’t necessarily give a direct answer to those questions, but he does explore lyrical themes of nihilism, race relations, politics, and love over percussive beats that feel influenced by electronic and industrial, with features from Kilo Kish and Kendrick and production from James Blake and Bon Iver. There’s a lot to unpack on this album, but it’s a great window into one of the greatest minds in hip-hop today.

1. Kendrick Lamar — DAMN. (listen)

This year was Kendrick’s — coming off TPAB and releasing an album with the backdrop of Trump’s America, there are a ton of directions Kendrick could have taken this album, and where he ended up is somewhere I wouldn’t have guessed, but it works incredibly well.

From the start of BLOOD. and Kendrick’s story of the blind woman, he’s back to threading music around a loose narrative, and the segue from this into the Fox News segment and DNA. is one of the best drops of 2017. It sets the pace for the first half of the album: a military march flow that pulsates over the drumbeat to create the high-adrenaline vibe that I thought would carry for the first part of the album, but then he goes into YAH. and ELEMENT., which both are more soulful, melodic tracks full of quotables.

His ability to play with rhythms and melodies over a wide variety of ever-changing instrumentals really shines on this album, and the features from Rihanna and Zacari are both perfectly-executed (and makes me wonder why the Rihanna one especially took so long to happen, since their dynamic on this one track is better than any she’s had on a dozen tracks with Drake).

The concept of playing front-to-back and back-to-front was pretty witty, and I appreciated the thoughtfulness that went into not just creating a narrative throughout the album, but also a sub-narrative that plays out when the tracks are reversed. Even that aside, though, the raw quality of these songs was, to me, head and shoulders above anything anyone else put out this year, and solidified Kendrick as the best rapper alive in 2017.

Thanks for taking the time to read through some (or all) of this — hope you found some new music to enjoy, and feel free to let me know in the comments if I forgot some of your favorite albums of the last year in here (I know I still need to give Björk, War on Drugs, and Perfume Genius proper listens, and before you ask, Run the Jewels 3 came out Christmas 2016, so wasn’t eligible by my rules 😜).

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