Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day. Not best. Not most influential. Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow. Just my favorite, ranked in order.
13. black milk - no poison no paradise
Black Milk’s last album, 2010’s ambitiously-titled Album of the Year, had a cover simply adorned with a large black circle and the number “365”. No Poison No Paradise’s art is a much more complicated (and overtly symbolic) affair. Cartoon multicolored ghouls devouring letters floating on clouds, hourglasses lurking in corners and suns chased into clouds by orange daggers – it’s a lot more evocative, to say the least. That quality extends to the music inside, too: it’s not the Motor City’s best hip-hop album of the year, but it’s the one that’s best at bridging decades and eras of hip-hop. Black Milk’s channeling early 2000s Detroit with a decidedly electronic twist, sliding in restrained funk riffs on “Codes & Cab Fare" just a song after the practically hopping bassline and piano sweeps of "Deion’s House”. It’s just so perfectly Detroit (have you seen anyone channel the city this way since J Dilla?). A reinvigorated Black Milk (suddenly one of the best Detroit MCs alive, a stark progression from the rapper who got strutted all over by Danny Brown on his own joint three years ago) is all over the scene with this one, carrying on about his hometown over tight drums and even tighter samples. The real highlight, though? “Sunday’s Best/Monday’s Worst”, the pre-album two-song cut that got split into tracks for the album, might be one of the most compellingly framed hip-hop tracks about crime this decade. The first half sees Black Milk rapping about church in the ghetto – but only until the funk and military drumline rhythm of “Monday’s Worst" kicks in, and he weaves his tale of crime from two different sides. It’s the peak of brilliance on an album that tackles an entire city’s story beautifully.
13. rich homie quan - "type of way (prod. yung carter)”
This song should be so bad. Everything about it, from the cover (shout out to bobblehead Quan) to his name (do you really get any more tacky than Rich Homie Quan and Yung Carter?), everything about it screams 2013 get-me-on-the-radio rap. But that’s not it. In fact, it’s the best Autotune wailing hip-hop song this side of Future besides, well, Future – the entire song’s basically “Cadence and Inflection for Rappers 101”. It’d be a bit patronizing to say that Quan sounds like he’s on the verge of tears, but his rushed, wavering delivery snags the perfect balance between emotional and ridiculous. He’s nailed the ambiguity, too (difficult to tell that he’s stunting when it’s over bottomed-out synths), but it’s unmistakable after you stop incoherently singing along with the lyrics for enough time to actual decipher Quan’s boasts (“I got hoes like golf tryna make what Tiger makes”). It’s a brilliant anthem in a year full of them – Quan could have looped the hook for four minutes and still had one of the songs of the year. Instead, he dropped an Atlanta masterclass. Who said the South’s dead?