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.
7. run the jewels – run the jewels
There’s something about rap duos that captures the imagination: is there anything quite as entertaining and impressive to watch as two rappers trading bar after bar, verse after verse? But even as far as rap duos go, El-P and Killer Mike mesh together incredibly seamlessly; it’s been a while since we’ve seen two rappers so at ease giving and going. Even if their resumes don’t exactly suggest “soulmates” (El-P came to fame as one of the New York underground’s most prominent rappers, while Killer Mike’s a figurehead of Atlanta), it actually makes a quite a bit of sense: they’re both hard-hitting, and they both evidently don’t give a shit. El-P has been perfecting the art of musically capturing the apocalypse since he began his career, but this might be the best produced album of his career (it flits from sound to sound without dwelling too long on any set of menacing synths, and it never lets up). Hooks like “DDFH”’s “Do dope, fuck hope” don’t seem overly fatalistic or out of place here. But what makes Run the Jewels one of the best rap albums of the year is El-P and Killer Mike’s banter; it’s hard to believe this partnership came together last year. Mike on “Banana Clipper”: “Producer gave me a beat, said it’s the beat of the year/Said El-P didn’t do it, so get the fuck outta here.”
7. kanye west – “blood on the leaves (prod. kanye and his friends)”
Rightfully so or not, most of the coverage swirling around “Blood on the Leaves” has to do with the two samples Kanye chose to make up the song’s spine, Nina Simone’s plaintive and racially-tinged rendition of “Strange Fruit” and an altered version of electronic duo TNGHT’s “R U Ready”. The suggestion (and criticism) is that Kanye, true to form, is twisting a shallow love story into a racial affair, and that sits well with few. But I’ll set aside the sample flips for a second (which is hard to do: even though the loops are simple, the effect is initially discordant but ultimately brilliant). Even beyond what Kanye and Co. are doing behind the boards, this is Kanye at his most dark, accusing, and self-effacing (again, true to form). Kanye’s not a good singer, we can get that out of the way right now. But this is sharp, stripped-down Kanye, and his words strike like daggers even if he’s not hitting all his notes; the hook is haunt-your-dreams material. And that’s not even including the song-ending verse.