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.
20. roc marciano - marci beaucoup
I could go on and on about how incredible Roc is about crafting his own universe within his music, or how he might be one of the best technical rappers of all time. There’s that approach to discussing his third studio album. But that’s not why it’s one of my favorite projects of the year. There’s something familiar and comforting about listening to Roc Marciano’s music. It’s the same collection of grimy, crackling loops and soul samples, glued together by his impeccably strung-together stacks of rhymes. Even after just a couple listens, there’s something irresistible about Roc’s beats (I’d swear I’ve heard the beats to “456” or “Dollar Bitch” if I didn’t know better): Roc has a remarkable ear for when to let his loops ride out for a measure or two as his filtered sample vocalist lets out a couple wails, just before jerking it back to the tight rhythm that gives Marci Beaucoup its skeleton. But Roc didn’t land a spot on this list off of perfecting a formula (Curren$y and Young Roddy just missed this list for that very reason). Roc knows how to give his style a little nudge, grabbing jarring features (like the excellent turn given to British rapper S.A.S. on “Willie Manchester”) or playing with odd sounds and twisting them to fit into his trademark (It sounds like he sampled an ice cream truck on “Didn’t Know”). It’s not the best project Roc’s ever released – it’s not even his best of the year (hint hint). But it’s the very definition of “solid”, and at times it’s just smack-you-in-the-face New York rap at its absolute best.
20. freddie gibbs - “freddie soprano (prod. i.d. labs productions)”
At this point I’m willing to go as far as to say that on a one-verse basis, Freddie Gibbs might be a top five rapper alive. By his standards, 2013 was hardly his best year: ESGN, his version of Jay-Z‘s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia (“Jay-Z and Friends”) album, was probably his weakest project in years, while his long-awaited collaborative work with Madlib, Pinata, managed to get itself pushed back yet again. But even in a year jarringly lacking in murderous Gibbs verses, on an album full of chanting trap songs that play down Gibbs’ abilities on the mic, he’s capable of dropping songs like this one. It’s not just that Gibbs can string together rapid rhymes with the Andre 3000s and Kendrick Lamars of the world – there’s a little more to it than that. I still can’t put my finger on it exactly, but a lot of it is his rhythm, the subtle voice inflections and tone shifts that transform mundane strings of lyrical threats into breathless, menacing lines. The barrage here is overwhelming (I’ve listened to this song at least forty times and I’m still hearing new lines). And it’s all over an airy, flutey beat that’s only brought down to Gibbs’ street level for him to rip by pounding bass and snares. "I’m the coldest nigga to spit this gangsta shit since Jadakiss,“ indeed.