1. pusha t - "nosetalgia feat. kendrick lamar (prod. nottz & kanye west)"

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.

1. pusha t – “nosetalgia feat. kendrick lamar (prod. nottz & kanye west)”

On an album that embraced minimalism as a way of life, “Nosetalgia” stands head and shoulders above the rest as the purest manifestation of the album’s “Rick Rubin on steroids” mantra.  It’s as bare-bones as a hip-hop song gets, relying on about six different drum and sample sounds to lurch it along, and there’s no mistake where the spotlight’s turned: towards the mic.  On a superficial level, it’s excellent simply as a glass display case for two of the best rappers alive; Nottz and Kanye’s stretched-out horns and subdued drums certainly leave enough space between drums and rattles for Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar to flex.  We could leave it there – it’s just two incredibly talented rappers clearing the table off, sitting down, and rhyming.  

But that’s not all.  Kendrick plays the windowpane-peering Nas to Pusha’s Jay-Z stunningly well, each taking up two different roles and lenses to view the cocaine trade through.  While Pusha was “crack in the school zone/two beepers on me, starter jacket that was two-toned,” Kendrick’s “daddy turned a quarter piece to a four and a half/Took a L, started selling soap fiends bubble bath.”  They’re at odds by the very nature of the parts they play, but “Nosetalgia” doesn’t pit the two rappers against each other: the song isn’t accusatory towards any side, and it’s not a platform for either to level shots.  Instead, the aggression and intensity bleeds through the lines and snarls, letting the verses serve as testimonials to be taken and absorbed.

For any other rapper, Kendrick’s turn on “Nosetalgia” would be a career-high.  It’s telling that for him, it’s just another clip in a highlight reel of a year full of song-throttlers: Big Sean’s “Control”, Tech N9ne’s “Fragile”, Fredo Santana’s “Jealous.”  It’s not as in-your-face as the verse that most might name as his biggest contribution this year (here, Kendrick at least refrains from calling out his peers), but it burrows into your brain just as well.  While “Control” saw Kendrick tossing out a flurry of references and threats, he’s paradoxically both more restrained and animated here.  Halfway through his verse, right before he segues into a conversation with his father in which he raps both sides: “And nine times out of ten, niggas don’t pay attention/And when there’s tension in the air, nines come with extensions.” Kendrick’s not as grizzled as Pusha, and maybe he doesn’t have the same type of resume to flaunt, but when it comes to backdoor meaning unveilings and crafting unforgettable images, well, he’s virtually unparalleled.  King Kendrick.

5. danny brown - old//pusha t - "numbers on the board (prod. don cannon & kanye west)"

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.

5. danny brown – old

While 2011’s XXX was practically built to be a critical darling, Old (by design) is a lot more divisive.  From its pseudo-double-disc structure (Side A sports a more traditional Danny Brown, while Side B is all massive festival material) to his general disregard for the types of songs that made him an indie darling a couple years ago (needless to say, songs like “Smokin’ & Drinkin’” completely lack the heart-baring transparency of songs like “XXX”), this is Danny striking out for a different musical path.  But does that mean he’s put out a worse album? Hardly.  It’s not just that Danny’s making a different kind of music, he’s just flashing a different skill set from the one we’re used to. For one, Danny’s the rare artist that can restrain himself from descending into repetitiveness even when he’s crafting bangers like “Dip”: it’s not all just “girls, molly, girls molly.”  It’s easy to forget amongst the rattling basses and seizing synths that at his core, Danny’s from the gutters of Detroit – that is, until he hits you with a line like “Bankroll in my pocket so everybody know me/Went home and gave my mama three hundred for some groceries” (“Side B (Dope Song)”).  It’s tough to say an artist going through musical changes is ever staying true to his roots, but that’s certainly what Danny’s doing.  Getting better, too.  Who’d have predicted that the man putting out Detroit State of Mind mixtapes a few years ago would be disguising escapism as mosh-pit churners?

5. pusha t – “numbers on the board (prod. don cannon & kanye west)”

“Unorthodox” wouldn’t be a bad way to describe the first single off of Pusha T’s first studio album with G.O.O.D. Music.  The beat is brilliantly executed minimalism, riding off kitchen-pan percussion and a couple buzzing bass notes, a hip-hop instrumental stripped to its very core.  The hook is a quick one-line snarl (“Ballers, I put numbers on the board”) interjected seemingly at random between short verses, and halfway through the song, Jay-Z circa 1997 busts through in the form of a sample for a half-bar.  But at the same time, as unconventional as “Numbers on the Board” might be in relation to the rest of 2013 hip-hop, it’s still the same Pusha.  Same push-ya-top-back chin thrusts (“Your SL’s missing an S, nigga/Your plane’s missing a chef”) and same slick drug rhymes (“I might sell a brick on my birthday/thirty-six years of doing dirt like it’s Earth Day, God”).  And, of course, the same love for stripped-down beats – we can thank Pharrell and Chad Hugo for that affinity.  This one is as raw as the kilos Pusha moved way back when.

9. pusha t - my name is my name//nipsey hussle - "face the world (prod. 9th wonder)"

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.

9. pusha t – my name is my name

My Name is My Name couldn’t have come at a better time – it’s a reminder that no matter how inconsistent and illogical he’s been with his solo career until now, he’s capable of hunkering down and rapping about cocaine better than virtually anyone alive.  Pusha might be thirty-six, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost any of the slithering menace that he’s sported since his early days with Malice in Clipse.  Of course, he’s doling it out in portions, but the times My Name is My Name really shines are when Pusha throws caution to the wind and snarls out bar after bar.  It’s a short album, but that doesn’t stop it from suffering from filler: we could have done without the (hyper-acccurate) Ma$e impression on “Let Me Love You,” and even if it presents an introspective side of Pusha we rarely see, “40 Acres” doesn’t really belong here.  And Wrath of Caine’s “Revolution” really, really should have been on here somewhere.  But it’s really not a concern when Pusha decides to really rap.  It’s funny, because Pusha’s overbearing persona exemplifies the type of approach most new artists seem to be taking with their career: style first, and Pusha does minimalism better than anyone else, including Kanye.  “Numbers on the Board” strips down a hip-hop beat right down to its spine, and most of the time, his idea of a hook seems to be a quick afterthought of a bar between verses. And while it can be a bit limiting to cast yourself almost exclusively as a drug-flipping rapper (it ruins the effect when Pusha decides to kick the thugging down a notch), it truly is hard to care once Pusha starts flinging around lines like he used to fling around kilos. 

9. nipsey hussle – “face the world (prod. 9^th wonder)”

This is the type of song that defines lost potential. Nipsey’s been making music for years now, and nothing he’s made even remotely touches this masterpiece. Sure, a lot of it stems from the beat, for sure (I shouldn’t even have to explain how good 9^th Wonder is, and this is him at his very best): but Nipsey’s the real star here.  It’s not like he’s throwing around lyrical beauties or anything; all about the atmosphere.  Nipsey’s the rare rapper (like Blu) that can be optimistic and offer advice and drop lines like “Yeah, this your life, you can play with it/You make your bed, you gon’ lay in it” without sounding remotely played-out.  Maybe it’s the confidence, maybe it’s the delivery, or maybe it’s the fact that Nipsey pulls off the slightly-harried, determined-with-a-hint-of-desperate tone here better than Game ever will.  But what it means is that this reads less like a Macklemore preaching session and more like a rapper who made it out of Crenshaw laying out his lessons.  I listened to this song again to write this, and I think I got chills about three different times.