The year was 2016, and everything was grey. Except, in the music world, where technicolour R&B albums were getting dropped left right and centre. Here are WIRED's top 16 albums of 2016, where we look at not only those musically lauded, but also the ones innovating within their genre.
“James Blake does dance music,” the singer often sarcastically jokes at his concerts, but the Colour in Anything is a clear shift away from the R&B of the Mercury winner’s two previous albums. The Colour in Anything shows off Blake’s production and mixing skills, subordinating his vocal talent to focus on the artificial over the real. Siren-like repetition with the archetypal tentative vocals makes this album artful, interesting, and ambitious.
As soon as JME dropped a Twitter challenge asking people to submit their dances to “Whippin Excursion,” it was clear this album was going to be a big one. Opening with a verbal mapping of London – Grime here is a musical odyssey of the city - there’s something epic about Giggs’ fourth album. His slow and considered rapping tempo shows an authority in his music, not excluding the playfulness that keeps the whole album grounded (see: the Star Trek sample that runs throughout.)
MIAs music carefully hovers in an unknown space - a migrant crossing borders between genres. Her postmodernist droning verses on globalisation and identity mesh with the dub-beats and pop drops of tracks like “Go off,” while “Foreign Friends” confronts head on the kind micro-aggressions of modern day society with humour and bite.
This album is arguably long and messy, but break it down into its component parts and it boasts stand alone gems, moving between dancehall vibes to ambiguous gospel interludes. Sure, more curation should have gone into the construction of the album, but its themes are richer than a throw away hip-hop album, and with tracks like “One Dance,” “Child’s Play,” “Faithful” and “Too Good,” it wouldn’t be right to ignore its contribution to the 2016 music scene (if for nothing more than the memes it produced).
Gender-bending and electro synth pop come together in Héloïse Letissier’s alter ego, Christine. Performative, energetic, emotive and enigmatic, the lyrics of lost and constructed identities, missed opportunities plus a really good Kanye cover results in a complex and charismatic album. As a performer, Letissier is the physical manifestation of stage presence and an incredible dancer, and this album distills that physical intensity into an aural spectacle.
The tension between singer Mitski’s honey smooth vocals and her grunge guitar riffs and repetitive drum beats make for a bold listen in her album, Puberty 2. There’s something endearingly raw and gentle about it, mixed with the angst-y tension of dealing with mundanities like cleaning cups of tea and not knowing how to pay rent. The core Americanism to this album is invigorated by the singer’s vulnerability and poetics - often lacking in angsty American (male-dominated) indie rock.
Don’t @ me, this album is great. Ariana Grande has the best voice since Mariah, and her ability to collaborate with artists like Nicki Minaj, Macy Gray and Lil Wayne show this album to be so much more than just a post-Disney star release. The reggaeton influence on “Side to Side” shows not only Grande’s sheer ease at hitting such difficult vocal runs in a variety of genres, but her ability to embrace and define new pop in 2016.
“Like I don’t know man, I’m just so thankful. I’ve been trying to do this music stuff and work it out for so long, but it was the moment when I was like yo, let’s do this for ourselves...no record label or nothing, they just travelled the world. We just did this for us.” This was part of Skepta’s acceptance speech at this year’s Mercury prize, that had for a while pitted the late David Bowie’s Blackstar as a clear frontrunner. For Grime to have won in 2016 was the perfect signifier of an incredible year for the genre - and what an album to do it on. Featuring new, more experimental, excited invigorations of the genre like “Konnichiwa” and “Numbers”, Konnichiwa is a confident graduation of sound for Skepta.
With such a self-referential and self-aware rap style as Childish Gambino, the stark change in genre of “Awaken, My Love” was surprising. Gone were the heavily ‘punny’ raps of because the internet or Camp, and in its place was something oozing maturity. The soulful funk album with post-rock riffs speaks to a changed man: “Awaken My Love” is a serious, rich album, a change that may have had something to do with Glover’s new experiences of fatherhood.
A holy union came in the combination of Grime and the production team of the 1-800 DINOSAUR crew (feat. James Blake). The vocal brutalism of Trim’s verses and 1-800’s electronica sit next to each other as equals rather than one overshadowing the other. It’s no coincidence that on the one track Blake produces (“RPG”), Trim repeats the line “My name’s Trim who is he/ who is he?” a call of authority in the sea of greatness. An innovative move, to merge a genre defined by authenticity with the artificial sounds of 1-800’s production.
Why ANTI was so woefully under appreciated is beyond me. I suspect it had something to do with its branding and lack of visual definition, something key in a world with Lemonade and The Life of Pablo – albums that created as much visual meaning as they did musical. Nonetheless, this album shows a flexibility from Rihanna, from the song of 2017 - "Work" - in all its dancehall glory, to ballads like “Love on the Brain” and sexually confrontational numbers like “Sex with Me” and “Kiss it Better.” A second listening is required if ANTI doesn't punch you in the face with its brilliance (so to speak) the first time.
Innocence permeates this album. From the name “Colouring Book”, to references to Peter Pan, and nostalgic songs like “Summer Friends” there’s something youthful and mourning throughout Chance’s third album. That nostalgia doesn’t stop anything - especially not Chance’s optimism and electricity with tracks like “All we got” and “Angels:”. Pure energy, gospel vocals and a large brass section give the album an invigorating entry in the 2016 sea of hip-hop albums. Praise be.
This delicate, funk-soul, unashamedly political album is such a gift to 2016. Utilising interludes, staccato piano riffs, and stripped back vocals, A Seat at the Table makes a clear artistic statement from someone at risk from being overshadowed (cough, Beyoncé, cough). The visual elements to this album shouldn’t be forgotten either. Right from the title of the album to her videos, the cohesive confident aesthetic speaks to an album comfortable within its identity. An important note on blackness, womanhood and forging space in a world that constantly asks you to be less visible.
"I miss the old Kanye", say the ill-informed fans, failing to spot the genius in the rapper’s seventh album. TLOP is all about surface and image; playing on our conceived ideas of what we think “Kanye West” denotes, and the cultural emblem he has come to represent. The album is bookended by a gospel throwback to early West, and a house track you almost couldn’t tell was by the same artist, whilst the album artwork's repetition of "WHICH / ONE" depict the base dichotomy within the album: who is Kanye West? Beyond over-intellectualising it, the album features the production that made Yeezy so famous in the first place, and arguably one of Chance the Rapper’s best verses.
After constant playin’ from the master of temptation Frank Ocean, Blonde dropped almost as an afterthought to Endless, an enigmatic visual album also worthy of a shout out. This peculiar timing was confusing, but its a subtly brilliant album, even if it doesn't hit you over the head with its genius straight away. A glittering nightscape of R&B vocals, Blonde is far more considered than some of the somewhat bashful tracks on the former albums, but this is not to its disadvantage. Interweaved with racial commentary, the atmospheric beats, distorted vocals and constant allusion to past/present scenarios make it a magical third album. “Self Control” and “Nikes” are by far some of the best tracks of 2016.
What is to be said about the era-defining visual piece that is Lemonade? Never before has an album made such artistic and pop-cultural waves in both form and content. This album had everything - honesty, power, aesthetic-defining visuals, poetry, and in turn it sparked something in society; a pop political revolution in all sense, for all senses. Lemonade celebrated blackness and sexuality with golden vocals, trap beats and dexterous genre shifting. We will forever live in a post-Lemonade world.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
