Top 10 Albums of 2012
1. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel…
2. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city
3. Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE
4. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan
5. Getatchew Mekuria & the Ex & Friends, Y’Anbessaw Tezeta
6. Swans, The Seer
7. Various Artists, Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1967–74
8. The Mountain Goats, Transcendental Youth
9. Azealia Banks, 1991 EP
10. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
Top 10 Songs of 2012
1. Usher, “Climax”
2. PSY, “Gangnam Style”
3. Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”
4. Taylor Swift, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
5. Parquet Courts, “Master of My Craft”
6. Skrillex, “Bangarang”
7. Nicki Minaj, “Roman in Moscow”
8. Pussy Riot, “Putin Lights Up the Fires”
9. The Belle Brigade, “No Time to Think”
10. Can, “Graublau”
1. Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel…
2. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city
3. Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE
4. Dirty Projectors, Swing Lo Magellan
5. Getatchew Mekuria & the Ex & Friends, Y’Anbessaw Tezeta
6. Swans, The Seer
7. Various Artists, Listen, Whitey! The Sounds of Black Power 1967–74
8. The Mountain Goats, Transcendental Youth
9. Azealia Banks, 1991 EP
10. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
Top 10 Songs of 2012
1. Usher, “Climax”
2. PSY, “Gangnam Style”
3. Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”
4. Taylor Swift, “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”
5. Parquet Courts, “Master of My Craft”
6. Skrillex, “Bangarang”
7. Nicki Minaj, “Roman in Moscow”
8. Pussy Riot, “Putin Lights Up the Fires”
9. The Belle Brigade, “No Time to Think”
10. Can, “Graublau”
10. Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music
Artist: Killer Mike
Year Released: 2012
Get This Album
Nine years after “A.D.I.D.A.S.” became his only substantial hit, Atlanta hip-hop fixture Killer Mike made a knockout album with an agenda that doesn’t even hint at pop crossover. Produced by El-P (whose own solo album of this year, Cancer 4 Cure, is worth hearing), R.A.P. Music is tough, lean and assured, the work of an artist who knows how hard he can strike. It also bubbles over with political fury: “Reagan” starts with a memory of the Iran-Contra scandal and its ripple effects on black America and goes on to indict all subsequent Presidents too.
9. Azealia Banks, 1991 EP
Artist: Azealia Banks
Year Released: 2012
Get This Album
She doesn’t have an official album out yet, just this four-song taster (admirers are directed to her mixtape Fantasea). But her breakout single “212″ established her as a show-offishly gifted rapper, and the rest of 1991 backs up what it promises. Banks has a taste for club beats, an X-rated sense of humor and a gift for spectacular multisyllable rhymes. On the title track, she rhymes “Louvre in Paris” with “ruin her weave,” “juniper breeze,” “shoe with the bleed,” “Lou to the V” and “do it for free,” scarcely pausing for breath along the way.
2. Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city
Artist: Kendrick Lamar
Year Released: 2012
Get This Album
The most promising artist in hip-hop was born in Compton, Calif., in 1987, around the same time as gangsta rap. His first major-label album is as elegiac as it is celebratory — an authoritative memoir of a lifetime spent immersed in the music that has changed the lives of everyone around him, for better and worse. Lamar has absorbed so much from every major MC you can name that he is able to evoke any era or region of rap within a few seconds of his delivery, and his words can resonate powerfully: in “Good Kid,” he calls out gang members who “step on my neck and get blood on your Nike checks.”