These are the 10 best albums of the year, by CraigSJ
Those who spent much of 2020 in relative seclusion came into the new year swinging. Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos by Labels 2021 didn’t turn out the way we might have imagined; we made it back outside, and concerts, sporting events, and movie theaters reopened but did so while still under the pall of the coronavirus and a beleaguered economy and its working class.
7. Tyler, the Creator, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST Upon first introduction in the late aughts, Tyler, the Creator was an iconoclastic everything-phobe, a student of Eminem raps and Pharrell beats with a totalizing disdain for authority figures, be they politicians, music-industry execs, celebrities, or peers in hip-hop.
3. Esperanza Spalding, Songwrights Apothecary Lab Esperanza Spalding’s Songwrights Apothecary Lab is more than an album. Last year, the jazz singer and bassist consulted with a team of musicians and specialists across disciplines to get a greater handle on the healing properties of sound so that she could tailor a work deliberately to these ends. Each of the album’s 12 compositions was created with a different aim for the edification of the listener.
Ka, A Martyr’s Reward Listening to Ka will make you want to journey to a clandestine mountain yurt, live off the land, and study martial arts. The Brooklyn rapper and producer makes minimalist beats and writes raps that deal in pained street histories and grizzled war analogies. Like the early Wu-Tang classics, this music pulls from way beyond hip-hop and maintains an almost experimental starkness.
Little Simz, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert “I’m the version of me I always imagined when I was younger.” In a song called “How Did You Get Here” at the end of her new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, London rapper-singer Little Simz outlines the thousand small steps it took to build the confidence and skill to enjoy the acclaim she saw for 2019’s Grey Area, her third full-length, winner of the NME Award for Best British Album, and a nominee for the 2019 Mercury Prize.
Backxwash, I Lie Here Buried With My Rings and My Dresses Quebec-based rapper and producer Backxwash makes coarse, vital music about feeling left out of the promises of prosperity issuing from houses of government and worship, about the fallen brokenness of everything, in spite of the prim patina of decency masking the horrors of the modern age.
Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall, The Marfa Tapes Somewhere in between her 2015 divorce from Blake Shelton and her excellent 2016 double album The Weight of My Wings, country superstar Miranda Lambert snuck out to Marfa, a tiny arts community in the Trans-Pecos area of west Texas, with friends and veteran songwriters Jon Randall and Jack Ingram.
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