This list marks two “firsts” for me. The first of the “firsts” is that this is the first time a music top 10 of mine hasn’t been half or majority hip hop. (Not including the runner-up.)

It isn’t because hip hop had a weak year. On the contrary, the honorable mentions list is spoiled with great rap albums. There hasn’t been some radical shift in my taste. All that happened was that an extremely late entry slid in at the last second. And by “last second,” I mean it was the third to last 2021 album I listened to before putting my cap on new releases. I even had the list written out already, as I had assumed that nothing else was going to make it.

The problem was not the music itself. The problem was that music in 2021 was so goddamn good that I had to make room for what I could.

The second “first” is that this is the first year I’ve realized that I’ve run out of ways of saying that X year was good for music. Movies have off years. Video games have off years. TV, at least for me, finally had a singular off year. Music kicks ass no matter what, and there’s really only so many ways I can phrase that sentiment without annoying myself at the thought of having to write it again.

Thus a new tradition: Given that music is great and always will be great, instead of saying, once again, that music has a good year, I’m just going to list a bunch of albums that either killed my soul to cut or albums that were actually on earlier versions of the list that I took off because of my arbitrary bullshit. This year, those albums are:

Backxwash, I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND DRESSES
Cleo Sol, Mother
Joyce Wrice, Overgrown
McKinley Dixon, For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her
Nas, King’s Disease II
Remi Wolf, Juno
St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home
Vince Staples, Vince Staples

Music. It’s the fucking best. Let us now list.

Runner-Up: Your Old Droog, Time

Like Conway the Machine last year, Your Old Droog is an artist that’s been circling around my lists for a very long.

At first glance, Your Old Droog may seem like yet another indie New York rapper, and honestly you’re not wrong for thinking that. “Dated” isn’t the right word so much as there’s a certain style and sound expected of NY rappers, and if you’re not paying attention, Droog easily fits into the mold. (As Droog lays out in “Please Listen to My Jew Tape,” this was a direct criticism he received from a certain label head.) The fact that his voice sounds like the most NY rapper in the history of NY rappers probably doesn’t help much either.

That said, following tradition is by no means a bad thing, and again, his music only sounds hyper traditional if you’re only giving it a surface listen. The truth is that Droog is not only a gifted writer, but he has a talent for concept, a talent many artists can’t or don’t tap into. Jewelry, for example, explores his Jewish heritage while Dump YOD: Krutoy Edition does the same for his Eastern European side. (Wikipedia informs me that Droog and his family emigrated to the US from Ukraine when he was four.)

Time, as you may have guessed, is an album about time. But more specifically, it’s an album about reflection. About revisiting and reliving the formative moments of your past.

We’re in a time where we seemed locked in and obsessed with the idea of nostalgia, and we seem obsessed with the desire to relive our childhoods over and over again. It’s something I’ve railed about on this very blog many many times before, and it still drives me insane that I’m still expected to play with older generations’ toys for the rest of my life. However, over the last few years, I’ve felt myself giving it more of a pass. After all, 2020 and 2021 were both varying degrees of terrible, and I listened to this album in my apartment while I was still stuck in quarantine alone.

However, even in none contaminated years, Time still stands out because it feels genuinely nostalgic, not in a “remember this” kind of way, but in a way that feels genuinely painful. The “twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone” sense of the term. “Please Listen to My Jew Tape” is a cataloging of all the industry bullshit he’s had to endure in order to reach where he is today. “So High” recounts not just his early days experimenting with weed, but the exhilaration of having your life ahead of you and living in a time where the stakes were much lower. “Dropout Boogie” finds Droog regretting all the school he missed despite his success.

It’s not just an album about what happened to him, but an album about how he’d do things differently. It’s an album about equal parts euphoria and regret. It’s the first time a Droog album made ol’ Garth emotional, and the only reason it’s not on the main body of the list is that it got bumped here thanks to the last minute inclusion I talked about earlier. He will be on a list someday, and for those of you who have yet to discover Droog, this is the best jumping on point.

Favorite Songs: “Please Listen to My Jew Tape,” “So High,” “The Other Way”

10. Tyler, The Creator, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

Back in my middle school days, I didn’t have a laptop, a driver’s license, a parental unit readily available to drive me places (both my parents worked), or an iPod. (At least not yet.) Thus if I wanted to listen to music outside of the radio, I had few options. There was begging a parent to take me to a store on the weekends to buy a CD, there was Yahoo radio, or there was my buddy who had access to file sharing programs. (We did have a family computer, but it was an unreliable piece of shit.) So for five bucks, I’d give my friends a list of songs I wanted, and the next day, I would receive them on a blank CD.

As I was a budding rap fan, I was exclusively asking for new hip hop songs. and as file sharing services were famously reliable, most of the time I wasn’t getting the album cuts of the songs but versions off of mixtapes. The copy of “Knuck if You Buck” he gave me, for example, came with some dude randomly chiming in to yell, “Sellin’ bread!” every once in a while. (I tried to find it, but that particular recording might be lost to time.)

You probably see where I’m going here. I’m sure if you bothered looking, you’d find more than a few people who were annoyed at DJ Drama’s ubiquity on this album, as well as the constant “Gangsta Grillz” drops. But I found it oddly comforting.

In fact, “comfort” is a word that ran through my mind fairly often when I was listening to this album for the first time. Not because of its content, mind you. Though it’s hard to call this album fully sad, it is very much an album about the raw nerve buried under the front we show the world, luxury and sophistication in this particular example. So I can’t say it’s fully a flex album either. Rather, what I found comforting was the artistic direction, the sound, and where Tyler is in his career.

I loved Igor as much as the next person, but it was nice to hear him rap again. Moreover, it was nice to hear him rap in his own voice. It’s a reminder that Tyler is, and always was, a pretty great rapper, and during the peak of Odd Future where all the lyrical credit was being thrown at Earl, one could argue that Tyler didn’t get enough credit.

Moreover, this is the sixth Tyler solo project, and the third of what I think we can safely say is his mature period. It’s nice to know that Tyler doesn’t need to radically change himself or his sound in order to make great albums anymore. We don’t need the unexpected shift in content like in Flower Boy or the wild experimentation of Igor. Tyler can just sit back and make a great, relatively normal hip hop album like, you know… a rapper. That may be a strange thing to praise, but if we want to be optimistic, it means that Tyler’s in a place where he’s content with who he is as an artist and what he wants to make, Or at least that’s how it seems. I also find that comforting.

Favorite Songs: “SWEET / I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE,” “RISE!,” “WILSHIRE”

9. Westside Gunn, Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Side B

I’ve been been wanting to put a Westside Gunn project on a top ten list since the beginning of this blog.

I don’t remember if I said this when I wrote about Conway (and I’m too lazy to look), but my first Griselda project was 2015’s Hitler Wears Hermes III. Upon listening to that tape, I went back and listened to the first two in the series and just about everything that he and Griselda have put out since. Or at least I think I have. After all, I’ve watched Westside go from a guy without a Wikipedia page to a guy whose output takes up the majority of it, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t even complete. He put out three projects in 2020 alone.

Whenever you have a rap group or a collective, there will always be debate amongst hip hop nerds as to which member is “the best,” and usually, there’s either a consensus answer or it’s very easy to come up with a personal choice. Consensus: André is the more compelling rapper in Outkast. Personal: Ghostface Killah is my favorite Wu-Tang member (though Liquid Swords is my favorite solo release). Consensus: Posdnous is the superior MC in De La Soul. Personal: Dom McLennon is probably the most consistent member of Brockhampton. (Though the lines of greatness between the members of the group are quite fine.)

This debate about groups falls apart for me, however, when it comes to Griselda. In this case, it’s not really “Who is the best member of the group?” It’s really “Who had the best year?” (Assuming you qualify Griselda as a group, which I’m on the fence about. But I’ve committed to this rhetorical strategy too much to abandon it now.) 2020, to me, belonged to Conway. 2021 belonged to Westside Gunn.

So here I am, finally, with an opportunity to talk about Gunn, and honestly, I’ve got nothing to say.

It’s not that Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Side B doesn’t inspire thought. It very much does. In fact, let’s not mince words, Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Side B is Westside Gunn’s best solo release to date. The problem, however, is that now that Westside Gunn belongs to the world and not just hip hop fans who follow Big Ghost Ltd. on Twitter, I don’t think I have anything to say about him or this release that hasn’t been echoed on seemingly every corner of the internet. Everyone loves Westside Gunn.

If you love Griselda, you already know why this album is here. If you’re unfamiliar with Griselda or any of the affiliated rappers, you’re lucky because now you can jump on board. Nobody makes hip hop that’s grimier, nobody sounds like him (or they’ve tried and failed), and to be a little more specific, I don’t think there’s a single rapper who makes luxury sound as luxurious as Westside.

He’ll probably put out a billion albums next year, and I’ll listen to each and every one. Or maybe he’ll finally take a break. After all, he’s done more than enough to please me for the rest of my life. Either way, you gotta Westside. Boom boom boom boom boom boom booooooom.

Favorite Songs: “Hell on Earth, Pt. 2,” “Ostertag,” “99 Avirex”

8. Juçara Marçal, Delta Estácio Blues

There was an episode of a podcast, I want to say it was either The Champs or Juan Epstein, where Questlove joked that the easiest way to win a Grammy is to produce an album for an artist over the age of 65.

It’s hard to tell how much Questlove is joking. On one hand, it can be seen as a quip mostly at the expense of the voting body of the Grammys. When they’re not busy making the most racist decision possible, they will instead vote for the safest songs and albums of the year, and there’s a perception that older artists tend to not take risks and make safe agreeable music meant for people their age who’ve lost the need to engage with anything new or experimental. On the other hand, Questlove himself won a Grammy in 2011 for producing a Booker T. Jones album, and Booker would’ve been around the age Questlove was talking about when he made that comment in the first place. There are probably many producers who have Grammys for similar reasons.

I thought about that perception of older artists as I listened to Brazilian singer Elza Soares’s 2018 album Deus é Mulher. Elza, if my calculations are correct, would’ve been 87 years old when that album came out. Yet it sounds like it came from someone many decades her junior. Or rather, it sounds like it came from our usual perception of someone many decades her junior. It’s unpredictable, it’s inventive, and it came pretty damn close to making my list the year it came out.

Brazilian artist Juçara Marçal is nearly 60 years old, and Delta Estácio Blues is one of the strangest, most off-the-wall albums I listened to in 2021.

This begs a certain question. Mainly, what the hell is going on in Brazil? (Apart from the political horrors, of course.) How come all these older artists are putting out music that’s more glitchy and out there than much of what kids in their 20s are putting out? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think older artists should just put out “old” music, and the expectations of what older artists put out vs. what this album does is only a small reason as to why I love it. I’m pointing it out here because if there’s some cultural tradition in Brazil I don’t know about of older artists putting out the newest sounding music, then that fucking rules.

And now that I’ve successfully run out of mental fodder with which to distract myself from talking about the album, now I have to talk about the album. An album so varied and all over the place (in the best way possible) that I don’t quite know where to begin. On one track, she’ll be signing some of the most soulful experimental pop I’ve heard in years, and every aspect of the track will be executed flawlessly. On the next song, she’ll be rapping over a beat that many rappers wouldn’t dare try to rap over, and every aspect of that track will be executed flawlessly. It’s an album of contradiction and juxtaposition, yet somehow, it comes out sounding like a cohesive whole for reasons I’ll probably never understand.

The Brazilian music I’m familiar with is the same stuff everyone knows. Mainly, the Tropicália and MPB of the late ‘60s and ‘70s. Some Borges and Nascimento here. Some Os Mutantes there. Some Arthur Verocai. Some Caetano Veloso and all the other artists people got into when The Life Aquatic came out. But clearly, there’s much more to discover, and based on the Brazilian music I’ve listened to, some of which I genuinely consider the most beautiful music I’ve ever listened to, I can’t wait to spend a good deal of 2022 finding it.

Favorite Songs: “Delta Estácio Blues,” “Lembranças Que Guardei,” “Iyalode Mbé Mbé”

7. SAULT, NINE

I’ve been doing a terrible job of staying on topic so far. Truth be told, I do a terrible job staying on topic whenever it comes time to do these albums lists. As you can tell, my preferred strategy isn’t to talk about the album, but to talk about everything around the album before mentioning it was good at the end in the hopes that you don’t notice. Even now, I’m struggling to not turn this section into the Cleo Sol appreciation corner.

The last cut I made this year was for her second album Mother. Once again, it was that pesky last minute entry (which I’ll identify when I get to it), but it was also the simple fact that it was a tad too long for its own good. The other justification was, of course, that I could cut Mother and Cleo Sol would still be represented on this list as she’s one of the few identified members SAULT, an anonymous UK based soul music collective. (Another confirmed member is producer Inflo, who’s spent that last however many years kicking ass on every project he’s been involved in making. See his work on GREY Area, the more recent Michael Kiwanuka albums, the Cleo Sol albums, and another release we’ll be talking about soon enough.)

SAULT’s been around since at least 2019, but they arguably made their splash with the 2020 albums Untitled (Black Is) and Untitled (Rise). Both of these albums are, to put it mildly, fucking incredible, and I still doubt myself on not including them in the list last year. To be a bit reductive, both are Black Lives Matter themed neo-soul albums, and they were exactly what we needed in the rise of the George Floyd protests. If you haven’t listened to them, go do so now.

This brings us to Nine, the ten track album that appeared on the internet for 99 days and 99 days only. (Of course people loaded it onto Youtube, but still.) Though Nine is still very much a political album, its goal isn’t to take as much explicit charge as much as the previous two. The Untitled albums were about police brutality and systemic violence. Nine, I think, is about poverty. An album about the people of color trapped in an all-consuming cycle of heartbreak caused by various political and economic systems controlled by the wealthy and the white. It never outright says any of this, but it doesn’t have to. Either you know or you don’t.

Then again, it might be an easy aspect to miss as the energy of this album is so infectious that you might just want to tap into the music itself without paying attention to what it’s trying to say. Case in point, “London Gangs,” the first proper song on the album. It’s a song about not only gang violence in London, but the feelings of being trapped in a cycle and the decisions you have to make when you live under oppressive systems. Sonically, however, “London Gangs” is also one of the most thrilling songs of the year. You can imagine Cleo Sol and the SAULT backing band, whoever they may be, demolishing any venue they perform it in. Despite the darkness of the lyrics, it’s a song I’ve returned to countless times this year, and I’ll probably continue to do so.

Similar things can be said about every song on the album. “Trap Life” is one the most danceable songs about being forced to sell drugs and living in fear of being gunned down by the cops you’ll ever hear. “Bitter Streets” is a breezy and melodic song about losing loved ones to street life. A sizable percentage of the lyrics on the song “Alcohol” is just the word “alcohol,” but the music and Cleo’s singing sell it so well that you feel every ounce of the despair.

Does Nine live up to the two Untitled albums? Honestly, I’m not sure. The Untitled releases were so tied to a fraught moment that it’s hard to analyze it without that weight. But it doesn’t matter because Nine is incredible in its own right and its subject matter will, unfortunately, always be relevant. It may sound preachy, but the music is so infectious that you may not even notice the message. Then you’ll go back and love it even more.

Favorite Songs: “London Gangs,” “Trap Life,” “Bitter Streets”

6. Hiatus Kaiyote, Mood Valiant

I thought about doing a top ten albums of the decade list last year. I started a rough version of what that list would be, and I put Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly at the very top. Not only is it my favorite on an aesthetic level, but I think I could also make an argument for it being the most emblematic “2010s” album. The rise of the true domination of hip hop married to the renewed political spirit the decade brought out in millennials and Gen Z. However, just for a few seconds of fun, I put Choose Your Weapon by Hiatus Kaiyote at the top before taking it off just to what it would look like. Honestly, I didn’t hate it.

All of this is to say that Hiatus Kaiyote holds a special place in my heart, and Choose Your Weapon, like many music fans, is a beloved album of mine. Or at least I assume it’s a beloved album in some circles because after its release, I heard it sampled to high heaven. (See: Kendrick Lamar’s “DUCKWORTH.” and Anderson .Paak’s “Without You,” among others. Evidently 9th Wonder’s a fan.) Regardless, if you hooked a computer up to my brain and had it make the optimal album for my enjoyment, it would basically be Choose Your Weapon.

A lot happened between Choose Your Weapon and Mood Valiant. Lead singer Nai Palm put out her solo album Needle Paw, an album that also nearly made my list that year. She was also diagnosed with breast cancer. Other solo projects among the band were released, Nai Palm recovered, much to my unreserved joy. COVID hit. So on and so forth. At some point, they announced that a new album was coming and it took everything I had to temper my expectations.

So as you can tell by this album’s placement on this list, clearly it stuck the landing. I think I like Choose Your Weapon a tiny bit more, but Mood Valiant isn’t really that far behind.

Gone from Choose Your Weapon is the precise, almost prog rock precision. This is an album that feels looser and more free-flowing. Lyrics wise, it’s a much darker album, though you may not notice as it’s very easy to get lost in the euphoria of the sound. Naturally, when you have a near-death experience like Nai Palm had, your worldview shifts, as do the way people perceive you and what you write.

Case in point: “Red Room.” “Red Room” is a song about sanctuary, inspired by a room Nai Palm used to live in that glowed red for an hour when the sun set. If you didn’t know about Nai Palm’s cancer diagnosis, you may take it at a purely surface level. A song about the simple act of being at peace, if only for an hour. But the song takes on more emotional weight when you consider what you might need to take sanctuary from, something like, say, a cancer diagnosis or what I’m assuming to be the various nightmares surrounding the mastectomy process. Then it means something different, even if only by degrees.

Yet despite this albums brushes with mortality, it’s still joyous and rhapsodic. It’s an album that I found myself getting lost in a lot during 2021, and will probably continue to do so going forward. I’m so happy Hiatus Kaiyote are back, and I hope they stay for as long as they see fit.

Favorite Songs: “And We Go Gentle,” “Get Sun,” “Rose Water”

5. JPEGMAFIA, LP!

This is the third time that a JPEGMAFIA album has been in the top half of a list I’ve written. Every year he’s put out an album, it made my list. So let’s just assume that JPEGMAFIA will be here every time he releases something and let’s move on.

And before you say, “But what about the EPs???,” I’ll just say that I loved both of them, and LP! is a perfect marriage of the brashness of EP! and the melodic elements of EP2!. Also, I’m talking about the “offline” version of this album you get on Bandcamp.

Favorite Songs: “HAZARD DUTY PAY!,” “ARE U HAPPY?,” “TIRED, NERVOUS & BROKE!”

4. Dean Blunt, Black Metal 2

Part of my coping mechanism in the early days of quarantine, at least as far as music was concerned, was to finally clear up at least some of my backlog and go off the beaten path. Rather than listening to the umpteenth underground hip hop album, let’s get into some experimental stuff. A dash of art rock here and some weirdo electronic shit there. Or at the very least, finally get around to listening to some stuff that fell by the wayside. Albums, for example, like Black is Beautiful by Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, an album that had been sitting in my library for years. It’s pretty hard to overstate how great this album is, and “2” is now one of the most played songs I have now.

So down the Dean Blunt rabbit hole I went. Somewhat. Next up is probably his most known album, which was Black Metal, which contains a song called “50 CENT.” It was my most played song of 2020.

It’s a little hard to put my finger on why. It’s a song that aches of heartbreak and dread, as well as violence depending on how you interpret the lyrics. Yet it’s also alien and beautiful. Most people don’t live like outlaws and cowboys, and probably don’t know what it’s like to fall in love while constantly sowing chaos all around you. “50 CENT” offers a glimpse, and at the end of the day, concludes that this lifestyle is just sad. I was obsessed with it, and listened to it over and over again.

I was going to continue down the Dean Blunt hole, then I got distracted with other things. That is, until Black Metal 2 all of the sudden appeared on my radar the day it came out. “What is Dean Blunt up to in 2021?” Thought I.

The answer, it turns out, is taking the feeling of “50 CENT,” that beauty and tension, and expanding it into a twenty minute album. Obviously, I loved it.

When people write about Dean Blunt and his music, you see the words “weird” and “enigmatic” thrown around a lot. I understand why, as Dean Blunt’s music can be a little hard to pin down. I found myself having to describe the genre of Black Metal 2 to someone, and I was at a loss. I said something along the lines of “experimental pop” or “electronic” or something like that. The joke that I’ve heard plenty of times is that Dean Blunt’s music falls under the genre of Dean Blunt, but at some point, you need a non-jokey way of describing it.

That said, I’m trying to avoid just saying he’s weird because I don’t find his music that challenging or inaccessible. Black Metal 2, to me at least, is a pretty easy album to listen to, and the designation of someone as a “weirdo” in the music industry implies that an artist’s output somehow isn’t. Setting aside the reason Dean Blunt gets designated a weirdo whereas many white artists don’t, regardless of how you perceive Blunt or his music, it’s truly gorgeous stuff. Even if it is a little hard to describe.

Also “the rot” was my most played song of 2021.

Favorite Songs: “VIGIL,” “SKETAMINE,” “the rot”

3. For Those I Love, For Those I Love

For Those I Love is a project headed by Dublin artist David Balfe, and For Those I Love, the album, is a tribute to Paul Curran, Balfe’s best friend who took his own life.

You may read that description and conclude that this is album may be a heartbreaker. You would not be wrong. There’s the obvious grief and anguish that comes with not only the death of his friend, but everything that comes afterwards. But there’s also a degree of specificity and insight that only makes it more painful. For example, there comes a moment during every grief cycle when your inner sadness becomes rage at the world, and you want to lash out at everything around you. You grow numb to feeling inconsolable, so your thoughts turn to all the injustice around you that isn’t in your control. This feeling is perfectly expressed in “Top Scheme,” a polemic about the state of, well… everything.

And without getting into specific examples, as it would be hard for me to pick a favorite, Balfe has an immediately obvious gift for words. A skill he uses to get an extra rip or two in as he’s breaking your heart.

However, it’s hard for me to say that you’ll walk away from For Those I Love feeling devastated. Don’t get me wrong, you will. It’s baked into the very premise of the album. But there’s so much more this album has to offer.

For starters, For Those I Love is mainly a house album. (Specifically, Rateyourmusic informs me that it’s progressive house, but you get what I’m going for here.) It may seem strange to choose house music as a means to express your grief, and some may jump to the conclusion that it’s meant to be an ironic juxtaposition. But it isn’t. For Those I Love is an album about grief, but as I said, it’s also a tribute. An album about the joys of togetherness and expressing an unshakable love for your friends and the people you care about. The very first lyrics you hear on this album is “I have a love/and it never fades.”

This album is a release. What better place for a release than the dance floor?

It’s well-trodden territory, but it’s territory worth exploring over and over again. Though grief is all-consuming and burdensome, how beautiful is it that you can love someone, anyone, to such a degree? Balfe doesn’t really sing on this album so much as deliver spoken word poetry, and his delivery is so expressive and direct that you feel not only the incalculable weight of his loss, but every ounce of love he has for everyone in his life that he cares about.

In the simplest possible terms, this is an album about loving your friends, and I just had a year and a half where I didn’t get to see any of mine. It hit rather hard. Moreover, in the world of digital internet driven irony, there’s a sincerity to every word he says on this album that’s more than welcome. I don’t know David Balfe, and I probably never will. But based on this album and this album alone, I feel like I kind of do in a way, and he seems like a beautiful person.

Also, the last minute inclusion on this list that caused so much chaos? It was this one. Worth it though.

Favorite Songs: “I Have A Love,” “Birthday / The Pain,” “Leave Me Not Love”

2. Little Simz, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert

There are times when I doubt myself when it comes to these lists.

Don’t get me wrong, I love every album I’ve ever put on one. But there’s a part of me that always questions whether or not I made the right call. My tastes change, and I’m philosophically inclined to not only question the canon in any art form, but also to question works of art I’ve considered “favorites” at one point or another.

Was Wildflower the right choice back in 2016? At the time, I certainly thought so, and I think my reason for picking it was legit. But I don’t know, as that was a rather jam-packed year, music wise. (I lean towards “yes” though.) Was the Saturation trilogy the right choice when I made that pick? I’ve questioned it. Given the Ameer stuff, I can’t help but feel like those albums have lost a bit of their shine. Then I put on any random song from Saturation I and I think, “Naw, that was the right call.”

Really, there have only been two times I haven’t questioned myself. The first was SOPHIE’s OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES. Was that the best album of 2018? You’re fuckin’ a-right it was. (RIP SOPHIE!) The second was Little Simz’s GREY Area.

So naturally, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert had a lot to live up to, and I knew it had done so about halfway through the first song. But even if I hadn’t, I would’ve loved it regardless. Inflo, making his second appearance on this list, wastes no time lacing each track with his brand of neo-soul that I’ll never tire of, Simz’s rapping is as crisp as ever, and there’s a pop song that celebrates being an introvert.

Matter of fact, this may be apparent from the title, but this whole album is a celebration of introversion. Of taking time for yourself and finding triumph in the kinds of behavior and social patterns that most deem “anti-social” or “closed off.” Somehow, in 2021, a year where I had literally nothing but time for myself, it didn’t feel like rubbing salt in my wounds. Rather, it helped me rediscover the pleasantries of being alone. My roommate is one of my best friends in the world, and if I have to choose between hanging out with her or being alone, I’ll choose hanging out every time. But there’s little that can match the peace of curling up on the couch with a big bowl of nachos made from homemade tortilla chips and burning through a couple of Sopranos episodes for your billionth rewatch.

Of course I love this album. I love how it sounds, I love Simz’s writing, and I love everything there is to love about it. Do I think it’s better than GREY Area? No, but Sometimes I Might Be Introvert isn’t far behind. Take whatever standard you use to grade music. Imagine your highest score. That’s how I feel about GREY Area. Subtract a decimal point. That’s how I feel about Sometimes I Might Be Introvert.

But here comes the difficult part, because it seems like the music world at large has caught up to the level of enthusiasm I had for Little Simz back in 2019. As a result, I have very little to say about this album that you haven’t read already if you’re the kind of person who’s prone to consuming year end list stuff. So I’ll just end with one last petty internet thought: Remember when Kanye and Drake released the same day? I ended up liking Donda more than I care to admit, and I never liked Drake so I didn’t listen to Certified Lover Boy. But that said, were I the one in charge of crafting the narrative, we all would’ve walked away thinking that the actual best album released that day was Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Because it very much was.

Favorite Songs (I’m not allowing myself to pick “Introvert” because everyone and their mother already did that): “Woman,” “I Love You, I Hate You,” “Protect My Energy”

1. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, & The London Symphony Orchestra, Promises

I’ve had three notable listens of this album.

The first time I listened to Promises, I did so the same way I listen to most albums: In the living room of my apartment while playing a video game on mute. (Specifically, Apex Legends. I need to do something with my hands while listening to music, otherwise I can’t focus. Something mindless that I don’t care if I do good in.) It was at some nebulous point during quarantine when I had really become numb to everything around me, and though I’d known this album was floating around for a while, I was coming to it a few weeks after its release. I don’t really remember what I expected, but Promises blew me out of the water pretty much immediately and I spent the subsequent months already knowing that it was going to take the number one spot on this list.

The second time was a few weeks or months later. (It’s hard to tell how much time had passed.) I had gotten my two shots of Moderna, the two week waiting period for the shots to take effect had passed, and the very next day, I was in a car with my father heading back to the east coast. My dad, an avid jazz enthusiast, was delighted to learn that Pharoah Sanders was still alive. So I put on this album as we drove through the hills of the eastern California desert.

Promises is a jazz/classical/electronic hybrid, and like the best jazz albums, it’s hard to describe how Promises made me feel. Like I was traveling through the cosmos or something corny like that. The kind of feeling hippies (or Tony Soprano) presumably felt when they altered their minds and stared off into the sunset. There’s just a sense of scope to it that’s indescribable, and while driving through the mountains and the vast deserts outside of Los Angeles, finally on my way home after so much time spent away, I felt the scope of this album again. Only about a billion times harder.

The third time was right before writing this very entry. Currently, I sit in my childhood bedroom in my mother’s house, as I’ve been home for the last few weeks for the holidays. Omicron is currently tearing through the nation and about six hours ago, my flight back to Los Angeles got canceled. I’m now here for another five days, assuming that something doesn’t happen to the next flight as well. To put it mildly, I’m not thrilled.

So I put on Promises again in search of something to write about. I know that the moment I’m back in Los Angeles, I’m probably going into quarantine again, or at least a barely watered down version of it. I can’t help but feel demoralized. Yet, Promises still cuts through all that, and it still represents the freedom from quarantine that seems so fleeting at the moment.

Really, what else could I ask for?

Favorite Songs: Doesn’t really apply here, as Promises is one piece divided into nine movements. But if you want the general vibe of Promises, try Movement 2 for the jazz, Movement 3 for the electronic elements, and Movement 6 for Promises at its most grand.

Honorable Mentions

Adele, 30
Arlo Parks, Collapsed in Sunbeams
Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince
Backxwash, I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES
Billie Eilish, Happier Than Ever
Black Dresses, Forever In Your Heart
black midi, Cavalcade
BROCKHAMPTON, ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE
Bruno Pernadas, Private Reasons
C. Tangana, El Madrileño
CHANCE デラソウル, CHANCE デラソウル
Cleo Soul, Mother
Conway the Machine, La Maquina
Genesis Owusu, Smiling with No Teeth
Helado Negro, Far In
illuminati hotties, Let Me Do One More
Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee
Jaubi, Nafs at Peace
Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales
Joyce Wrice, Overgrown
JPEGMAFIA, EP2!
Ka, A Martyr’s Reward
LIL UGLY MANE, VOLCANIC BIRD ENEMY AND THE VOICED CONCERN
Mach-Hommy, Pray for Haiti
Magdalena Bay, Mercurial World
Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés, CLAMOR
Maxo Kream, WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
McKinley Dixon, For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her
Nas, King’s Disease II
Navy Blue, Navy’s Reprise
Olivia Rodrigo, Sour
Porter Robinson, Nurture
R.A.P. Ferreira, bob’s son: R.A.P. Ferreira in the garden level cafe of the scallops hotel
Remi Wolf, Juno
serpentwithfeet, DEACON
Silk Sonic, An Evening with Silk Sonic
Sloppy Jane, Madison
slowthai, TYRON
Spellling, The Turning Wheel
St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home
Sufjan Stevens & Angelo de Augustine, A Beginner’s Mind
Turnstile, GLOW ON
Valerie June, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers
Viagra Boys, Welfare Jazz
Vince Staples, Vince Staples
Wiki, Half God
Will Listen To Someday
There’s always something out there.