Huge thank yous to everyone who has been following my list so far! I wouldn't do this without you guys so thanks for the feedback, engagement and attention. Here's some fun stats for you. Over the past 10 years, I've lived in four cities, had three dogs, gotten two degrees, and one girlfriend! Happy decade, y'all!
10. Young Thug - Barter 6 (Atlantic Records, 2015)
Young Thug's flow seems almost quaint, now that he's been imitated to death by his Atlanta understudies and a handful of less creative biters. There was a time, however, when Thugger's high-pitched warble sounded unlike anything else. In 2015, you could have told someone Barter 6 was an alien transmission played over arpeggios and they would have believed you. The album scores major points for being the breakout and high water mark for one of this decade's most influential rappers. It also scores major points for creativity and execution. Thug's flows are never-ending. His assortment of vocal runs, harmonies and ad-libs don't stop either. Producers Wheezy and London on The Track build Thug his own musical universe. They flesh out his otherworldly voice to its fullest potential, allowing him to seemingly travel through dimensions. Thugger tackles and conquers beats that mere mortals never would. Songs like "Halftime" and "Amazing" border on avant-garde pop art, but still knock as hard as more conventional tracks like "Numbers" and "Check". Barter 6 is the best trap album of the last decade, and five years after its release, has left a major mark on hip hop's evolution.
9. La Dispute - Wildlife (No Sleep Records, 2011)
Wildlife is melodramatic. Before La Dispute recorded it, they spent weekends cutting a series of acoustic EPs at someone's Northern Michigan cottage. Peak whiteness. The music is aggressive but it's not tough. It's moody but not angry. For vocalist Jordan Dreyer, there's not an emotion to earnest or metaphor too on-the-nose. At points, it seems like he's reading right from his diary. On paper, it's too much. La Dispute came from a family of bands who mixed a type of melodic hardcore derided for its fans' propensity to cry at shows with the teen angst of Thursday. There's no way, almost a decade later, this could possibly hold up. Or so you think. Then, you find yourself on a train platform, fighting back tears, trying to hold your too-cool composure as Dreyer shreds his vocal chords into your headphones: "Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?/Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?/Can I ever be forgiven cuz I killed that kid?/It was an accident, I swear it wasn't meant for him." Wildlife is melodramatic, but there's a reason soap operas stay on TV for 50 years. For every cheesy moment on the album (there are a few), there's a moment so bright it burns in your psyche forever.
8. Title Fight - Floral Green (SideOneDummy, 2012)
Title Fight won the kids over before Floral Green. Their earliest releases did Lifetime worship so proficiently that a soon-to-be prominent pop-punk band would name themselves after a Title Fight song. Then they dropped Shed, inspiring dozens of bands to name-check Seaweed and Helmet. Still, the old heads weren't convinced. Queue Floral Green, a mature, fleshed out album blending the energy of hardcore with the melody of pop-punk and the dynamics of alt-rock. Suddenly, Title Fight were undeniable; beloved by gateway kids and gatekeepers alike. The album saw the band add reverb and delay to their pedal chain, inspiring countless imitators. Bands like Nothing and Whirr were already in the hopper in 2012, but I doubt they'd have been half as successful without Floral Green. The countless Run For Cover Records bands who all of a sudden claimed to be "dream pop influenced", should have just been honest and said "we heard Floral Green and started a band". Title Fight were always one step ahead of their contemporaries. It's one facet of what makes them arguably the most important independent band of the last decade.
7. Self Defense Family - Heaven is Earth (Deathwish Inc., 2015)
Self Defense Family vocalist Patrick Kindlon has never been shy about his lack of traditional talent. SDF got more and more melodic with every release, but for years, Kindlon's sandpaper bark stayed the same. Sometime around 2015, he started working with producers who were able to coax him out of his comfort zone. Nobody would ever confuse Kindlon's vocals on Heaven is Earth for Mariah Carey's, but it's hard to deny his dynamic ability. Whispers, groans and a host of production tricks supplement Kindlon's yelp, allowing him to adapt his poignant, hard-hitting lyrics to both the subject matter and the music. Speaking of the music -- is it possible for a post-hardcore band to write their hardest material after they've completely embraced alt-country weirdness? The answer, according to Heaven is Earth, is yes. The guitars have a sheet-metal sheen that wouldn't sound out of place on a Negative Approach album. The drums hammer and crash with furious intensity. Even the softer material is arranged in such an isolating fashion that Kindlon's hardcore heroes, 108, would have to give props. Self Defense Family released more great music than anyone else this decade. Heaven is Earth is their greatest.
6. The Menzingers - On the Impossible Past (Epitaph Records, 2012)
There's nothing better than listening to music that gives you nostalgic feelings. Being transported back to a time and place by a song is something everyone appreciates. That's why Backstreet Boys tickets go for hundreds of dollars. When music gives you nostalgic feelings the first time you hear it, you've found something special. On the Impossible Past is one of those musical moments. Lyricists Tom May and Greg Barnett do a masterful job of capturing the life of any teenager who drinks irresponsibly and has an abundance of black in their wardrobe. Young love, restaurant jobs, watching shitty bands -- it's all here. The 13 masterfully crafted PBR-punk tunes are perfect for drunken singalongs, long walks and late nights. The Menzingers apply a pop sensibility to their gruff, gravelly production for an album full of push-pit anthems that could just as easily work on an acoustic guitar around a fire. OTIP is a true classic, the type of album you can show to your non-punk friends and have them fall in love with.
5. Drake - Nothing Was the Same (OVO Sound/Cash Money Records, 2013)
Hip-hop's traditional classics have been bloated, 20 song smorgasbords where the artist and a gang of producers throw everything against the wall and see what sticks. In the 2010's, the standouts began to take the Illmatic approach -- shorter tracklists with a unified production sound and almost no room for fat. Drake told Q's Jian Gomeshi around the time of Nothing Was the Same's release that he had been challenged to write such an album. The result is a full-fledged listening experience that's engaging start to finish. NWTS is when Drake's production team nailed down his signature sound. The jagged edges of previous projects are smoothed away, replaced by cleaner, sultrier beats. There are no skippable moments on NWTS. Everything sounds like it belongs. There's also a lot of structural experimentation -- "Worst Behaviour" and "Tuscan Leather" being the best examples. Then there's the perfect moments of pure pop bliss Drake is known for, like "Hold on We're Going Home" and "Started From the Bottom". Nothing Was the Same is --start to finish-- the best album from the decade's biggest rap superhero.
4. Coliseum - House With a Curse (Temporary Residence Ltd., 2010)
Coliseum's third full length, compared to the rest of 2010's hardcore, doesn't fit. The band started as a somewhat remarkable d-beat project and finished as a Torche/Mastadon-esque alt-metal outfit. Smack dab in the middle, they dropped House With a Curse, a straightforward hardcore album that borrowed from 80's legends like Fear, Negative Approach and the Misfits. Nothing (except maybe Burning Love) sounded like it at the time. I still haven't heard anything that sounds like it. Perhaps the reason for House's uniqueness is its daring ability to pull from bands who aren't easily replicated. Perhaps it's the perfect (I'll say it again -- PERFECT) guitar tone. Perhaps it's the Nirvana-like mastery of the loud/soft dynamic, making the songs creak just as hard as they knock. Maybe Coliseum just wrote better songs than anyone else. Whatever the case, House With a Curse is truly a special album. Brilliantly crafted and perfectly executed -- it's outsider art for those outside the outsiders.
3. Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d. city (Top Dawg Entertainment, 2012)
Kendrick Lamar made three essential hip-hop albums this decade. 2017's DAMN. won a Pulitzer Prize, perhaps on the strength of Lamar's back catalog. 2015's To Pimp a Butterfly is, from a political standpoint, the most important piece of music released this decade. good kid, m.A.A.d city might be the least critically acclaimed of Lamar's big three albums. However, if you strip away the context and focus on the music, it makes a strong case for being his best. The Compton rapper's major label debut is his certainly his hungriest. Lamar was sitting on the album's concept for years, slowly developing the tools to execute it. When he finally unleashed it, people began calling him a generational rapper. For good reason. Lamar speaks like a street scholar. His bars are hard but intelligent, technical but catchy, and autobiographical but tasteful. The beats on GMKC are also Lamar's strongest. The album's production totally out-muscles the the tin-can-rattling of TPAB and the pop corniness of DAMN. The Cali-by-way-of-Atlanta sound perfectly compliments Lamar's perky delivery, resulting in the most sonically digestible project of his career. GMKC is a rapper's rap album. No bullshit, no throwaway lyrics, and no bad songs.
2. Taylor Swift - 1989 (Big Machine Records, 2014)
Major label pop music is an interesting beast. It's always subject to commercial expectations and the bullshit that comes with them. However, its artists have access to the best songwriters, producers, musicians and recording equipment. So while pop albums are often plagued by structural monotony, cliches, and the idea diarrhea of too many cooks are in the kitchen, they always sound incredible. When a pop album can buck -- or more accurately, excel within -- the confines of a major label, there's a great chance it will stand out. 1989 does way more than just stand out. For one, it's mixed and mastered perfectly. Its songs certainly don't reinvent the wheel when it comes to structure, but there's more than enough variety to keep the album interesting. "Style" and "Shake it Off" nail the pop formula with machine-like precision. "How You Get the Girl" is a big buildup with an even bigger payoff. The bridge on "Out of the Woods" is unforgettable. Every song on the album could have been a hit single on a lesser album. In fact, half of the album's 13 songs were released as singles, 5 of which reached the top 10 on Billboard. 1989 was critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and cleaned up at award shows. It also bangs harder than anything else released in the past 20 years.
1. Title Fight - Shed (SideOneDummy, 2011)
Title Fight's genre changes depending on who you ask to define it. Hardcore kids will tell you they're a hardcore band. Pop-punk kids will tell you they're pop-punk. A less codified listener might say they're "post-hardcore" or "alternative". The true answer is that Title Fight is simply greater than the sum of their parts. They synthesize a ton of disparate ideas into something familiar and cohesive. Then they execute with the type of rhythmic precision and ear for dynamics that makes you want to engage in a primal release, like jumping around your bedroom or driving your car really fast. Shed doesn't compromise an inch. It's 27 minutes of unrelenting punk rock that somehow manages to have just as many singalong moments as a Taylor Swift album. It's the Start Today of our generation, except infinitely darker. It only makes sense that hardcore legend and Gorilla Biscuits mastermind Walter Schreifles produced it. Shed is an essential piece of hardcore cannon, shaped by four kids who worshiped at the genre's altar, but knew how to stretch its limitations to create something unforgettable.
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Thanks again for reading! Here's some fun stats about my list that you might find interesting.
- The most represented year on my list was 2011, with nine albums finishing in the top 50.
- The least represented year was 2016, with only two albums.
- No albums from later than 2015 cracked the top ten of my list. Only two of the top 20 records were released after 2015.
- The record label with the most albums on my list was Triple-B records, with four albums. Deathwish Inc., was second, as they put out all three Self Defense Family records.
- Eight labels put out albums by multiple artists on this list. Those labels were: Top Dawg Entertainment, Triple-B Records, No Sleep Records, Closed Casket Activities, Southern Lord, Reaper Records, and Def Jam.
- SideOneDummy, Deathwish Inc., and Cash Money/Young Money Records all had multiple releases from the same artist.
- The artist with the most albums on the list was Self Defense Family (credited as End of a Year on You Are Beneath Me). They had three entries on the list. They're featured on the Mixed Signals comp as well.
- Title Fight and Drake are the only other repeat artists. Each had two projects on the list. Interestingly enough, all four of those albums cracked the top 15. Drake's 2015 retail mixtape If You're Reading This... it's Too Late barely missed the top 50.
- Only four of the albums on my list are from female artists or bands with permanent female members. Self Defense Family has two records with contributions from women. The other two artists on the list were Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift. I see this more as a personal problem than a reflection on the talented women in music.
I know I've said this twice already, but THANK YOU SO MUCH. THANK YOU SO MUCH to anyone who has read, shared, commented on and encouraged my writing over the past ten years. Thanks to all the bands who let me interview them in the last decade. It means the world to me. This blog has been one of the most enriching things in my life. This particular "End of a Decade" project was so fun and fulfilling for me to complete. Here's to another 10 years!
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