Micah’s Picks, The Best of Twenty Sixteen

Micah’s Picks: 2016’s Top 10 Albums

It’s been a great year for music. Here’s my second annual roundup of my favorite releases of the year, now with a top fifty song list and a complete list of songs that made my rotation this year.

Frank Ocean – Blonde

I will repeat myself. You will never read an unbiased Frank Ocean review from me. If you want to know how I feel about this album in detail, please read the review. I have a lot of faith in Frank Ocean’s ability to create the music he wants to make on his own terms and with his own voice, unadulterated. Solely based on the strength of his music, Frank rolled out two projects in a bewildering and fascinating fashion with no formal announcements or press. Frank hit record on a live stream and built a staircase in bursts over the course of two weeks. At the end of it, he released Endless, which I’ll go into more detail about later, and his masterpiece, Blonde.

Blonde is special. It’s cohesive, explosive, and deeply effective. It works the way my favorite albums do. It has immense peaks, soothing valleys, and holds up to the scrutiny of being picked apart song-by-song, moment-by-moment. After countless listens I still get goosebumps when I hear the intake of breath before the huge chorus hits at the end of “Self Control” and the hair on the back of my neck still stands at attention when “Nights” flips in the middle. It’s the one album that came out this year that I can still throw on and get excited each time the tracklist progresses. It’s genre-defying perfection and I’m so happy to have it. The four year wait has proven to be worth it and the combination of the rollout and quality of the music has vaulted Frank’s R&B status into the Beyonce-level stratosphere.

Read our full review here.

Chance the Rapper – Coloring Book

This year Chance and The Social Experiment proved that they are the kings of live music on television and the radio. You can review the evidence yourself:

Muhammad Ali Tribute at the ESPYs

Finish Line/Drown (featuring Noname) on SNL

Same Drugs on SNL

Angels (featuring Samba) on Colbert

Blessings (featuring Jamila Woods) on Fallon

Summer Friends (featuring Francis Starlite) on Good Morning America

No Problems (featuring Lil’ Wayne & 2 Chainz) on Ellen

Blessings (Reprise) (featuring Anthony Hamilton, Ty Dolla $ign, Raury & D.R.A.M. on Fallon

All We Got on BBC Radio 1

Kanye West – Ultralight Beam (featuring Chance the Rapper, Kirk Franklin, Kelly Price & The Dream)

Hundred Waters Show Me Love (Skrillex Remix) (featuring Chance the Rapper)

Snakehips – All My Friends (featuring Chance the Rapper & Tinashe)

Feel No Ways on BBC Radio 1

Sunday Candy at The White House

2016 was a huge comeback year for Chance The Rapper. After the lukewarm reaction to The Social Experiment’s Surf, Coloring Book was put together in a matter of months and given away for free. Chance’s strategy follows that of a grassroots politician. His door to door, heart to heart business mentality focuses on spreading his brand and his message to as many people as possible and only looking for returns on his tours and merchandising. This approach is only effective if the music is good and boy did Chance and The Social Experiment deliver on this project. The songwriting, instrumentation and contributions from the features (especially Francis Starlite) is top notch. I had high expectations for the follow up to Acid Rap and this album lived up to the hype and built my hopes for the next project.

Read our full review here.

Anderson .Paak – Malibu

This project came out almost a year ago. In fact, some of the promotional singles made the best of for last year. I love this album so much. Malibu formally introduces .Paak to the musical community after his breakout with Dr. Dre and showcases how diverse his sound can be while maintaining a high level of quality and integrity. He can rap, he can croon and he can drum with the best of them on electronic, boom-bap and syrupy R&B tracks. This album maintains a strange kind of cohesion in its wide diversity and has some of the strongest songwriting of any debut album of all time. Watch out for this man’s career trajectory.

Read our full review here.

Noname – Telefone

The debut album from the Chicago rapper is incredibly consistent, both in its production, lyrics, and delivery. Telefone is intimate, warm, but not always comforting. While the album sounds like a warm bath that makes your toes dance with satisfaction, Noname slips in challenging messages about violence, abortion and the difficulties her city faces. I love being able to listen to this album on two levels, the smooth, sonic level and the ah-ha provoking conscious level. There’s a lot to love here on one of the most overlooked projects of 2016.

Read our full review here.

Beyonce – Lemonade

I regret not writing a review for this album. There was a lot going on when this album came out and it simply slipped through the cracks. Eventually, it seeped in. Before her last album, I paid little attention to Beyonce, but her newfound sense of self and experimentation has transformed her from a pop sensation to an R&B pioneer, blending elements of Rap, Neo Soul and her own established foundation to create something groundbreaking and incredible. From the bangers to the ballads, Beyonce’s new record is unrelenting and I was surprised and thrilled from front to back.

NxWorries – Yes Lawd!

It may be cheating to put two albums from one artist on the list, so I’m going to do it twice, first here with Anderson .Paak’s collaboration with Knxwledge. If Malibu is a showcase of what .Paak can do when he diversifies his sound, Yes Lawd! Is a testament to what he can do when he entrusts the production to one producer and vows to make a whole album with a uniform sound. The project is an homage to blaxploitation and the 70’s pimp sound with psychedelic and soulful elements production underneath sing-rapping with unmatched swagger. You’ll be hard pressed to find another album from 2016 that’s as smooth as this one.

Read our full review here.

Frank Ocean – Endless

Endless is the second half of the one-two punch from Frank Ocean after his extended silence following Channel Orange. It is also a clever way to fulfil his contract with Def Jam, allowing him to release Blonde independently. By delivering a visual album to the label and self-releasing the true third album, Frank was able to fully control and profit from his second masterpiece. That being said, Endless has extraordinary songs and moments, despite it’s bare-bones and unfinished aesthetic. While there is some filler, the best tracks on here match up to the quality of those on Blonde, but with a much darker and hollow vibe. I didn’t expect two projects from my favorite R&B singer, let alone two great ones. I’m thrilled to have them both to get me through the next few years until Frank releases his next project.

Kendrick Lamar – untitled, unmastered

Are you kidding me? The B-Sides compilation from my favorite album of last year made the top 10 of this year? Either this year has been garbage, or Kendrick really is the messiah. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the middle, but I was surprised at the quality of this tape. There is something awesome about hearing the rawness of the primordial soup that birthed To Pimp a Butterfly and how Kendrick interacts with the musicians making the music, instead of simply rapping over it. Almost every song on this project made my rotation and I’m sure I’ll continue to return to it.

Read our full review here.

ScHoolboy Q – Blank Face LP

While this isn’t a project I can throw on at any time, when I’m in the mood for tough-guy, drive around with the windows down-rap, this really does the trick. ScHoolboy proved on Blank Face that he could make make an album that was cohesive, sonically dense, and at times experimental. While there are some big name features on this album, the quality of the project leans on the production from the TDE camp and ScHoolboy’s writing and performance. He really came into his own on this project and I’m excited to see where he takes it from here.

Read our full review here.

Kanye West – The Life of Pablo

You could argue that this album is a bit all over the place, both quality-wise and conceptually. For me, this album has some of Kanye’s greatest songs (Ultralight Beam & Real Friends) and some that I just don’t mess with. To some degree that’s been true of all of Kanye’s albums (except College Dropout, that album is perfect) and the high points on his latest album surpass those of anything he’s done since Twisted Fantasy. There’s something to be said about artists making their best music when their life is a mess and if the headlines about Kanye keep up the way they have I think we have a lot to look forward to from Kanye.

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