With 2013 almost in the books, we turned to some of the year’s most creative minds to help us figure out the best albums of the past 12 months. Listen up.
With more music available to listeners than ever before, sifting through what’s hot and what’s not can be more than a little overwhelming. So we brought in a little help, recruiting 15 of the year’s most influential creatives to cue us in on their favorite albums of the year. After all, who better to turn to than those who had their finger on the pulse of pop culture?
From Elliott Wilson, the CEO of Rap Radar who conducted CRWN sit-downs with Macklemore, Drake and R. Kelly, to Majical Cloudz, whose sophomore album Impersonator vaulted the Montreal duo to the forefront of indie pop, the creative community weighed in on what was coursing through their speakers this year. As you’d expect, their selections spanned the gamut of musical genres, including the indie rock stylings of Vampire Weekend, the smooth and sultry singing of Wale and the brash unpredictability of Kanye West. So get comfortable, turn up your speakers and get listenin’.
Photo by Ray Yau
Elliott Wilson, CEO of Rap Radar
Album: Drake, Nothing Was the Same
Label: OVO/YMCMB/Republic
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Because he had the best tunes. I think it’s the best albums. It’s the best songs. Why did you win the game? You scored the most points. No, I think it’s a great album. I think there’s people very critical of it. I think it’s his best album in terms of his balancing of singing and rapping. I think him and [Noah] “40” [Shebib] did a masterful job of it.
I think the hard part is that it’s… Any album that come out now is measured against [Kendrick Lamar’s] good kid, m.A.A.d city, which is a traditional hip-hop album in the sense of the skits and the structuring and the sequencing and, you know, it sort of pays homage more to that. And they executed it flawlessly and incredible. So Kendrick makes his five-star classic album, so every album is judged like, am I gonna buy a whole album, you know? Am I getting this complete beginning-to-end ride? And I think that Kendrick did that so well that nobody’s gonna do it the exact same way or else they’re gonna look like they’re biting. So I think Drake found a different way to do it musically, and maybe you don’t like every song on there if you’re fan, but I enjoy most of the songs.
I have love/hate with “305 to My City.” Like, it entertains me, but I don’t like it necessarily as a record. But I feel like musically they were able to do it in a way, organically, by the arrangement and the moves and the—and the motive of the record. So I applaud them for that. You know, I think it should be celebrated a little bit more.
But I think that Kendrick has done a great job in 2013 keeping himself relevant, you know. They’re now positioned as rivals so I think [Nothing Was the Same is] not getting as much embrace from people that are Kendrick Lamar fans, ’cause they’re like, they can’t like Kendrick and can’t like Drake at the same time or fully embrace him.
And I like Kendrick and I like Drake, but I think [NWTS] may be the best album of the year, clearly, that came out in 2013.
Betty Who, Musician
Album: Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dream
Label: RCA Records
Release Date: September 25, 2012
Kaleidoscope Dream might have been my favorite album of the year. I think, actually did it come out in 2012? I’ve been listening to it this year, though. And there’s an artist that I am obsessed with that not a lot of people know about. And they have an EP out right now [titled The Story]. And their name is KING. “In the Meantime” is like the most amazing song. That’s a single off of an album that they're putting out in January. But their EP, The Story EP that has “The Story,” “Hey” and “Supernatural,” is just like, it’s such amazing music. So that’s special. The second that I heard [that] this year, I was so blown away and I want everyone to know about them.
Photo by Noe Richard
Speedy Ortiz, Band
Album: Earl Sweatshirt, Doris; J. Cole, Born Sinner
Label: Tan Cressida/Columbia; Dreamville/Roc Nation/Columbia
Release Date: August 20, 2013; June 14, 2013
Sadie Dupuis (guitar/vox): I really like the Earl Sweatshirt album.
Darl Ferm (bass): Yeah, I was gonna say J. Cole just to not shout out my friends for once.
Sadie: J. Cole was really good, too. I played it too much. Of our friends’ albums, [the label] Exploding in Sound has had a really great year. And everything they put out is one of my favorite records ever. But if I picked one of those, I would have to pick among my best friends. So I’ll pick Earl Sweatshirt instead so that maybe he’ll become my best friend.
Darl: Yeah, our key is to try to make some friends through these interviews.
Sadie: Earl, we’ll give you beats. Call us up.
Darl: I’d love to be friends with J. Cole.
Sadie: I’d say, I can play piano. Call me up, bro. I got some beats for you. We went to see [Earl Sweatshirt] all together when we were in North Carolina. That was, like, the best band field trip ever.]
Mary Lambert, Musician, Spoken Word Poet
Album: Tegan and Sara, Heartthrob; James Blake, Overgrown
Label: Warner Bros.; Universal Records
Release Date: January 29, 2013; April 9, 2013
I love Tegan and Sara’s album. I love it. It’s a super good record. You know who else put a really good record out I just loved it ’cause it was just so weird? James Blake’s record. But I didn’t expect anything less from James Blake to be a little weird.
A$AP Ferg, Rapper
Album: A$AP Ferg, Trap Lord
Label: A$AP Worldwide/Polo Ground/RCA
Release: August 20, 2013
My shit was [my favorite album]. Mine was the most innovative. It’s the freshest music, it’s nothing you ever heard before. It’s new everything. I was the first nigga to integrate the old artists with the new artists on new tracks. To have legendary niggas do songs with young niggas that’s coming up in the game, I was the first to do that. Not only that but I have a fresh new sound that’s going to be relevant the next year and the year after that. I was doing album cuts when nobody was doing album cuts. My shit is just the bomb. The way my album is sequenced, it’s just like one big ass song. You can run through the whole album from start to finish. There might be some songs you can relate to more than others but that album has a song for everybody. It has one for your mother to listen to, it has one for your grandmother to relate to, there’s a song for your fucking pastor to relate to. There’s a song that you can listen to to get turnt up up in the club. There’s all types of shit for people to relate to.
Lizzy Caplan, Actor
Album: Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
Label: XL Recordings
Release: May 14, 2013
I really like The National’s record [Trouble Will Find Me]. But I actually think my favorite album, which definitely took me by surprise, was that Vampire Weekend album [Modern Vampires of the City]. God, I love that. I’ve been obsessively listening to it. I came to it late because I had the one before it [2010’s Contra], and it was OK, but this was like they kicked it up to the next level. And now I’m a huge fan.
Aloe Blacc, Musician
Album: Gregory Porter, Liquid Spirit
Label: Blue Note Records
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Gregory Porter is one of the most important voices in contemporary music. His 2013 major label debut, Liquid Spirit, on Blue Note Records, is an exhibition of exemplary musicianship, lyricism and artistic prowess. A song like “No Love Dying” reminds me of what good songwriting really is. In a marketplace where it is difficult to find the true talents within the noise, Porter gives me hope and inspiration to continue making music.
Weekend, Band
Album: Pity Sex, Feast of Love
Label: Run for Cover
Release Date: June 25, 2013
I unexpectedly fell in love with the new Pity Sex record. They were also the best band I saw at CMJ, which made me appreciate them even more.
Taran Killam, Actor/Comedian
Album: Haim, Days Are Gone
Label: Polydor
Release Date: September 27, 2013
Haim are so amazing, right? The first song I heard by them was “Falling” and I instantly fell in love with it. Even though they didn’t play that song on Saturday Night Live, they played it at soundcheck for us, which was so cool of them to do. Oh, and if their music wasn’t great enough when they were here, I also found out that that we both went to LAHSA, which is Los Angeles High School for the Arts. They’re a little bit younger than me so we didn’t have any classes together but it still feels so nice to see these small circles come together.
Majical Cloudz, Band
Album: Dirty Beaches, Drifters/Love Is the Devil
Label: Zoo Music
Release Date: May 21, 2013
I first listened to Drifters/Love Is the Devil while Matt and I were driving through the desert in August on a U.S. tour. Being in the car all day forced me to sit with the record, listening to it from front to back repeatedly. The first thing that impressed me about it was the atmosphere that it conjures. The power of the record is more than the sum of its parts. It creates a world that the listener steps into. As I listened to it more, I listened more deeply. First I was impressed by the big picture, but then I was impressed by the details. The strange, powerful chords playing beneath the drum machine in “Mirage Hall”; the pop hooks in “ELLI”; the emotional weight and power of “Love is the Devil.” I’ve walked around listening to this album on headphones more times than I can count in the second half of this year. It has meant a lot to me in a very personal way, and also inspired me artistically. It’s great! Go listen to it.
SOHN, Musician
Album: Kanye West, Yeezus
Label: Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella
Release Date: June 18, 2013
Oh damn yeah, it’s massive, it’s easily the biggest record to come out this year in terms of what it did. It’s an incredible, incredible influential record. Huge. What I liked about it the most was the fact that I didn’t like it at first. That was probably the thing. I had to learn to like it by getting used to the idea of what it was going to be. Because I was the same, I think, when I first listened to it. I was like, ooh, um, yeah, I’m not really sure about that at all. I think what’s amazing about that record and what’s amazing about what it does for music in general is that it’s now stretched a boundary. You can’t go back. Those doors are now open in mainstream music, those doors are now open and you can’t close them ever again. That’s the incredible thing about that record. No one has been brave enough to do something like that for a long time.
Nick Catchdubs, DJ/Producer
Album: Drake, Nothing Was the Same; Kanye West, Yeezus; Speedy Ortiz, Major Arcana
Label: OVO/YMCMB/Republic; Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella; Carpark
Release Date: September 24, 2013; June 18, 2013; July 12, 2013
I feel like the Drake record and the Kanye record were really big for me. On the rock side I really liked the Speedy Ortiz record. Just personally, I like when there’s a contrast of the sweet and sour. I love the airy female vocals over this knotted, grungy rock music. But honestly, it's harder and harder to find album-type stuff that leaves you with that sort of effect.
This was a huge singles year—every one is, but this one in particular. On the dance music side of things, a guy like DJ Snake had an amazing year. He’s got tracks on the Lady Gaga record, he’s had two or three of the biggest club play records this year. He’s actually doing music that is at the nexus of your sort of trap music and this new twerky, mid-tempo bounce sound that’s coming out.
Nico Muhly, Composer
Album: Kanye West, Yeezus
Label: Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella
Release Date: June 18, 2013
Honestly, I was so unprepared for it to be as amazing as it was. I was prepared for it to be great but I was unprepared for the magnitude of it. It reminded me so much about what I loved about Nine Inch Nails in the ’90s. It insisted in this idea that you could have silence in the middle of a song—digital silence—absolute zero, uncomfortable silence. And quick switches. Things I had been interested in in classical music for a long time. It felt like, all of a sudden in a mass way, that those ideas were not considered insane. It was so good and so extreme at the same time in that the extremeness and the goodness became linked.
Yo Gotti, Rapper
Album: Wale, The Gifted; J. Cole, Born Sinner
Label: Maybach Music Group/Atlantic; Roc Nation/Columbia/Dreamville
Release: June 24, 2013; June 18, 2013
My favorite album would have to be between Wale’s The Gifted and J. Cole’s Born Sinner. I think I like Wale’s album. Those are my favorite two and I actually like both of ‘em, but Wale’s album as more what I was into at the time. A song that stood out was—what’s the name of the song I always sing—“Rotation.” [Sings] “Five blunts in rotation.” I like that record. I really liked J. Cole’s album, too. “Rich Niggaz,” he had a stupid, crazy flow on that record. It was a different flow, different rap pattern the way he came on that record. It was crazy. I also listened to my album [I Am] right before it came out. [Laughs] I already heard it so many times, I know it back and forth.
Danny Brown, Rapper
Album: Chief Keef, Finally Rich
Label: Interscope
Release: December 18, 2012
I really like Chief Keef, and I say that album because it’s fun to me. I listen to it a lot. I think I listen to that album more than any other album, that’s why I had to go with that choice. Chief Keef’s just fun to me, man! What’s the name of that song…[Laughs] I can’t even remember the song title. “Laughin’ to the Bank” is my favorite one. Real inspiring. If I were an entertainer as a teen, I would’ve probably been like Chief Keef. I guess I can relate to him a lot. This year, I really like Young Thug. I think he’s just been consistently releasing good music all throughout this year, and it has been getting better and better. The last few songs he released, “Stoner” and “Danny Glover,” are the best he’s—it’s just getting better and better. I could see really big things happening for him in 2014.
