Commentary by Devin McCue, Sumner Newscow — After a month hiatus, Culture Cow is back and ready to close off the year with the top 10 best musical projects of the year.  2017 has been a spectacular year in the world of music and while it may be nearly impossible to nail down a definitive top tier from the plethora of albums to choose from, that’s exactly what I have for you today.

But before I start the list, a few notes about the criteria:

• I’ll be using the Grammy’s time table for eligibility of Oct. 1, 2016, and Sept. 30, 2017
  • I’ll actually  break this rule once;
  • (sorry Eminem);
• The order not only depends on musical ability, but also the quality of the structure of the overall project and the message it sends;
• Unfortunately, I have not listened to every album this year so if I miss your favorite it might be because
  • I have not heard it
  • It isn’t as good as you think it is
  • I left it off to personally spite YOU.

So without further ado, let’s get started…

10. Blkswn – Smino

Coming in at number 10 is a new artist out of Chicago named Smino and his studio debut, Blkswn.

kwBlkswn is a long album that showcases the young artist’s ability to switch up his style between melodic singing, quick-paced, rhymes, jazz-scat inspired bars, and much more.  Smino’s style is decidedly different from almost all of his peers and while it can be hard to understand him at times, he’s a far cry from a so-called “mumble-rapper.”  The album bounces back and forth from R&B, to Kudi/Kanye-esque symphonic songs, to traditional rap, from song to song.

The album is also riddled with secret bangers that won’t hit you until your third or fourth listen.  The stand-out tracks are Anita and the lead track Wild Irish Roses, but the more you listen to the young man from Chi-town the more you appreciate secret gems like Netflix & Dusse, Glass Flows, and a personal favorite, Edgar Allen Poe’d Up. 

9. Rainbow – Kesha

Rainbow is the first instance of the musicality of an album coming in second to the structure of the album itself and the message it sends.  The tracklist is full of stellar songs like Hymn, Praying, Boots, and Spaceship, to name a few, but that isn’t what earned Kesha a spot on this list.  What earned her the #9 slot was her transformation as an artist and how the sexual assault that plagued the last several years of her professional and personal life changed her as an artist.

Gone is the party-girl persona of her past (RIP “I got Jesus on my necklace-ace-ace…) replaced by a confident woman who won’t let her past define her future.  Kesha’s newest album is also a genre-bending smash hit with pulse-pounding bass-knocks juxtaposed with boot tapping country hits as well, which never hurts.  For CultureCow’s longer review of the album, click here

       8. Melodrama – Lorde

Lorde’s sophomore offering earned her the eighth spot on the list and the respect from music industry as a whole.  It’s not every year that the former Grammy winner Best New Artist tops themselves.  Lorde was an internet novelty whose studio debut nabbed her a Grammy, but few expected her to knock her old work out of the park so quickly.

Her new album, Melodrama, shows an already maturing artists, who’s wide vocal range and ability to innovate musically will propel her to fame and critical success for years to come.  The album was a collaboration project with producer Jack Antonoff that brings some of the best elements from the alt-pop genre and fuses it with Lorde’s hypnotizing voice for a marriage made in music heaven.  Lorde is on the cutting edge of her industry and is the lone challenger to Taylor Swift’s crown as the new Queen of Pop.

       7. Good Evening – Deorro

With the exception of #3, Good Evening is the only project on the list that isn’t nominated for a Grammy this year.  The Grammys traditional favor safe picks and seldom venture out to artists on the edge of the EDM world that are actively shaping the genre.  EDM is the secret driving force behind pop and rap and it’s important to pay attention to the top players in the area.  There are few EDM artists as accomplished as Deorro.  Deorro’s newest album, Good Evening, breaks sharply with most albums of the genre by having something noticeably absent from the rest…a plot!  In every other genre, it’s almost impossible to see success without a running message or narrative in an album, but EDM differs in that respect because of its relationship with the club and party scenes.  Good Evening is one of the first EDM masterpieces that tries to bring an element of congruence to its many songs.  It imitates an orchestra throughout the project, including a traditional intro and outro, several musical interludes, and even a fancy bowtie to don the album’s cover art.  Hopefully this trend takes hold in the genre and EDM can get the respect it deserves from those who still label it “silly dance music.”

6. Awaken My Love! – Childish Gambino

Childish Gambino, AKA Donald Glover, surprised everyone with his funky and soulful R&B album early this year.  This album was a clear departure from his earlier work that was almost exclusively rap and known more for its comedy than lyricism.  Gambino let everyone know he was a serious artist by dropping the best track on the album, Redbone, as a single before the release, much to the delighted surprise of his fans.  Awaken My Love is the closest thing to a Funkadelic album that ever existed and even borrows actual P-Funk samples throughout.  Gambino sings in such a unique way it sounds like he’s using a synthesizer at points, but never loses the human touch to it that makes his voice so enticing.  Awaken My Love is the favorite to win the Grammy for album of the year behind its funky vibes and breakout hit in Redbone, but it’s the secondary tracks like Zombies and California that make it a well-rounded R&B classic.

5. 4 Your Eyez Only – J. Cole

Cole’s fourth (“4” Your Eyez Only, get it??) studio album followed suit from his last smash hit Forest Hills Drive to even more fanfare.  Cole has some of the best fans in the rap game that hail him as the savior of the classic form of rap.  Critics complain that he’s too simple and relies on his storytelling to overshadow his weaker versus.  I side with the former rather than the latter and believe it’s his wonderful stories that make him such an enthralling lyricist.  4 Your Eyes Only is devoid of a bad song and lacks the superfluous features that many artists flood their albums with.  Cole strips down his style and appears solo on every track even when the story sounds like its being told from someone still in his home neighborhood.  It’s a conscious album that focuses on the plight of African Americans in America, displays Cole’s expert rhyming style, and derides mumble rap and its departure from direction Cole thinks rap should go.  Tracks like She’s Mine Pt. 1 & 2 and Folding Clothes show Cole’s personal as well as his professional growth.  He’s a new husband and father and the title track is a story to a future daughter about what makes a man and that this entire album was meant for her.  One of the best rap albums of the year and a damn shame it came in such a competitive year.

4. Flower Boy – Tyler the Creator

Rap fans might disagree with this placement because Tyler the Creator’s rhymes aren’t up to the same par as Cole, but it’s his skills as a producer that propelled the Flower Boy to the fourth spot.  I’ve listened to this album more than any other this year and Tyler’s seamless incorporation oh his deep baritone into his self-composed beats that keep me returning again and again.

There’s a more personal connection between artist and music when he or she creates every part of a song; think Kid Kudi and Kanye West.  Tyler the Creator is a better producer than he is a rapper, but that should in no part take away from his skills a lyricist.  He can bounce from heartfelt lines like :

“Truth is, since a youth kid, thought it was a phase.  Thought it’d be like the phrase; “poof,” gone, But, it’s still goin’ on”

In Garden Shed to his signature wild outbursts like “—- global warming, my neck is so frío I’m currently lookin’ for ’95 Leo. My mom say she worried because I’m so ill.  I should stay in bed, but got too much bread to make, she said watch my weight So I stayed home and start eatin’ some meals.  Get out of my way, way boy that’s McLaren, that’s zero to sixty in two-point-nueve, I’m gone.”

In his breakout single Who Dat Boy.  Unlike his previous albums, Tyler takes a more somber and serious tone as he walks us through his difficult process of coming out and his troubles with dealing with such emotions and helping others with the same issue.  Rarely do we get to see an artist grow up in front of our eyes in the rap game.

3. Reputation – Taylor Swift

This is the album I break the first rule on.  It technically doesn’t meet the time requirement to be considered for this Grammy cycle, but I make the rules and I want to include it.  For a track by track listening guide to the album check out the CultureCow article from just after its release, here.

Reputation changed the entire pop genre and its effects will be felt for the next few years and further than that, it marks the new direction the Queen of Pop, T. Swizzle, will be taking in her career.  It wont win any Grammys this time around, but watch for next year when Taylor will have to bring a wagon with her down the red carpet to carry all her trophies.

2. 24K Magic – Bruno Mars

This album is why I believe the time frame Grammys use isn’t very effective.  24K Magic came out in 2016, but its timing means it’s being considered for Grammys this year.  Although it’s technically in the pop category, I have a hard time labeling it as such.  This album is nothing short of a timeless, genre-shattering, musical anomaly.  No one is doing anything close to Bruno Mars.  He denies any normal expectation of a pop album and hits us with a 10-track powerhouse album every few years that we can listen to for the rest of our lives.

If you played this album to someone living under a rock that’s never heard of Bruno Mars, he might tell you it was made in the 70s…or 80s…or 60s…or 2020s!  It’s near impossible to fix a time to this album because it’s punchy, soulful, and hype elements come from his silky-smooth voice and strong brass elements rather than any modern form of music production.

Bruno Mars only does 2 things: seduces women and makes genius music about seducing women.

Honorable Mentions

Before I unveil the pick for #1 best album of the year, I’d like to take a moment to honor a few that didn’t quite make the cut.  Drake broke the rules and didn’t make an ablum, but a playlist instead, titled More Life.  Newcomers Khalid and Jessie Reyez emerged as some of my favorite rookie artists with their albums American Teen and Kiddo.

SZA and K. Michelle dropped my favorite R&B albums of the year titled Ctrl and KIMBERLY: The People I Used to Know.  Old Dominion came the closest of any country artist to this list with their remarkable sophomore album Happy Endings.  And I’d be remiss to leave out the absolute bombshell year the city of Atlanta had.  Migos had Culture, 2 Chainz had his best album of his career, Pretty Girls Like Trap Music, and my favorite rapper in the game, Young Thug, had 2 new albums including the single-dropping brilliance of Beautiful Thugger Girls.  Let’s also not forget to mention that Gucci Mane is back and hitting us with album after album.

1. DAMN – Kendrick Lamar

DAMN combines wonderful musicality with tongue-twisting lyrics, complex double and triple entendres, and brilliant album structure.  Kendrick only makes conscious albums and each of his projects takes a look inward on his own life to comment on the environment of the world today.  A self-described poet and philosopher, K-Dot uses DAMN to examine the troubling times African Americans live in and the history of institutional racism meant to keep them in an oppressed state.

Apart from that central message, Kendrick takes shots at his peers like Big Sean and remarks at the heaviness of the crown he bears as best rapper in the game.  The album is far more than just a sum of its best tracks, but the individual tracks on DAMN are some of the best of Kendrick’s career.

HUMBLE might win the Grammy for song of the year and rightfully so; it’s one of the most bumping songs I’ve ever heard courtesy of Mike-Will-Made-It and let the public know just how hard the young rapper from Compton was going to go on his latest project.  LOYALTY shows Kendrick can cross over into pop-esque territory and takes a shot at Drake and other pop-rappers by morphing the chorus from Uptown Funk as the hook for this song and casts Rhianna as the feature (although she raps for the first time rather than sings).  Perhaps better than its music is DAMN’s album structure.

This is no more evident than the fact that the album can be played either forward or backwards for two entirely different tones.  Played forward, the album is an angry fit of expert rhyming and live outbursts with constant call-forwards to later in the album and forms a complex narrative that takes a few listens to unravel.  When played in reverse order, however, DAMN starts with Kendrick calmly pleading with his creator to understand why his race is so oppressed and walks through his journey to find that answers.

It’s the ability to tell two wildly different stories with the same subject material and still come out with a commercially successful album that sets Kendrick apart from his contemporaries and earns this spot as the best musical project of 2017.

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