End of the road. Sure, our top album is hardly a shocker but when you consider that Sun On The Sand hasn’t been one for consensus in its brief existence, this year’s winner must be a special effort. If all this wondrous music and writing hasn’t sufficed, stay tuned for some 2010 extras in the coming days.
Honorable Mentions
#50-41
#40-31
#30-21
#20-11
10. Broken Social Scene – Forgiveness Rock Record
Cohesiveness has never been a calling card for the collection of Canadians known as Broken Social Scene. Considering the amount of talented musicians they have contributing towards You Forgot It In People and Broken Social Scene, it’s not surprising those efforts ended up sounding more like mixtapes than proper full-lengths. But on Forgiveness Rock Record, a sense of direction and purpose is clearly present; everything feels like it’s in its right place. Despite, or maybe because of, its title, ‘World Sick’ is as wide-reaching as any track Broken Social Scene has ever written, with several guitars taking the song across multiple countries and continents. ‘Texico Bitches’ is delightfully bouncy, an unnatural yet successful pairing with its political lyrics. The playful squeaks and squalls of ‘Ungrateful Little Father’ are accompanied halfway through by a subtle yet welcome addition of harmonica. The bubbly ‘All To All’ is a shining moment for first-time album contributor Lisa Lobsinger, delivering a subtle yet gorgeous vocal performance. ‘Meet Me In The Basement’, an instrumental which Kevin Drew described at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival as “the band’s new theme song”, is quite simple in structure, yet the joyful nature of the guitar, drums, and horns leaves the listener begging for the tune to continue on and on. While some may miss the eclectic nature of previous BSS offerings, Forgiveness Rock Record is a testament to how rewarding a unifying vision can be. – Max Logan
9. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid
It’s an album completely devoid of an editor, an attempt at pushing artistic impudence and ambition to its fullest, most bombastic sense. It is bigger and more gargantuan than most of the records on this list combined, a soliloquy that would require the assistance of at least a half-dozen contributors to properly perform. It is a testament to the album as a previously vacuous form, a rebirth of the long play through its unmatched grandiloquence; to the genre, a style that was largely thought to have died along with its king; and to the artist itself, a statement so overarching and ubiquitous that its headlining guest stars become mere cogs in the larger system being developed, their names and significance being swallowed whole by the size of said album.
No, I’m not talking about Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, nor Sufjan’s The Age Of Adz, though you would be forgiven for thinking so. Rather, the biggest little secret in the music business, Janelle Monáe and her simultaneously genteel and ghastly debut album The ArchAndroid. In it, Monáe has birthed another world, a cosmic dream of robots and messiahs and magnets and endtimes and literally every genre you can possibly conceive. To wit: sappy adult contemporary (‘Sir Greendown’), Nico-inspired baroque pop (’57821′), psychedelic rock (‘Mushrooms & Roses’), Whitney-Houston-esque pop R&B (‘Oh, Maker’), space-age soul (‘Make The Bus’), psychobilly (‘Come Alive (The War Of The Roses)’), whatever the fuck ‘Wondaland’ is, and so, so, so much funk.
But where Kanye and Sufjan feel as if they’re going out of their way to exceed their already oversized personalities, to achieve something rather than just create something with their latest releases, The ArchAndroid feels like all Monáe all the time, the 70 minutes, 18 tracks, and genre-hopping necessary to properly contain her. No editor would find a single thing worth dropping, not without damaging the bigger picture she’s painting — or rather, painting, sculpting, frescoing, carving, lacquering, etc., etc., etc. — or sacrificing some necessary part of the story of who Monáe is. And that is, a gigantic, huge, overblown personality, a person for whom tags like “prodigy” and “jack-of-all-trades” just don’t seem to cut it, for whom “genre” and “experience” are simply things to step over. Within The ArchAndroid, Monáe’s character is a Christ-like figure, an android that is to redeem the rest of her android race from their oppression and dissociation with freedom and love. It seems it’s about time we start viewing her the same way in reality, too. – Brian Riewer
8. Bibi Tanga & The Selenites – Dunya
You can file this album under my most pleasant surprise of the year thanks to a recommendation by a fellow staffer. Bibi Tanga’s third album — first with The Selenites — is part funk, part jazz, part African, and it all works in different and amazing ways. It comes as no surprise then that Tanga spent much of his childhood traveling throughout parts of Africa and Europe. ‘Swing Swing’ is a delicately balanced and woven funk piece that moves along at a perfect pace. The title track evokes the term “groovy” and it’s hard not to find yourself loving and singing along with it after multiple listens. Tanga advises “let me take you to a place where southern happiness shines, all the time” and I’m more than happy to oblige. While the influences are heavy and evident throughout, Tanga & co. shine brightest when they are creating something uniquely their own. ‘Be Africa’ sports a heavy bass line over what sounds like electronic beats and lyrics in a tongue I do not recognize. The fact that I cannot pinpoint exactly what is going down just makes it all the more entrancing. Truly great records take their influences and add something new to them, eventually changing the future of whatever genre they are a part of. While pinning down exactly what genre Bibi Tanga & The Selenites inhabit is work for a much wiser man than I, whatever genre it may be will find Tanga at the head of it, sporting a sizable distance between he and his next competitor. – Joe Mateo
7. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
With a “band” like Gorillaz, we always expect some great tunes and good times throughout the course of an album but perhaps we didn’t expect such a concise and brilliant vision to play itself out quite like Plastic Beach did. Usually, records that rely so much on collaborations and unrestricted genre barriers tend to hit a few brick walls here and there but that cannot be said about Gorillaz’s third album. Damon Albarn reminded a few people that he is very much the most consistent British songwriter since David Bowie and that post-Blur, he remains extremely relevant. While Albarn’s voice on tracks such as ‘Rhinestone Eyes’ and ‘On Melancholy Hill’ will leave you wanting a lot more from the singer, every guest vocalist is perfectly cast. UK rappers Bashy and Kano introduce themselves to a bigger world splendidly on ‘White Flag’, Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals) is glorious on ‘Superfast Jellyfish’, and Bobby Womack rolls back the years with his vocal on ‘Stylo’. There is an overriding theme of global responsibility and condemnation of over-consumption, over-population, and waste throughout the album but it’s by no means preachy in any way. While there is a message there for everyone to hear if they want, at the same time this record is one hell of a party. The midway shift from crooning space cowboy to outer space lazer disco on ‘Empire Ants’ is a particularly magic moment on the album but Plastic Beach is full of such occasions. This is an album that finds influence from pretty much every continent of the planet in some form. In a time where such a large contingent of pop music is driven by a Simon-Cowell-driven media circus of fake bullshit, here is something very real, full of artistic vision and intent. Up front, it may all appear to be just a cartoon but behind the scenes, herein lies the work of a genius and some very talented friends. – Matthew James
6. Beach House – Teen Dream
This year has seen quite a few albums released to almost overwhelming hype, some building anticipation prior to release and others generating buzz based upon early reactions. Beach House’s third album came out in January and immediately hopped into the latter category, within weeks being labeled an “album of the year” contender. It seems to happen annually, the crowning of the first solid album as the year’s best, but frequently said album falls off a bit, or gets completely buried by releases later in the year. So how did an album of sleepy, meandering pop songs withstand the months and myriad albums to stay in the top 10?
I listened to Teen Dream quite a bit the first week it was out, then like most hype albums it was shelved for a while and revisited a couple times a month. In between listens, I would drop it farther down the running list in my head, but each time I came back to it, I was reminded just how good it is and as a result it kept its spot among the year’s best. As to why this album stands up, that falls on Victoria Legrand. Teen Dream doesn’t cover a whole lot of ground sonically. Simple beats and keys, with the occasional raw piano or disco pulse for depth, can only go so far, and it isn’t that Alex Scally’s accompaniments are lacking. They’re perfect, but they are just that: vehicles for Legrand’s throaty, raspy wailing. And what sets this third try apart from their first two efforts is a marriage between inescapable melodies and powerful writing. Each of the first four tracks can be found bouncing around my head for days after listening, particularly opener ‘Zebra’ and highlight ‘Walk In The Park’.
But what keeps listeners coming back is Legrand’s openness, dealing with relationship stress and doubt on almost every track, weathering the emotional body blows and responding in turn. She sounds almost defeated on ‘Silver Soul’, moaning “it is happening again”, but then she goes on the offensive, accusatory on ‘Better Times’ with “my heart stands for nothing and your soul’s too weak”, and dismissive on ‘Walk In The Park’, self-assured that “In a matter of time you would slip from my mind/in and out of my life you would slip from my mind.” It’s this force that won over so many listeners at the beginning of the year, and eleven months later, it still resonates. – Paul Bulow
5. How To Dress Well – Love Remains
How To Dress Well’s debut Love Remains is, more than any other album released this year, a Rorschach test, telling more about the listener by their reaction to it than the record itself. Personally, I hear Justin Vernon’s cabin-dwelling Bon Iver character, having happened upon a thrift store keyboard and drum machine as replacement for his acoustic guitar. Staff writer Paul Bulow stated in his review that he heard scraps of TV On The Radio and chillwave pumping through Thomas Krell’s veins. Additional testimonies include a bit of Grouper, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, and Burial; the ghostly apparitions of R. Kelly and Brian McKnight, or The-Dream in collaboration with David Lynch; and the bedroom tapes of a previous incarnation of James Blake while in the midst of a Céline Dion binge.
But the one quality that remains static, that overrides all the aesthetic differences people see in Krell’s music is the longing, the aching want that pervades his entire being. He takes R&B’s sultry, desiring tones and turns them into mea culpas begging for some sense of acceptance, retaining the anticipation but removing any expectation of its being fulfilled. With this attitude in hand and a collection of fizzing and popping, overworked lo-fi beats, Krell has turned in the best debut of 2010, a record that jumps eras and genres upon a feeling that anyone can attest to.
Assessing Krell on the quality of his lyricism is damn near impossible, as his vocals are constantly eaten up by a wall of static, his strains overworking whatever archaic recording system he’s relying on for this album, but this is probably for the best as it forces the listener to consider his emotional charge ahead of his literary one. Standouts like ‘Ready For The World’ and ‘You Won’t Need Me Where I’m Goin’ thus rely on Krell’s dynamic, heart-wrenching falsetto for their staying power, the former dependent upon his ability to push wavering vocal excesses over a short repeating female vocal sample and the latter upon the yearning and despondency in his harmonies and his sample’s emotional vacuum. Others likewise succeed on his skill in rendering sentiment in the absence of balladry: ‘Can’t See My Own Face’ is crafted upon its doleful beat and Krell’s pious meanderings, ‘Lover’s Start’ is banged out through a tinny guitar piece and cooing melodrama, and ‘Suicide Dream 2′ sets Krell at his most pained against a backdrop of translucent pianos. Regardless of the actual words being said, though, the message of the album is plainly clear: “I am here, I am alone, and I am despairing. But I remain hopeful.” – Brian Riewer
4. The National – High Violet
High Violet is a perfect nightcap. Matt Berninger’s velvety vocals pair with raising energy of the slow-building instrumentation like whiskey and ice. This was The National’s most highly anticipated album yet and it welcomed their broader audience with greater depths of exploration. There’s a grandiosity contained within each track and the Brooklyn troupe expertly keep that grandiosity on the verge of combustion without ever tumbling over the edge. It’s that masterful restraint working in tandem with emotional peaks and valleys that highlights their fifth full-length album. High Violet hits a high point early with ‘Sorrow’ as Bryan Devendorf’s drums open a light rain against the windows, inviting the rest of the band to join in with subtle ambiance that grows in intensity as the song modestly strolls along. The lyrics chronicle a very personal relationship with sorrow, as it grows dependent with the reoccurring confession: “I don’t wanna get over you.” A couple of tracks later with ‘Afraid Of Everyone’, The National take on the musical flavor of anthemic and sinister rock ‘n’ roll. Otherworldly voices gently rise and fall underneath Berninger, creating a host of ghostlike traveling companions for this paranoid exodus. The enchantingly brief guitar trills make for an addictive centerpiece that only becomes more enticing each time they come around.
A few entries later, The National present us with one of the most memorable and powerful tracks they’ve released to date. ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ opens with an aggressive rock beat that captivates while the melody simmers for 21 seconds before reaching a full boil. The spot-on vocal delivery is one of The National’s greatest strengths and it’s at its most powerful here. When Berninger sings “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees”, the music mimics that very same swarm and carries the listener off to the dark, guilt-ridden Ohio of memory. After an album’s worth of narrative and emotional swells, The National leave us with ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’, a slower song buoyed by light instrumentation and Berninger’s vocals cradling the album home from the highest portion of his baritone. A vulnerable exit to wrap up the act’s biggest and most assured outing to date. – Jeremy Schaefer
3. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
Aural intimacy is by and large associated with honeyed and domestic sounds. Downy ambience, slender spines, the vagaries of numb or dejected troubadours, these are generally the templates framing “personal” albums — the stuffy, almost claustrophobic ones which don’t greet us with open arms but absentmindedly forget to shut the door before resuming the pity party. They’re anchored to the minute, a particular moment unfurling in a particular locus. It’s fairly odd then, that this year, the release dragging us through the soul-searching trenches most viscerally originates from an artist toppling the walls of post-Dilla beats to pioneer a “space opera” into lands and eras far-flung from his former instrumental hip hop residence.
For his third full-length, Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus heads home by embarking on a musical heritage tour conflating his origins and oeuvre. Over the course of Cosmogramma‘s 17 songs, he treads sundry causeways ranging from jazz to minimal techno to ascertain a defining tenor laying beyond the grasp of Los Angeles‘ parochial provinces. Unlike dime-a-dozen acts dabbling in exotic cues as gimmickry, Ellison’s trek is anything but blithe or flimsy. This is not a safari, it’s a pilgrimage, a tireless sprawl continuously dusting off trails in the sweeping landscape or diving in the morass to ensure he isn’t betraying his roots. His nod to lineage is most lucid when honoring the Coltrane in his blood on ‘Arkestry’ and ‘Recoiled’, the former’s eager drums drifting in and out of the portrait pining for an exit where they may exhale freely while the latter mines clandestine sites both supple and scatterbrained. Extending well beyond the two jazz-heavy cuts, an exploratory disposition colors just about every track on show. Shuttled down a slide of watery bells and skittery whistles, Thom Yorke’s meek yet mesmerizing voice nudges nagging questions into the ether on ‘…And The World Laughs With You’. Elsewhere, the suspended waltz of a grainy spacefaring documentary score is littered with footsteps toward the myriad doors presented on ‘MmmHmm’, chomping at the bit to uncover the luster of interstellar dimensions.
Cosmogramma‘s assiduous search bears spectacular rewards, but what’s most riveting is the many shapes it assumes. FlyLo’s quest is a colossal and clamorous melting pot of sounds and spirits, a glimmering lattice confirming the man’s inventive brio as a beat conductor while also baring an inner enterprise for direction. His muddled stream of consciousness dips and dives to tumescent techno on ‘Do The Astral Plane’, he’s baffled by the din of raindrops upon tin cans on ‘Satelllliiiiiiiteee’, he scrambles to secure his family’s voice amid malicious synthesized splinters on ‘Drips/Auntie’s Harp’, and through it all, he emerges lost as ever. The profound yearning he can’t evade stirs him down to the bone and occupies the faintest nips of solace, as on the feathery gem ‘Table Tennis’ during which Ellison’s pounding yen for purpose swallows the lulls between the babel of ping pong balls, brushing the number in dense coats of dubiety and distance. Guest Laura Darlington chronicles the restless ache tearing into his side with a splendid vocal showing, leaning toward the nonchalant on one hand and the utterly forlorn on the other, gradually sinking into oblivion. Even thousands of leagues below, there’s no fleeing his implacable arriere pensees.
The cloistered and earthbound grounds of 1983 and Los Angeles have been kind if quelling to Ellison, and he feels destined for something bigger, for broader and more bountiful galaxies which he only begins to sink his teeth into on Cosmogramma. He’s finally spread his wings, and though he casts a mountainous shadow over his peers in the process, the peaks attained are ancillary to the flight’s true course. When he lands, he needs to know he can do so with heartsease in tow. In a seemingly insatiable thirst for repose, Flying Lotus has vacated the cozy confines of his house for it was never a home. – Vinh Cao
2. The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt
Despite having spent the entire extent of my 22 years of existence in the grasp of Chicago’s sadistic weather patterns, I’m still never ready for when the weather turns cold, and good lord, this year was certainly no exception. To cope, outside of excessively layering every warm article of clothing I own every time I go outside (I’m going on six years without owning a winter jacket, because I am an extremely stupid person), I turn to the cuddly warm embrace of folk music. Usually wrapping me up in their graceful guitar work and au naturel vocals are the likes of Bon Iver, Bill Callahan, Nick Drake, and Iron & Wine, and with the release of his sophomore record The Wild Hunt, The Tallest Man on Earth has joined that list.
Not that Shallow Grave, his more restless debut, was anything to thumb your nose at; that album is still arguably Kristian Matsson’s best, a colossal, hyperactive work detailing Matsson’s figurative transformation into this “Tallest Man On Earth” mythological figure, controller of the weather (‘The Blizzard’s Never Seen The Desert Sands’, ‘Into The Stream’) and of nature (‘The Sparrow And The Medicine’, ‘Where Do My Bluebirds Fly’), an omnipotent being (‘I Won’t Be Found’) or possibly a fraud, though one possessing good intentions (‘The Gardener’). It was jammed to the brim with fantastical, druidical happenings, with promises of rivers being tied up in vines, deserts disappearing into the narrator’s eye, tears being hidden in dew, along with a fair share of lines that are sure to stay with you until the day you die, such as “I have set my house on fire ’cause I don’t need it anymore” and “the death will grow my jasmine, I find it soothing I’m afraid”.
But where Shallow Grave relies on youthful exuberance and fanciful musings, The Wild Hunt is a far more controlled, mature record, with Matsson’s head out of the clouds and in the real world. Borne of pain, borne of anguish, borne of the unyielding march of years, The Wild Hunt resolves itself not with whimsy and fantasy but with a dose of reality, its songs feeling far more melancholy and adult than those of Shallow Grave. Detailing a complicated relationship in ‘You’re Going Back’, Matsson crows, “Let us float in the tears, let us cry from the laughters/When it’s not for some sake and the city’s not near”, an account of the ups and downs experienced with this person and the loving light he puts it in, though despite his love he or she is leaving him as shown in the refrain, “Well now, you’re going back” and the bridge, “You said, ‘Driver, please, don’t go that fucking way’/You said, ‘Just let it go away’/You said, ‘Just let it go’”, sung with all the straining sorrow that the Swede can muster, all of which is far heavier than any emotions expressed in his previous effort.
The doses of reality continue on ‘The Drying Of The Lawns’, another song about breakup, but this time featuring a realist of a girl and a romanticizing boy. “She said ‘I cannot tell you why’, she said ‘I’m in a rush/There are softer dreams for you to think about now love’”, Matsson expounds over pitter-pattering guitars, continuing with, “‘And no this is not the summer dream,’ she said. ‘It’s just the drying of the lawns I want to leave out there’”, a suggestion from the girl that this won’t work out, or that this relationship is at least short-lived. The boy fights against the girl’s pessimism, pronouncing, “but I will stand down in the hallway with no thought to leave the set/of a movie I will sure as hell not end just yet”, which remains as touching a line as you are likely to hear this year or any. Matsson then moves to the sad, angry, even evil ‘Love Is All’, highlighted by the lines, “Evil’s in my pocket and your will is in my hand…and I’ll throw it in the current that I stand upon so still. Love is all, from what I’ve heard, but my heart’s learned to kill”, the desperately sentimental ‘A Lion’s Heart’ marked by the lines, “There’s a boy running downhill to the lowlands tonight and he’s catching the train to where he’s heard you have been. He’s a fool now among us, a dreamer within, dreaming of you”, and the self-sacrificing, “And you know it’s a lion’s heart that will tumble and tear apart when it’s coming down the hills for you”, and finally to ‘Kids On The Run’, Matsson’s first foray into piano ballads, an account of some unspeakable acts committed as shown by, “And the reflections in their eyes sure could paint us as killers, oh I’ll be there. And till the terror of our time could forgive us as lovers, oh lets break some hearts.”
The Wild Hunt isn’t completely devoid of Shallow Grave‘s phantasms — ‘King of Spain’ is dreamy account of what Matsson would do were he Spanish royalty, the title track is largely composed of extranormal phenomena, as is ‘Troubles Will Be Gone’ and ‘Thousand Ways’, while the most memorable line in the album is also one of the most unreal, the spine-tingling, “Oh but rumor has it that I wasn’t born; I just walked in one frosty morn, into the vision of some vacant mind” — but more often than not their incantation is a response to reality knocking at the door, the older Matsson hoping to regain his youthful lightheartedness but finding it impossible to do so. As a result, though, the passion of Shallow Grave is far more nuanced this time around, as Matsson reveres in his adulthood, his age, his reality, and the one life he’s been given. And thank God, because at this point in the year, I can use all the impassioned vigor for life’s good and bad that I can come across. It may be cold, baby, but I’ve got a fire in the pit of my stomach that could melt the snowcap clean off a mountain. – Brian Riewer
1. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
No surprises then. Like pretty much every other website/blog/publication, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is Sun On The Sand’s album of the year for 2010. As we held our end-of-year meeting when the final tallied votes were announced, there was perhaps a little apprehension and a tinge of disappointment that this was the final outcome. Individual lists were diverse but the combination of those lists led us here. This was, you could say, the obvious choice, a safe bet, a winner that fell in line with everyone else and that is something that has usually not really happened around these parts in the two years we’ve been sharing our thoughts with the world. Shit, last year our winner was Bill Callahan. We gave Kid A the finger in favour of Arcade Fire’s Funeral in our “best of the decade” poll and then this year, promptly told the Montreal rockers that we were not impressed with their universally lauded disappointment that was The Suburbs. So why do we find ourselves here this year, seemingly at one with the consensus? Well, I guess the reason is simply that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a modern day masterpiece. An instant classic.
So much has been written in the past couple of months about this record that admittedly anything new that is thrown into the mix will most probably be lost in a swirling void of gushing praise. But MBDTF deserves all the acclaim is has been getting. Kanye West is undoubtedly now the biggest name in popular music on the planet. And “pop” he is. The Chicago rapper may have his roots in the hip hop underground but as he announced on the genius confirming album Late Registration, ‘We Major’. Kanye West had hit the big time. Let’s be honest: when an artist reaches these dizzying heights of global stardom, we all want to dig at them, bring them down, and find faults in their music. Maybe Kanye had taken a couple of steps down this undignified path too in recent times. Graduation was a good album but was not at the same level of its predecessors. It was very much a pop album, ready for the masses but lacking that originality and spark that pushed West to the top. And quite what to make of 808s And Heartbreak, I still do not know. We are still led to believe that this is a Kanye album proper, not a side project in the least or piece of studio experimentation that was deemed just about good enough to release. It did reveal Kanye to be an artist willing to shift his sound but most of the positives from this release eventually were weighed down and lost in a world of auto-tune hell. That, along with the media saturation of paparazzi punches, award ceremony stage invasions, a twitter account containing tweets which take an eternity to read, a (some would say) out of control ego, public romance, breakups, tragic death of a mother….
….It maybe stopped being about the music. Just like so many pieces written about MBDTF failed to write about the music. Yet the greatness of this album is all about the music. Its power, emotion, drive, creativity, humour, inspiration. This album is full of lush melody, bruising beats, harmonious strings, voices, and ideas as well as conflicting polar opposites. Somewhere amongst the Rihanna-led chorus of ‘All Of The Lights’ apparently is Elton John — how does that happen? Some of the samples used are just as mind-boggling. Mike Oldfield, Black Sabbath, and Manfred Mann — strange, unexpected but truly exquisite in their execution. For us, maybe the most intriguing part of this was the usage of Justin Vernon of Bon Iver (artist behind SOTS’ best album of 2008). What Kanye and Vernon did to an already amazing tune in ‘Woods’ is nothing short of brilliant. That beautiful, spooky vocal is offered out to a much bigger place. Instead of being “lost in the woods”, the singer now is “lost in the world” and sure to be found by many more unsuspecting people. There is beauty to be found throughout MBDTF -– ‘Runaway’ being surely one of the most moving hip hop tracks ever recorded. Wonderful arrangements, killer beats, and a vocal performance by West that is both down to earth and brash, revealing a conflicted mindset and acceptance that perhaps sometimes he is an asshole. However, he is also a sensitive soul, not an easy thing to portray in the hip hop world but West has no such problems conveying that here. The subtle and unexpected twist in ‘Power’ where things turn from bright lights and rockstar glory to a song contemplating suicide reveal another moment of fragility while each guest rapper and West take turns at observing their darker side on the compelling ‘Monster’. So there is the beauty and the darkness, maybe the twisted part comes from the profane, sexually explicit, and arguably disgusting guest spot from Chris Rock — uncomfortable giggles and cringes aplenty here.
So many of us had been planning out end of year lists well before the November release date of MBDTF but we knew it was a good idea to save a place for it, even before we heard it. This had to be a great record, and thankfully it is. For once, hype is met with substance to back it up. We’ve all been burned before, but not here. For an album to have this kind of impact so quickly is quite astounding. To not creep but loudly and unapologetically jump to the head of the queue, ahead of albums we’ve been listening to and loving for months, in some cases almost the whole year, does indicate greatness. If we are still around at the end of this decade, doubtless MBDTF will figure somewhere in our next 10-year spanning poll. But this is now, this is fresh, and this is meaningful to us in 2010. A more than worthy winner from an artist quickly defining himself as one of the finest of his generation. The daggers will be out quickly next time as MGDTF will surely be labeled as an album that is impossible to follow. In Kanye West’s baffling whirlpool of a mind, though, he’s probably already written his next masterpiece. – Matthew James