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5-“This Unruly Mess I’ve Made” (Macklemore & Ryan Lewis)I was hopeful that this would be good since I thought their previous release “The Heist” was solid for what it was and thought that they might continue to develop in a positive direction with this follow up. Unfortunately that is not the case with this record here. Macklemore tries to take on big issues on this record but does so extremely ineffectively and these songs that try to tackle big issues are tossed in with stupid joke rap songs. Although I think he is really well intentioned in his attempt to talk about the issue of white privilege/supremacy and that this is a subject that is important for folks to think about - he isn't the right rapper for this since he doesn't really have anything to say about the subject and (as most of the material on this album) it feels contrived. He paints himself as a white-rapper martyr for the cause…but is not shedding any new light. This album makes me really uncomfortable for what it tries to do and fails over and over to accomplish - because what it's trying to do is so necessary right now - making it that much more devastating that the music and the muddled delivery of message is so terrible. You can’t accuse Macklemore for not trying hard enough…but it might do him a lot of good to do so.
4-“Train Does Led Zeppelin II” (Train)
Why….???
This could have been so good…and it’s so not… Prophets of Rage is a supergroup consisting of three members of Rage Against the Machine (bassist Tim Commerford, guitarist Tom Morello, and drummer Brad Wilk), two members of Public Enemy (DJ Lord and Chuck D), and B-Real of Cypress Hill. Tom Morello explained the purpose of the group in an interview saying, “We're an elite task force of revolutionary musicians determined to confront this mountain of election year bullshit, and confront it head-on with Marshal stacks blazing." Despite this amazing mission in a time when we really need a group like this - Prophets of Rage do not deliver. The covers of the songs from groups they were in pale in comparison to the original recordings as they do not effectively reimagine them with this new ensemble and are devoid of new life.
2-Endless
No album got me more upset this year than Frank Ocean’s visual album “Endless”. The music on this album is actually really solid - especially Johnny Greenwood’s contributions which are beautiful. Although it feels more like a mix-tape or a collection of B-sides and lacks the clarity of “Blond” (which is a great record and I’ll talk about in my top 50 albums of the year) there are enough well crafted moments on the album to make the audio a decent listen. However - as a visual album, the video component is 50% of this release…and the entirety of that 50% is of Frank Ocean building a spiral staircase in a warehouse. I can imagine watching the live stream that this “visual album” is cut from would have been very interesting in it’s mystery of why he was doing this, and I get that it’s SUPPOSED to be painfully dull and a statement about anti-promotion - but putting the video onto this music does not serve any purpose as it does not connect to any of the songs on the album- but instead takes 50% of the viewer/listener’s attention away from the music - making the album only half as good as it would have been otherwise. The worst part of this visual album is it was only available for purchase - so viewers could not just watch it on youtube for free. I’m afraid that in releasing the album this way and marketing it as a visual album has done the genre of visual albums a huge disservice, and many folks who spent money to watch this album to only see video that was a complete waste of time and did not enhance the music in any way will be far less likely purchase visual albums from artists in the future. As a multi-media artist who is making visual albums - this really hurts, and (even for as great as Blonde was) I will probably never forgive Frank Ocean for releasing this.
1-Angelic 2 the Core : Angelic Funkadelic / Angelic Rockadelic
There is absolutely no competition - this is by far the worst album of the year. While three of the other releases I went into at least somewhat hopeful - I purely went into this out of pure curiosity of how bad it could be - and oh my this album delivered. It is mind-blowing that human beings could accomplish an album this terrible. It’s not bad the way “Speedin’ Bullet 2 Heaven” is bad (where Kid Cudi is going for something noisy and artsy) - Corey Feldman is trying to make pop songs that are often influenced by funk and modern electronic music and it’s going for a high production sound (although the layers often don’t make sense and sometimes sounds like 3 or so songs playing simultaneously - making it sound experimental/avant-garde even though it totally isn’t trying to be). This album took 10 years to make and is 22 songs - there are a lot of thought and intention put into this…which makes it even more of a mindfuck. There’s even some bigger name features like Snoop Dog (on “Go For It”) and Fred Durst (on “Seamless” - one of the funkiest on this bunch lol)….It’s hard for me to even try to articulate how this album is so bad - the dialogue in the skits are so awkward that they are truly difficult to listen to and sometimes sound like they’re from a bad non-sensical porno (like in the title track), the vocal melodies don’t make sense and the vocal delivery sounds like a terrible angsty/growly Michael Jackson impression. This is on a level of something like “The Room” and I feel like it’s definitely bound to develop a cult following - It’s the best kind of worst album and an essential listen for anyone who loves terrible things.
(....or spare yourself and don't)
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