Kendrick Lamar- Good Kid M.A.A.D. City

Though not the all time classic that people seem to want it to be, this introspective street record is no doubt fantastic. Complex themes mixed with just good ass rapping make for an album that gets in your head for a while (the skits are not funny enough though).

Frank Ocean- Channel Orange

Front to back, one of the best R&B records of the last five to ten years. Got me through many nights working at the pyramid.

Deep Time- Deep Time

This one snuck in under the wire but has been running my fall/winter. Re-forming (transforming? deforming?) from the ashes of Yellow Fever and trading in their flower printed swimsuits for vocal lessons from the ghost of Trish Keenan, Deep Time slow it down to hypnotize speed.

Ty Segall- too many things to list

Dude has not put out a bad record, dude has put out like 50000 records. Bonus points for best cover songs, both choice and execution.

Freddie Gibbs- Money, Clothes, Hoes (from the BFK mixtape)

The Midwest Master brings the smooth on this double extendo chorus jam, which would seem silly if the chorus wasn’t so good.

Bernard Estardy- Electro Sounds Vol.1 & 2

This should be the background music to everybody’s parties, always and forever. Two discs of smooth grooves and weird electronic goodness from early 70s France.

Schoolboy Q- There He Go (from the album Habits and Contradictions)

While his Black Hippy co-conspirator Kendrick Lamar was getting all the critical accolades Q came through with the song that I put on repeat the most times this year. While Habits and Contradictions is a fine album in its own right I barely listened to the whole thing because I’d just flip it back to this.

King Tuff- Bad Thing (from the album King Tuff)

This whole record is very good but this is the song that made me think so. Much of it is spent in the thin fake T-Rex voice that has plagued music recently but when Kyle Thomas lets it all go confession style for the chorus it rips. He quits being cool so he’s only getting cooler.

Julia Holter- Ekstasis

There is so much space in this record, it simultaneously fills your head with thought and cleans it out completely. No record did more with less this year.

Jimmy London- Kissing in the Back Row (from the album Jimmy in London)

Are you dating/in a relationship/married to someone? Do you want to have a song (you know, like me and Shoshana Landau had More Than Words by Extreme back in jewish school) that is not dumb and corny/by the Beatles (same dif)? Did your friend take With a Girl Like You by The Troggs? Well you can’t have this one either BECAUSE I TOTALLY CALLED IT.