The Best 100 Albums of 2016 (Part 3)

This is the final part of Noisey's best albums of 2016 list. Make sure to read parts one (100-67) and two (66-34).

Did anyone ever really think Chairlift would surpass "Bruises"? The song spot-lit the Brooklyn duo via an iPod nano commercial back in 2008, when those ads could take a band from obscurity to omnipresent in seven days. It could have been their albatross, but instead Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly cut the cutesy-coo and lo-fi canned beats, with each album surpassing the last in confidence and vision. Where 2012's  Something swiped the feel-good sparkle of 80s radio, this third album welds the polished curves of 90s R&B with the duo's left field, Asiatic, weird pop tendencies. Here more than ever, Polachek's elastic vocals and inventive trills thrill. She's poured the blushing bloom of romantic love and intimacy—with all its vulnerability, dizzying highs, and tactile pleasures—into every song, from the flinty "Romeo" to the velvety center of "Crying in Public." Where the irrepressible pulse of "Show U Off" could come off smug in its buoyant expression of happiness, instead it beckons you into the backseat for a joyride. This is easily one of the brightest, boldest pop records of the year.  — Kim Taylor Bennett

If  XXX was a raucous party and  Old was the hangover from the day after, then Danny Brown's fourth full-length is what happens when the party never stops—when days turn into nights, the drugs don't work but you take more of them anyway, and depression takes the form of empty hotel rooms and empty-headed hangers-on. Brown's lyrics have always contained multitudes, but  Atrocity Exhibition features his strongest writing yet, touching on everything from smoke breaks to erectile dysfunction to the unceasing grind of life on the road with a deft mix of humor, sadness, and wizened reflection. All this is backed by the type of production from Paul White, the Alchemist, and Evian Christ that sounds languid, hyperactive, and utterly trippy—sometimes all at once.  Atrocity Exhibitionis the feel-good-then-feel-bad record of the year for anyone who lost the ability to feel after last call.  —Larry Fitzmaurice

808INK are from Deptford, south London, and they're here to fuck up everything you know about British rap music. They don't make grime; nor do they make the sort of dry, crumbling hip-hop anemic stoners pontificate about as they roll damp looking spliffs in the shed behind their parents' house. 808INK's palette is a diverse one. There's this production, sweeter than dipping into a pot of honey—kind of like the Neptunes, but with murky, purple, almost swamp-like undertones. As these sounds collide with the vocals, they create an image of warped looking council estates at night, or the backseat of a Vauxhall Astra with the bass in the speakers turned up to the max. Hungry is a unique album and one of the most progressive British releases of the year.  —Ryan Bassil

Poland's Cultes Des Ghoules has always been good, but the quartet's latest album,  Coven, or Evil Ways Instead of Love, is genuinely next level (and releasing it on Halloween was a nice touch). Seriously, have you  heard this thing? Heavily inspired by Master's Hammer's witchcraft-laced black metal operetta,  The Jilemnice Occultist, Cultes Des Ghoules stripped any semblance of romance from the source material and focused entirely on death's cold embrace, plumbing the depths of black metal perversion until they struck sinister gold. Diabolical, dynamic, and strange,  Coven… pays homage to the ancient evils of Mortuary Drape, Mayhem, and Necromantia, but it also makes clear its creators' own warped brilliance. Mischief, mischief, the devilry is at toil…  —Kim Kelly

It was a given in these information-saturated times that someone would eventually make a song named after a certain deceased gorilla; it was an unforeseen blessing that that person would be Young Thug, who is so far off on his own planet that memes are merely the tiniest atoms in constructing the incomprehensibly vast, fractal-like structures of his songs. And so, naturally, "Harambe" is full of gravelly vocal contortions last heard from Louis Armstrong while the title character is never mentioned, utterly demolishing the idea anyone else could make a song about something so pointless as a joke. Elsewhere, "RiRi" interpolates the titular pop star's biggest hit of the year into dolphin sounds; "Webbie" finds our hero sitting on a plane admiring the way the sun makes his watch glow; "Wyclef Jean" gives us a nursery song about money longer than a NASCAR race. Young Thug is churning through ideas and flows at a dazzling rate—for most artists, simply making the most iconic album cover in years would wear them out. We're lucky to be be here for the amusement park thrill ride of a genius at play. — Kyle Kramer

David Nance's label refers to him as Omaha's best-kept secret, but he's possibly the best songwriter in the United States that nobody outside DIY tape collectors and his friends has heard. This may be dusty and emotive heartland rock 'n' roll, but it has more in common with the grimy lo-fi realism of Peter Laughner of Pere Ubu and Rocket From the Tombs than with any John Cougar/Jeff Tweedy sap. When Nance says that he's spent countless hours absorbing the Stones'  Exile on Main Streetand Jim Shepard's  Picking Through The Wreckage With a Stick, it's easy to believe him.  More Than Enough, his debut album with a full band, was recorded in Los Angeles, scrapped, then re-recorded after a move back to Omaha. It needs to be listened to the same way it was recorded, late at night with a bottle of brown liquor close by. Tracks like "Unamused" and "Pure Evil" come from a dark and skulking place. Delivered quickly and in secret, they retain pieces of home-recorded brilliance.  — Tim Scott

Britain had something of a golden era in the 90s for celebrating British-Asian pop culture. Cornershop and Bally Sagoo were on the charts, Prince Naseem Hamed was the most absorbing sportsman on the planet,  Goodness Gracious Me was on the telly and young British-Asian kids were conjuring up their own version of rave culture (see: Daytimers). It feels like a lost era in comparison to today, where immigration has become a dirty word rather than a hopeful one. In 2016, immigrants of varying generations have been made to feel at best unwelcome and at worst attacked by the political rhetoric that has infiltrated mainstream politics, which made  Cashmere by Swet Shop Boys one of the most timely and affecting albums of the year. Here we had Riz Ahmed (a British-Pakistani rapper of Indian heritage) rapping alongside Heems (an American-Indian rapper of Pakistani heritage) spitting bars about identity, racism, ignorance, the South Asian diaspora, and also Zayn Malik. From the first sampled shrill of a traditional shenai in opening track "T5," it's a balls-out rap album garnished with thudding beats and gritty South Asian sounds. One of the most potent extinguishers of prejudice is a shifting perspective—when people are made to understand and sympathize with a viewpoint different from their own. That's why  Cashmere should be posted through every letterbox in Britain and America.  —Joe Zadeh

It's quite hard to quantize Skepta's  Konnichiwa as just an album. To anyone outside of Britain, it probably just looks like a decent grime record with four or five great tracks, then some good ones, then some just fine ones, and then a Pharrell feature. But to those who have been following Skepta and the grime scene since "Not Your Average Joe" and beyond, Konnichiwa represented something far more spiritual and poetic. It was the redemption story of an artist whose career has had more success, failure, opulence, and drama than a damn Shakespearean tragedy. But it was also the redemption story of the genre itself—an underappreciated, exploited, and often demonized section of UK culture —finally bursting the dam and getting the recognition it truly deserves, on its own terms. Konnichiwa was essentially grime's version of when Bender raises his fist at the end of  The Breakfast Club.  —Joe Zadeh

Dev Hynes wrote much of  Freetown Sound in New York City's Washington Square Park, once a gift to free slaves from Dutch settlers in the 17th century. It was a manipulative deal to solely benefit the Dutch, creating a buffer zone of black bodies from natives outside of the park area, all while twisting free slaves into giving up their children's right to freedom. Hynes's act of reclaiming space there, coincidence or not, is symbolic of  Freetown Sound's purpose: a self-described clap back against people trying to tear down black, queer, and unsung identities. Freetown Sound is deeply personal, an R&B-new wave mixtape named after the birthplace of Hynes's father that samples POC reference points including  Paris Is Burning amidst Hynes's multi-instrumental genius (two words: synth guitar). Rather than dominate the conversation on inclusion, Hynes often recedes into his own background of 80s drum machinery to give women space, featuring everyone from Carly Rae Jepsen to Blondie's Debbie Harry.  Freetown Sound stands as a beautiful argument for nostalgia, visions of a happier future borne through reconnecting with the past.  —Jill Krajewski

If one were to write a list of what makes Sturgill Simpson an authentic country artist—the type the country music industry tends to applaud from a very long distance for fear of ruffling feathers—the list would fill at least one composition notebook. On his third album (and first with a major label), inspired by a letter his grandfather, stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, wrote to his family in case he didn't make it home, Simpson provides for his son a guide on learning to live life while his father is away, touring and pursuing his career. There is tenderness, happiness, and tears shed for both his losses and his gains throughout the 38-minute, nine-song record, Simpson's longest to date. There are horn sections, strings sections, soft melodies, and raucous choruses, not to mention a killer cover of "In Bloom." But at the core of  A Sailor's Guide to Earth is Simpson's reckoning with his own mortality, "Brace for Impact (Live a Little)," a slinking, slow-burning reminder of the inevitable decay that goes hand in hand with life. If country music—that is, good country music—is, as Ander Monson puts it, "nothing if not mourning," then Simpson leads his own funeral procession on  A Sailor's Guide…, mourning the death he experiences while separated from his family, anticipating the one that becomes us all.  —Annalise Domenighini

If November 8 sounded the death knell for irony, Anohni delivered some preemptive blows with  Hopelessness, an album unapologetically and often uncomfortably on the nose in its fiercely political message. Never pedantic, the record asks more questions than offers answers, underscoring its songwriting with traditions of dissent embedded in dance and electronic music. The result is a collection of protest anthems that sounds indigenous to its era, rather than playing into tired stylistic tropes rooted in past movements. Whether belting sweetly about getting drone-bombed as a seven-year-old girl on "Drone Bomb Me" or leading orchestral hooks about global warming and existential fragility on "4 Degrees," Anohni uses her music to galvanize us about the difficult truths we tend to normalize or grow numb to amidst media oversaturation. It's lush and visceral and will get stuck in your head, and that's precisely the point. At a time when it's easier than ever to feel overwhelmed and disconnected, Anohni and collaborators Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never found a way to make it all personal.  Hopelessness is at once triumphant and crushing: It embraces the paradox of being alive in 2016 instead of getting paralyzed by it. In doing so, it offers us a way forward. — Andrea Domanick

Cass! When did you get so smoooooth? Well, perhaps he's always had it in him—there was, of course, the sax-filled, Leonard Cohen-esque "The Burning of the Temple, 2012." But with his eighth album, the prolific Bay Area-born troubadour churns out countless buttery grooves ("Bum Bum Bum" and "Opposite House," featuring Angel Olsen), which recall the plush warmth of 70s FM radio. Check the flirty flute on "Laughter Is the Best Medicine" for further evidence. His alt-country angles still make an appearance, but alongside these drive time swerves lie other surprising detours, like feminist hip-swiveler "Run Sister Run" and "In a Chinese Alley," which could almost be Crowded House. It's an incongruous and unexpected smoosh of styles, but Cass holds it all together with ease because, well, he's Cass. He sings "I'm a shoe / And so are you" with such forlorn sincerity it feels like a confessional we're honored to be privy to. Perfect for lazy Sundays. Spooning optional, but always advised.  —Kim Taylor Bennett

Giggs has made it very clear that nothing will stop him from cementing his legacy as UK rap greatness —not the police, who have made playing shows in London harder than a ninja assault course, not award shows, which have selective memories when it comes to creativity, and not a music scene which (before Giggs) was more acclimatized to grime acts than British gangster rap. His fourth album,  Landlord, continues his great tradition of perseverance and pushing shit forward, and it is full of all the dark, brutal beats and sinister (occasionally funny) wordplay that he's built his name on. There's the hollow, stomach-shaking coldness of "The Blow Back," delivered with bars from Stormzy and Dubz; there's the grinding rhythms of "Whippin' Excursion," which you've probably heard blasting out of smoked up, rolled down windows in Peckham; and there's the slow, downbeat melodies of "Of Course," which is probably the closest we're ever going to get to a Giggs love song. Honestly though, this album is a testament to what hella obstacles can do to an artist's self-reliance and resolve and creativity. Listen to this album, kids, and remember: If life smacks you hard, smack it back harder.  —Daisy Jones

It's easy to label any particularly impressive album a "game-changer"—hyperbole and music writing go ham-hand in hand, after all. But the release of  Rheia triggered a genuine seismic shift in the fortunes of this Belgian collective, especially in North America. Oathbreaker have been operating since 2008, but their third album made them undeniably one of 2016's breakout bands.  Rheia harnesses the individual powers of post-hardcore, crust, black metal, spellbinding vocal harmonies, and raw emotional catharsis and spins them into an incredibly cohesive, compelling whole. Vocalist Caro Tanghe adds a whole new range of colors to the band's already far-from-monochromic sonic palette, and it's a goddamn revelation seeing the band let loose live. Few bands achieve the heights Oathbreaker have soared to on this release, one that's as beautiful as it is abrasive.  —Kim Kelly

Hot new bands live and die by the sophomore slump, and Toronto's PUP looked like they were destined for one. Their 2014 self-titled debut was a hard showing to top—an utterly perfect, critically acclaimed pop punk record full of lightning riffs, stop-on-a-dime change-ups, and sing-along gang vocals. Plus, the relentless, worldwide touring they did in support of it, over which they quickly earned a large and rabid fanbase, seemed like a surefire method of running themselves into the ground. But, amazingly, when the four-piece remerged this year with  The Dream Is Over, they were more energized than ever. It was like they took what people loved about them and turned things up to 11. Everything was faster, louder, and sharper. PUP wear their battle scars on their sleeves as a point of pride on this album, openly showing off songs about being run down by the road and how it sometimes makes them want to literally kill one another. Even the title is an homage to the doctor who told lead singer Stefan Babcock to quit music or risk permanent damage to his voice.  The Dream Is Over is an album that takes all of the shit life has thrown at the band over the last two years, looks it right in the face, and says, "What else ya got?"  —Dan Ozzi

The three decades' worth of rock influence on  Teens of Denial are clear—fans of Leonard Cohen, early Weezer, and Talking Heads will appreciate this record in equal measure—but the album, and frontman Will Toledo, have more in common with Frank Ocean than any of Toledo's forbearers. Like Frank Ocean's  Blonde, Denialis an album that, musically and lyrically, inhabits gray areas, from its referential use of sampling and paraphrase to its sexual ambiguity to the existential freefall that defines it. It's a record rooted not in time but in identity, examining the relationship between our self-conceptions and how we exist in the minds of others—be that friends, lovers, family, or society—and how we re-calibrate the world around us accordingly. It's also a whole lot of fun, as likely to have you banging your head as it is reading the lyrics without any music playing. Toledo is one of those rare talents whose precision as a songwriter is matched by his gift for arrangement: Songs tend to sprawl, but rarely repeat, and never drag, and are deceptively layered and complex—a hidden slide guitar line, distorted harmony, or third meaning in some wordplay is likely to reveal itself well after you've memorized the lyrics. However you parse it,  Denial is a thoughtful stream-of-consciousness ode to fucking up and figuring it out, a concept album about life after ego death by a rising new voice whose vision transcends the genre that got him here. — Andrea Domanick

He gives it away right there on the final song: "the days have no numbers," a comforting incantation from a distant voice. Of course, so far there have been numbers everywhere, "22 (OVER S∞∞n)," "8 (circle)"—literally all the songs, and they have some sort of numerological meaning about life and death and spirituality. You begin digging, noticing more clues: that tape glitch, the circular ten seconds of quiet piano mulling at the beginning of the track, what are maybe live bongos played in a garage drum pattern but they only play for two measures so it's hard to say? There's a part that samples Stevie Nicks singing in a semi-legendary rehearsal video that lives on YouTube. And the lyrics offer so much, too—conversations in stairwells, the super screwed down part saying "I'm so sorry for cheating," the whole song that maybe matches up perfectly to the plot of the  Great Gatsby. These are things you can excavate and hold onto or let pleasantly drift by, the way everything else in life is enjoyed. Maybe there's meaning in the numerology, in warped human voices fluttering in and out; maybe it's all part of some cosmic mystery too vast to be explained. Wouldn't both be perfect? — Kyle Kramer

No artist figured greater in rap's intergenerational culture wars this year than Lil Yachty: When he wasn't busy trolling hip-hop's old heads by admitting he'd never listened to Biggie, he was confusing the hell out of them with childlike raps over beats that sounded like ambient versions of cartoon theme songs (and in some cases literally were). But that conversation always overlooked the fundamental premises of Lil Yachty, which are that you can be deadly serious about being playful, that finding a beautiful sound can be as impactful as any lyrical message, and that positivity is an inalienable virtue. Drifting through Auto-Tuned falsetto and floating through dreamy landscapes of noise, Yachty understands that texture and atmosphere have become some of rap's most important tools and takes these ideas one step further, relishing the prettiness of a modulated "hellooooooo" or a voice melting into a synth. And somehow, songs like "1 Night" and "Wanna Be Us" also bang. "Minnesota" might be an era-defining posse cut. Get on the boat; it's lifting anchor soon, and it's about to be a long voyage to the future. — Kyle Kramer

Blackstar, the final album David Bowie released—his 25th, for the record—arrived three days before he died. The final song on his final album was called "I Can't Give Everything Away," a song about how—after a lifetime of creativity—he struggled to express himself in ways he felt the world deserved. That's the kind of perfectly told story that, when written, feels like a cliché. But here we are, and that's how David Bowie exited this world. He was a cliché because he invented the clichés. Bowie inspired multiple generations to look nowhere except inwards when thinking about the kind of human being they wanted to be. What's more (and arguably more important, given this list!) is that, despite  Blackstarproviding a storybook ending to his career,  it's a really fucking good record,one that's arguably on par with any other classic Bowie album. True to his form, Bowie worked within his own constraints—mainly, his wearying voice—to provide a lovely piece of art that serves his legacy right. Bowie didn't die in 2016. He ascended. — Eric Sundermann

"I sit alone in my four-cornered room, staring at candles." That's Scarface's unforgettable intro to Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," and it's a vivid piece of imagery that comes to mind while listening to Atlanta rapper 21 Savage's excellent project with Metro Boomin,  Savage Mode. A solitary, reflective streak runs throughout here—which is maybe a weird observation to make about a record that features the boast, "Wet your mama house / Wet your grandma house/ Keep shootin' 'til somebody die." But it's 21 Savage's slack, largely unconcerned mode of delivery that cements the alluring aura of  Savage Mode; even in his braggiest boasts, he rarely sounds like he's doing anything more than talking to his shoes, and when he does raise his voice, there's an audible strain. Paired with weightless and hollow production,  Savage Mode sometimes sounds as if you're listening to it by accident—like you've stumbled upon someone in mid-conversation with themselves, unconcerned as to whether you're listening or if you're even there at all. It's a singular achievement, one he might never pull off again—and honestly, would you want him to?  — Larry Fitzmaurice

More than 20 years ago, A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz to rap, the only true American artform speaking to the other true American artform. Along the way, the group became bound up in hip-hop's DNA—everyone in America knows the answer to "Can I kick it?" Now, to listen to Tribe is to feel rhyme and rhythm unfold naturally, a conversation with friends in which, on any given day, a familiar line might appear as if for the very first time.

And if that sense of the music's inextricability is true of hearing the "Bonita Applebum" sample all the time, it is especially true when the sample returns within the dreamlike logic of  We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, Tribe's parting album. Here, just as they do in your memory, the group's voices drift up out of the background: Q-Tip, Jarobi, Consequence, Busta Rhymes, even André 3000 and Talib Kweli and Anderson .Paak and Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West and Jack White's guitar. They come in snippets: "the ramen noodle" or "green and the white, we serving Nigeria" or "How I'm 'posed to know how home feels? / I ain't even on my home field." It's Tribe's jazz instincts brought full circle—each voice, each reverbed one-string burst of guitar, each flickering synth pattern welling up like a solo out of the groove. This may be, among other things, one of the great synthesizer nerd albums of all time, word to "Conrad Tokyo."

Yet among those soloists, there's one that stands out, of course: Phife Dawg, the Trini gladiator so skeptical of these new rappers he's hearing, watching Donald Trump on SNL with mounting dread. When Phife passed away earlier this year, it felt as though that long-running conversation Tribe had always hosted had been cut off, that a friend was gone. So what comfort to have him arrive here, in all his sharp-tongued glory? That Donald line will live on in tough times, naturally, a reassurance from Phife, even now, that he's got our back. But, the guys argue, " The Donald"—Donald Juice, the five-foot-three funky diabetic—is more eternal. After all, his words are life, in all its dimensions.

And so, at one point, Tip imagines Phife's voice from the afterlife, ranging far and wide: He's roasting dudes about their shoes and cracking jokes about being short, but he also rhymes with "cremated molecules." There's a promise to "rip every stage with grace look right in they face / live the Tribe principle of having impeccable taste." Lastly, there's a request: "You still got the work to do / I expect the best from you / I'm watching from my heaven view / don't disappoint me / make sure that they anoint me." With this parting statement, what other outcome could there be? — Kyle Kramer

Look at that cover art. When the mutant robot overlords peel back the history books, the image of a solitary and vacant piece of technology looking over the rapidly changing face of the capital is one that will stand out. The album itself, primarily a Dean Blunt project but with work from the likes of Arca and Michachu, is as political as one could expect from such an image. Opening with a five-minute loop of a man stating "This makes me proud to be British," the record's focus is on the different interpretations of identity. Presumably that one loop is taken from the London Olympics 2012 opening ceremony or some other affair, setting up the record's poignant journey through a British identity that often isn't represented at such events. As  FACT mag said at the start of the year, Babyfather is the sound of modern protest music, challenging, yet rewarding with each listen. And in a time where British music is finding its feet again, top marks also go to bars like "Real and good, true and proper," a poetic encapsulation of what it means to make music that could only come from London.  —Ryan Bassil

Jeff Rosenstock called it. He knew the nightmare that fate had in store for us all in 2016, and predicted it right in the first verse on his new album when he sang, "This decade's gonna be fucked." And so far, he's been right. Just this year, we've seen numerous deaths of beloved musical icons, a disastrously contentious Presidential election, and regular news stories about the ongoing strife between civilians and the police. And to amplify all of that, everyone and their uncle wants to do some ALL-CAPS RANTING about it on Facebook. It's that non-stop bombardment of opinions—the "loudness of social media" as Rosenstock calls it—that fueled the writing of this appropriately titled panic attack of an album. In his second solo effort since disbanding his beloved punk scrappers Bomb the Music Industry!, Rosenstock has assembled his most cohesive work yet with  WORRY., seamlessly blending a little of everything, from lightning fast ska to acoustic slow jamming. The record doesn't offer any solutions to the world's problems, though. Instead, it's a jam-packed half-hour that offers the listener the opportunity to think about everything going to shit, bury their face in a pillow, and scream until it doesn't feel so overwhelming. And in a year like 2016, that's something everyone in America could use.  —Dan Ozzi

Culture Abuse's debut album,  Peach, kicks off with a proclamation: "Let there be peace on earth. Let love reign supreme." Those two sentences, which are also written in giant letters across the record's insert booklet, serve as the album's mantra, a theme that runs through every one of its ten songs. That sort of flowery cheerleading might come off like naïve hippie bullcrap from most bands, but not the way Culture Abuse sings it. The band's outlook on life is instead one of optimistic nihilism—seeing the shit the world routinely dishes out and smiling through it all. Because what the fuck else can you do?

Frontman David Kelling is no stranger to life's shit sandwich. In his time writing Peach, he watched a couple of friends pass away, tended to his mother in the hospital, and got pushed out of San Francisco by the area's gentrification, living out of the band's 15-by-15 practice space with four other people. Not to mention he has cerebral palsy. But rather than complain and wallow in misery, Kelling flips it on its head and embraces it.

Peach's opening track, "Chinatown," kicks off Culture Abuse's blinding "whatever, dude" positivity, as Kelling is nearly brought to tears by local police brutality but then snarls defiantly, "Gotta gotta gotta live the way you wanna / Gotta gotta gotta be the way you're gonna." And later, when considering the futility of living in a city where rents skyrocket with seemingly no limit, Kelling opines: "There's no future, but I don't mind." He applies this attitude on a global scale on "Peace on Earth" with the lines, "I never thought about the government or the president, I wouldn't listen to them anyway / So, there might be a war, well I don't care / I just want to get by if that's alright." Truly, he is the living embodiment of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Even though  Peach's thematic slogan reads like something that'd be on a bumper sticker tacked to a Volkswagen Bug at Woodstock '69, Kelling is no Jerry Garcia, and Culture Abuse is no Grateful Dead. When they take the stage, Kelling grabs a microphone or two and growls pure catharsis into them as the rest of the band soundtracks his exorcisms with a thick blanket of deep-toned guitars. The band's live act is heavy enough to go toe to toe with any punk or hardcore band in America today. The difference is that when the mics pull away from Kelling's face and you get a glimpse of his expression, he's not mean-mugging or scowling. He's grinning ear to ear like a damned fool because, like he sings on "Jealous," "At the end of the day, I'm just happy to be here."

2016 was such a heinously bad year that it took most people off guard. Its events were so bafflingly disastrous and without precedent that no one knew whether to react with grief, anger, or despair. But Culture Abuse offers a reminder that sometimes it's okay not to have any response at all—instead you can throw up your middle fingers, smile, and say "fuck it all."  —Dan Ozzi

Some of the best albums associate themselves with a specific place. There's Kendrick Lamar's  good kid, m.A.A.d city, which is firmly centered in Compton's avenues, side streets, and housing projects. There's Nas and his 1994 classic album  Illmatic, which details the "NY State of Mind." And then there's Kano's Made in the Manor. Unlike those iconic releases from Lamar and Nas, which propelled both artists toward early success,  Made in the Manor arrived as Kano's career entered its second decade. He's been known in Britain ever since his debut track "Ps & Qs" became an underground hit in 2004, and international music fans may have heard him on Gorillaz's  Plastic Beach or seen him in the TV show  Top Boy—which is so good Drake is reportedly funding a new season. But it's Kano's fifth album,  Made in the Manor, that is his defining record. Arguably, it's also one that couldn't have been released without the long career leading up to it.

In terms of place,  Made in the Manor is a reflection on bygone days in Kano's home of East London. References are packed together like cigarettes in a newly purchased box: from the smell of A-road junction exits, to barber shops in Canning Town, to the face of the queen sticking in the backseat of a jean pocket. For those looking to get an illustrative look at the area that surround London's DLR line, this is your album. But there's more to  Made in the Manor than its association with place. Before its release, Kano said "This is the most honest I've ever been on an album. It's not that I wasn't being honest before, it's just that I wasn't speaking about things this personal before."

Of course, the idea of an artist being "honest" is a cliché that's been here ever since record sales began. But in the case of  Made in the Manor's most heartfelt tracks—such as "Little Sis," a track Kano dedicated to a sister he's only met once, or "Strangers," about close friends who grew apart—it rings true. Elsewhere, there's one of the best tracks of the year in "3 Wheel Ups"—a collaboration with Giggs and Wiley that goes harder than a steam-train as it careens down a hill, having lost control of its brakes. Or the bonus track "GarageSkankFREESTYLE," the ideal beginning or concluding track to any night out on the town.

Ultimately, Kano's  Made in the Manor ticks all the boxes. It's sentimental, it's raw, it's colorful and detailed, but it can also be listened to when you're drunk and need the shubz to enter a new echelon. Kano may have been relatively quiet in the early stages of last year's grime renaissance, but his time spent working on this record has paid off. A lot of people have said there hasn't been a British album like this since Dizzee Rascal's  Boy In Da Corner. All of them are right, obviously. Wheel this album up again, and again, and again—it's not hard to believe it will stand the test of time.  —Ryan Bassil

Movement defines Kaytranada. With his debut album, the Montreal producer went backwards to push dance music forward, drawing inspiration from that golden era when 70s disco rhythms gave way to early 80s hip-hop beats. Kaytranada's signature sound is an assertive, seductive low end so deep in bass that it becomes a pulse beating in time with yours. It's a kind of propulsion that mirrors Kaytranada's career itself, as he went from bedroom producer to Soundcloud favorite, Artbeat Montreal staple to internationally-touring and acclaimed DJ, and Disclosure fan to Disclosure contemporary—all by the age of 24.

_99.9>#/i### may be Kaytranada's debut album, but it's hardly a novice effort, as he reaches the type of heights that some veterans have had trouble attaining. It's a cohesive yet genre-bending record where each song can stand on its own, from the ebb and flow of "Track Uno" to Aluna Francis and GoldLink's back-and-forth on "Together." Kaytranada establishes himself as a master of sonic and emotional arcs from the get-go, pushing the music on  _99.9%further as he goes.

Born in Haiti as Louis Kevin Celestin, Kaytranada immigrated to Montreal with his family as a baby, growing up between cultures and later parents when his parents divorced at 14. In a candid FADER profile, Kaytranada also opened up about another divide in his life: his sexuality, and his challenges passing as straight while knowing he was gay and being bullied for not conforming to his Montreal neighborhood's idea of masculinity. So  _99.9>#/i### demands that we challenge our assumptions of what an electronic album by a queer, black, Haitian-born artist in Canada can sound like, and by breaking down those labels, it becomes a statement that's both universal and essential.  _—Jill Krajewski__

When Kanye West eventually released The Life of Pablo after much stopping and stalling, Noisey published 41 reviews of it, swearing you'd never have to read anything else about the damn thing ever again. However, that was ten months ago, and much has changed since. Firstly, there were the changes made to the album itself, which West has referred to as a "living breathing changing creative expression"—reworked lyrics, additional vocals, an updated mix of the entire album followed by an additional track. Then there were the personal and cultural changes around it, which started off with some customary messiness—that Taylor Swift lyric, the resulting phone call scandal, and a plethora of problematic tweets ranging from his musings on the word "bitch" to asking Mark Zuckerberg for funding—before taking a dark turn. Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in Paris, Kanye began to use the rant segment of his live shows to announce his support for Donald Trump, tour dates were cancelled and he was hospitalized shortly after.

There are albums that exist in their own creative vacuum, albums that are anchored ostensibly in a sociopolitical time and place, and then there is  The Life of Pablo—a body of work so deeply connected to its own mercurial creator that it requires constant re-evaluation. While the first elements that stood out may have been things like Chance the Rapper's soul nourishing verse on "Ultralight Beam," the genius of Rihanna and Nina Simone tag-teaming "What You Gonna Do," or having fresh batches of peak Kanye lyrics like "I'm too black, I'm too vocal, I'm too flagrant" to feast on, it's now difficult to listen to  Pablo without honing in on its darker corners. Spiritual, confident and conflicted,  The Life of Pablo is a poignant reflection of where Kanye West seems to be right now both as a producer and as a person. For every line of face-with-rolling-eyes misogyny, there is a nod to his own insecurity. For every shamelessly graphic tale about staining his t-shirt with a model's asshole bleach, there is a tender homage to his wife and children. A proud and beautiful track portraying Kim and Kanye as rap game Mary and Joseph sits next to a Lexapro-referencing expression of their marital problems and a Nike diss track with a verse about furniture.

Public opinion on Kanye West has been historically unforgiving, and fans are well aware that the Kanye who goes off script during a live TV fundraiser to say "George Bush doesn't care about black people" exists largely in the past. Whether it's his output or his worldview, West is and always has been in a constant state of evolution. The former tends to move in impressive, groundbreaking, and exciting directions—the latter, not always so much. For better or worse, Kanye West is nothing if not wildly unpredictable, and The Life of Pablo is an album that forces us to look it—at him—from more than one angle, which is a consideration he truly deserves but rarely gets. Of all the unusual releases 2016 has produced, The Life of Pablo keeps rising further and further to the top. —Emma Garland

Zeal & Ardor's Devil is Fine brings together genres that rarely come close to one another, venturing far beyond the realms of metal. In an interview earlier this year, Manuel Gagneux explained that the album originated from a challenge on imageboard 4chan where he'd asked for ideas to make new music and received requests to create "black metal" and "nigger music" in return. The black music that Gagneux ended up drawing from was the hypnotic chants of negro spirituals and chain gang music. Except, unlike the singers he's drawing from who often looked to the sky for their salvation, he replaces the man upstairs with Lucifer. The album's title track, which has vocals that sound like samples from Jim Crow-era prison blues, features Gagneaux coarsely crooning, "Little one better heed my warning / He come in early morning / He go by many names / We gonna go home to the flames."

The pairing of those vocals with Zeal and Ardor's off-kilter instrumentation provides an exhilarating experience. On the purgative "Children's Summon," he opens with delicate xylophone chords that crash into pounding drums as he conducts demonic Latin chants; "What Is A Killer Like You Gonna Do Here?" sounds like it takes place in a jazz club under warm lighting—that is, if the place was cool with songs about coaching someone through a murder. In the revved-up negro spiritual "Blood In The River," he sings, "A good lord is a dark one / A good lord is the one that brings the fire."

Zeal & Ardor's ascension in the metal world this year couldn't have been more unexpected, or timely. The genre is typically a predominantly white male-dominated field—so here's Gagneux, a Swiss biracial man creating a mashup of music deeply rooted in American slavery and metal, at a time when racial tensions in the U.S. are boiling at a rate not seen since the Civil Rights era. That concoction has also forced members of the black metal community to grapple with realities that they might have previously ignored, and the discomfort that Devil is Finehas already created implies that it could be revolutionary for metal. — Lawrence Burney

When it was announced Beyoncé would appear at this year's Super Bowl Halftime show, the discerning Beyoncé fan knew that it was going to be far from a one-off performance. Sure enough, she used the performance as an opportunity to announce her forthcoming Formation world tour, which would support the later released visual album  Lemonade. It was a powerful pro-black performance at arguably one of America's whitest professional sporting events, in which Bey donned Black Panther-esque fatigues, which in turn led some to believe her lead single, "Formation," and its accompanying video off  Lemonade exhibited anti-police sentiments.

The conservative outcry against  Lemonade was immediate and fearful, with everyone from The Drudge Report to Sean Hannity decrying Beyoncé as a bad role model, pointing specifically to her car-smashing escapade in the video for "Hold Up." It was a reminder of the power Queen Bey wields, that by thriving—hell, by merely existing—she poses a threat to white America.

Lemonade is a provocative and political record—a mediation on her blackness in the current pop cultural climate that sonically traces black history in America via pop, rock, country, and blues. But Beyoncé's sixth solo studio album is also deeply personal, often thought to be predominantly about cheating allegations against her husband Jay Z. It's a reminder of how much she's evolved not just as an artist but as a person. Over her nearly 20-year career, we've seen her grow up, from being a young performer to a married woman negotiating her sexual power to wholly assuming the roles of mother and wife. As listeners, we're privy to the very real and hard growing pains that occur in long-term relationships; on "Formation" she sings "I'm so possessive so I rock his Roc necklaces" to "I ain't thinking about you" on "Sorry," after bragging "You ain't married to no average bitch, boy" on "Don't Hurt Yourself." It's a reminder that personal openness can be political, too. — Sarah MacDonald

Consider this: within the first ten minutes of Rihanna's  ANTI, we're treated to four songs (technically, three and an interlude) that could each be the centerpiece on any other album.

There's the sinister drums of "Consideration," the spacey textured keys of "James Joint," the pop zenith that is "Kiss It Better," and "Work," the single that launched a thousand riddims. It's objectively the best multiple song run of any album this year, and therein lies one of the album's strengths: it confidently shows its hand from the get-go. There were a lot of albums-as-narratives this year, every song delicately placed for structure. The charm of  ANTI, then, is how it deals with love, hurt, and relationships; it all feels sonically messy, leaving us with songs that don't naturally ebb and flow from the next.

Several months prior to the album's release during the unveiling of its cover, famed designer Roy Nachum wrote regarding Rihanna and the title's meaning, "By continuing to follow her own instincts, her work strives to make an impact by doing the very antithesis of what the public expects." To Nachum's point, that's exactly what we expect from Rihanna, and why she's so beloved. Her casual disregard for the egos of the opposite sex are cause for celebration; her eclectic and constant image revisions result in her being treated like a semi-deity online, but her fortitude to veer towards whatever direction she fits makes her a hero.

Over the course of the album, though, she's comfortable playing the role of the very opposite—an antagonist, an agitator, and an aggressor who pushes to the center while everything else shrinks in her wake. "Woo" and "Needed Me" best capture this spirit; over the former's atonal guitar riffs and unstable bassline, she sings, " Bet she could never made you cry/ Cause the scars on your heart are still mine." Yet when she repeats, "I don't mean to really love ya," her conviction just barely masks words that sound like a heart that's suffered. While the latter colors her cold and callous remarking, "You was just another nigga on the hit list." The final quarter then slows to a crawl and follows a tug and pull of id and ego, hubris and humility as Rihanna wrestles through regret ("Same Ol Mistakes") heartache (Love On The Brain), desperation ("Higher," which features a hoarse yet rich vocal performance and her best to date), and surrender ("Close to You").

Most criticisms of  ANTI have addressed its seemingly jarring pacing and unclear direction, referring to it as a front-loaded effort that hops betweens themes and convoluted emotions. But  ANTI is meant to be free-wheeling and aimless, and anyway emotions typically aren't neat and almost never stable. There's no linear arc that can be traced, other than bouts of bygone memories and the feelings that still remain present. It's supposed to sound uneven. It's supposed to sound spotty. It's supposed to sound human.  —Jabbari Weekes

2016 was Chance the Rapper's year. Before Kanye West's  The Life of Pablo came out, Chancellor Bennett was a talented rapper with a keen ear for the sounds of gospel and Common, inching towards stardom; he had two mixtapes under his belt—one raw, one compelling—and a bunch of bright guest verses. He was a hero in Chicago, but not yet an American icon. That changed when he walked out on  SNL to hold his foot on the devil's neck with his verse on  The Life of Pablo's "Ultralight Beam," which showcased a new level to his artistry—more certain of himself, soulful where he used to be nasal, resolute where he used to be paranoid. He saw his moment and asked for quiet: "This is my part, nobody else speak."

Like "Ultralight Beam,"  Coloring Book is transcendent: it rises out of chaos and pain, sings through the darkness, and reaches for resolution. The resolution is God, of course, though Chance isn't fearful—they're "mutual fans"—and he isn't pious either. He knows there's contradictions, so, he sings ecstatically that "My life is perfect, I could merch it" before rapping through "Summer Friends," remembering young death in his Chatham childhood. He can pitch a Peter Pan ending on "Same Drugs" ("Don't forget the happy thoughts, all you need is happy thoughts") after singing through addiction and fading memories; on "Smoke Break," he sings about parenthood and its strain on his relationship, sharing the track with (who else?) Future. His life isn't perfect, and on "Blessings," he comes even closer to expressing his truth: "I'm at war with my wrongs / I'm writing four different songs."

Sometimes, it sounds like Chance has put four very different ideas into one song, as the sheer diversity of sound on  Coloring Book is a marvel—from Francis and the Lights' pretty electro to D.R.A.M.'s acid trip lullaby "Special." There are more radical departures, too: the trap beat and Auto-Tune of the Young Thug and Lil Yachty-featuring "Mixtape," "All Night"'s tipsy bass and taxi-home singalong chorus. But Chance can jump back into the album's harmonic roots whenever he wants without it coming across as jarring, as "All Night" fades out into three rich minutes of "How Great"'s gospel choir.

While all this is a soundtrack to Chance trying to break free from his demons, he knows he's already found independence as an artist, and "No Problem"'s label-baiting is clear about that. Bennett has become a superstar without a record deal, as  Coloring Book hit the  Billboardtop ten on Apple Music streams alone. To underscore that, he brings  his Chicago with him on  Coloring Book, sharing tracks with Saba, Towkio, Jeremih, and Noname. Then, he doubles down and invites his favorite iconoclasts to share the mic: Jay Electronica raps about God, Young Thug gets to changing the culture.

But, almost inevitably, it's Kanye West—everyone's favorite heretic—who gets the best line, right at the start. "Music is all we got" isn't an escapist phrase; it's an articulation of a history that reaches deep into gospel and the blues, a statement on everything that Chance's praise-through-pain aesthetic on  Coloring Book is searching for. So yeah, "we might as well give it all we got."  —Alex Robert Ross

This past year's critical go-to move is to stamp work from black artists as "unapologetically black"—as if that represents their peak aim. It insinuates that part of the art's value is its ability to function properly, in spite of whiteness or any other existing force. That crowning can be endearing but with theories of us being in a new Civil Rights era, music from black artists that is resolute in its call for pride, love, and understanding is likely to increase. So we're going to need a few more creative qualifiers. Being unapologetically black is to just  be. It's not something that can be accomplished—it just is. Continuing to exist in a world that tells you that your presence is a threat and generally unwanted is the epitome of audacity—of being unapologetic—and that's what gives value to Solange's  A Seat at the Table. On the record, blackness is not being flaunted; instead, it functions as an insider's message  purely for black people. These sentiments are echoed throughout the album: on Master P's "For Us By Us" interlude, he closes by saying "If you don't understand my record, you don't understand me, so this is not for you," and "F.U.B.U." extends a comforting hand to those made to feel small because of their color.

Solange is especially effective with pulling the listener in with plainspoken confessionals stating that your journey isn't a lonely one. On "Cranes in the Sky," she tries self-medication, retail therapy, and travel to distract herself from unresolved inner conflicts; on "Mad," she embraces her anger and accepts that holding it in will only prevent progress, while pointing to the fact that anger expressed by a black woman is often amplified into categorization and punctuating the song with: "But I'm not really allowed to be mad."  A Seat at the Table effectively walks the line of self-reflection and political criticism, as Solange snags her mother Tina Lawson to challenge the concept of black pride being anti-white, her father Matthew Knowles to revisit what life as a child was like in the segregated south, and Master P to stress the importance of self-worth and black ownership for a string of interludes.

The varied sound on the album is a result of Solange's decision to blend elements of soul and indie rock. An all-star lineup of co-producers and collaborators including Q-Tip, Sampha, Raphael Saadiq, TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, and Dirty Projectors' David Longstreth help craft a sound that elevates Solange as one of the best in her field. There are moments to dance ("Don't You Wait"), reflect ("Cranes in the Sky"), and to demand respect ("Don't Touch My Hair"). The most refreshing gift the album gives is centralizing the black American experience in a timeless manner; there are songs that were written almost a decade ago, stories of the Civil Rights Era to daily-received microaggressions of today. All of these stories, while told by different people describing various parts of their lives, still apply to what black life is like in its full complexity. Equally cleansing in its pride in black womanhood and meticulous selection of production,  A Seat at the Table stands as one the year's strongest musical statements.  — Lawrence Burney

With  Blonde, Frank Ocean presented something calm in a tumultuous world, and forced us to do one thing: pause. The narrative of the release felt like more than an album, which is a bit odd, really, to think about how something held up with such anticipation could be the antithesis of what caused its hype. But here we are, and that's what  Blonde is.

In a year where it felt like nothing was real, Frank made an album about the concept of reality. On a sonic level, the record offers something complex while still remaining warm and inviting, feeling a bit abrasive at times but steadfast in its commitment to being balanced. Through its ups and downs,  Blonde just sounds weird—a stitched together collection of half thoughts and phrases thrown through different forms of vocal manipulation. He doesn't concern himself with making dramatic points or catchy phrases, and instead patches together the dissonance he feels, offering this bizarre portrait of how the human mind works—and in particular, the millennial mind. "Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought / That could think of the dreamer that thought / That could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God," he quips on "Seigfried." He continues: "I be dreaming a dream in a thought / That could dream about a thought / That could think about dreaming a dream."

Although this is a sprawling project that seems to touch on every cultural cornerstone of what it's like to be alive in 2016, it still somehow feels and acts focused, confident in its ability to answer questions while still posing even more. There's no doubt Frank did his share of psychedelics while putting  Blonde together. This is a record that screams for those moments in which you find yourself standing on the edge of the universe, yelling at the top of your lungs into the unimaginable distance, terrified of the answers you might find but wanting nothing more than to know the questions you asked to get there.

Critics may call Blonde's relentless commitment to introspection boring. But that's a shortsighted approach to a record that demands your time. There is no one specific moment on the album that stands out—no single that demands radio play, no track that goes off in the club—but instead, Frank has presented a project that relishes the moments between the music as much as the songs themselves. The vocal beauty of tracks like "Ivy," "Solo," and "Self Control" play against the raw conviction of others like "Good Guy," "White Ferrari," and "Seigfried." This is an album that wants you to think about why you listen to it as much as it wants you to listen to it, and how those two ideas play into each other.

Blonde is somber. It's the kind of album that seems to be wandering with purpose, like walking aimlessly through a city on a Saturday night only to find the perfect bar for the perfect drink with the perfect someone. "The whole time I felt as though I was in the presence of a $16m McLaren F1," Frank wrote in a letter to fans on its release, "armed with a disposable camera." Despite the immense amount of pressure that was placed upon putting this piece of art into the world, Frank somehow gave the world a project that felt free of any sort of expectation. It was just… Frank, really. That's all. — Eric Sundermann