Magazine/website/record store BEST OF 2011 end-of-year list pile-up

FACT mag 10-1
http://www.factmag.com/2011/11/30/50-best-albums-of-2011-50-41/5/

10: FRANK OCEAN - NOSTALGIA, ULTRA. (SELF-RELEASED)
09: LV & JOSHUA IDEHEN - ROUTES (KEYSOUND)
08: JULIANNA BARWICK - THE MAGIC PLACE (ASTHMATIC KITTY)
07: DRAKE - TAKE CARE (CASH MONEY / UNIVERSAL)
06: JAMES FERRARO - FAR SIDE VIRTUAL (HIPPOS IN TANKS)
05: ARAABMUZIK - ELECTRONIC DREAM (DUKE)
04: PRURIENT - BERMUDA DRAIN (HYDRA HEAD)
03: CLAMS CASINO - INSTRUMENTALS (SELF-RELEASED / TYPE)
02: RUSTIE - GLASS SWORDS (WARP)
01: THE WEEKND - HOUSE OF BALLOONS (SELF-RELEASED)

Ouch, that's a bad top ten

yeah, I'm not nuts about some of those

They really love the Drake/Weeknd axis over there

lol y'all got trolled by FACT

haha are FACT delibrately trolling ILX?

xp

i love that araabmuzik album though

Yeah that FACT list was super interesting until the top ten, then, ugh.

I <3 los kramupsinos! dn.

this Rustie album is... okay? not the second-best album of the year tho

why wouldn't you put 'the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot of R'n'B' at #1?? Lol.

Juliana Barwick album is nice though, so I can't complain...

Julianna Barwick and Clams Casino will be on my albums ballot...of the rest, 50% I haven't heard and 50% meh.

"This is AraabMUZIK’s electronic dream, and if you don’t like it then you’re quite frankly having a nightmare."

lol @ Drake and the Weeknd. Clammy Clams will be on my ballot, though. And the James Ferraro is pretty good (would need to hear it more before I decide whether it's good enough for a ballot place, though).

lol FACT, i still love you.

never got round to listening to the prurient what with horrible memories of the cold cave album still fresh in my head

This isn’t to say it’s an r’n'b album for indie kids

and yet the only other r&b album on the list is frank ocean lmao

i fuck with the top 10 of that Q tracks list, improbably

(i like most of that fact top 10 including the weeknd)

also the fact top 10 is, uh, okay

i like 'house of balloons', but not that much

despite lex's best protest in march, it was not a big year for r&b full lengths, so i'm not surprised that stuff like the weeknd and frank ocean have filled the void a bit

i get that fact likes to stay well within the tumblrverse but it is slightly weird putting frank ocean in your top 10 and not even giving a nod to like, beyonce (or did i miss this?)

but on other hand it means they don't cover kanye/jay which is nice.

FACT should be, like, way more into lloyd than they are tho imo

yah otm

not even on some lex AYO CHECK OUT MARSHA AMRBOSIOUS, THIS SHIT IS SO MUCH BETTER but i'm surprised that they aren't checking for fun party songs w/ good beats all done by a single producer

MBDTF was FACT's number two album of last year and they gave WTT a pretty good review iirc

for some reason i keep thinking MBDTF was released this year duh

I was thinking "jesus, every song on this Araabmuzik album sounds exactly the same", then I looked at Spotify; I'd made it to track 2

now I'm just bemused that FACT ranked what sounds like an overlong dubsteppy Junkie-XL album the 5th-best album of the year

OK, so v-shasty isn't Steve Shasta.

i like the araabmuzik a lot -- it's cool to vibe too, idk -- it's def pretty same-y but i like when he does the laser tag keyboard thing and a lot of the samples are p cool

4. Mayer Hawthorne : How Do You Do?

From the Filter list--is this more than just retro blue-eyed soul? Haven't heard it yet...

i like the araabmuzik a lot -- it's cool to vibe too, idk -- it's def pretty same-y but i like when he does the laser tag keyboard thing and a lot of the samples are p cool

it's not BAD (I like Junkie-XL!), it's just... not what I was expecting

yeah it's not his crazy MPC thing

from FACT, files this under "don't use wikipedia as a source"

The production values on Take Care really were staggering, and made even more impressive by the fact that whether it was Lex Luger, Just Blaze or Jamie xx

from FACT, file this under "people comparing 'take care' to the wrong kanye west album"

More than anything, this album was Drake’s College Dropout

From the Filter list--is this more than just retro blue-eyed soul? Haven't heard it yet...

No, but imho I think its really, really well done retro blue-eyed soul. I usually cringe at this shit, but my brother in law does some promo for Hawthorne and pushed the album on me and I found myself really liking it.

alright, i take back anything nice i ever said

Like Outkast’s Stankonia before it, House of Balloons also appears to have brought everyone together this year

despite lex's best protest in march, it was not a big year for r&b full lengths

yet three of my top 10 are r&b, plus a further five in my top 30?

and the anthony hamilton isn't out yet either

I'm sorry lex, I am still staring in shock at the quote v-nasty posted otherwise I'd ask which 3 R&B albums you're repping (I'm guessing Marsha is one of them? She was on the Soul Train Music Awards last weekend and sounded really, really sick ;_;)

poor love.

beyoncé, dawn richard, nikkiya, meshell ndegéocello, marsha ambrosius, goapele, raphael saadiq, diddy dirty money (r&b remix mixtape)

i'm not even that into the lloyd album compared with his past work (but it's still better than the weeknd/ocean OBV)

co-singing that goapele

i rep for trey songz anticipation 2

the musiq soulchild album was pretty good too, and the cherri v mixtape was excellent

and the anthony david album! this song is one of the best songs of the year full stop, amazing stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__khgIzMyaM

oh yeah Musiq Soulchild, I played that album maybe three times and then forgot I owned it

Sure, ‘NY is Killing Me’ became annoyingly inescapable,

i've never heard this

I love the Marsha Ambrosius record; it's held up well all year.

beyoncé, dawn richard, nikkiya, meshell ndegéocello, marsha ambrosius, goapele, raphael saadiq, diddy dirty money (r&b remix mixtape)

i'm not even that into the lloyd album compared with his past work (but it's still better than the weeknd/ocean OBV)

― lex pretend, Friday, December 2, 2011 9:53 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

this is what i'm talking about in terms of a 'big' year for r&b, beyonce aside. saadiq and maybe ambrosius are household names, but the rest of them are kinda the FACT list for r&b heads

yeah, i just came to the marsha album recently. 'far away'!!

of that FACT top 10, clams and araabmuzik will make my EOY list (the latter top ten, probably), still haven't listened to the rustie or prurient albums, FO and barwick didn't leave much of an impression on me, sort of avoiding weeknd/drake, haven't heard of the other two

i'm wending my way through that NPR 'other sounds' list - if you like gorgeous ambient drifty things, that nicholas szczepanik album is wonderful