Prelude – Winter deepens, we pass the solstice and turn quietly. Bears continue in hibernation, hungry-looking foxes can be seen in fields and hedgerows as the scent of roast root vegetables, mulled wine and turkey wafts low across the countryside. People are friendly, catching up with old friends, and merriment and goodwill creeps up from the cracks in our broken society. No newspapers for a day, the radio hums agreeably with the story of Bethlehem and Wham. Bloggers sit in dark rooms squinting at laptop screens and making lists.
I intended to do some sort of list with all my favorite albums of the year, but it quickly turned into an absolutely unholy mess and I’m a bit too late with it now anyway. Not wanting to throw all this out, I decided that the best way to proceed was to post on some of my favourite rap and R n’B releases of the year, because rap kicked indie’s arse in terms of exciting releases this year and I listen to a lot of it but feature hardly any on the blog. The post comes complete with an incomprehensible amount of links and pictures and videos in an attempt to mask the fact that this is an extremely poorly conceived ‘list’. End-of–year mixtape to follow. LOADS OF LINKS TO DEADLY FREE MUSIC BELOW.
Danny Brown – XXX (Fool’s Gold Records)
Danny Brown – XXX
Detroit rapper Danny Brown turned 30 this year, so he named his new tape XXX. Thirty is supposed to be some sort of seminal age, right? So Danny raps about income tax (“that income tax swag”), he raps about growing up in industrial Detroit. He raps about drugs – dealer turned dealed (“I use to turn these drugs/Now these drugs turn my life”) and his various substance abuse problems. Oh, and he raps about his sexual preferences in toe-curling detail too. And by ‘raps’, I mean snarls, growls, yelps and croons, and all with skinny jeans and a half-shaved head of hair. Turning up on any number of guest verses and generally getting himself out there, it’s fair to say that Danny Brown was indie rap in 2011.
Danny Brown – Fields
Quelle Chris Ft. Danny Brown & Roc Marciano – Shotgun
- Download XXX for free here.
Shabazz Palaces – Black Up (Sub Pop)
“Black Up – the film”
On the third verse of Wu Tang Clan’s seminal ‘7th Chamber (Part Two)‘, Inspectah Deck pronounced ”my rap style has the force to leave you lost, like the tribe of Shabazz…” Eighteen years later, the tribes of Shabazz have been well and truly found. Today, if in some sort of bizarre and values-inverted alternative reality, should someone back me into an uncomfortable corner with an unpleasant-looking implement demanding an album of the year, there’s an excellent chance the words ‘Black Up’ would crawl their way from my mouth. It’s a triumphant celebration, with bongos and other strange percussion, hooks, growls, compelling lyrics and absolutely immaculate production. It’s sort of Bedouin, it’s a movement, deserts and oases, goats’ shit cracked in the dead heat and soaring trumpets. It’s a feeling.
Shabazz Palaces – Swerve
Big K.R.I.T. – Return of 4eva (self-released)
When people talk about this guy, the phrase ‘real southern rap’ gets thrown around a lot, which was something of an alien concept to me until I saw Ludacris casually eating chicken in this video. Return of 4eva has some very rewarding moments, not least on the powerful ‘Dreamin”, which samples ‘Dream‘ by the Brothers of Soul and shows that the premise of ‘southern rap’ is a shifting paradigm.
- Return of 4eva was originally released as a free download but it seems to have been withdrawn since. You can download a ‘chopped and screwed’ version for free here.
Death Grips – Exmilitary (Third Worlds)
When you listen to an album that opens with Charles Manson spitting some mad shit about “dealing the cards” and “rolling in nickels”, you know you’re onto something pretty special. This is aggressive Sacramento punk-rap accompanied by live percussion and screams and if you don’t like it, just keep listening to Drake’s new one.
- Download Exmilitary for free here.
Cities Aviv – Digital Lows (Fat Sandwich)
Cities Aviv is 22-year-old Gavin Mays who, on his breakout 7″, ‘Coastin’‘, boasts that “by the time I’m 25, the world is mine”. An indulgent claim perhaps, but judging by the quality of the tracks on his May album Digital Lows, not one that I would be entirely opposed to. Not only did he produce one of the smoothest tracks of the year with the aforementioned ‘Coastin”, but the guy admits to having experimented with sampling My Bloody Valentine and increasingly crops up in the same sentences as ‘RZA’. Need any more reason to pay attention? Just listen to ‘Fuckeverybodyhere’.
Cities Aviv – Fuckeverybodyhere
- Download Digital Lows for free here.
Lil B - I’m Gay (I’m Happy) (self-released)
Ok, ok, ok. Let’s be clear here. I’m Gay is hardly ‘album of the year’ stuff. Far from it. For most of the 12 tracks, Lil 
B sounds like he has no idea what he is rapping about. While this is ‘positive’ Lil B – ie, he isn’t ‘rapping’ about eating Wonton Soup or being Bill Clinton – some of the wisdom proffered here is purely childish. Capitalism and greed has detrimental effects on how we live as a society? Wow, never thought about that particular theory before.
HOWEVER, I’m Gay did produce one enormous tune in ‘Unchain Me’, a Clams Casino-produced, ‘Cry Little Sister’-sampling groove that genuinely is probably one of the best things Lil B has ever done. Sure, yet again, the lines are somewhat contradictory and naive – he raps “Man the rap game is the slave trade/No time for meditation/Turn into robots/The Devil is money/It’s not even human/The people die for a piece of paper/It’s so stupid,” before stating “Man, just live, however you do it” – but you just know the intention is good. Good intentions alone would not suffice for almost any other artist (can you imagine having the same patience with a new ‘electro-indie’ act? The reek of pretentiousness would be too much), but with Lil B it’s different. ‘Unchain Me’ and ‘Game’ took some heavy plays on my iPod from June on, and by September it was clear that the former had gained an exclusive spot on my soundtrack to summer 2011. I did some seriously mad funking out to that track in the kitchen while eating breakfast on those wet July mornings before cycling the 13 windy and raw kilometres to my unpaid work placement. ‘Unchain Me’ will forever remind me of walking past Tuam livestock mart on lengthy rambles around the town during my lunch-break. If that isn’t ‘rare’ and ‘emotional’, what is? Below is the song’s video – shot in classic Lil B style (poorly), and licence from the man himself to grab the whole thing for free.
http://www.mediafire.com/?o4z4ebht1gettlh CUZ I LOVE YOU IF YOU DONT HAVE 10 DOLLERS TO BUY MY NEW PROJECT HERE IT GOES FOR FREE- Lil B :+)—
Lil B From The Pack (@LILBTHEBASEDGOD) July 02, 2011
A$AP Rocky - LIVELOVEA$AP (self-released)
Yeah the whole $3m debut record deal and the ‘Sound of 2012′ tag means that the 23-year-old Harlem rapper has all the ingredients to a classic backlash/meltdown/disappointment situation round about April next year, but that doesn’t change the fact that 2011 was a very good year for those subscribing to the motto of ‘Always Strive And Prosper’.
A$AP Rocky – Bass (prod. Clams Casino)
- Download LIVELOVEA$AP for free here.
Frank Ocean – nostalgia,ULTRA (self-released)
When Odd Future started to blow up in stratospheric fashion sometime around late February, their oldest member, Frank Ocean, got little of the attention. Around the time that Tyler, the Creator and Hodgy Beats made their break-out debut on TV, the New Orleans ‘singer-songwriter’ (a term he prefers to ‘R n’ B artist’), quietly dropped nostalgia,ULTRA, an album that had originally been intended for a Def Jam release but was shunted online for free download after Frank tired of the label’s lackadaisical approach. Initially it seemed to be overlooked beneath the growing, growling wave of OFWGKTA’s march on the music industry. The ‘Yonkers’ video arrived, SXSW came and went and finally Tyler’s Goblin came out in early May. The peak of the wave. And then, for Tyler, and some other members of the crew, there was an eerie moment of deafening silence before a barely perceptible dip in public opinion. Listening to Goblin at first was great, largely thanks to the enjoyment that fans got from the bombastic resumption of the personal saga that started with Bastard. After a few listens however, it became clear that Goblin was not the album that had been expected. Not long after, I downloaded nostalgia,ULTRA and spent a day moping around the house eating stuff with lots of salt in it and blaring songs with titles such as ‘Lovecrimes’, ‘Songs for Women’, ‘American Wedding’ and ‘Dust’, and instrumentals from the likes of The Eagles, Coldplay and MGMT. Put like that, it sounds as though it could have been a contender for one of the most depressing days of the year, but the reality was different. It was great and this man is going places.
Frank Ocean – Swim Good
- Download nostalgia,ULTRA for free here.
The Weeknd – House of Balloons (self-released)
It’s possible that this was my most listened to album of 2011 and if you had told me last December that particular accolade would go to a fucking Rn’B album thick with narcissism, sex and cocaine, I would have laughed and called myself a loser. House of Balloons and everything The Weeknd touched in general was an internet sensation this year. Within the space of a few months, Abel Tesfaye had gone from underground Tumblr crooner to collaborating with Drake and apparently providing every single YouTube browser with their favourite heartbreak ballads. Anyway, this is a very cool album. Don’t be fooled by the glib or washed-down connotations of the genre either – House of Balloons is a glorious nod to that nasty feeling of acute self-awareness and disgust that comes over the room at 5am when the sun flickers off stained walls and the first stabs of a crippling headache rise from the sticky sea of empty cans on the floor…
- Download three 2011 mixtapes from The Weeknd here, including House of Balloons.
Others;
Kendrick Lamar – Section 80 (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Freddie Gibbs & Madlib – Thuggin’ EP (Stones Throw Records)
Curren$y – Weekend at Burnies (Jet Life Recordings)
Mr Muthafuckin’ eXquire - Lost in Translation (Mishka)
