2016 - you know, it wasn’t great. But it was for music, especially R&B. Presenting my favorite 21 songs of the year. 

21. Ariana Grande - Into You

Should reasonably be higher but I wanted to kick this off with a bop. It’s pop perfection, just as concerned with the tease and the chase as it is with that utterly satisfying explosion of a chorus. The intro is pulse-pounding and sexy, the lyrics are just inky and coy enough to hint at looming high-speed danger, and Ariana sounds head and shoulders above her peers as she twirls that complicated syntax around the synapses-firing disco squelches on that beast of a hook. It should have been bigger than it was but we can rest easy knowing Ariana and the rest of her wholly solid Dangerous Woman LP gave us the pop star glo-up of the year.

20. K. Michelle - All I Got

Bless K. Michelle for bringing the wedding song back. This year’s answer to Calling All Lovers, K. Michelle continued to challenge Tamar Braxton in a battle of “Who’s the most extra?” with an album titled More Issues Than Vogue and one particular song that contained the lyric “Save if for The Shade Room!” She’s a treasure, a multi-faceted singer who infamously wanted to name her album I Ain’t White, But I Hope You Like It after label execs bristled at her love of country ballads. “All I Got” isn’t quite full-on country, but there’s definitely a hint of her heavy Memphis twang to be heard over those proudly unfashionable throwback keyboard flourishes and canned finger snaps. How starry-eyed and achingly sincere, the type of heartfelt, slightly cheesy ballad that got left behind with the Clinton administration. You might not respect it, but I sure do.

The 30 Best Tracks of 2015

30. Lil Mama - Sausage

For maybe the first time in all of history, someone in the YouTube comment sections is making sense: “People would like this if it wasn’t Lil Mama performing it.” Damn straight - “Sausage” is the exact type of deeply comic, pastiche cultured absurdity that we’d all be flipping out over had the credits listed Missy Elliott’s name instead of the girl who, depending on whom you ask, is either famous for a novelty song or for bumrushing a VMA stage. Lil Mama’s royalty of internet punching bags so it’s almost a directly defiant move of hers to draw inspiration from memes and Vine videos for the shell of the relentlessly bonkers “Sausage.” Lil Mama breathlessly weaves through eras of hip hop and R&B, her ADHD attention span providing a surreal barrage of reference points, from Slick Rick, vogue balls, Mary J. Blige’s “Seven Days,” and then, inexplicably, a chipmunked Dionne Warwick outro. It makes absolutely no sense, a glorious sensory overload that prioritizes entertainment and fun over balance and logic every hopscotch jump of the way. This is a music video that features a woman in a Ninja Turtle letterman’s jacket riding some sort of plastic dune buggy while growling “sa-sa-sa-sa-sausage” like she’s a car starting in the dead of winter - it’s pure madness, honestly transcendent in its brazen disregard for good taste. It’s also a nice reminder that Lil Mama can spit when she has to, her assured delivery giving the juvenilia the necessary amount of gumption required to pull all of this off. When she slips into a rewrite of “Flicka Da Wrist,” I go offfffff.

 29. Neon Indian - Annie

When your chorus relies heavily on the phrase “answering machine,” there’s possibly a slight chance you’re trying to bring to mind images of a specific era frozen in time. Alan Palomo curbs a name from Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” takes a little of the song’s neo-noir along the way and then blends it with tropical rhythms one part “La Isla Bonita” and the other from the Men at Work back catalog. It’s a delightful morsel of Reagan-era electro-pop, evoking images of neon reflected in pools and dark alleyways. It’s also a confident step forward for Neon Indian who emerges from the depths of chillwave and marches straight forward into proper rock stardom.

28. Snakehips (Feat. Tinashe and Chance The Rapper) - All My Friends

As Tinashe bides her time prepping for her 2016 takeover (lest we forget the night terror beat of “Party Favors,” a 2015 highlight of its own), she’s best served doing her trademark navel-gazing on Snakehips’ “All My Friends, a song with a sing-along chorus so massive that its notable absence from Top 40 radio should be the last pile of dirt that grave needs. Like Alessia Cara’s equally great "Here,” “All My Friends” is about feeling like a loner in a sea of people, the empty thrills of the club scene gnawing at Chance and Tinashe until they begin to feel less than human. Everyone’s looking for more, idling in carnality in the meantime but not really having fun anymore. Tinashe ends her twinkling bridge section with “I’m stuck here with the vultures hissing and circling.” The reason? “You didn’t call me.” A moment of emotional honesty buried deep within a song that appears giddy on the surface only so it can burn off the excess energy to exorcise every demon toiling away in the verses. This deserves to be huge.

27. Nao - Apple Cherry

As neo-soul starts to creep back from the margins of the R&B landscape, Nao arrives from nowhere with a beautiful, breathy soprano and the sexy autre-funk of “Apple Cherry,” a song that sounds like Prince in both name and steadfast intent to seduce. “Your apple cherry kisses, how would they feel?” - it’s a question never answered, Nao’s longing falsetto perhaps gone criminally unheard. Nao’s plea for intimacy dovetails into a stunning call-and-response bridge breakdown, each syllable echoing into a dialogue held by just one. Anticipation without release, at least for now. 

26. Kurt Vile - Pretty Pimpin' 

The soundtrack to a measured nervous breakdown. Kurt Vile is at peak stoner troubadour on “Pretty Pimpin’,” the pinpointed crossroads of a boy and man facing mortality, roads chosen and the very rest of his life. Vile oscillates between impressed (“All I want is to just have fun/live my life like a son of a gun”) and embarrassed (“Then Saturday came around and I said ‘Who’s this stupid clown in the mirror?’”), at one point considering brushing back his tangled hippie locks and correcting his course towards the more traditional. Through the laid back finger-picking and bluesy psychobilly, Vile starts to switch out “man” for “boy.” The man looking back in the mirror isn’t perfect but at least Vile agrees that he’s looking pretty pimpin’ in those clothes of his.

25. Banks - Better

I thought Banks’ debut was completely unimpressive, cribbing from nearly every “dark R&B/goth pop” trend possible and ending up with a collection of songs that had no strong argument for existing. Banks was without identity, lost to lavish production and a play pretend sense of darkness. “Better” is the polar opposite. I’m shocked by how raw, bracing and vulnerable it is, bringing to mind the earthy sensuality of the tracks featuring theTrio Bulgarka from Kate Bush’s “The Sensual World.” The vocal arrangements are heartbreaking with their repetitive self-doubt, giving Banks all the room in the world to place a frayed and naked vocal as the song’s emotional touchstone. She sounds broken, fixated on a petty phrase (“I can love you better than she”) and ultimately left with nothing to show. The echoing “ca-ca-ca-cans” are numbing. Bring on that sophomore.

24. Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian at Best 

Courtney Barnett made anxiety cool in 2015 and I suppose I should be grateful for that. “Pedestrian at Best” is a self-described “existential time crisis,” a seemingly stream of consciousness diatribe of conflicting internal monologues, mounting frustrations and an abundant lack of clarity. It’s all delivered with a charming Australian accent, sung over a deluge of power chords that seep into your grey matter and nestle snugly at the corner of “kill me” and “fuck you.” There’s power in the words Barnett manages to toss off here, even if they never complete the voyage from her brain to her mouth. In the end she reaches a staid conclusion; “I’m a Scorpio!” As meaningful a self-analysis as you’re lucky to get.

23. ANOHNI - 4 Degrees

Climate change as a passive aggressive whiteboard note left by your roommate. Over apocalyptic war drums and orchestral stabs, the artists formerly known as Antony and the Johnsons drops her booming vibrato on an indifferent populous like an anvil, indicting the world’s shrugging reaction to global warming with searing, mocking intensity. “It’s only 4 degrees,” she sings casually, “I wanna hear the dogs crying for water/I wanna see the fish go belly up in the sea.” Ouch. It’s a jarring reflective surface of a song, one that manages to avoid proselytizing by never shying away from its own culpability. Never has inaction sounded so deadly.

22. Thundercat (Feat. Flying Lotus) - Them Changes

Like being transported back to all the Saturday mornings waking up to my dad playing Brothers Johnson and Stanley Clark records. Thundercat flexes that elastic 6-string bass over a sampled Isley Brothers beat and brings the space funk back into orbit with his matter-of-fact heartbreak. “Nobody move there’s blood on the floor/and I can’t find my heart.” Somehow playful and shattering at the same time, Thundercat’s falsetto brings the melodrama and the twist of the knife with a single note. A sax solo plays out the song, his pleas lost in the chatter of a crowd.

21. Chairlift - Ch-Ching

Fresh off writing the stealth bomb of that monumental Beyonce album (“No Angel”), Chairlift are back with a newfound hip-hop edge, crafting a song about self-made success over world music influences and clattering beats and rhythms. The way Caroline Polachek’s goes in and out of her head voice is addictive. I’ve heard it dozens out times and I still flip out at the “27-99-23” part. I could not be more excited for this album

20. Jeremih - Oui

Nobody would listen to Jeremih’s “Late Nights” and mistake him for a gentleman, but it is possible they might if they only heard the painfully romantic “Oui.” Over lightweight pianos and a disorienting bed of clipped vocal ad-libs, Jeremih brings the full-offensive charm with lines like “Most of them need dollar signs/to make every day your birthday and every night your Valentine.” There’s a cute joke with the title (“There’s no we without you and I”) that works on a few levels, none of them needing to make total sense to operate exactly how they need to. Jeremih know how to bend around sexy grooves and his high-pitched New Edition voice brings it to a whole 'nother level when he gets to that Shai interpolation of a bridge section. Oui Oui.

19. Kendrick Lamar - Alright 

The cathartic centerpiece of Kendrick Lamar’s scorching “To Pimp A Butterfly” has turned into a modern day “We Shall Overcome” for the Black Lives Matter generation. FOX News made an issue of out “and we hate po-po/wanna kill us dead in the streets for sure,” and for good reason too. It wasn’t being distrustful of police states that had them shaking, it’s Kendrick and Pharrell’s triumphant hook that did the trick- “Nigga, we gon be alright!” Kendrick chronicles a world run by the impulses of Lucifer and somehow finds a simple slogan among all the hurt and hate and aggression and comes out the other side. With a new miscarriage of justice seemingly every day, it’s a sentiment that doesn’t seem plausible in the now, but then again, movements aren’t supposed to be short-term.

18. Jazmine Sullivan - Brand New

Jazmine has easily been the most slept-on singer in R&B for close to a decade now. “Reality Show” is a triumph, boundless in ambition, rueful and clever in its depictions of boilerplate soul heartbreak and unafraid to pivot from every genre cliche she encounters with the goal of making songs interesting from more angles than vocal pyrotechnics alone. Jazmine’s refusing to sing material that could be handed to any R&B female singer at this point. She’s a storyteller now, inhabiting spaces and characters and approaching R&B from its hard-scrabble origins, most notably depicting its women. On “Brand New” she’s the ignored girlfriend of a rapper who blew up, singing from the pavement on the block he stayed on and not from the new-found greenrooms and tour buses. Over a sputtering, ratchet beat (maybe the closest thing on the album to an R&B trend), Jazmine’s resentful and wounded, the woman behind the man who did the work and didn’t get the credit. “This one’s for all the baby mamas and the down-ass chicks/Remember y'all used to take bathroom pics in the crib/He said if we ever got rich we out this bitch/Believed that shit.” That scratchy vocal kills it, as it always does. The little jazz riffs on “that’s so brand new.” Everything single element works and yet Sullivan barely ever sweats.

17. Young Fathers - Shame

The best TV on the Radio track in years. Scottish band Young Fathers are yet again making sure you can’t assign them a genre qualification, this time delivering a ragged rock stomper, filled with gospel elements, percolating electric feedback and an insistent vocal background that gives the track the intensity of a 100-yard dash.“Shame” is scrappy by definition, unsure whether it’s triumphant or self-punishing. Whatever the direction it’s running towards, the pace is relentless. No time to decide.

16. Tame Impala - The Less I Know The Better

Like a Hall and Oates song performed on a psychedelic episode of Soul Train, Tame Impala finds something fabulous in the dorkier pockets of AM radio. The bass works hard here, smoothing the funk to a level that Leo Sayer could be comfortable with. It’s a track with a sense of humor (“She was holding hands with Trevor/not the greatest feeling ever”) but also one relatable in its frank reverence for the pathetic

15. FKA twigs - In Time 

Once again emerging from the primordial soup after her stunning 2014 debut, FKA twigs gifted us “M3LL155X,” a 5-track audio-visual experience with “In Time” as the emotional centerpiece. It’s a plea for a relationship to turn back to normalcy, ping ponging sentiments of longing and righteous anger over collapsing beats and tempo shifts that feel like water trickling down stone walls. At times she’s delicate (“In time you’ll learn to say sorry”) but she’s also indignant (“You got a goddamn nerve!”) - there’s no clear outcome to this story but the music lets us know it’s only a matter of time before the walls close in on her completely.

14. Bjork - Lionsong

Bjork’s spent the last decade very concerned with textures and often losing sight of melodies. While this focus has produced some enrapturing moments (2011’s “Virus” still gives me chills), “Vulnicura” is the sound of Bjork reclaiming some of that celestial tension from all the gradients and materials of her beats. As a painful breakup album, there’s real emotion this time, something not as easily sacrificed to the whims of the conceptual. “Lionsong” was the most immediately bracing, its rich tapestry of blips, swelling strings and Bjork’s multitracked vocals sending the listener into a free fall of devastation and emotional stagnation. I had a legitimate aha moment with this track, the line “I refuse it’s a sign of maturity/to be stuck in complexity/I demand clarity” gracefully encapsulating the frustration of loving someone marred by their own internal dialogue. “Maybe he will come out of this loving me” is sung to a repetitive degree, almost like a prayer for release. Bjork’s trapped, her heart with a man that needs feelings dug out of him with a knife. To give and not receive.

13. Tamar Braxton - Simple Things

Tamar Braxton is a cartoon character, perhaps even more so than later-day Mariah is. She’s a boundless supply of reaction gifs, speaks almost entirely in catchphrases (#SheDidThat #GetYourLife #DotCom #YouTriedIt) and frequently refers to herself in the third person. You’d think I’d forgive you for not taking her seriously, but that’s simply not going to be the case as long as she keeps putting out albums as consistent as “Calling All Lovers,” a surprisingly excellent collection of the kind of thoroughly unhip, no-frills R&B that the 90s left behind. Most R&B in 2015 is existing in this post-Drake/Weeknd malaise of minimalism and self-loathing but Tamar is a SINGER and that means she’s going to tear all of these songs to shreds with a voice that never fails to surprise me with its nimbleness, dexterity and adaptability. “Simple Things” is what I would lip sync to if I were a drag queen. It’s a cute little 60s throwback about love over materialism (off brand!) and Tamar sings the hell out of it, commanding each and every line so triumphantly that you barely have time to chuckle at the appropriately low-budget production (on brand!), that ultimately ends with a spoken word outro where Tamar exudes the wonders of FaceTime over a Casio horn section. This is in my top 5 albums of the year and I will not apologize.

12. Bully - Trying

I spent all of May listening to Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” for some reason, perhaps nostalgic for Daria and a rocker chick version of myself I like to think I’d have been had I been born a bit earlier and never discovered Whitney Houston records. The Veruca Salt comeback single was decent but I needed something a bit more brash in its youthful arrogance to really fill that gap. Then I found Bully’s “Trying,” a perfectly bratty rush of a lighters-up anthem that aims its target at the full cornucopia of grown-up people problems. Through debt, pregnancy scares and career doubt, Alicia Bognanno’s high-pitched head snarl sends that guitar hook through the goddamn roof. It ends with her screaming “Why am I?,” which isn’t the worst tattoo idea I’ve ever had.

11. Beach House - Levitation

Beach House songs are a form or sorcery. These are songs that seem to appear out of ether when you need them; moments of grief, derailed joy, and painful nostalgia all coalescing into a haze of lost dreams and uncharted alternate timelines. Victoria Legrand’s drowsy androgynous voice is bewitching as it’s ever been been, moved forward in a mix of slow spiraling guitars, droning organs and gloomy militant drums that feel like an ephemeral incantation of something traveled to the next world. There are more attention-grabbing moments on “Depression Cherry” (namely that synth squiggle of “Sparks” and “Space Song’s” computer bop) but opener “Levitation” is my personal standout, achieving a trance-like feel of weightlessness and a ripe train-out-of-time metaphor right out of a Wong Kar-Wai film. Some have accused the Beach House formula of growing stale, but “Depression Cherry” is their best yet. Could be all about the moment in time - as any of their songs will tell you, those are hard to bottle.

10. Ashley Monroe - The Blade

This one’s a weeper, one that was maybe a bit too close to home for me in 2015. As far as killer country metaphors go “You caught it by the handle and I caught it by the blade” is a doozy, demonstrating Monroe’s persistent wit and dovetailing it into a song so full of exposed nerve and tissue that the only salve is the repeat button and a few hours of crying into a pillow. In my book, it might be the best mainstream country song I’ve heard since Miranda’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” period, Vince Gill’s production perfectly balancing its mix of slide and acoustic guitars and a vocal performance that Monroe wisely dials back to a quiver. It’s a song that physically hurts, upholding a strong tradition of country torch songs in the neoclassical style that brings to mind Emmylou in the 80s. The chorus provides some therapeutic release but there’s only enough life in Monroe for her to get it out twice. The resignations already there - she bled out and he kept on walking.

9. Jamie xx (Feat. Young Thug & Popcaan) - I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)

“Pop quiz it’s a pop quiz!” “Good Times” is the strange outlier on what’s otherwise an extremely thoughtful and lovingly realized trip through various dance clubs and dance eras. Opening with a sublimely gooey doo-wop sample courtesy of The Persuaders, “Good Times” makes way for a very lewd and very animated Young Thug, emerging as the record’s id and devil on the shoulder. There’s just a few elements at work here (the sample, island drums, finger snaps) but somehow you can actually hear an entire party happening in the background that’s not actually there. Popcaan’s chants of “I know!” are ecstatic, maybe even life-affirming. There’s no doubt in that statement - good times are ahead.

8. Janet Jackson - Dammn Baby

Barring a few choice singles, we haven’t really had Janet since “The Velvet Rope” era ended. When you look back at those first four albums, each had a conclusive statement: the declaration of personhood in “Control,” the youthful optimism of “Rhythm Nation,” the sexual awakening of “janet,” and the wounded existentialism of “The Velvet Rope,” still my vote for most thoughtful pop album ever recorded. Since then, Janet hasn’t really had anything to say. She even TOLD Jimmy Jam the very same but still went ahead and recorded three albums that did nothing but point to creative bankruptcy. Janet announced “Unbreakable” with a hashtag - #ConversationsInACafe - which she references in “Dammn Baby.” 8 years away and Janet’s talking again, nearly biting off more than she can chew with the hushed wisdom of a big sister. The point is, Janet’s back and confident, no more evident than on the absolute banger that is “Dammn Baby,” a song that rekindled all those years spent performing Ms. Jackson choreography in front of bathroom mirrors. The beat on this is so vicious that I risked humiliation by dancing to it in my building’s laundry room. Over off-kilter, bottom-heavy drums and a disembodied male voice, Janet’s vocals are effortless, skittering around at different speeds and absolutely nailing that divine “Can’t nobody tell you” flutter in the pre-chorus. There’s a wonderful nostalgia bid with that “I Get Lonely” breakdown but the song stands mightily on its own in the endless pantheon of truly impressive Janet dance tracks. Pure elation.

7. Grimes - Flesh Without Blood

With “Art Angels” Grimes emerged from the neo-goth haze of “Visions” and walked fearlessly into something resembling a traditional pop song. Make no mistake, Grimes’ dark electronica is still present and there’s really only a rough sketch of a hook, but it’s also really the first Grimes song you can actually sing along to, propelled by a bratty chugging pop-punk guitar riff that’s only a few degrees of butt-rock away from something like Sum 41. It’s fun watching Grimes play with this push and pull at the expense of her critics. In a way she’s trolling, giving interviews where she speaks of “bro-art” influences and then contrasting those sounds with feather vocals, cheerleader chants, and sweet tooth melodies. It’s the sound of someone guilelessly following their instincts and blowing kisses in the wind, and “Flesh Without Blood” is a perfect example. Grimes’ beautiful lilting vocals hover like hummingbirds, floating between hiccuping beats and through lyrics that viciously chronicle the dissolution of a decayed friendship. The production is beefed up but the edges remain frayed.

6. Miguel - coffee 

Miguel’s always had a knack for finding the sweetness in depravity and the blooming flowers in a creepy come-on. “coffee” is a sex jam but its concerns reach far-beyond short term satisfaction and instead bleed into imagery of the eternal, a feeling echoed by an album cover that places the singer in some sort of rapturous heaven. Miguel’s deadly serious here (sex itself is even referred to as “gun play” in case we’re mincing words above the velocity of its force), eager to pilfer from the Prince school of cosmic sensuality with references to baptism, angels and glistening moons to really sell the weight of the act’s wonder. The song starts with the line “I wish I could paint our love” and we’re left with a deliberate coffee metaphor, all swirls of colors and hues blending into one.

5. Carly Rae Jepsen - Run Away With Me

If I allowed more than one track per artist on this list it might just end up the whole of Carly Rae’s massively entertaining “Emotion,” an album so ruthless with earworm melodies and razor-sharp songwriting that it makes “1989” look like it’s asleep on the job. I could go on and on about the two-step jaunt of the title track, the oozing sentimentality of “All That,” the cotton candy kiosk that is “Boy Problems,” or even the M.C. Escher staircases of “Making The Most of the Night’s” refrain, but it’s opener “Run Away With Me” that takes it’s rightful place above the heap of Top 40 classics that never were, no small part due to whatever that sax-synth-kazoo hybrid is that so memorably opens it. The first time I heard “Run Away With Me” I knew almost instantly I’d heard the best pop song of the year and that’s a feeling that’s more than held up with so many repeat listens I’ve lost count. Lyrically, Jepsen tends to sand off the corners, but the vague platitudes of “Run Away With Me” are why it works. Here, the universal sells, all underbaked plans, dizzying rushes of blood to the head and a propulsive euphoric energy that spirals into the most mammoth chorus of the year. In a way it’s just as cutesy as “Call Me Maybe” was, but there are only declarative statements this time. “Run Away With Me” is a command and it’s Jepsen doing the commanding. No more room for question marks. 

4. Sufjan Stevens – Fourth of July

I was blessed to see Sufjan tour “Carrie and Lowell” earlier this year and will ever be grateful to be a part of an experience so intimate and threadbare in emotion that it rendered an entire auditorium to stone silence. There was precisely one moment where Sufjan interrupted himself to tell a story – in it, he spoke of his childhood, how he grew up in a family that routinely took in stray animals and how the constant entrances and exits of wildlife provided an early understanding of death. As a whole, the album might be the most artful and moving depiction of loss and death I’ve encountered in my life. In the case of “Fourth of July” specifically, the story Sufjan shared adds an extra wrinkle of sentimentality, giving familiar context to all the animal references lovingly and painfully used in a song that provides a dialogue between a son and his dead mother. “Well you do enough talk, my little hawk/ Why do you cry?” The trading dialogue structure gives Sufjan an internal battle to fight, his own stanzas reconciling the aftershocks of death (the planning, the doubt, the questioning of faith) and contrasts with the impenetrable comfort of a mother’s love and encouragement. In the end we hear the brief sparks of her life lay extinguished as embers. When it’s all done, there are no words left for Sufjan to repeat but the infinite in the finite: “we’re all gonna die.”

3. Joanna Newsom – Leaving The City

As long as Joanna Newsom’s had a career she’s directly drawn upon a romanticized version of the pastoral - all the Ren Fair harps and lutes, flowery prose and language, and the prevailing notion of the absorption of earthly bodies into an almost cosmic sense of order. But on “Leaving The City”, we see her confront the realities head-on. What happens when we attempt to return to a simpler way of life? Are we doing this, “are we leaving the city?” At first it’s an idea presented like a marriage retreat, but soon the reclamation into plowed fields, golden wheat, and pervasive silence gives way to tugging at the threads of the universe and questioning our role in unconquerable cycles. So much of “Divers,” (unquestionably my album of the year) is concerned with our relation to time, how we reconcile our feelings against these forces that directly oppose them, and how we can find solace in being mere specks in time. In pure Joanna fashion, “Leaving The City” questions inertia with equestrian terms (“The bridle bends in idle hands/ and slows your canter to a trot”), places the country vs the mystical (“Here, the light will seep/and the scythe will reap/ and spirit will reap”), and ultimately surrenders to forces beyond her control; the acceptance of death. Musically it’s stunning, adding live drums, guitars, and an added heft to a musical profile usually masking its own complexity in deceptively sparse instrumentation. Even the tempo shifts are purposeful, creating a push and pull of action and inaction, serenity and chaos. I will forever be in awe.

And that is all I want here
To draw my gaunt spirit to bow
Beneath what I am allowed

2. Chance The Rapper (Feat. Saba) – Angels

Rather unexpectedly, I burst into full-on tears the first time I heard “Angels” during its debut on Stephen Colbert. Even thinking about that performance months later makes my eyes well up. I was completely taken aback – here I am with no direct personal ties to south Chicago, its culture, its pain or its struggles, reduced to the Oprah ugly cry just because I can’t think of a single time where I’ve seen so much pure and unbridled love poured into a piece of artistic expression. Repping your city is a tenant of hip-hop culture, but Chance knows his is a matter of life and death, providing a beacon of hope for a city that any outsider would assume is slouching towards oblivion. There’s a direct reference to ineffective government at the song’s start (“I got my city doing front flips/when every father, mayor, rapper jump ship”) but Chance is far more concerned with the scarcity of positivity as a commodity, instead focusing on unique traits of a community distinctly its own.  Quite simply, this is a song absolutely bursting with energy, backed by tricked-out kettledrums, gospel choir harmonies and a triumphant horn section that has never once failed to send a sharp wave of goosebumps up my forearms.  And that performance? Saba’s beaming smile as he proclaims “City so damn great I feel like Alexand!”, the local radio sweatshirts, all those regional dances (how often do you see rappers dance?), that voice crack – it’s honestly almost too much undiluted joy to take in all at once. The microcosm of Kanye’s “Family Business” stretched out to encompass the beating heart of an entire city.

Watch the Colbert performance: HERE

1. Natalie Prass – My Baby Don’t Understand Me

As it was during the cat and mouse tension of last year’s “Why Don’t You Believe in Me,” Natalie Prass’ strength is primarily in her timing and delivery.  Technically, there’s a lot going on in “My Baby Don’t Understand Me,” so much so that Prass has resorted to words like “community” to describe the team that made the record’s lavish arrangements possible. Beginning with little more than a whisper, Prass traverses her way through a whole collection of Southern orchestral soul elements – horns, woodwinds, guitars – before arriving at that devastating final train platform. A less-talented singer could easily get lost in all the grandeur, but all the gilded lilies of the arrangement are ultimately at Prass’ mercy, bending to the whims of her strident vocal performance and ultimately acting as an extension of her own emotional weight. Horns may swell with the fervor of Prass’ doomed relationship epiphanies, but they just as quickly drop down to a complete hush to allow room for moments of achingly tender sincerity and resolute loss to stand confidently on their own. It all builds to that stunning “Our love is a long goodbye” bridge, the rolling boil of a heartbreak and the quiet resignation of a person powerless to stop it. One of the first new songs I heard in 2015 and nothing since has knocked me off my feet quite like it.  

Please note: Tracks from the initial release of Beyoncé’s self-titled album were not eligible. :)

30. Nick Jonas – Jealous

He may have ditched the purity ring and achieved premium beefcake status during his transition from Disney star to Timberlake Jr, but Nick Jonas is still the very model of the boy next door. “Jealous” is a direct attempt at injecting sex into a career that was previously defined by the absence of it, and while the bedrooms of America may be the obvious targets of the Marvin Gaye-lite beat and abundance of falsetto notes, Nick’s relative discomfort with the subject and “aw shucks” vocal delivery end up being the song’s secret weapon. On unedited versions of the track, Nick sings  “you’re too fucking beautiful and everyone wants your sex,” but he’s just as quick to sanitize the chorus in order to perform it in front of a gospel choir and on a giant piano Big-style at a toy store. Vague undercurrents of digital slut-shaming (“I wish you didn’t have to post it all”) are present, but instantly recede to Nick knowing he’s succumbing to his worst caveman instincts. Jonas’ ode to the green-eyed monster can’t quite commit to the menace and hip grinding eventually gives way to toe-tapping. With all the crotch-grabbing going on in his magazine pictorials, Nick might not exactly be going for “adorable,” but that’s exactly what bubblegum pop should sound like. 

I like this jittery fox.

intodust:

sorry for the b99 spam but this episode was so great!

I really forgot how to do Tumblr in my absence so it’s maybe just going to be Brooklyn Nine-Nine gif sets.

archiemcphee:

‘A Peanut Dissected’ by Brian Stuckey

We hope this particular Mr. Peanut specimen donated his body to science and didn’t run afoul of rogue dissectors.

[via Super Punch]

Does this imply that Mr. Peanut has two sets of eyeballs? I knew that monocle was just for show.

Same.

Mr. Ratburn lives his best life.