Pazz'n n Jopp'n →
I sent a ballot in for this, and these are my picks. And I pretty much stand by this list, but I do have a couple runners up worth mentioning, some of whom I’ve just gotten into, some of whom just missed the cut:
Albums:
St. Vincent - Strange Mercy
Starlito & Don Trip - Step Brothers
Big K.R.I.T. - Return of 4eva
Meek Mill - Dreamchasers
Tyler, the Creator - Goblin
James Ferraro - Far Side Virtual
jj -kills (technically 2010, but 2011 was year of impact)
Danny Brown - XXX
Main Attraktionz - 808s and Dark Grapes
OJ da Juiceman - Culinary Art School Vol. 2
Wu Lyf - Go Tell Fire To The Mountain
Adele - 21
EPs
elite gymnastics - ruin I/ruin II
ASAP Rocky - Deep Purple
Stacy Barthe - Sincerely Yours
Kirby Kaiser - There’s A Boy
Singles
[I don’t have my carefully curated list from when I did my ballot, and I don’t want to YouTube link to all of these, so just know that there were a lot of Drake songs, a lot of Beyonce songs, a lot of Frank Ocean songs, a lot of The-Dream songs, a lot of Jay-Z/Kanye songs, this Ryan Adams song and this awesome K-Pop song. Oh and one Yung God song, one TKO Capone song, and one song with both of them]
Also, I had a really good post about my top musical experiences of 2011, but my computer has been without a charger for two weeks, so I’ve been working on public computers and I lost that post. It looked like this, basically:
1. Pitchfork (the festival, my first time going to a major music fest, and with so many of my favorite bands)
2. Interviewing/meeting Lil B (indeed the Based God, who gave me the best definition of swag that exists; unfortunately this interview is no longer online, making it very #rare)
3. Podcasting with Gabe (the ultimate bro)
4. Odd Future (getting incredibly hyped, getting caught up in The Hype, reading tons of fantastic writing about them, going to Detroit to see them, standing in line with all those awesome kids in Detroit, crowdsurfing for the first (and probably last) time to avoid heat exhaustion at Pitchfork, going to Gabe’s house to watch them on Fallon, seeing a (finally) straightforward dope show at Metro, listening to their music, which was often very good)
5. Teaching James Blake the cooking dance
Okay, so anyway, that was the year in music! It was fun! Shouts out to all the people on there with similar taste, and to all the ones with radically different taste.
