Although this year wasn’t quite as prolific as 2018, the last 365 days still provided a laundry list of quality projects for music fans to digest.
Earlier this week, we shared our favorite rap projects of the year; followed by our favorite R&B releases. And now, in an effort to show off our personal tastes, Meka, Wongo, and I are sharing our individual lists.
Like the previous years, there’s overlap with some, but plenty of variation.
Diving right in, my Top 5 (in no order) belongs to Freddie Gibbs and Madlib‘s Bandana (how they improved on Piñata is beyond me), Little Brother‘s May the Lord Watch (man, it felt good to hear Pooh and Phonte on wax again), Dreamville‘s Revenge of the Dreamers III (from the Willy Wonka-esque invites to the final product, J. Cole and them did it), Griselda‘s WWCD (capping off another crazy year from Westside Gunn, Conway and Benny the Butcher), and Maxo Kream‘s Brandon Banks (I’ve always thought Maxo was dope, but this album was really really good–with zero skips).
From there, album’s like Boogie‘s Everything’s For Sale, Jim Jones‘ El Capo, and SiR‘s Chasing Summer were in constant rotation. Snoh Aalegra‘s – ugh, those feels again might be the best R&B album of the year. YBN Cordae had one of the more impressive solo debuts in recent memory with The Lost Boy. Anderson .Paak made up for his Oxnard misstep in a big way with Ventura, while the Free Nationals finally released their self-titled debut. Rapsody proved she is only getting better on EVE. DaBaby went back-to-back on everyone, Benny the Butcher introduced us to the plugs he met, Young Thug was having a lot of fun, and much more. ’19 was great.
Below you’ll find an IG post that breaks down pretty much everything I enjoyed throughout the year. Like usual there’s a lot – and some I forgot.
