10. Fabolous—Oh Lets Do It
In a year that proved the hip-hop inverse of '09—gargantuan, brilliant albums and mostly lackluster mixtapes—Funeral Fab's second collaboration with DJ Drama, The Funeral Service: There is No Competition 2, was the best of the pack by far, and "Oh Lets Do It" probably the highlight. Fabolous spends most of the mixtape spewing blanket layers of vitriol at anyone else who's ever picked up a mic, and hijacking what was originally a Waka Flocka Flame track, he lays down something better than what either Waka or Lil Wayne was able to do with it. Highlight: "My verse go first like it ride in a hearse." If you don't already have the mixtape, get it from Dat Piff fo free.
9. Surfer Blood—Catholic Pagans
For reasons unclear to me, Arcade Fire were crowned the kings of adolescent pageantry this year after the release of The Suburbs, a melodramatic, painfully boring failure that has about as much to do with any authentic experience of youth as Twilight does. Surfer Blood's Astro Coast is everything The Suburbs isn't: witty, contemporary, fun and jacked up with real doses of what it's like to be a smart, understimulated kid watching David Lynch flicks with a girl he can't quite read. And "Catholic Pagans," with its bellicose chorus and story of someone getting their act together for a girl, maybe that same girl, makes rock and roll sound redemptive again.
8. Katy Perry—Teenage Dream
No offense, but if this song doesn't get you to seriously consider making a run for the nearest beach/dancefloor every time you hear it, you might be medically dead. Songwriter Dr. Luke has had an Olympian year, and Perry turns his feverish, hopeful lyrics—"Let me be your teenage dream tonight"—into a paean for American youth.
7. Yelawolf—Pop the Trunk
Alabama rapper Yelawolf's been steadily rising since his turn on Big Boi's Sir Luscious Left Foot, and "Pop the Trunk" shows off his writerly technique and a penchant for twisted storytelling, all chopped up and delivered via his Dixie-meets-Eminem flow. The beat adds nicely to "Pop the Trunk"'s dramatic sensibility, stuttering along and then blowing up big for emphasis when Yela gets to the good parts.
6. Tyler, the Creator—Bastard
I wrote a bit earlier this year about Tyler and the Odd Future Wolf Gang, but to that I'll add briefly: sometimes, mood is everything.
5. Last Year's Men—Beware
I also wrote a pretty long feature about these guys, who, if there were some sort of algorithm for calculating talent and success in relation to age, might be the highest-rated band in the country. Rocking ragged and poetic, the band just kills it with "Beware," and its chorus—"Baby, I'll be the coffin if you'll be the nail/I'll be the letters inside your mail"—must make older songwriters kick the ground in envy.
4. Sufjan Stevens—Impossible Soul
Never having been a huge Sufjan fan, I couldn't believe how much I liked The Age of Adz—visionary, heartfelt and expansive, the record felt, and still feels, like some form of future. Removing a track from this context is tough, so I went ahead and picked the one that's 25 minutes long, because it best encompasses the record's shapeshifting textures of voice and instrument.
3. Curren$y ft. Mos Def and Jay Electronica—The Day
Curren$y was 2010's breakout rapper, this is the best track off either Pilot Talk, and, let's face it: "The voodoo man is coming, bruh." This song cuts diamonds.
2. Mr. Dream—Knuckle Sandwich
The sneering, pugilist-punk that makes barfights sound so attractive sometimes—that's Mr. Dream, 2010's best new band by a significant margin. Made up of a bunch of hyperliterate music critics, these guys steep their vicious guitar-and-drums in layered histories of rock and roll; you can practically hear the footnotes, and it's totally refreshing. Postmodernism at it's best, which is intelligent, humored and surveying the scene with wide eyes.
1. Kanye West ft. Pusha T—Runaway
After pretty much bloodletting myself to write that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy review, I still have a surprising amount to say about what is, for me, without question the song of the year. But I'll keep it short. On "Runaway," Kanye takes a stained-glass-and-sunlight-gorgeous beat and treats it like someone he loves, with all the pathos, adornments and indulgences this metaphor might suggest. Between Kanye's shredded singing and the samples like rough surf, Pusha T's scalpel of a verse and what might be history's most deranged use of vocoder, we're given something that feels like it should be hung in galleries, a piece that begs to be framed and looked at over and over, its wrinkles memorized and its colors made intimate.
Honorable mentions: Waka Flocka Flame, "Hard in the Paint"; Vampire Weekend, "Giving Up the Gun"; Tokyo Police Club, "Wait Up (Boots of Danger)"; Titus Andronicus, "The Battle of Hampton Roads"; Superchunk, "Learned to Surf"; Spoon, "Got Nuffin"; pretty much every song on Sleigh Bells' Treats; Rihanna ft. Drake, "What's My Name"; Rick Ross ft. Styles P, "B.M.F."; Mountain Man, "Soft Skin"; Liars, "Scarecrow on a Killer Slant"; Kanye West ft. Rick Ross, "Devil in a New Dress"; Jamie Lidell, "The Ring"; The Hold Steady, "The Weekenders"; Brandon Flowers, "Jilted Lovers and Broken Hearts"; Andrew Cedermark, "Hard Livin'"; Alicia Keys ft. Drake, "UnThinkable"
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