Songs of 2012
1. Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe
One of my favourite personal moments of 2012 was at a birthday house party, "Call Me Maybe" rocking the dancefloor, me typically interrupting proceedings to announce to my friend Catherine that I expected you could sing the final stretch of Katy Perry’s "Teenage Dream" over the final stretch of the song playing and it would scan perfectly. So we did. I don't know that anyone else really appreciated our spontaneous mash-up, but it felt in the spirit of "Call Me Maybe", a song so inclusive and all-encompassing that it welcomes everyone and anyone not merely to nod their heads in appreciation but to sing and dance and mug along (even if not the right words). I'm not even convinced that "Call Me Maybe" is clearly the best song on Carly's unexpectedly fine debut album ("This Kiss", "Curiosity" and "Hurt So Good" are also contenders) but such technical quibbles seem churlish in the face of her signature tune's unmatched capacity to bring listeners into the tent. This is not some kind of quirk of chance, some inexplicable spiritual or magical infusion that lifts this unsuspecting tune above the ranks of every other (get out your airquotes) pedestrian manufactured pop song; rather it is the very craft of "Call Me Maybe", the honed perfection of each progressively greater step (from the verses to the chorus 1 to the chorus 2) which allows it to act as a kind of skeleton key that unlocks and awakens the bashful recognition of as many listeners as possible. Seeing it have that effect in public is almost as fun as singing along.
2. Guru - Lapaz Toyota
"Lapaz Toyota" is consummate azonto not merely in the sense of being tremendously good, but also in the sense of taking to their logical extremes all of the style's most winning qualities, or rather that one quality of its qualities, the way that everything that happens - the tense string riffs, the metallic pings and scrapes, the ricochet beats, the cacophony of different voices all chanting different earwormy hooks - happens at once, in a barely coherent yet somehow flawless explosion of ideas, or perhaps less an explosion then the largest, most confusingly spiraling set of falling dominos ever. At first, "Lapaz Toyota" is like a carnival ride that moves too fast for you to feel sick, to even absorb much other than the constantly mutating dazzle of colour and shape. After a few replays, though, you get a sense of its motion and patterns, and the fun shifts to anticipating each new development, an oddly angled synth riff signaling the arrival of a drum build-up which seems to trigger a shouted vocal interjection which itself sets off something else again in an endless loop of breathless excitement, the sheer inevitability of each new trick almost as enjoyable as the tricks themselves - how could its creators ever imagine it, and keep it all in their heads long enough to commit the result to tape? For a more subtle, sinuous take on the same idea check Guru's hypnotic "Anything Goes" from 2011, which but for its release date would be my second favourite azonto tune of the year.
3. Nick Hannam & Tom Garnett ft. Tom Zanetti - You Want Me
The grace of simplicity: no tune in 2012 prowled so persuasively as "You Want Me", its tick-tock snare/hi-hat pattern, rustling percussive coughs and owl hoot synth hooks taking their own sweet time to get where they're going, which is basically nowhere. If there was one tune that could conceivably stretch on for hours and never seem to get tired it's this one (ironically, for much of the year I was stuck with an edit lasting less than three minutes). I can understand why many listeners find it difficult to see much to treasure in jackin's darkly humorous economy of expression, its deliberately exaggerated demonstrations of reserve always interspersed with displays of such gross lack of subtlety that even reserve's typical compensation (that sense of classiness that hangs like a pall over much of the most celebrated dance music in 2012) is forever denied. But really there's no excuse with "You Want Me", which applies this mixture to a pop template with remarkable aplomb and perfect execution: everything from the dead-eyed Shola Ama interpolation vocals (not even in the same galaxy as post-dubstep's glut of R&B cut-ups) to Tom Zanetti's springloaded MC verses ("Okay then / watch what I say then / if you like champagne swing my way then") filled with jackin's characteristic worldly joie de vivre, a celebration of a life in which nothing is ever at stake except the compulsive pursuit of gratification.
4. Miguel - Adorn
What is there left to be said about "Adorn" that hasn't been said by a million other, better writers? Nothing, I suspect, but "Adorn" is not a tune that is apt to be captured properly in purple prose anyway, its charms ultimately too mysteriousness in their apparent straightforwardness. Like, if I said that "Adorn" is half-treasurable for how much it reminds me of "Sexual Healing", this would still confront the problem that "Sexual Healing" itself is a song whose appeal is easier to succumb to than to understand; something about that sense of universal yearning, that boundless generosity of desire, as if for Miguel (and Marvin) a specific display of sensuality nonetheless can become a kind of lingua franca of feeling, a sovereign remedy for existential crisis. It's in the rumbling, staticky warmth of the synth-bass, those dewy-eyed rising chords, and of course Miguel's virtuoso vocals, leaping over and around and amidst the soft-centered groove as if trying personally to touch each outstretched hand of a crowd of listeners, while background Miguels coo and sigh with sympathetic astonishment. Too intense to be revivalist, "Adorn" truly does merit the hackneyed descriptor "timeless": out of time in any setting (old or new) but intuitively fitting into any space, filling any void with its reassuring affection; not what you asked for but absolutely what you needed.
5. Katy B ft. Jessie Ware - Aaliyah
It occurs to me that what makes Katy such a superlative dance diva is that her everygirl pose just fits in so well within the non-stop hypnotic beat that defines - or at least should define - house and so many of its modern day variants, like if those beats could have a personification that also acted as counterpoint, a foil for house's sleekness and dazzle, it would be this sweet but unvarnished, hooky but undramatic singer, studiously avoiding big displays but always likable to the point of irresistibility while remaining somehow unknowable. That so much modern dance-pop plumps instead for singers like Florence Welch says a lot about how little patience most current examples have for the idea of house as essentially enveloping rather than merely bludgeoning (though I'd be the last person to say that in the right context a good bludgeon doesn't have its uses). If Katy's On A Mission never really moved beyond the territory of "really nice" for me, despite excellent singing and mostly excellent arrangements, it's perhaps because the album was simply too restless and uptempo and spiky, all things which in isolation could and even should appeal to me but somehow weren't quite what I wanted from Katy. "Aaliyah" made this clear by giving me exactly what I wanted: a tune so hypnotic it verges on meditative, a weightless mass of constant swell and involution without any edges whatsoever, its gently scraping synth-riffs so insubstantial and yet so tangible, that even the intermingled envy and jealousy of Katy's words lose their bite, become enamoured of their own sparkling intensity. And of course if you want tangible insubstantiality then there's no better idea than to rope in Jessie Ware as guest singer: Katy and Jessie's traded lines on the billowing double middle eight slash breakdown make for perhaps 2012 pop's most entrancing moment, two sirens beckoning you down into an endless haze of uneasy fever dreams.
6. Angel Haze - Werkin' Girls
The first time I heard "Werkin' Girls" was one of those jawdrop moments that you spend each relisten trying to recapture. Which isn't to say that this tune doesn't reward replays; rather, that the first time leaves behind such a warm glow of discovery that the glow itself takes on its own identity, a personality that inheres in subsequent replays like a sense of vocation or calling. Not surprisingly for a tune with this effect (on me, perhaps on you), the qualities of "Werkin' Girls" cannot be reduced to a singularity, of if they can then it's a kind of meta-singularity, that sense that everything here is honed to an absolute purpose: Angel's ceaseless, hypnotic flow never stopping for breath, except for a marvelous pivot where the groove actually breathes for her. And what a groove, the kind of swarming insectile chittering beat that we thought was left behind forever in a world cordoned off and marked "early 00s, do not touch"; in feel if not strict sound, I'm reminded of Shawnna's "R.P.M.", and indeed this is perhaps the most relentlessly bouncy - or not quite bouncy, perhaps, since that implies that you come down for every time you go up - hi-energy rap tune since that pinnacle. What perhaps marks out "Werkin' Girls" is the way it works itself up to this state so organically, so inevitably, Angel and the beat like two long distance runners who both speed up as they approach the finish line, each stretching out their legs that much further in an almost painful desire to be first - or, in Angel's words, running "like a cheetah in a jungle, but I'm muhfucking faster / like a pre-teen boy in a church with a pastor".
7. Kalenna - Matte Black Truck
"Matte Black Truck" starts innocently (even ignorably) enough, but quickly amasses by accretion a kind of sonic and emotional largesse and complexity that is rarely found in combination in 2012 R&B, and a kind of ambivalence that is even more rarely pulled off so successfully - are the synths squealing or groaning? is the beat bouncing or lurching? is Kalenna declaring love or war? It's this uncertainty that makes the song so addictive, and it's riven with it: "you the motherfucker I need", Kalenna sings blankly, "put it on me / I ain't got time for games / you could put the freeze on me / get on your knees / n*gga put this ring on me." No straightforward promises of devotion, just commands that sound like menacing threats, or threats that sound like seductive commands. "If you leave I'm a crank Wu-Tang in my matte black truck, in my matte black truck / I'm a keep my red cup filled up, in my matte black truck, in my matte black truck" - a premonition of suicide, or a fantasy of resuming control? For Kalenna it's necessarily both, and the choice to frame the chorus and the song itself around a vehicle representing both freedom and danger is hardly coincidental - it's the fact that you never know what’s going to happen, what the fuck girl will do, that makes "Matte Black Truck" so enthralling.
8. Future - Turn On The Lights
No artist this year made a virtue of seeming flaws so relentlessly as Future, his lyrics raising/lowering the bar for spur of the moment profundity, and his hook-laden but tonedeaf sing-songy emphysemic mutterings not so much pitching to a space between rap and R&B as falling through the cracks between them, degraded yet further by autotune creases and wrinkles that leave both the performer and his songs sounding like damaged goods in spite of the grandiose post-Three 6 Mafia beats. Somehow, this alchemic combination makes Future a consummately relatable and vulnerable everyman, lost in a world of paranoia and fleeting triumphalism. It works brilliantly on his exuberant anthems, but even better on pseudo-ballads like “Turn on the Lights”, where Future, addled by drink and drugs and thwarted desire, searches in vain for the ideal girlfriend. His hoarse, guttural exhortations may sound spontaneous, but the gravity of his task is underscored by an astonishingly involuted arrangement courtesy of Mike WiLL Made It, featuring plaintive, harpsichord-like synth arpeggios embracing spectral gothic choirs, wordlessly dooming the rapper’s quest. Future himself, lost in third-hand idealizations of the perfect woman and torn between boastful fantasy (“I wanna tell the world about you just so they can get jealous”) and remorseful realism (“If you see her ‘fore I do, tell her I wish that I met her…”), somehow knows he doesn’t deserve the prize, and it’s that undercurrent of deflated wistfulness that makes “Turn on the Lights” as loveable as it is startling.
9. Disclosure - Control
Lots of dubstep and post-dubstep fans don't much like Disclosure, who they see as taking post-dubstep's own (let's face it) anaemic approximations of house and garage and rendering them even more polite, more conservative and more simple-minded in pursuit of popular appeal - the Jamiroquai to post-dubstep's acid jazz, if you will (Disclosure have even admitted their love of Jamiroquai in interviews). The fact that Disclosure have been so thoroughly embraced by undeniably gully types like DJ Q hence offers a problem that requires explication. The short answer is that DJ Q is always right and post-dubstep fans are always wrong. The longer but essentially identical answer is that this very whitebread congeniality sets up shop at the exact point where politeness short-circuits with rudeness, offering a soulfulness so garish, so ripe for colonisation by a particularly gauche display of aspirationalism, that it can only end up as the authentic* music of a street culture disinterested in the vexed, handwringing negotiations of self and other that both inspire and erode 90% of contemporary British dance music. "Control" was my favourite among many fine examples ("Latch", "My Intention is War", "What's In Your Head", their masterful remix of Jessie Ware's "Running") because of its obviousness in this regard, but also its grace in obviousness: a lovingly rendered and exactingly measured (in feel rather than strict sound) homage to 2-step at its most aristocratic and refined (think MJ Cole's "Crazy Love" crossed with the Dubaholics), its amniotic synth glows and carefully calibrated percussion and funklessly severe vocal stabs combining to capture precisely the sense of inevitable forward tumble - into groove, but also into chorus, into emotion, into seduction - that defined so much of garage-pop at its best. People who cannot hear this, who instead hear only limp modern production sensibilities, are listening with their heads rather than hips and hearts.
*(Before you send angry letters into the editor, note that any use of the term "authentic" here or elsewhere is in no way serious.)
10. Donkie Punch & Lorenzo - Snapbacks N Tattoos
For some reason I class Driicky Graham's original "Snapbacks & Tattoos" with Kanye/2 Chainz/etc.'s "Mercy", and though perhaps no one else agrees I reckon it's a on a similar level of "pretty great", really what's not to like about its mutating production and constant lock on hooks, like if you try to tell me you don't nod your head to the slow-mo stutter snares and decaying isotope synths on "uh, show off your hats, show off your tatts..." I'm going to just ignore you for a minute. Still, to my mind it now largely exists as an adjunct to Donkie Punch and Lorenzo's amazing jackin' rework, perhaps the consummate display of Lorenzo's ongoing project of absorbing everything good about the last twenty years of music into his elastic jackin' framework (this may be giving Donkie Punch too short-shrift, but Lorenzo's magic fingers were all over so many amazing jackin' tracks this year that the conclusion he is the secret genius here is almost irresistible). Jackin' is really "endpoint" music, though not in the way that most people mean when they apply that term to dance music - it's not stentorian in its minimalism like Plastikman or replete with subtlety like whatever feted deep house you were listening to this year. Instead, jackin' offers up a kind of science of mainstream dance maneuvers, all those too-familiar riffs and tricks now wielded with an intensified awareness of their operation - combining an artisan's practiced ease with an almost naive reinvestment in the sound of these sounds. On "Snapbacks N Tattoos" you hear it in the tinny reticular snare patterns, the clipped drum roll samples, the gleefulness of the bass deployments, all pushed into super high-contrast such that every sound brims with purpose and portent. I suspect jackin's strong affinity for current rap - never more obvious than here - stems in part from it sharing a similar relation to the constant evolution of the house beat as rap does to its own endless reinvention of rhythm (mannie fresh to lil' jon to lex luger to mike will, and so on); it's an affinity of spirit rather than strict sound that makes jackin much more interesting and compulsive (from any perspective you care to name) than dance producers making "trap" ever could be. And so it's hardly surprising that when "Snapbacks N Tattoos" suddenly veers into its own pseudo-trap breakdown the result manages to surpass even the original's superlative production.
11. Meek Mill ft. Drake & Jeremih - Amen
Meek Mill romanced me with his careening out of control anthems - "Gasoline", "I'm A Boss", "House Party" - and while his debut album was mostly heavy enough (who could fuck with the opening run of "Dreams and Nightmares", "In God We Trust", "Young and Gettin' It", "Traumatized" and "Believe It", or closer "Real N*ggas Come First") it lacked some of the busted-brakes velocity of my favourite Meek. What a surprise that the highlight would eschew both heaviness and velocity: "Amen" is the kind of all-embracing victory lap swagger that I would occasionally fall into the trap of assuming My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy must have somewhere (given how fans described it), crossed with some of that down home freshness that Gucci Mane would sometimes pull out to marvelous effect. That repeating piano figure, like joy rising up through your central nervous system; those aisle-rocking organ blasts; the booming one-note bassline holding up the floor; Meek sounding breathless with excitement ("I'm on probation, when they test me i just pee Rose / Cause last night I went hard, Peach Ciroc, Patron and all / thirty racks on magnum bottles, I think I was born to ball") while Jeremih offers super smooth R&B interjections. "Amen" achieves exactly what it sets out to do, which is to turn the party track into a truly congregational (albeit not religious) experience, its get out your seats invocations cutting across any of the lines and demarcations that seemed particularly imposing in rap this year (or at least I certainly hope so; if you don't love this you can get the fuck out, frankly). I could imagine it going further than that, really; wouldn't it be amazing to hear this dropped in the middle of some already great soulful but raw house set and still beat every other tune at whatever game it deigns to call its own.
12. Vybz Kartel - Lip Gloss
My very favourite mode for Vybz is that sly, enervated and insouciant drawl which always suggests he's putting in half the effort of any other MC because, well, he's Vybz fucking Kartel, what more could you possibly want? And every other voicing of the TNS Riddim really does just bring too much energy, too much personality, missing (and so failing properly to exploit) that crucial, feline spareness and elasticity in the groove's insistent bass-driven pulse and rapidfire laser zaps, its sudden unveilings of disorienting chimes, its gear shifts from stripped-back minimalism to, well, more intensely stripped-back minimalism. Only Vybz knows intuitively, instinctively what the riddim requires, and so he reclines back into the beat, offering up only the louche grace of aristocracy - that is, of always allowing someone or something else to do the work. "Di Mac, Cover Girl, Revlon, Origins", he intones like its a holy chant, a talisman or ward against the evils of a life stripped of glamour, and then in that clipped nasal flow that he typically reserves for his best tunes he issues commands that come on as part objectification, part veneration: "lick ya lip like a modeling chick...wind ya waist like ya wan' broke your hip" (that last part is definitely one of my favourite lyrics of 2012). So persuasive is the sense of this spectacle - for him, not for us - that it's impossible not to subordinate yourself to his economy of desire.
13. R Kelly - Believe That It's So
If Matt and our car could vote, I suspect the number one tune of any of these would be "Believe That It's So" (number 2 and 3 would be "Springsteen" and "Show Me"); we spent a lot of time cruising around, uh, the northern suburbs of Melbourne, playing this at full blast. More precisely, we'd turn it up to full blast at about 2:50, being the point where the song transitions from a top shelf uplifting seventies soul-into-disco pastiche into a full-blown stepper's anthem. I expect that "Believe That It's So" has been dismissed and underrated even amongst R Kelly fans who don't see the utility in yet another stepper's anthem given we already have "Step In The Name Of Love" (and more to the point "Step In The Name of Love (Remix)") in our lives, but the truth is that "Believe That It's So" is the equal of its more celebrated predecessor. Yeah, I said it. Seriously though, how could anyone with a half-functioning body resist this lazy four by four, the lazier flute and horn hooks, the simply superlative strings, and R Kelly doing his sleepy monotone to perfection with lyrics that scan like they require a more impassioned performance ("fingers snapping, hands is clapping, in the club I'm going / damn it's hot I'm taking shots, you already be knowing / how I do it, when I do it, if I hit the club / whatever city, it's my city, honey show me love"), but really, they don't (also, the recurring refrain "I've had a little too much to drink" may just be R&B's most universal since Whitney confirmed "my name's not Susan"). While not my favourite tune of the year, I'm pretty sure that none made me feel happier than this one.
14. Konshens - Bun Satan
"Bun Satan" is a rather dramatic name for the year's most relentlessly cheerful tune, but then Konshen makes the task of burning the devil seem relatively straightforward, a nice walk in the park and home for tea. I'm sure that this is how war used to be sold to impressionable young people, and indeed "Bun Satan" could act as a particularly useful recruitment tool in this capacity. Some of that is the fabulous, appropriately titled Drum Corps Riddim, starting off sounding like fairly typical dance-pop (albeit sizzly, snare heavy, bass churny dance-pop - like if Carl Craig decided to be Max Martin) before almost immediately leaping vertiginously into ratatat military snare rolls that bounce through and around Konshen's performance with childlike glee. But most of it is Konshen's fantastic performance and lyrics, which are worth quoting extensively: "Satan go suck yo momma wid a straw / Come out a wi life an meck wi get fi prosper / Go fi di Christian call di Rasta / Meck wi come together an go bun Lucifer." What could I possibly add to that?
15. Eric Church - Springsteen
Something about the laconic way in which Church wends his way through such an epic country tune, like being laconic or being epic either of them in isolation wouldn't cut through to your heart, but the two in combination is deadly. And also something about that accretion of (and eye for) detail - "somewhere between that setting sun, 'I'm On Fire' and 'Born To Run', you looked to me and I was done," pinpointing a flashback not even to a particular song but to the ellipsis between them (never mind that no Springsteen album includes both those songs; anyway a handmade tape would suit the vibe of "discount shades, store bought tan, flip flops and cut off jeans", like Charlize Theron in Young Adult rewinding her old make-out tape to play Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept" over and over again, only not cringey). Funny how a melody does sound like a memory, and how melodies can go places memories alone cannot: when Eric ends on his wordless, wistful, hopeful "woah, woah, woah-oah-oah" refrain, both the past and the future seem flush with nameless possibilities.
16. D'Banj - Oliver Twist
I discovered "Oliver Twist" while convalescing in hospital, which would have to be about the worst context in which to acquaint oneself with a tune like this other than that the rendezvous seemed to have a certain feverish intensity about it. Later when I had recovered I realised that "Oliver Twist" always sounds like that, always sounds beamed in from another planet where people live just a little more energetically than on planet earth. For all that this was probably the biggest piece of African pop in 2012, it seems bizarre to me that "Oliver Twist" wasn't more embraced by both pop and dance music audiences; certainly anyone acting like this wasn't the peak of the set of any DJ sensible enough to drop it is kidding themselves. Doubtless in five years someone will release a vocal free edit and all of the people who embraced "Township Funk" will jump on it; in the meantime, you can enjoy D'Banj's falsetto "doot doot doot" hooks and useful insights on Beyonce and Nicki Minaj, the exquisitely programmed snares, the seasick shanty slip and slide of the synths, and the weird sense of guilty complicity prompted by D'Banj's sly "You gotta secret / but I think I know it..."
17. Cahill - Take It Back (Ill Blu Dub Mix)
Ill Blu kinda depressed me this year: at first their sideways swerve into a kind of aggro, apocalyptic dutch house meets The Prodigy (circa "Firestarter") sound (as revealed on tunes like "Turnpike" and the impeccably named "Heisenberg") seemed promising, but everything since then has all been a bit too serious and minimal, like they picked up some nasty furrowbrow infection from all the post-dubstep types they share club night bills with. The two grand exceptions were their production work for Sneakbo's "Zim Zimma" (scraping my top 30), reprising the lumbering electro-house sound of "The Wave" only more ludicrously overblown; and this, which is up there with anything they've done pretty much. Skip the slightly irritating vocal mixes and go straight to the dub: for a beat that I'd describe as "skipping" if it weren't so punitive (kinda like being hit in the face with a jump rope); for bass that cuts into your ears with scalpel sharpness; for the most weirdly compelling incomprehensible vocal sample (a basso profundo groan "bless this out like a rubix cave"?? I just don't know); for the endless piling-on of brilliant additions, from darting pizzicato strings, to the layers of sighing vamps to skanking off-beat keyboard riffs to that final out-of-nowhere degraded little bass riff and chanted reminder "ill... blu...." which they throw in at the end as if to say "we could have kept going but instead we're gonna cut it off right here just to fuck with you." I'm reminded of Basement Jaxx's "Yo-Yo"; and what's more, I'm reminded of how I felt the first time I heard "Yo-Yo". Which is saying something.
18. Usher - Show Me
Yeah, "Climax" is brilliant, a classic, etcetera. But the Usher tune that I turned to most this year was this cheery, cheesy uptempo number, Usher at his most sell-out but utterly endearingly so ("relax, it's what you deserve" he reassures me early on in the song, and how I could not blindly believe such a silky smooth endorsement). "Show Me" is notable for suggesting an alternate reality where dance-pop still dominates R&B but more for good than ill, its armory of tricks and tactics deployed in dazzling combinations (tinkly piano lines, rattling bouncy drum patterns, multi-layered background chants, trancey synths, a breakdown featuring the most winsome four second bassline ever) rather than laid out in cynical tick-box succession. Moreover, each iteration of the chorus is just that much more uplifting, more all-embracing in its scope and generosity. At its rare best, the current era of dance-pop R&B should have an air of inclusiveness, trying to charm the largest cross-section of listeners possible; that "Show Me" feels so unusual in this regard is an indictment on most attempts at the form.
19. Wisin' & Yandel ft. J Lo - Follow The Leader
I don't think I heard or saw anyone even acknowledge the existence of this frankly amazing piece of latin pop, a simply flawless attempt to cross-pollinate the Club Med vibes of J Lo's "On The Floor" with something a bit more genuinely equatorial - in this case reggaeton. In my imaginary world of people who recognise realness, this was as big as Shakira's "Whenever, Wherever", its cavernous four by four thump the soundtrack of every passing car, its rumpshaker dem bow offbeats a clarion call to hen's night gatherings to clamber up onto precipitous bartops, its shameless "olay olay" hooks lighting up the dancefloor like christmas lights. Sadly my imaginary world of people who recognise realness remains imaginary, and "Follow The Leader" remains perhaps 2012's great shoulda been.
20. Nicki Minaj - Come On A Cone
So many Nicki songs could go here: the relentless "Stupid Hoe", the blaring "Pound The Alarm", the oddly moving "Gun Shot", the sleek "Va Va Voom", the borderline-annoying-so-you-listen-on-repeat "Beez In The Trap", the kind-of-all-of-these "The Boys" - and I'm still absorbing the rest of The Re-Up. Increasingly, it's clear that Nicki's all over the map style is a necessary part of her appeal, and really the only things remaining to be worked on is quality control and presentation (e.g. with a different track sequence Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded would be much easier to listen to in full). At any rate I chose "Come On A Cone" because it's the one that I put on the most mixes, which must count for something: that wasp-attack groove running into an asteroid belt, the endlessly repeatable "When I'm sitting with Anna / I'm really sitting with Anna", the still shocking-when-it-comes-on leap into the hilariously oversung "dick in your face / put my dick in your face". If defining Nicki by a single song remains an impossible task, this is the closest we can get.
21. Dawn Richard - '86
22. Linkoban - Like This (Tom Shorterz Remix)
23. Cheryl Cole - Call My Name (Royal-T 'Back to '99' Mix)
24. Mykki Blanco - Wavvy
25. AlunaGeorge - Your Drums, Your Love (Lil' Silva Remix)
26. Davido - Dami Duro
27. The Wanted - I Found You
28. Infinity Ink - House of Infinity
29. Sneakbo - Zim Zimma
30. Eats Everything - Jagged Edge
31. Tanya Lacey - Greatness (Preditah Remix ft. Kozzie)
32. Lil Durk - L's Anthem
33. Alyssa Reid - Alone Again (Sunship Remix)
34. KW Griff - Bring In The Katz
35. Edem - Over Again
36. Zebra Katz ft. Njena Redd Foxx - Ima Read
37. Popcaan - Coolie Gal
38. Chief Keef ft. Lil' Reese - I Don't Like
39. Hot Since 82 - Knee Deep In Louise
40. Rick Ross - Stay Schemin'
41. Julio Bashmore - Au Seve
42. Dama Do Bling - Champion
43. Lil' Reese - Haters
44. Arcangel ft. Daddy Yankee - Guaya
45. Matthew Kyle - Moments Not In Love
46. Mungolian Jetset presents Jaga Jazzist vs. Knights Of Jumungus - Toccata
47. DJ Vetvuk vs Mahoota - Stokvel
48. Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T and 2 Chainz - Mercy
49. Todd Terje - Inspector Norse
50. Travis Porter ft. Tyga - Ayy Ladies
51. Kendrick Lamar ft. Gunplay - Cartoon & Cereal
52. Change - Holiday (Late Nite Tuff Guy Muscle Mix)
53. Plan B - Se Cree Mala
54. Majestic - Let's Go Back (Cause & Affect Remix)
55. Beenie Man - Jamaican Celebration
56. Driicky Graham - Snapbacks & Tattoos
57. Hard-Fi - Hard To Beat (Paul Sirrell Garage House Remix)
58. Christopher Martin - Give Thanks
59. Ill Phil ft. MC Sim - Away We Go
60. Nadjat - Gbaa Alert
Albums of 2012
1. Dawn Richard - Armor On
My thoughts on Dawn:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16486-armor-on-ep/
2. Grimes - Visions
Whereas many current indie records explicitly reference nostalgic childhood cultural motifs, listening to "Visions" - with its endlessly delightful overlapping sing-songy vocals and winning early 90s techno textures - actually gets closer to how the world appeared to my younger, less disenchanted senses, everything invested with a boundless capacity to scare, to thrill, to comfort, everything big and strange and able to change from one thing to another without any warning. Not nostalgic at all, then.
3. Taylor Swift - Red
A lot of Taylor's greatness as a songwriter - and performer, because the song and the performance come as a package deal - can be attributed to her innate sense of songcraft as something that can drive (rather than simply constrain or translate) emotional affect. On monumental tunes like "Treacherous" or "Holy Ground" the lift-off into the bridges is stratospheric, not merely on a sonic or melodic level, but in a sense of scaling new heights of intimacy between the listener and the character singing these songs. People increasingly talk about Joni Mitchell when trying to grapple with Taylor's best qualities, and if there's a link there it's less in the confessionals and the oblique references to starfucking, and more in the way in which these artists make their problems seem like yours, like there's no longer any space left between what she's feeling and what I am. It's as if Jake Gyllenhaal slowly froze me out rather than her.
4. Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream
The emerging consensus portrayal of Miguel as some kind of rule-breaking R&B wunderkind makes sense only in aggregate, as a way of accounting for the impossible polymath diversity and dexterity of his charming second album. Song for song, the reverse feels more true: what is most remarkable about Kaleidoscope Dream is how Miguel works so well within the rules he makes for himself, whether offering a sensuous, yearning “Sexual Healing” tribute (“Adorn”), unexpectedly lachrymose S&M in a multi-layered rainstorm (“Use Me”), or dreamlike harmonies and Timbaland rhythmic stutters and the most earthshaking slap bass ever (“Do You”). Rather than seek to deconstruct the genre, Miguel emerges as R&B’s pre-eminent artisan, offering up a succession of costumes that are comfortingly familiar, but better designed, better woven and simply better worn than we’re used to or could reasonably hope for. Perhaps he has learnt from the lesson provided by his excellent and versatile voice, which effortlessly navigates a variety of contradictory poses both falsetto and baritone, from the whispery intimacy of the title track (“body language like piano keys” he murmurs so close you can almost feel his breath in your ear) to the glamorous distance of “Arch & Point”, at all times so fake it’s beyond fake. To spell it out: cutting through artifice sometimes is necessary, but creating it and then living up to it offers the much more pleasurable course.
5. Blondes - Blondes
The deepest of deep cinematic tech-house, so gorgeously involved and crisply tactile it's like you've already done an E, but so thoroughly present and impressed on the senses that actually meddling with things by adding drugs would seem sacrilegious.
6. DJ Neptizzle - The Ultimate Azonto Mix CD
7. Angel Haze - Reservation
8. Future - Pluto
9. Gunplay - Bogota Rich: the Prequel
10. Kendrick Lamar - Good Kid, m.A.A.d City
11. John Talabot - fin
12. Carly Rae Jepsen - Kiss
13. Voices From The Lake - Voices From The Lake
14. E.L. - Something Else
15. Saint Etienne - Words and Music
16. Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded - The Re-Up
17. Actress - R.I.P.
18. Shanell – Nobody’s Bitch
19. Peaking Lights - Lucifer
20. Cooly G - Playin' Me
21. Meek Mill – Dreams and Nightmares
22. The Cataracs - Gordo Taqueria
23. Usher - Looking 4 Myself
24. Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw...
25. Dev – The Night The Sun Came Up
26. Charli XCX - Supa Ultra Mixtape
27. Goat - World Music
28. Rinse-T - Rinse Presents Royal-T
29. Mala - Mala In Cuba
30. Lindstrom – Smallhans
31. Andy Stott – Luxury Problems
32. Various Artists – Jaymo & Andy George Present Moda Black
33. The Congos / Sun Araw / M. Geddes Gengras - Icon Give Thanks
34. Chairlift - Something
35. Silkie & Quest - Dubstep Allstars Vol. 9
36. School of Seven Bells - Ghostory
37. Neneh Cherry and The Thing - The Cherry Thing
38. Kalenna – Chamber of Diaries
39. Jessie Ware - Devotion
40. Zaki Ibrahim - Every Opposite
41. Beach House – Bloom
42. Melanie Fiona – The MF Life
43. Mungolian Jet Set – Mungodelics
44. Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
45. Daphni – Jiaolong
46. Rick Ross – Rich Forever
47. Carter Tutti Void – Transverse
48. Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music
49. Raime – Quarter Turns Over A Living Line
50. Shed – The Killer
― Tim F, Tuesday, 1 January 2013 05:38 (twelve years ago)