To Pimp A Butterfly is a veritable feast for thought--and there are simply too many loaded couplets and unrelenting sonic fakeouts to be unpacked within the confines of a single review.

This one is no less ambitious and rewarding than some of his previous entries.

This is the Second Coming of D’Angelo, not a close second, but a continuation of that lineage. We’ve waited fifteen years for his finest album to date.

For anyone who was ever remotely interested in Mount Eerie or the Microphones, A Crow Looked at Me is a must-listen. But it feels made for a very specific time and place, and the subject matter is tough to stomach and tougher to shake.

It’s a rare album that sounds this warm, this easy, this melodic, this fierce, this startling, this unforgettable.

Self-care has allowed Lorde to make something extraordinary and authentic, something that takes you by the hand and assures you that you can survive and thrive in the same sea of emotion.

All told, there’s more flaws here than there is greatness. But with each of Tribe’s albums up until now, it’s pointless to dissect it track by track when really, it should be taken as one, singular groove (made up of smaller grooves).

Haunting anecdotes make Carrie & Lowell consistently compelling and elevate the storytelling from murky religious contemplation to relatable human struggle.

What a breathless--and breathtaking--comeback it is.

Annie Clark stands astride St. Vincent, a colossus in total--and thrilling--command.

RTJ2 isn’t quite the game-changer The Money Store was, but it makes no attempt to hide its desire to knock its progenitors out cold and scamper off with the crown.

M3LL155X, whatever the hell it is, is perfect. Rarely have five songs sounded so cohesive, or made such a dramatic statement.

Make no mistake--this is an album that’s challenging and demands attention, but if you can stay focused, you’ll be richly rewarded.

This is a vibrant, uneven, irresistibly likable, and occasionally transcendent release from an artist who shows no signs of falling off anytime soon.

A truly progressive, existential, emotionally saturated hip-hop album that establishes the value of dance-centric collaboration by reminding us that it’s exactly that. And it will win this way, every single time.

Though at times it rages, it also rebukes division and seeks dialogue. In the same way black art is enriched by its complicated history, A Seat at the Table shines due to Knowles’ unwavering commitment to her own complexity, both musically and personally.

To Be Kind is a loving ode to chaos, full of deranged, mutant energy and even more brilliant for it.

Divers takes another logical step, tightening up from the sprawling consistency of Have One on Me without quite tightening up enough to return to Mender’s folk-pop. This is easily Newsom’s most sumptuously arranged album, with a more eclectic palette of instruments than she’s previously employed.

A Moon Shaped Pool is the best album we could expect from a rock outfit already into its third decade of existence, and a superb work from the last important band left in the universe.

What’s left is an artist reframing the landscape, a reverse-chameleon who can’t camouflage, but transforms the world around her instead. “Pop” is the sound of a bubble bursting.

Sometimes I Sit and Think is in conversation with the likes of Marvin the Album and “Supernova,” Brighten the Corners and “Malibu,” Mellow Gold and “About a Girl.” The dream of the 90s is alive in Courtney Barnett. And with Sometimes I Sit and Think, it’s just been fully realized.

It’s better than the first or second installments: slightly more ambitious and slightly more layered.

Art Angels is the maximalist brainchild of a prodigious talent. It’s hugely entertaining. It’s delightfully bizarre. It’s refreshingly caustic.

It’s Crampton channeling her own history into 25 bracing, punk minutes of post-everything, out-there, futurist electronic madness. Drexciya would be proud.

You’re Dead! is a near-flawless examination of death as narrated by a virtuosic musician who has been exposed to a little too much of it.

Plunge is a worthy addition to Dreijer’s career discography, and fans of Fever Ray and the Knife are sure to enjoy it. It’s an energetic and erotic record that may very well soundtrack some of the freakier parties you attend this fall. Still, it doesn’t capture the full scope of Dreijer’s ambition.

Depth is a tough thing to accomplish. It can’t merely be present, it also has to be convincing that it’s there and worthwhile. Have You in My Wilderness’ best quality is that it won’t let you down if you get up close and sit with it for a while.

Though it dissects insecurities and shortcomings as much as it does success, Dirty Computer unabashedly refuses to downplay or apologize for its behavior. ... With this forthright attitude comes fresh ways for Monáe to play on subject matters.

On the 2018 remake (full title: Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)), Toledo maintains his vulnerability but hides behind layers of noise and production value. ... But if Toledo’s production sensibilities are still a work in progress, his sense of humor and wit continue to shine through.

When packaged together, the album’s 41 minutes of clatter, jazz, and incantation coalesce into something otherworldly and almost marvelous.

This is a new My Bloody Valentine and it is excellent.

It’s more ambitious than her last one; better too. But I simply don’t think the formulaic songwriting is worthy of praise, nor the very notion of being more ambitious. Nor do I think the anti-septic production of the second half to be the best fit for her sound

On the whole, Blonde is more assured and consistent than Channel Orange. It inherits the bagginess of his overstuffed debut, but lacks the thrill of groundbreaking novelty. Frank Ocean is an outlier, an artist who can produce an album this phenomenal and nevertheless fall a bit short.

It takes him--and the listener--way out of the comfort zone, a shift that suits his tendencies wonderfully.

Consider the context of the odd drum machine and her monotone delivery, giving more emotional weight to her words and that pause, and the contrast provided when the riotous saxophone comes in. Other highlights include the gorgeous harmonies of “I Bet on Losing Dogs” and the Pixies-inspired “Dan the Dancer” and “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars.”

It’s beautiful. The second half of the album, as mentioned earlier, is less interesting.

It may not be the most talked-about rap record of the year, but it probably deserves to be. Long live Ramona Park.

Vulnicura is a harsh and demanding album, one to sink into with a good set of headphones. But it’s also Björk’s most--if not first-- personal record.

It’s a little too steeped in irony, not without tenderness, flippant but consternated, self-satisfied yet hungry for more, eager to expose the world’s duplicities alongside its own and then do nothing about it.

It took exuberance, painstaking detail, and wide-eyed nostalgia for Daft Punk to create Random Access Memories, their best.

A collection of emotionally evocative soundscapes punctuated by more conventionally structured compositions.... It's an ear candy confection of the highest order.

Uchis’s voice possesses a bit of that wooden Winehouse timbre, but it comes out the same way Uchis does everything else, leisurely. Its slight lilt sometimes puts her out of tune, yet the imperfections play very much into Isolation’s outsider status.

Not since Kid A has an album so superb pushed away and pulled closer its audience, simultaneously and with such aplomb.

A personal triumph that continues her revamping of what pop means today. Its contents show a trajectory from acts like Art of Noise into ‘90s pop and Eurodance to today’s droning and experimental music by acts such as Lotic.

Her instincts as a songwriter--one of the best of the decade, surely--have not been diminished or neglected in her pursuit of an expanded, sometimes experimental sound. These ten new songs, some of her best yet, brim with heart and wisdom.

What Grande has honed on thank u, next is the way she cunningly interweaves modern r&b patois and beats that brush up against the boundaries of top 40.

Hats off to this fantastic singer-songwriter for not only emerging from the fog so quickly, but also for crafting a dynamic album that is bigger than its size and very deserving of the praise it will undoubtedly receive.

Whether by Simpson’s own design or in spite of it, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth is ahead of its time.

While Are We There can be taxing at points, by its end, you’ll be overcome by the feeling that you’ve shared in something profound.

Richard D. James has successfully crafted one of the most stunning records of his career, and he did so by exercising a deft amount of self-control.

This is an album that belongs in a 2016 time capsule, and one that any indie bard hopeful should be required to hear.

Within himself he finds the strength to embrace existence, an epiphany achieved after ‘processing’ his feelings thoroughly and honestly. And like the loneliest whale, he did all while sounding like nobody else.

Once I Was an Eagle is a singular achievement: a haunting record, peopled with aural ghosts that come gradually crawling from out of the grooves.

Two and a half hours is a hefty commitment, but if you take the time, you’ll have fun with this one.

Twigs’ superb vocal melodies anchor LP1’s flights of experimentation. Were they to be stripped from the album’s bizarre flourishes and dropped into a commercial R&B context, they would stun nonetheless.

Present Tense may be a less accessible offering from Wild Beasts, but it’s their most human--a mesmeric bundle of contradictions, indignities and pleasures.

Another rare instance of an artist coming up with a classic a decade after what seemed like the peak of his career (Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury), and the only thing that could’ve made it better was if he pre-released “Infrared” so that Drake could’ve responded and we could’ve had an album with “The Story of Adidon” on it.

Ultimately, easily one of the most simultaneously hardest and atmospheric hip-hop albums of the year.

American Dream is as close to a unified artistic statement that Murphy has delivered. I’d argue it’s his first front-to-back, total triumph.

Acid Rap is the summer action blockbuster of mixtapes, where the audience need not dig much deeper than the surface to enjoy the best of what the production has to offer.

The crowd-pleasers are big and full, richly accessible and eccentric at the same time.... And yet even at its most infectious this music can pivot on a dime, emotionally, and the effect is often shattering.

It’s nerves are uneasy, but Lost in the Dream stands as Granduciel’s most open-armed record yet, filled to the gills with selfdom and sprawling musicality.

Untitled Unmastered provides a spectacular contrast of sounds gallivanting under the same roof.

Poison Season is a caustic, beguiling masterpiece.

Judicious use of the skip button to find the tracks on which Andersson’s transfixing voice is front and center, results in a much more rewarding, immediate experience.

This is the kind of album you might find yourself less inclined to play all the way through than scroll through the tracklist and queue up songs at will, but there’s enough great music here that you could have a new favorite song every day.

So spend your capitalist dollars on this album. He’s worth them.

Paak’s got the musicianship down to a science. Now it’s clear he’s working on what his music feels like.

It’s a different kind of thing now, even if the fundamentals are unchanged. It finds the National snapping out of the comfortable groove they’ve settled in over the last decade, fuelled by strife, battle-tested wisdom, and a touch of righteousness.

The best record of the xx’s career.

The sparse musical arrangements and haunting production only serve to heighten the album’s intimacy and ultimately render it a masterpiece of reflection and introspection, destined to be played on repeat in scores of late-night, tired, and lonely rooms.

This is an excellent and refreshingly tense album.

“Soothing” sounds legitimately fresh in a way very little new music does, and while it carries inescapable echoes of other artists (the bass line reminds me of peak career Tom Waits), the overall impression is that Laura Marling is paving new ground in her brand of folk music. Unfortunately--you knew there was going to be an “unfortunately”--there are only small glimpses of that innovation on the rest of the album.

A great way to approach I’m All Ears is by thinking of it as a jam session, where both Walton and Hollingworth experiment news ways of making music and detailing experience. It allows for a mishmash of elements and influences to come together in a bizarre and ultimately rewarding experience.

While Goodness doesn’t match the raw feeling or sincerity of Home, Like Noplace Is There, it’s well worth the time of any self-respecting emo junkie.

Pure Comedy’s scope, ambition, and beauty herald something bigger: the year’s first great album.

It’s the duo’s most sinister and fascinating collection of songs, enrapturing the listener with dystopian soundscapes and frustrating arrangements.

Beyoncé waited for the last moment to unveil 2013′s finest pop album. It arrived too late to enter our top ten lists, but just in time to own the year.

The more you listen, the more you’re likely to find, and the more you find, the more you’re likely to like Beautiful Thugger Girls. It’s not quite as endlessly explorable as Jeffery and doesn’t quite project the same confidence and swagger.

Flower Boy has elevated Tyler closer to the line. An unexpected move to be sure, but no less impressive whatsoever.

It feels like a natural evolution of what Coltrane was doing, anyway.

Emily’s D+Evolution is a tight package that should appeal to fans of Janelle Monáe and Joni Mitchell’s more jazzy endeavors, or anyone who is looking for some well crafted, ambiguous music, with elements of jazz, rock, and folk accompanied with some stellar singing.

The result is a record that stands at the crossroads between assurance and insecurity. In the hands of lesser artists, this dichotomy would be an obstacle to surmount, but for Ørsted the disparate strands of her identity combine like a binary chemical cocktail and ignite into something dangerously and delicately sublime.

A collection of remarkable songs by a group of musicians that compliment one another as well as any group over the last decade.

What he’s presented us with, essentially, is the skeleton of Animal Collective’s fleeting creativity, stripped down to its roots, revealing that even at its rawest, purest form the music still has an instinctive grasp of sincere emotion and beauty.

There’s no flash here, just a finely crafted batch of searingly personal indie rock songs. Unless you never had to grow up, it will resonate.

More often than not, however, this album brings you into its world and convinces you that love really is redemptive, that it can hold back the hounds at the gate.

Kanye West doesn’t give the listener a second to realize the album is more a masterly response to a masterpiece than a masterpiece itself. With one sweep of the hand, West brushes away expectations. And then he sticks you squarely across the face

Wildheart is his finest and most stubborn statement yet.

As an album set out to reappropriate pop rock, MCII succeeds.

While the subsequent inconsistency may hold The Worse Things Get back from greatness, it does make it honest, and when it comes to art I’ll take honesty over consistency any day.

For as commanding and affecting Burn Your Fire for No Witness can be while it plays, the album remains elusive when trying to call it to mind later.

Sometimes Cardi B runs out of things to say. “Bartier Cardi”, though it rips, repeats its extensive chorus five different times. “Money Bag” stomps forward with “Bodak Yellow”’s flow and sound, and in my opinion, last year’s favorite record pales in comparison to the strides she makes on Invasion… The vulnerability on display in the standout “Be Careful”, where Cardi B shows off a soft singing voice and a softer side, is a perfect example.

Singularity is the follow up every fan would hope for. It's larger; it's denser; it's quicker. It’s a 63-minute microhouse masterpiece. It rebroadcasts Hopkins’ sound as a more atmospheric, clearer vision.

The experimentation keeps things interesting and is a rare and welcome sight for a musician in his fifties, but it’s the songs that aim for summer afternoon in the suburbs of “Gold Soundz” or “Range Life” that are his forte and the album’s best.

Varmints displays both extremely well crafted instrumentation, and an overwhelming creative freedom.

It’s one of Snaith’s least cohesive and affecting full-lengths, even as it provides us with some of his strongest individual tracks to date.

Currents is a consummate grower, in part the musical evolution is overwhelming.