The palpably effervescent joy of Rae Sremmurd feels untainted by the ills of reality and stands against a backdrop of contemporaries like Shmurda and Chief Keef who use their as a way of combating the grim reality of inner city rot.

An understandable desire to have her traumas understood by everybody inevitably results in a bland mush of melodrama. Despite this, The Pinkprint is Nicki Minaj’s most successful album by a fairly wide margin, as she becomes more empathetic than at any point in the past while Pink Friday’s DMZ between pop and rap becomes little more than a historical footnote in her career.

Her melodies are always on point and her voice is as strong and confident as ever, a very large and noticeable step up from the teenage True Romance.

Very much a step forward from last year’s The Coming Tide, Everlasting Arms is a sterling effort from an artist who fully understands who he is and what he is and is absolutely loving every minute of it.

Quite simply, there hasn’t been a Copeland album as complete as Ixora.

While the record’s bloat does kind of compromise its overall consistency and cohesion, Lost on the River probably still has more of the year’s best songs in one place than almost any other album.

Overall, if you’re going to listen to one seasonal release this year, Los Campesinos! have created an EP which provides that festive hit whilst maintaining exactly what it is that makes them special with their usual work. Another stellar release from one of the most under-rated indie rock bands in the world.

On her debut album, Azealia Banks has established herself as a brash and crude personality both on and off record, and she’s complemented it with a competent execution of a bold artistic vision.

Cadillactica very rarely falls short of its goals, and the few throwaway tracks are unobtrusive enough to not take anything away from the record.

White Noise stands to be one of the most promising and impressive debut album of the year, but more than just deserving that title, it stands to be one of the best albums of the year.

Run The Jewels 2 is the logical follow up to Run The Jewels; it's bigger, bolder, and feels like a punch to the gut that you'll be feeling for weeks.

With this record, the band not only rose up to the bar set by their contemporaries, they raised it to a new level-- which is a good thing, because if this record is the new standard for the metalcore genre, then the future is looking incredibly bright.

The New Sidewalk isn’t their great album, but it’s undoubtedly a stepping stone on the way there.

All told, it’s a solid record with no glaring weak points (a first for the Foo Fighters) and with some of the band’s more rewarding and adventurous songwriting.

This is not disposable music--it’s exhausting and exhilarating and desolate and hopeful all at once--and there are layers both musically and lyrically that’ll reveal themselves with each subsequent spin. Pianos Become The Teeth’s third record is the most captivating and rewarding record of 2014--one that will be remembered as a classic within the genre and a gateway to those outside it.

Rice hasn’t changed his sound much, but his writing is still every bit as visceral as it always has been, and his long-awaited third album, called My Favourite Faded Fantasy, absolutely lives up to the legacy of his previous work.

Take the time to listen to this album, front to back. Pick up on the subtleties and metaphors, because you don't hear this kind of poetry from a band every day.

Pleasant Living is anything but a happy album, but that doesn’t mean it can’t point us in the direction of better times.

Absent Sounds is one of those records where favorite songs change by the hour. And it’s also a record that understands your perceived meaning is the most important one.

Taylor still crams an awful lot of herself into these verses and choruses, to the point where most of these songs hit a new sound, but are still unmistakably her.

Within its contents the album very much feels like the debut record from a solo artist trying to feel things out on his own as a songwriter.

The beauty of a record like I’ll Be The Tornado, which spends so much time in the devastating minutiae of heartbreak and pain, is its realization that the bad can still do lots and lots of good. It’s a fairy tale thought to think that life won’t get in a gut punch or two, and Dads have made a record that revels in failure for truly triumphant results.

There are moments of despair, but on the whole, Lift a Sail rings as an uplifting testament to love and human resilience.

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is especially welcoming given that it’s probably his most consistent front-to-back set of songs since Transit.

It makes for a mixed bag of an album--occasionally the band sticks to their wheelhouse and sounds great, occasionally their normal stuff gets a bit stale; sometimes they experiment and it goes well, sometimes not.

Full of tenderness and vulnerability yet also razor-sharp and raucous moments, it makes the record even more charming due to the relatable nature of the constant battle with internal monologues.

If you’re already a fan of the band, Hold On Pain Ends delivers in every way.

It's a record full of beauty and heartache, confidence and fear, and these ends pull at each other for one of the most captivating records to come out this year.