What do we have, two weeks left in the year and everybody and their brother(because most "journalists" are under 35, and thus still relevant) have put that Kendrick Lamar album on a fuckload of year end best album lists...and the rest of us, who actually realize that we have no lyrical connection whatsoever to Kendrick, we don't give a shit about Compton(cue the struggle) and we don't really want to pass the time thinking about what the fuck "To Pimp a Butterfly" means. I'm sure its deep, but still....no connection to most of us, whatsoever. "Us" being rock fans.
Lets be honest, hip hop is for younger than me people who like to dance, bounce their heads up and down in an unchallenging mid tempo rhythm, smoke, and buy very expensive sneakers that they put on display. Among a long list of reasons that would(in this quick edit, reactionary world) brand me a racist, I never liked it because the poetry relied much more on style, not substance. I'll give you your debut album to get all of that struggle out, but you gotta move on after that, cmon. No real, well read human being wants to hear about all of the beautiful people, places and things you acquired after your accountant told you you could go balls out and buy stuff that the small brained and disenfranchised covet.
But in terms of music, a genre, it has legs, it has influence, a heritage apparently important to culture and lots and lots of grown humans all over the world, love it, champion it and put a shitload of it on their best of lists.
But fuck it, not me. I'm almost 50, and I'm cool with being an avid proponent of hip hop. I get the fact that millions of all y'all connect with it. I never did, and I never will.it does nothing for me but make me feel cheated, bored. Maybe its different for musicians whose chosen genres, rely on a shitload of woodshedding alone in basements and bedrooms...lots and lots of trial and error with no help from a producer, another "featured" artist, or somebody actually "selling" beats like a digital carnival barker, as a cheap shortcut infused to the foundation to your hustle and flow.
That said and with complete control of this non sequitur...Here are my favorite albums of 2015.
1) Wand-Golem (blew my mind live 2x in 2015, thats high praise..almost religious)
2) Fuzz-Fuzz II (Ty remains teflon)
3) Clutch-Psychic Warfare( a smidge of a step down from Earth Rocker, but Neil is still a lyrical genius)
4) Built to Spill- Untethered Moon-
5) Ava Luna -Infinite House (the best band from SXSW 2015)
6) Wilco-Star Wars
7) Le Butcherettes- A Raw Youth (aint no frontwoman alive right now better than Teri Gender Bender)
8) High on Fire-Luminiferous
9) Sun Kil Moon-Universal Themes....But Benji from 2014 changed my life
10) Jason Isbell-Something More than Free(quite simply one of the best songwriters on the planet right now.)
Thats all I got. Send hate mail to me...
