Best Rap Album

I don’t know if you guys noticed, but rap was fucking crazy this year. I mean, look at some of the things that weren’t in contention: YC the Cynic’s humble schooling of the modern rap game, the sweeping G-Side symphony (especially iSLAND), Action Bronson & Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire’s New York throwbacks, ASAP Rocky’s genre-bending answer to the $3million dollar question, 13 & God’s intercontinental existential trip, the proliferation of Curren$y, and the mutated west coast rap of Main Attrakionz. There was serious talk about just extending the category to 12, but then we realized that even that wouldn’t be enough. So now we’re here, and here’s what we have:

-Death Grips and their broadcast from a world blackened heart
-Danny Brown’s shooting star lighting the sky
-The Roots dropping political posturing for a devastating allegory
-Shabazz Palaces at the brink of enlightenment
-Big KRIT’s pure country heart laid bare
-Tyler The Creator’s young man mind, committed to tape

So here’s how we cut this down. These are all excellent albums, but four of them had flaws in their own way, be it inconsistencies in message or bad track placement. Shabazz Palaces and Death Grips didn’t have those problems. When it came down to it, Death Grips’ aesthetic is some of the most raw art being made right now.

Shabazz Palaces however, moves to take on all conceptions of rap and then solidly defeats them with the one thing that I’ve felt has been missing from rap: Wisdom. Some rappers have been open on their quest for it, some have confused paranoia for it, and some act like it’s a new cap to wear for album covers. Black Up has it, and flexes it not by spitting punchlines but by showing the real ideas that exist at the core of rap apart from the ideas of “hip hop:” Language and pulse.