Tag Archives: Empress Of

The Top 50 Albums of 2015

Here it is….Everything Ecstatic’s 9th Annual Best Albums of the Year List. Shouts out to everyone who’s followed along over the years and I’m excited to share the spoils of another year in music witchas. This year, I had to abandon the one album a day for 20-30 days format of the past few years, cause there just weren’t enough hours in the days leading up to this post.  But you can still see all of the archives from ’06 to ’13 here and 2014’s entries beginning here.

At any rate, this year’s list is 50 albums in one post, straight up. Each entry is brief, with some scattered notable videos, links and I made a playlist of all the albums at the bottom. Props to Abhi/Dijon, Drake and Bob Moses, who put out quality releases in 2015, but were the last 3 albums cut from the Top 50. Also, you won’t find D’Angelo on this list as Black Messiah was released on December 15th, 2014. I know some outlets are ranking it this year, but release dates are the only definitive indicator of what year an album belongs to. But ultimately, Black Messiah doesn’t need to be placed on an arbitrary list to validate it’s beauty and importance far beyond a musical context. You can read more of my thoughts on the first performance from D’Angelo’s renaissance here, and know that if it was a 2015 album, it’d be sitting at #2 on this list. With that, let us begin the annual ritual. Enjoy!

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PHOTOS: Empress Of at Rickshaw Stop

I had the pleasure of seeing Empress Of this past Tuesday at Rickshaw Stop here in SF. It was one of those shows when you’ve been listening to an artist and an album so much lately, that it just felt like a special occasion that they’d happen to be coming through town at the same time. There was a memorable opening set from electro R&B up and comer ABRA and Trails and Ways’ Keith Brower-Brown dropped a super sweet DJ set at the start of and end of the night that kept the vibes going long after Rodriguez left the stage. (Also, I must’ve watched this 10-second clip of Empress Of’s enchanting, “Threat”, twenty times before I hit the hay that night.)

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