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Albums of the Year, Music

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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Music

Grimes’ “Go” Video Officially Ushers in Electro R&B

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Grimes dropped the video for “Go” today, presumably the first single off her upcoming album. It’s unsurprisingly artistic, opens with a reading of a passage from Dante’s Inferno and enters into a futuristic modern dance interpretation of the classic work featuring producer Blood Diamonds and Grimes in a remote desert.

The extravagant production is something that the Canadian Claire Boucher (Grimes) has come to be known for, this much was expected, but the evolution of the sound sees an experimental electronica heavyweight assuming her place on the throne of a new style of R&B….One that’s becoming increasingly prevalent with artists like FKA Twigs and Banks. Enter Grimes, going one rung higher on the ladder. Let’s face it, she belongs here…She signed with Jay-Z’s RocNation management late last year to assume this pole position. It’s just taking her polished product a little longer to materialize.

Mark it down, what we’re witnessing here is “The Next Big Thing.” And I’m not talking about the artist, but rather the entire musical movement into this incarnation of Neo-R&B. Call it whatever you’d like. Some have dubbed the sound ‘PBR&B,’ as a nod to it being more hipster friendly (seriously). It’s a direct descendent of what i’ve dubbed ‘electro-soul,’ but it’s the fully realized fusion of electronica into R&B. Hence ‘Electro R&B’ is about as close as we’re going to get and the movement is just gaining steam.

With FKA Twigs’ stunning release in the foreground and Banks’ LP, Goddess, supposedly set to drop in September, Grimes has just stirred the pot, served it to the masses and done them all a favor. Take note, the revolution is here.