40 Best Rap Albums of 2015

The Jacka’s tragic murder at the beginning of 2015 marks the end of an era in Northern California’s hip-hop scene. Jacka’s first posthumous project was the third ”“ and presumably final ”“ entry in his collaborative series with Taylor Gang’s Berner, a rapper whose own style has become surprisingly fluid in recent years. Much like earlier iterations of Drought Season, the production is top notch; unlike earlier editions, the record serves as a farewell for the cast of artists who’d joined forces with the local legend over the years, including spots from Paul Wall, Freeway and Cormega. Yet from the spiraling, lush production of “One Sound” to the epic finale “So Much Pain,” it’s Jacka’s LP: Each verse is typically spare, giving space for meaning to echo in between the lines. The Jacka was one of his era’s truly singular stars, and his loss brings no silver linings. D.D.

Puff Daddy’s return finds him casting aside the Auto-Tuned rich man’s blues of Diddy-Dirty Money for life as a Harlem boss. At 46 years old and with a reported net value of over $700 million, he’s certainly earned the title. More importantly, he’s learned to inhabit the role, with his voice having grown rough and coarse, possibly from smoking too many Cuban cigars. The best moments of MMM find him doling out advice like a Godfather on “Facts,” and holding court on the Blaxploitation funk of “Auction,” while “Money Makin’ Mitch” finds Future bouncing over the beat like a rubber toy. Puff’s old Bad Boy crew have set aside their differences and returned to the dinner table, too: Lil Kim, the Lox and the Hitmen are here. The Notorious B.I.G. is gone, of course, but Puff Daddy honors him nonetheless: “And almost 20 years later, still Biggie we mourn/Baby baby!” M.R.

The 10-track debut from East New York M.C. Junglepussy is, in part, a cleverly crafted examination of relationships and sexual politics by a woman who is partially an around the way girl, partially an alpha boss and totally a wildly entertaining rapper. On “Spicy 103 FM” she plays the roles of JP, the fed up wife and ”“ with an effect to make her voice deeper ”“ the guy who is the cause of her dissatisfaction. The guy cites the money he’s spent and the times he took her out to defend himself. JP let’s him know that “relationships are more than food and lusty interactions, dude.” T.A.

Despite his moniker’s resemblance to Ty Dolla $ign, Ty Money is working from a completely different playbook. Ty is a nimble street rapper from Harvey, Illinois, a downtrodden suburb to Chicago’s south. His early work showed extreme promise, with a sense for narrative detail that gave his stories an authentic, lived-in feeling. With 2015’s Cinco De Money, he locates a new sound, one suggesting musical savvy to match his topical depth. This step came in large part from his interest in newer rhythmic patterns, as his style evolved from the longer lines and fluid delivery in the lineage of T.I. to a more rhythmic, repetitive approach. Nothing was lost in the transition: songs like the narrative “Ricky Killer” and lyrical exercise “Just Bars” are both contiguous with his wider story, and powerful songs in their own right. But his real strength is a rap style in which conflicting moods of anxiety and confidence, strength and vulnerability all coexist and collide. D.D.

Living Legend lead single “Tell ‘Em” was one of the year’s hardest, an irrefutable trunk thumper in which our Floridian hero belted out his bona fides like some kind of braggy, juicehead personal trainer. Gunplay’s delivery is at least half of his appeal, and his bluster is the other half, both of which he displays with characteristic excess and fealty to the streets that made him that way. He sounds like he not only hit the concrete, but that he poured it, too. Living Legend‘s aspirational pusher fables come part and parcel with Gunplay’s repertoire but, partnered up with mostly lesser-known producers who know the meaning of a subwoofer, it landed like a kickbox knock-out.J.E.S.

Life can be absurd for this blue collar MC/producer from Detroit whose talent outweighs his fortune; and Denmark Vessey addresses his ups and downs with a sharp sense of humor. Take for example “Think Happy Thoughts,” an introspective look at life’s challenges held together by a positive-thinking mantra Vessey got from mother and late grandmother. The track’s soothing vocal harmonies and guitar strumming supplied by Exile give way to a comical church skit and then the disjointed strings of “Keep Your Hoes In Check” where Vessey ponders deep questions like “Does your road to success have a cul-de-sac?” and not-so-deep questions like “Fuck you mean I can’t put head on the rider? T.A.

Open Mike Eagle speaks to the anxiety that is the byproduct of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. The topics of his stream-of-consciousness rhymes are as random as those on your Twitter timeline but accented by an internal dialogue that pokes fun at and questions everything ”“ including himself and his chosen profession. “I’m a rapper, we lament being broke/All the comics get money, but they spend it on coke” he raps on “Dark Comedy Late Show.” When he says “We should play a big Scrabble game and make every word a confession” he gestures toward humanity in a world he sees as consumed with facade. There’s nothing wrong with a little earnestness in the era of the microceleb. T.A.

Boosie Badazz emerged from a prison-induced hiatus to a hero’s welcome in 2014, releasing the acclaimed Life After Deathrow tape and hitting stages across the country. He also faced serious health concerns: At his first New York show, Boosie ”“ who is diabetic ”“ became sick on stage after a few minutes and couldn’t perform. Later in the year, he was diagnosed with cancer, for which half of his kidney was surgically removed. Yet he kept recording. Touchdown 2 Cause Hell, his official major label album and first in nearly five years, sold well, but remained an underground phenomenon, with no major hits. Yet from a creative perspective, it reaches for the commercial gold ring without compromising Boosie’s essence: an expressive voice that radiates pathos, and a story in which mythic triumph and cold, ambiguous realism are locked in permanent battle. The epic story of an artist’s rise against the odds is baked into hip-hop’s DNA; Boosie is one rapper whose music ”“ and life ”“ affirms this narrative’s power while shattering the fairy tale. D.D.

“Dense” doesn’t begin to describe Tetsuo & Youth, an album that marks a turn towards rococo stylings from one of hip-hop’s most accomplished technicians. Lupe is not always right, but he’s always a step past you: a step smarter, maybe, and sometimes one step closer to getting lost in his own head. No rapper in the modern era has as thorough a command of hip-hop’s tools, a more fully interrogated knowledge of its tropes. His verses are shaped by imbricated wordplay and elaborate syllable sculptures. There may be a message in this music, but it’s Lupe’s best album since 2007’s The Coolbecause it enjoys the journey and not the destination. D.D.

Over muted washes of instrumentation by Kenny Segal, the slippery, wordy, motormouth flow of this California-via-Wisconsin art-rapper doesn’t come across as showy; instead, he simply seems like someone searching for life’s answers everywhere he possibly can, from Busdriver to the Hagakure (which Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring, under his rap alias Hemlock Ernst, asks to borrow). Sometimes Milo’s quest can seems futile, like when he offhandedly recalls how Darrien Hunt was shot by police while cosplaying as a Samurai Champloo character. But it is also tough to think of a better skill Milo inherited from Busdriver than to patiently work through his own anxieties: Noble hawk-eye, but mumble like I’m pea-brained/Usually identified by the ghee stain/Moved to California just to mispronounce the weed strains.” C.L.

It was a banner year in British grime, with veteran artists putting down some of the best work of their careers, and the underground pirate radio stations that nurture it experiencing a resurgence both terrestrially and online. Stateside, no one had a bigger year than Skepta, whose collaborations with Kanye and Drake (and boots-down touring schedule) cracked the mainstream consciousness for the first time since the mid Aughts. Globally, no one had a better year than Skepta’s brother JME, whose third studio album exemplified why grime has stayed vital: malleability and nimbleness have enabled it to keep its raw roots, to the point whereIntegrity>‘s second track, “96 Fuckries,” is actually a single from 2012 but still sounds hulking and anti-gravity-chamber futuristic. JME’s bars are multitudinous, stick sharp and funny, varying from road brags to exhortations of his veganism to anthems that offer a good argument for unionizing grime MCs (“The Money,” featuring Wiley). On “No You Ain’t,” he raps: “I’m a Eighties baby/The best MC lately? Maybe.” In London parlance: Safe. J.E.S.

Before his death in August, Sean Price was New York’s greatest stylist of a particular strain of bugged-out punchlines, effortless internal rhymes and mean-mugging hard-assness ”“ or as Nineties hip-hop heads called it, “rapping.” His fourth commercially released mixtape (his 15th-or-so release in all), is as dependable, hilarious and technically stunning as nearly everything in his catalog since his celebrated 1996 debut with Heltah Skeltah. Loosies and new tracks are sliced and diced with aplomb by D.J. P.F. Cuttin’, leaving little in the way of hooks and just an ocean of amazing bars, including the inspired MF Doom impersonation of “Metal Beard” (“We outshout the posse/Clappin’ trey, happy days to Ralph Malph and Potsie”). Just another great release from a classic NYC boastmaster, who remained on of rap’s most quotable until the very end: “Defending my bars first/Never respond to a fuckin’ Kendrick Lamar verse.” C.W.

Vic Spencer’s music sounds like nothing else coming out of Chicago. It channels a forgotten branch of hip-hop history, a vituperative, pugnacious, irascible counter-trend to the eager enthusiasm which glimmers around the city’s more positive scenes. Spencer is not positive. What he does have is his own sound, his own style, his own obnoxious sense of humor: “The coldest rapper that Chicago got/Live and direct rollin’ up in a Wells Fargo lot/Invent something new like some cargo socks/Rappers in my city, which one of these retardos hot?” Spencer has no fear of burning bridges, beefing with more popular stars or “Slapping Gatekeepers.” But he isn’t simply promoting conflict and negativity: He’s pushing for honesty, a ruthless curmudgeon whose raps argue that the genre is at its best when calling out false prophets.D.D.

Raury’s discerning, Andre 3000-inspired philosophizing helps portray him as a storybook hero, while his expansive folk rock makes his universe feel foreign. But this precocious newcomer, otherwise known as the artist who wore a Mexican soccer jersey with Donald Trump’s name crossed out to his late night TV debut, stresses that he isn’t daydreaming or depicting some fictional world: “I could be MLK, I could be Juicy J/Or a lame on Instagram that shows the world his AK.” To listen to All We Need, where Big K.R.I.T. is a wizened sage and RZA a boho-hippie balladeer, is to view the world with fresh eyes, and from someone who actually seems to puff out his chest when he calls himself a “millennial.” C.L.

Since his first mixtape dropped in 2012, New York spitter Joey Bada$$ has seen his overflowing talents diminished since his music sounds like the year of his birth, 1995, in a genre that values the new and contemporary. But from the opening jazz boom-bap of Statik Selektah, his debut full length shows he never paid the critics much mind. In fact, his devotion to vintage styles of New York rap is what keeps his lyricism in top form, whether he’s trash talking (“Christ Conscious”) or reminiscing over the past (“Curry Chicken”).D.T.

The second disc of this 2-CD package sets a brave new course for the noise-rap trio, inventing new ways to be funky (growling like the sound of revving motorcycle for starters) and uncovering new ways to be abrasive ”“ there’s room for Atari Teenage Riot-style electro-punk rants (“I Break Mirrors With My Face in the United States”), bouts of feedback-soaked Smashing Pumpkins rock (“On GP”), robot funk-metal (“Why a Bitch Gotta Lie”) and even something that leans towards the noise-punk of drummer Zach Hill’s former band Hella (“Beyond Alive”). MC Ride’s lyrics dwell in the social anxiety and the Internet hall of mirrors that powers everything from vaporwave to PC Music to Earl Sweatshirt, but since he’s bellowing them at Waka Flocka levels, it turns introversion into an hardcore cry of community in solitutude, shouting “I don’t care about real life!” and “I like my iPod more than fucking!” C.W.

The debut album from Paterson, New Jersey’s gushing romantic Fetty Wap delivers on the promise of “Trap Queen,” “679,” “My Way” and even “Again,” which probably should have been a hit considering it’s made of the same stuff. Fetty deals in gritty subject matter, candy-coated melodies and an exasperated, brink-of-ecstasy/brink-of-tears delivery that constantly crosses the line where his throat breaks and his voice cracks. In a year where the melodic tics of Young Thug and Future started sinking even deeper into the framework of the way people rap in 2015, Fetty was all dessert, all the time: 17 trap-pop songs that aimed for the hugest hooks possible, sang almost exclusively like the spots where Auto-Tune changes notes, featuring melodies that he rode into the ground like AC/DC would a riff. C.W.

Future’s partner DJ Esco spent nearly two months in a Dubai prison, and in celebration of his return they teamed up for the darkest record of the rapper’s career. Self-medication, women and heartbreak drive Future’s club hits, trap anthems and unabashed love songs; but 56 Nights drains everything out until all that’s left are morose drug meditations. That hard left turn gave birth to hard yet melancholy songs like “March Madness” and “Trap Niggas,” both of which had a refusal to give up that turned Future into something of an inspirational figure. No matter how dark his music got, through the murk shined a light of exuberant confidence: “Waking up fresh, that’s Kodak/Killing these niggas you know that.” D.T.

The year’s second most ambitious hip-hop album is a master class in production courtesy of Dr. Dre, the man who invented the idea that hip-hop can sound as much like Abbey Road as Crenshaw Blvd. Ostensibly inspired by reminiscing over the West Coast gangsta rap that he helped invent, his third solo album ends up an arms-wide-open opus inspired by the crush-and-jitter Atlanta trap (“Talk About It”), the muted groove-slash of J. Dilla’s Detroit (“Satisfiction”) and DJ Premier’s New York (“Animals”). Dre’s arrangements bustle to the point of being cramped, full of drops, reverses, live drums, skits, strings and ”“ no kidding ”“ a flugelhorn. Rap’s most showboating MCs add to the wide-screen vision, including Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and newcomer King Mez. C.W.

As victim of a massive data leak, Young Thug has one of 2015’s messiest catalogs. Yet he still managed to open the year with a concise release, a dark vacuum of a record with a sound perfectly complemented by the brown-red scheme of its cover art. The Barter 6 is a coherent statement from an artist accused of incoherence, where melodies shimmer and emerge from the molasses silence to form singular shapes, embedding in the brain like memory foam. Every guest spot ”“ including two vintage Birdman verses ”“ seems to stand on the same fluid stage. Despite Young Thug’s reputation for eccentricity and wackiness, The Barter 6 is a record of great musicality, poise and a subtle autobiographical sadness which seeps into its final songs. It was initially greeted with skepticism: Where are the hits? But then, of course, it produced two (“Check” and “With That”), proof that great artists shape their world and don’t let it shape them. D.D.

Forty-something Brooklyn firefighter by day, wildly gifted rapper by night, Kaseem “Ka” Ryan is the most noir personality in hip-hop’s celebrated lineage of dizzying assonance enthusiasts: He’s got the brain-bending intricacy of Kool G Rap, MF Doom and avowed fan Earl Sweatshirt, but does it all with an chilly groan like he’s constantly exhaling from a cigar. The crime stories of his fourth album, a collaboration with producer Preservation, are like the whispers behind the tales Raekwon was proud to shout, mostly spun with his vowels in tidy rows: “Was bopping through every possible obstacle/My options grew until the cops pursue.” Often eschewing snares entirely, Days With Dr. Yen Lo can sound like the minimalist dark-jazz of Bohren and Der Club of Gore getting a gritty guest verse to steal the smoky spotlight. C.W.

It feels distant now, as Rae Sremmurd’s two biggest hits both struck in 2014. Yet at the top of the year they released a lean, mean record of concise, punchy pop-rap. It’s a record in which novelty and craft not only coexist, but feed upon one another. A PG-13 dance record, it was a refreshing splash of water after the discomfiting shock of YouTube gangsters and club-chasing paeans to codeine addiction. Two fresh-faced stars flaunted their talents ”“ and, importantly, irreverence ”“ with the precision production of Mike Will’s Ear Drummers team hitting hard and getting out of the way. Its spiritedjouissance is never contrived, yet its surface is clean and brightly packaged.SremmLife is an exacting product, but never lets that get in the way of a good time. D.D.

Summertime ’06 is what results when a Northside Long Beach Crip engages with the genre-less beat streams of Internet culture. Clams Casino’s amniotic melodies pulse underneath Vince Staples as he croons, “This could be forever, baby.” The rapper spends as much time harmonizing soulfully as he does throwing signs, and sharply retorting on “Lift Me Up,” “I never vote for Presidents/The presidents that change the hood is dead and green.” He may be a (former) gangsta like his Daddy, and raps with poise and confidence, but he opts for haunted laptop arrangements from DJ Dahi instead of the lowrider funk of his forbears. The world he occupies looks unfamiliar because it’s owned by a younger generation that’s savvy about the social media-connected world around them, yet are just as committed to their neighborhood, and the sometimes deadly rituals that define it. As Staples raps on “Norf Norf,” “Nate Dogg still here ’cause of niggas like me.”M.R.

Magic City still belongs to Future. His touring DJ Esco still plays the ever-popular Monday nights at the now world-famous strip club, while, as of this spring anyway, the TV screen behind its stripper pole plays scenes from his “Magic” video. Yet DS2, a hazy nightcap to his triumphant 2014-2015 run of four releases, Future is no longer the reliable paid endorser of the trap-rap lifestyle. The Auto-Tuned crooning that once had Miley Cyrus singing along has all but withered away. Any leftover notions of grandeur (“The Percocet & Stripper Joint”‘s faint horns, “Where Ya At”‘s cascading harps) only seem hearken back to his now-distant past of his last studio album, Honest. Even when he sings of money showers, his voice grows listless. Yet because of how convincing Future is ”“ how he draws you closer by barely seeming conscious, how he self-medicates to Henny and sex despite himself ”“ he is as compelling as ever, if not more. C.L.

Though his team went to great lengths to clarify that Surf was no sequel to Chance the Rapper’s game-changing sophomore tape Acid Rap, fans were nonetheless surprised to discover an oddball pop-jazz record with more left turns than a racetrack. Still, standout lead single “Sunday Candy” would not have sounded out of place on the rapper’s breakthrough. With the breathless enthusiasm of a high school musical, the song is a nesting doll: Hidden in plain sight, it’s a love song, within a song of familial love, shown through symbols of faith. As a whole, the album travels far beyond Chicago’s South Side, yet the attitude which pervades “Sunday Candy” is decidedly local: dancers, street rappers, entertainers, legends. It’s an adventurous record that celebrates imagination and collaboration; a chorus of youthful voices taking their first confident steps, and a few older ones rediscovering their footing. D.D.

Sometime between Drake’s half-decade as a silky smooth half-rap/half-croon heartthrob and our current “Hotline Bling” era came this glorious Ferrari joyride speed-bump of a mixtape. If You’re Reading This fulfilled all the promises of the Common beef and the Migos co-sign ”“ Drake basically reinventing him as a capital-R rapper who cared more about making hot lines than making hot songs (in turn, neither of its singles cracked the Top 50). Swaggering around more like Rick Ross than a vulnerable ex-soap star, Drake takes aim at against haters, exes, fakes, clones, shot-takers, Tyga and, er, Rolling Stone. He’s buying islands, ignoring texts from centerfolds and serving “beef well done on the double with cheese.” He raps with the same funk-over-all attitude of Young Thug or Bobby Shmurda: “The shit was gettin’ too predictable/The new shit is on steroids, I would never pass a physical.” Who cares who wrote it? C.W.

What more can be said about an album that landed in March with a thump, as if it were a 1,000-page novel? Kendrick Lamar’s masterwork may not be the length of Infinite Jest ”” its 79 minutes makes it about as long as a late-Nineties rap CD. Yet we’re still trying to unpack his meditations on post-millennial blackness, Christian struggles with “Lucy,” assertions of lyrical superiority in the new West Coast and communion with spiritual forefathers like Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, George Clinton and DJ Quik. Lost amidst the endless discussion of its themes, however, is how exhilarated Lamar sounds throughout. “Alright” is a celebration of being alive, and neither the danger of not living up to God’s plan nor the specter of random police violence can diminish that feeling. He sounds like a spoken-word poet gone mad in the coffeehouse on “For Free?” “King Kunta” finds him throwing bows in a drop-top Chevy as he takes in the L.A. sunshine. Lamar’s mind never shuts off, and he challenges us to follow his thoughts ”” but he always reminds us that life is a joyous blessing. M.R.