Pitchfork’s 50 Best Albums of 2015
It’s that time of year again, where sites round up their year-end lists of best music. Pitchfork, one of the most trusted and undoubtedly influential music publications, has been on a roll this week with their “Year in Music 2015” features.
Yesterday, they presented the 100 Best Tracks of 2015, which included a diverse selection of the year’s greatest rap, pop, and indie tracks. This morning, they’ve released their highly anticipated list of the 50 best albums.
There’s a lot of super sharp and pertinent commentary included alongside each of their picks (as to be expected by Pitchfork), but I found Kris Ex’s reflection on the #1 album of 2015 immensely insightful. Warning: spoiler alert ahead!
Filled with themes of racial oppression, mental illness, self-loathing, love and determination, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly definitely deserves top spot on any comprehensive 2015 music list (in fairness, my Best of 2015 list focused mainly on indie favorites from this past year). But, as Kris Ex argues, Butterfly reigns as album of the year not only because of its merits—it matters because it’s an album by an artist who is so dedicated to his truth:
“All of this Blackness is important. Important because sometimes white people need to take a metaphorical seat—to sit down, shut up, and listen to conversations in which they are a cultural object, not the center. This is not an easy task. White people have been way too comfortable for way too long in this country, in this world. Way too comfortable with the way they choose to see reality solely through their own gaze, way too comfortable with their sense of entitlement over the planet and its resources, way too comfortable with their appropriation of culture in ways large and small, way too comfortable with the stories they tell, the lies passed off as the history of mankind. Way too comfortable with the things they pick up, way too careless with the way they put them down. But Kendrick was willing to discomfort the comfortable.”
I think this quote rings incredibly true, and is especially significant considering all of the horrific events that took place in 2015. Kendrick’s hip-hop odyssey To Pimp a Butterfly is important for everyone because although it isn’t speaking for everyone, it places the realities of the black, poor and otherwise marginalized at center stage, without lyrical or musical compromise.
Read more features from Pitchfork’s “Year in Music 2015” on their website, pitchfork.com.
Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY?rel=