There won't be anything harder to judge than who deserves the title of "2015 Hip-Hop Album of the Year" when this year comes to a close. Each artist has brought his A game from the veterans like Dr. Dre to newcomers like Joey Bada$$. Each album has their own style and rhythmic taste making the list that more difficult to assess. As we come to the end of August in 2015 here are some of the top hip-hop/rap albums to date:
5) B4.DA.$$ - Joey Bada$$
It feels crazy to think that the one guy who can bring back the early 90s rap in his lyrics and rhymes is somebody who was born in 1995. By the time Joey was old enough to even comprehend the rap music the tides had shifted into the early 2000s hip-hop. But that didn't stop Joey Bada$$ from delivering a gold star in his debut album. There are many people who still remember the glory days of hip-hop in the early 90s with De La Soul and Redman. When you sit down and listen to B4.DA.$$ you can feel that '93-'94 type of rap vibe. Paper Trail$ deliverers listeners into a lyrical and pulsating time machine giving the 20 year-old much creditability between both the younger rap generation and the older. Joey Bada$$ has given hip-hop fans the ability to listen to some of the best years in music with his flow and his lyrics and easy-flowing, head-bobbing beats.
4) Compton - Dr. Dre
Wait, who? It seems we haven't heard from Dr. Dre in so long that he has gotten lost in the rap game, and we might have almost forgot about him. Maybe it has been the sudden emergence of Compton's own Kendrick Lamar that revitalized the elder hip-hop legend. No matter what it was we are all glad the Doctor is back, and back with vengeance. For years fans have been teased with the reemergence of Dre and with the recent documentary of the group N.W.A., Dre seemed prepared to deliver. The anticipation had fans saying, "How will he do it again?" Decades have past, kingdoms have fallen, but one thing has stayed the same: the rap/hip-hop game has always revolved around Dr. Dre. But what he released was a bit of a surprise to many. Dre has always seemed to showcase others in his music rather than himself, but this time it was all about him. He joins with fellow Compton native Kendrick Lamar in the song "Genocide" where Lamar keeps to his latest flow that he demonstrated in To Pimp a Butterfly. This is where we see the Dr. Dre that we have never seen before. His delivery jumps out at the listeners and this is the only place on Compton where Dre is rapping. To a lot of listeners it is almost impossible to even recognize, but the beauty of it is a gift from the rap Gods. For years Dr. Dre has been the center of the hip-hop. At 50 years-old, Compton will be his farewell to the industry and this gives fans, young and old, a bittersweet memory to remember him by.
3) Dirty Sprite 2 - Future
Coming off his sophomore album, Honest, that was very much confused and misunderstood by fans, Future needed to swing for the fences in 2015. Honest wasn't a bad album by any means but Future had trouble finding himself during it. He went away from his pre-Pluto self that helped him claim all the attention he had heading into Honest. The bangers turned into pop songs with Miley Cyrus and the Atlanta, GA native's music had completely fallen from his dystopian into more of a jubilation. He wasn't going to let that happen again in DS2. The second song on the record "I Serve the Base" is a salute to all his fans who have been with him since day-1, not his new "pop" fans. He says in the song, "Tryna make a pop star and they made a monster." After he became rich and famous, Future says the "industry" tried to change him into a "pop" star like they do everybody. But because of this the industry has created a man with deeper and darker demons and those are all fully visible in DS2, a club-banging, dark, 18 song album showing how Future has tried many times to escape his demons, but he just can't.
2) Summertime '06 - Vince Staples
Hands down the biggest surprise of 2015 is the album Vince Staples dropped. Each and every time Vince drops an album or a single he seems to be reaching higher, and higher, for the sky. His flows get better, his lyrics get better, and his beats get well - better. This is the album you want to be driving around blaring in your car at high volume with an 18" subwoofer bumping in the back. But this album is much deeper than just the beats, which is the reason it is so high up on this list. Most days you either find an album with an underlying amount of club-bangers with the lyrics so-so, or a record that lyrically is incomparable but the beats are wack. Vince Staples gives you the best of both worlds in Summertime '06. The album is essentially a double, with ten songs on one side and ten on the other. But Summertime '06 is not an album you will bring to a party, rather, Vince wants you to take a trip inside his mind. "Norf Norf" has the beat and bass of a song you'd dance to, but instead you get entrapped inside of where Vince Staples grew up - North Side, Long Beach, CA, where he "never ran from nothing but the police." Summertime '06 is the first, and could be the only, album in 2015 to successfully incorporate flow, lyrics, and bass into one project.
1) To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar
Only Kendrick Lamar could pull off such a masterpiece with a hip-hop album when integrating jazzy, dreamlike production style beats. Most hip-hop fans remember a Tribe Called Quest and their jazzy beats mixed with unmatched lyrics but what Kendrick Lamar deliverers is something that never has been done before. Much like good kid, m.A.A.d. city, To Pimp a Butterfly tells a story. Kendrick honestly probably could win a Grammy and an Oscar award for his work on this album. The beat in the song "King Kunta" is a remastered version of the beat in the song "Get Nakkid," by Mausberg, which at one time, according to Sounwave, was considered "the jazziest record in the world." Kendrick turned this beat inside out and lyrically destroyed it, setting the bar for the rest of the album - which didn't disappoint. From combining the downfall of Wesley Snipes into a parody in "Wesley's Theory", to symbolically introducing God himself in the form of a homeless man in "How Much a Dollar Cost", and to end it all Kendrick closes the album out with "Mortal Man", a bone-chilling, dream-type interview with the ghost of 2Pac himself. Kendrick Lamar hands down has proven himself to be the smartest, dopest, most creative rapper in the game today. And when it is all said and done, a few more records like this, Kendrick Lamar could go down as the best rapper ever.
