Best of 2009: Album Leftovers

No, I’m not done with 2009. It was that great for rap music.

I overlooked some albums in the rush to spit out some 2000-odd words and cut off a few more to keep it at a nice round number of 10 for the Best Albums posts. I should’ve also noted that I have not been able to keep up with too many releases from November and December. I’ve only barely scratched the surface on albums from the Clipse, Souls of Mischief, Z-Ro, Juvenile, and Ryan Leslie, so apologies to those projects. At any rate, here are some more projects that I enjoyed plenty this year, in no particular order and again, with download links for the artist-sanctioned free releases:

Ryan Leslie – Ryan Leslie
Obviously, I couldn’t put this on a Best Rap post, it not being rap and all. But if I had, it would’ve ranked pretty highly. Ryan Leslie is a great pop producer and just a real sweet dude, which is pretty cool. Except for my obsession with ignorant rap music, I’m pretty square. I mostly like my R&B to be less playerating and womanizing, more monogamously lovely but without sounding like it’s for old people. And that’s basically what Ryan Leslie’s music is. He actually released a second album this year but that fell in with the late-year batch that I didn’t get to.

Beautiful Skin Mix

I made a mix for a girl (who we will from here on out refer to simply as Girl) for her birthday because I’m a sucker like that. I won’t exactly be sharing it with you because yknow, it’s a gift for her and not you. But I did take some time picking out the songs and sequencing them and I thought I did a pretty good job. This isn’t saying much but this is my best mix yet (thanks also in large part to Audacity, which I’m finally beginning to learn how to use). Here’s what I included in the mix and some explanation of why. It’s mostly love/girls’ songs because I generally don’t give girls enough credit to be down with hard-assed gangster rap (except Monique, who is a 5-star chick like that) and also shottas don’t make for good hollas. But it’s still generally good rappity rap regardless.

1. Ryan Leslie – How It Was Supposed To Be

Well, except for this. I don’t listen to enough R&B to be a good judge but Ryan Leslie’s album is one of the best R&B albums I’ve heard in years. And this song has been stuck in my head for months, causing me to involuntarily sing it aloud throughout the day, sometimes rocking the harmony, betraying my high school choir roots (poorly at that …… our choir really sucked). I realize throwing this in first sounds cocky like “This is how a mixtape is supposed to be done.” But it’s just that this is the only straight-up R&B joint and I didn’t know how to fit that into the mix. I decided to tack it onto either the beginning or the end. I chose the beginning because it’s upbeat and I want to start off upbeat or fun for the mix.

2. Method Man & Redman – Mrs. International

These first four songs are all songs with fun concepts. It’s no surprise that two of them are from members of the Wu-Tang, which is prone to coming up with great concepts for girl songs (e.g. “Ice Cream,” “Killa Lipstick” come to mind). “Mrs. International” fits right into that mold with a great hook and hilarity from Redman (“Weren’t you on Maury?”). The concept fits the Girl really well too because she loves travelling the globe, is very interested in world politics, and seems to value bougie worldliness in general.

3. Atmosphere – Domestic Dog

The Girl also loves Slug from Atmosphere so I wanted to work him in. This joint off Atmosphere’s very good Strictly Leakage mixtape finds Slug extolling the virtues of picking up chicks at the grocery store. He’s usually really emo so when he gets a chance to be an asshole, it’s refreshing. Great hook too. The song reminds me of my pick up lines, which Girl really enjoys when I use them to fake hit-on her.