“Name one genius that ain’t crazy,” Kanye West requests on “Feedback,” a hypnotic, erratic highlight from his seventh LP (eighth if you count his Watch the Throne collaboration with Jay Z), The Life of Pablo. They may still be far from the light, but they’re also far from done. “I just hope I make it ‘til tomorrow,” he says at the end of “PROM/KING.” Saba and the city that raised him are growing through darkness. From opener “BUSY/SIRENS,” where Saba ponders how “Jesus got killed for our sins, Walter got killed for a coat,” to album high-point “PROM/KING,” a harrowing, heartbreaking account of he and his cousin’s friendship, death hangs over all here.
The rapper’s cousin and fellow Pivot Gang member John Walt (aka Walter Long Jr.) was murdered in 2017, and his death shadows every corner of the record. Saba’s Care For Me takes a similar tack through tragedy and toward grace.
Embattled mayor Rahm Emmanuel announced he would not be seeking re-election. In a year of often overwhelming national cruelty, the city found itself looking toward some sort of light on the horizon. But no artist embodied what 2018 meant for Chicago more than Saba. There was Noname’s victory lap, CupCakke’s unabashed self-love, and Valee’s world-conquering flow.
There were flashier stories from the Windy City in 2018. A$AP, and he never sounds more at home on his commercial debut than when he’s reunited with some of its producers, especially Clams Casino, who contributes two sterling tracks. His exemplary production tastes carried his breakthrough 2011 mixtape, Live. “Pussy, money, weed / All I really need,” he raps on “PMW,” and with the exception of fashion, that’s about all he ever raps about. Though he raps proficiently, with ample confidence and a nimble tongue, he’s a flat personality who regards his shallowness and vanity as his best qualities. Rocky doesn’t have the kind of presence to stand out against all those bigger names. The track also tosses in a Kendrick Lamar guest spot, which only further crowds Rocky out of what was supposed to be his spotlight. A$AP, was “Fucking Problems,” a DJ Khaled-less DJ Khaled track carried by a slick Drake verse, a boffo 2 Chainz chorus, and a sure-thing beat from Noah “40” Shebib. It sure seems like a vote of no confidence, then, that instead of introducing listeners to Rocky’s codeine-and-cashmere aesthetic, the first real single from Rocky’s RCA debut, Long. For his part, Rocky was to serve as the telegenic public face of this empire, a gateway to the odd, luxuriant strains of rap that thrive online, just below radio’s radar. It was investing in a whole A$AP empire, backing not only Rocky’s debut album but also his group label A$AP Worldwide, a potential farm system for other up-and-comers who run in Rocky’s Internet circles. When RCA threw $3 million behind A$AP Rocky, it wasn’t just investing in the Harlem rapper. So, from music’s biggest names like Kendrick and Kanye to Odd Future glow-ups like Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler, The Creator, here are the best hip-hop albums of the decade, as voted by the Paste Staff. You can stan for the ’90s golden era of hip hop, or maybe vouch for the 2000s boom, but you can’t deny the evolution of the genre in the 2010s. Sub-genres flickered up in America’s cities-trap remained king in Atlanta, drill music continued to bloom in Chicago, bounce informed the New Orleans sound and Houston artists like Solange and Travis Scott transformed underground chopped and screwed sounds for a pop audience. While this decade wouldn’t necessarily be categorized as hip-hop’s heyday (that’s what the 1990s are for, after all) it was a truly distinct time period in which rappers experimented and pushed the genre’s limits, perhaps more than in any hip-hop age before. This has been true for years and years, but it’s been particularly interesting to witness American hip-hop artists work through a decade that began inside a bubble of optimism, one that bursted in the second half of the 2010s.
Where to begin when writing about the genre that defined the decade? Hip-hop remains one of our purest forms of protest and release.
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