The Dowsers prides itself on being the first music magazine devoted to the playlist experience—and in 2017, that experience became all the more multi-faceted. By nature, playlist-making is a highly personal process, an opportunity for anyone to play the role of radio programmer and tailor their song selection to suit a particular mood, activity, or obsession. Increasingly, we’ve seen them become a more communal medium, whether it’s bands releasing a curated mix to hype a new record, streaming services using them to break new artists, fans crowd-sourcing set lists to create shareable post-show souvenirs, or one of the biggest rappers in the world taking the “playlists are the new albums” mantra literally. But in 2017, we also saw playlists that moved beyond the realm of the promotional to the political, be it through pointed statements or charity initiatives. It may still feel strange to think a playlist could change the world, but in 2017, the act of dragging-and-dropping reached new levels of artistry, activitism, and influence.1. Your Discover WeeklySpotify’s Discover Weekly playlist was launched in July of 2015, but with the music service now boasting more than 60 million paying subscribers and playlists eclipsing albums as the dominant way fans consume music, the weekly personalized mix is more relevant than ever. Essentially based on the concept of collaborative filtering, the algorithm looks at songs it knows you like, then recommends you songs adjacent to those songs in other users’ playlists and libraries. The result is often uncannily precient recommendations. If you’ve become as addicted to this playlist as so many others, there’s good news: The more users Spotify adds, the more data there is to mine, and the better these recommendations get.
2. RapCaviarIn 2017, RapCavier was the Avatar of playlists. It adorned billboards, spawned its own tour,stirred up controversy, and turned its creator, Tuma Basa, into an industry celebrity. It’s easy to be cynical about it all, but also very difficult to turn away. Week after week, it simply delivered the goods, helping break an entire new generation of rap artists (it’s no coincidence that Lil Uzi Vert headlined the tour) while also being one of the first playlists to incorporate video. In an era that was supposed to have decimated the tastemaker class, Basa and his playlist provided essential listening.
3. Drake, More LifeThis is among the best of Drake’s clumping-tracks-together things, and that’s very much because More Life is consciously a “playlist.” This isn’t a low-stakes gambit or a cheap marketing gimmick (at least not entirely), but an honest engagement with a new form. More Life is loose and meandering, and sometimes the individual components seem slight and tertiary. But like the best playlists, it captures a moment, a feeling, and a place. More Life is enjoyable and, as anyone who listens to a lot of classic albums knows, enjoying music trumps appreciating it—and this release is infinitely better than any other non-sweater-meme Drake release in years. For that, we can thank the generations of mixtape compilers, playlist curators, radio DJs, and compilation creators for helping define this new form. But, most of all, we should thank Drake for getting that the lines between artist, audience, critic, and curator are porous, and for making an initial foray into what this intersection looks like.
4. Grim Kim’s 150 Raddest Metal Albums Ever Made by People Who Happen To Not Be DudeThis past July, NPR released their list of the 150 greatest albums made by women. On first glance, the list appears to be wide-reaching in its scope. Meshell Ndegeocello, Sleater-Kinney, and Egyptian superstar Umm Kulthum all make appearances, with iconic figures like Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell nabbing the top spots. However, renowned metal critic Kim Kelly quickly noted on Twitter that the “definitive” countdown failed to include any albums metal albums by women—so she Tweeted out a list of her own, and then a Spotify user named Jim Fenner compiled (most of) them all into a 1,023-track, 87-hour playlist. Kelly’s crash course does more than simply construct a history of women in metal; she highlights the diversity in female and non-binary artists who have transgressed the genre itself.
5. The Bathroom BansWithin the Spotify ecosystem, you’ll find a multitude of playlists created by the streaming service in response to current events, be it mixes that benefit Mexico City’s earthquake victims, or expressions of support for American dreamers jeopardized by the Trump administration’s DACA repeal. But The Bathroom Bans (part of Spotify’s recently launched I’m with the—banned series) is more than just a playlist protest against repeated attempts by Republican state government to enforce which type of public restrooms trans people are allowed to use. Threading expository animated videos (narrated by Halsey) with tracks by trans/gender-fluid artists and their vocal allies, it nudges the playlist format toward the realm of narrative documentary.
6. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “For Puerto Rico” PlaylistAll-star charity singles have a bad reputation that is entirely earned. But Hamilton playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Almost Like Praying” (proceeds from which benefited victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico) was unexpectedly fire, bringing together everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Dominican icon Juan Luis Guerra for an impassioned, dembow-driven love song to Puerto Rico. The track was introduced through Miranda’s “For Puerto Rico” playlist, which not only presented a soulful portrait of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its diaspora in the U.S., it also raised money for hurricane-relief efforts through a Spotify donation based on the number of followers it acquired. As an added incentive, the songwriter pledged that, if the playlist hit 50,000 followers, he would share an old photo of himself, dressed as J.Lo. (At the time of this writing, the count was over 73,000, but we’re still waiting for the big reveal.)
7. Aphex Twin’s Field Day setThere’s a reason why Reddit users frantically threw together a playlist of the tracks that Aphex Twin spun during London’s Field Day just hours after the set ended on June 3. The U.K. producer born Richard James remains one of electronic music’s most cherished and mysterious figures, and the singularity of sound and vision has spawned a fervent fan base that tracks his every movement. Admittedly, listening to a playlist comprising tracks exclusively from a DJ set is an odd experience; as an unmixed, dangling historical artifact, experienced within the confines of headphones or home speakers, it’s not how or where James wanted this music to be heard. But your mind fills in some of the blanks: the 3D mapped light instillation; the entrances and exits of the segues; the sweat and flesh of the festival crowd. It’s an incomplete experience, but it’s also interactive, and feels less like you’re staring through a tiny peephole at a much larger world and more like you’re parsing an ancient, oblique text.
8. Frank Ocean’s BlondedAfter a four-year silence that ended with last year’s widely acclaimed Blond(e), Frank Ocean greeted 2017 with renewed vigor. On top of dropping a handful of new singles, he also released a dynamic playlist, “Blonded,” that appears far more personal and revelatory than the artist-branded content that label publicists crank out for streaming services. The first installment, revealed on February 24, included Celine Dion and Teen Suicide alongside obvious nods like Prince and Nina Simone. His March 10 update ventured further afield with jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, prog-pop enigma Todd Rundgren, and techno iconoclast Actress. And this most recent update from this past August features everyone from Frank Sinatra to Geto Boys to Japanese Breakfast. “Blonded” aspires to the ideal of music consumption in the streaming era—now that we can listen to everything, we can consume anything (and switch things up when the mood strikes). It remains to be seen if Frank Ocean’s ideological generosity will eventually manifest in his music.
9. Four Tet’s 60-Hour (And Counting) MegamixAt the time of this writing, the primary Spotify playlist by Four Tet (a.k.a UK producer/DJ Kieran Hebden) spans 695 songs and runs over 60 hours. By the time you read these words, it will have probably grown. Over the past few months, it seemed to serve primarily as a vehicle for Hebden to build anticipation for his ninth long-player, New Energy, mixing in tracks from the record with songs from peers (Bicep), inspirations (Sly Stone), and aliases (um, 00110100 01010100, which is the artist page stub where an album of Four Tet b-sides resides in Spotify). DJ mixes are a dime-a-dozen, and it’s not hard to find plenty by Four Tet out there in the ether. What’s much more rare to find is such a comprehensive compendium of all the sounds that go into an artist’s aesthetic. For a veteran like Hebden, an experimental cosmonaut who’s as likely to fold 2-step garage into his music as he is ‘70s jazz fusion or Nigerian funk (or…Selena Gomez), a standard 15-track playlist simply wouldn’t capture the breadth of his tastes. Hell, 10 of those wouldn’t. At nearly 700 tracks and counting, this mix is at least beginning to come close.
10. Ivanka Trump’s 991122 PlaylistEven in the streaming-dominant age, it’s still extremely rare for a playlist to make international headlines—but then this feat is probably only the 8,654th weirdest thing to happen under the current presidential administration. On October 15, Ivanka Trump posted this cryptically titled playlist to her Spotify profile, and given its timing (appearing 10 days before her and Jared Kushner’s eighth anniversary) and the egregiously lovey-dovey nature of the songs featured within, manymediaoutletsspeculated that the mix was designed as the soundtrack to a sexy-time couple’s retreat. However when you consider the themes of nostalgia (Adele’s “We Were Young,” Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man”) and looming separation (Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” Passenger’s “Let Her Go”) running throughout the playlist, it’s possible that Ivanka and Jared are actually preparing themselves for a different sort of getaway.
Considering how young the members of the band are, its amazing just how influential Jamie XX and his crew have been in popular music in the past five years. You can hear echoes of their work in everyone from FKA Twigs to Drake. This cool playlist from Complex offers a tribute to band by Nosaj Thing, John Talabot and others.
Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.Dark music is often defined by an instrumentalist’s skill: guitarist Dave Mustaine’s mastery of his six-string made Megadeath legends, the controlled metallic baritone of Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor put mall-goth on the map. These particular manipulations are amplified in noise music insofar as they are changed, strained, crushed and elongated. By definition the genre is contradictory—how is noise, music?—and as a result, challenges thinking about silences. When looped vocal techniques are distorted, feedback is allowed to prosper, static is treated as an instrument—what is made? This year has been especially interesting for noise—in Puce Mary’s “Night is a Trap ll” Frederikke Hoffmeier’s twisted speakerphone vocals mimic the sounds of an industrial explosion around her; Bruxa Maria’s “Human Condition” acts in discordance with every element in its songwriting, Gill Dread’s high-pitched holler placed below the sounds of sharp saws running unmanned. Far removed from their powerelectronics are the ambient, animalistic found sounds of David Toop’s “For a Language to Come,” and the Wagnerian haunt of The Stargazer’s Assistant. In 2016, a year filled with noise politically and otherwise, a genre embraces the pandemonium.
When David Bowie died of liver cancer eight days into the New Year (and two days after the release of his astonishing Blackstar), it was an awfully prescient indication of 2016’s relentlessly downward direction. When news came of Prince’s passing in April — a sudden and surprising event given that the Purple One had seemed his usual vital self the same week as his death, tooling around Minneapolis on his bicycle and shopping on Record Store Day — it felt like a kick in the teeth. How bad could this year get? As it turned out, it could get a lot worse…By December, the list of the departed would range from boomer rock titans (Eagles’ Glenn Frey; Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner; Leon Russell; both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake) to soul and R&B greats (Sharon Jones, Billy Paul, Natalie Cole, Maurice White) to heroes of the underground (Suicide’s Alan Vega, French electronic-music godfather Jean-Jacques Perrey, house-music pioneer Colonel Abrams) to many more gone way too soon (Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, hardcore-era Beastie Boys guitarist John Berry). While Merle Haggard passed away peacefully in his tour bus, tragic car crashes would claim both Atlanta rapper Shawty Lo and the rising British band Viola Beach. Hell, we even lost Blowfly, dammit, though if it’s any consolation, the hereafter just got a whole lot filthier with the addition of the NC-17-rated R&B showman.Perhaps he’ll find a new friend in Leonard Cohen, another songwriter who prided himself on having a certain expertise on carnal matters. Though his loss was keenly felt in November (especially since the news hit two days after the election), Cohen was just as considerate as Bowie in ensuring he left us with one final masterwork. Sublime tracks from Blackstar and You Want It Darker are part of this collection of songs by singers, songwriters and musicians who’ve been sadly silenced by the fate that’s waiting for the rest of us, too.
Founded in the late ’00s, Glasgow’s Optimo Music is the quintessential Scottish label, and that’s exactly the way JD Twitch wants it. The producer, DJ, promoter, remixer, and proud Scot has amassed a catalog that directly mirrors the freely flowing exchange between DIY, anything-goes rock and cutting-edge dance music that has long defined the country’s underground. After all, Scottish artists were some of the very first on the planet to (1) blend punk and discoid propulsion (see Fire Engines’ 1980 landmark “Get Up and Use Me”), (2) fold alt-rock into house/techno (Primal Scream, of course), and (3) pioneer ’00s dance rock (the crazy prescient Yummy Fur did it a decade ahead of schedule).Among the slew of vinyl Twitch released in 2016 (including those sides on the Optimo Trax and Optimo Music Disco Plate sub-labels), it’s on The Pussy Mothers’ The Number 1 EP, MR TC’s Surf and Destroy, and Junto Club’s Warm Me Up that these deliciously anarchic qualities are most in your face. Surf and Destroy is especially telling: the title track is a throbbing orgy of acid squelch, post-punk atmosphere, and psychedelic guitar wash.In contrast, these qualities become more subtle on those records that (at first blush, at least) tilt more toward orthodox dancefloor groove. A track like “In Turbine,” from Underspreche’s Invito Alla Danza Part 1, is minimal, electroacoustic drone rock (complete with warm organ hum) from a duo who are no strangers to pounding club jams. Noo is another revealing example: Their Optimo Music Disco Plate Five is all about 21st-century Italo awesomeness filtered through a scrappy, slacker basement vibe. Noo, it has to be noted, was founded by Christophe “Daze” Dasen and Sami Liuski, who hail from Switzerland and Finland respectively. You see, that’s a part of Twitch’s curatorial genius; he possesses a knack for teaming up with artists who, while they may not hail from the Scottish underground, create music that totally reflects its unique sensibility.Note: while my playlist is stacked with tracks from Optimo Music’s 2016 releases, listeners will also discover a handful of older gems. Truth be told, the label’s full catalog is never far from my turntable. For example, I probably jam Golden Teacher’s Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night — a boisterous collision of future punk, acid, and all manner of tribal funkery released in 2013 — at least once a month. Like most underground music from Scotland, this stuff simply doesn’t age.
We remember the heroes and innovators we lost over the course of 2017 by revisiting the playlists we created in their honor, both to celebrate their achievements and/or shine a light on the less-traveled corridors of their career.
The passing of Chuck Berry on March 18 at the age of 90 put the final punctuation mark at the end of this musical pioneer’s story. But the legacy left behind by the man who made rock ‘n’ roll what it is today largely rests on a relatively small group of milestone singles—about a dozen or so, mostly released between the mid ’50s and mid ’60s. And, when you’re talking about an artist like Berry, that leaves a lot of things out. On this collection of Chuck Berry esoterica, you’ll find just about everything you can think of and then some: calypso, jazz, Latin-tinged jams, psychedelic experimentation—you name it.
It’s impossible to imagine what hip-hop, house, and techno might have used for a rhythmic foundation if not for the 808 beat. That’s why the impact that inventor Ikutaro Kakehashi—who passed away April 1 at age 87—had on the past four decades of music is incalculable. Since the fine 2015 documentary 808 tells you everything you could want to know on the subject (and way more), we let the music do the talking with a set that includes many of the most famous uses of the 808 (and its successor the TR-909) by early adopters like Arthur Baker as well as such present-day devotees as Kanye West, who transformed the beat into the sonic epitome of emotional desolation on 808s And Heartbreak.
Few filmmakers ever displayed as much savvy about music—or were so eager to show off their sheer love of it—than Jonathan Demme. The director, who passed away on April 26 at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, established his impeccable and impressively diverse tastes—from The Fall and The Feelies to Big Youth and Boogie Down Productions—long before indie-movie hotshots like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson followed suit in the 1990s. This playlist includes the iconic tracks famously featured in his films, as well as selections from the many musicians with whom Demme collaborated.
The late Chris Cornell—who took his own life on May 18 at age 52—was one of the most dynamic and adventurous singers to emerge in the ’90s. This playlist highlights the underrated non-Soundgarden songbook of the only rock vocalist to have worked with both Timbaland and the Zac Brown Band, while always sounding unmistakably like himself.
Prodigy of Mobb Deep was one of the best rappers on the planet because he was dark. He didn’t have Pac’s tortured-thug activist energy, Big’s charisma or hitmaking ease, or Nas’s wisdom combined with the ear of a jazz musician. It didn’t matter. While other rappers laughed and joked, or screamed in your ear, Prodigy calmly explained how he would end your life while referencing the Book of Revelations and the Illuminati. The MC passed away on June 20 at age 42 from complications related to a painful life-long fight with sickle-cell anemia; this playlist salutes the greatest writer of threats in rap history.
There’s something almost transcendental about early Linkin Park. They were too anthemic to be fully nu metal, too hip-hop to be rock, and too emo and mainstream to be “cool.” But Chester Bennington’s lyrics had a radically human core, one that embraced and tried to work through longing and alienation. And their music was very intriguing, boasting intelligent percussion, authoritative washes of reverbed guitar, disciplined use of electronics, and methodical pacing. In the wake of Bennington’s shocking suicide July 20 at age 41, we published this playlist tribute to a band who, for certain angst-ridden teenagers, were like The Smiths of their era.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were already anachronisms when they met as jazz-obsessed teenagers in the late ‘60s and began to write the droll, harmonically complex songs that made Steely Dan one of the greatest and most unique bands of the ‘70s. So it’s not surprising that a duo who worked tirelessly to get the best performances out of skilled session players never had much interest in hip-hop and the art of sampling. But the Steely Dan songs that have been sampled by multiple rap artists offer a case study in how many options the band’s rich arrangements offer to beatmakers. Becker, sadly, passed away from esophageal cancer on September 3 at age 67. But his music lives on—and continues to find new audiences—through the many hip-hop, rock, and R&B tracks collected here.
With ’80s noise-pop pioneers Husker Dü, Grant Hart played the misfit McCartney to Bob Mould’s lacerating Lennon, providing the honey chaser to his partner’s hoarse-throat howls. Following the band’s extremely acrimonious break-up, Hart gradually faded into obscurity, releasing a small handful of under-the-radar records while Mould enjoyed a steady, successful career as an alt-rock elder statesman. Recent years had been especially trying: Hart lost both parents in quick succession, and he was injured in a fire that destroyed his longtime family home in South St. Paul. And then 2017 brought the diagnosis of the kidney cancer that ultimately claimed him on September 14 at the age of 56. With this playlist, we pay tribute to the man who forged the Dave Grohl prototype of the shit-hot drummer who also a tender tunesmith.
Before his death from cardiac arrest on October 2 at age 66, Tom Petty was a man of the people in a way that Dylan and Springsteen couldn’t be, because they just seemed too oversized, too mythic, too huge from the get-go. Like the characters he tended to write about, Petty was always somewhere between underdog and self-made outcast. Yet the chip on his shoulder was the rare and beautiful kind that seemed to make him more empathetic to people rather than less so. That’s what you hear in these songs, some of which are hits, while others are deep cuts from albums that didn’t quite get as much love as they should’ve. (For more, check out this playlist of the contemporary artists keeping Petty’s spirit alive.)
Gord Downie was effectively Canada’s Bruce Springsteen—a rock star with blue-collar blood, whose intimate portraits of Canadian life could stir a patriotic fervor with a simple small-town namedrop. His band, The Tragically Hip, was huge in Canada and in Canada only, however, since Downie’s untimely passing from brain cancer on October 18 at age 53, more people outside the country are tuning into his peculiar genius. Here’s a playlist of 23 songs to introduce non-Canadian newcomers to Downie’s deep discography. While it includes some Hip hits, these aren’t necessarily the band’s most popular songs. Rather, they’re ones that mostly venture beyond the band’s bar-rock roots and don’t require an Encyclopedia Canadiana to decode. And they’re the ones that most directly communicate Downie’s singular combination of outsized passion, white-knuckled intensity, sly humor, absurdity… and grace, too.
If his brother, Angus, is AC/DC’s Chuck Berry (all about dazzling flashes of lightning and speeding, razor-wire licks) then Malcolm Young was their Bo Diddley, a brilliant groove engineer (as well as songwriter—let’s not forget that) who could ceaselessly combine and recombine the essential, fundamental components of boogie. We present a cannonballed salute to the greatest rhythm guitarist in hard rock, who passed away November 18 at age 64 after a years-long struggle with dementia.
Moses Sumney had a certain feeling he wanted to capture when he recorded Aromanticism, 2017’s most irresistibly sumptuous debut album. “That moment as you’re feeling asleep,” he told the New York Times in September, “or right when you wake up, when you’re still one foot in and one foot out of the dream world, and everything is really murky and you feel like you’re floating.”The L.A. breakout artist is hardly alone in his quest to capture that ineffable state. This year yielded a startling abundance of music that had the same alluring softness as Sumney’s blissed-out R&B. Fellow travelers like Sampha, Kelela, Nick Hakim, and Syd all double-downed on the combination of smudgy beats, pillowy synths, and diaphanous vocals that had once marked Frank Ocean as an outlier but now seems everywhere. More cerebral and less carnal than the R&B sound that had been dominant since the rise of Drake, it aims to evoke a more solitary variety of bedroom experience than the genre has typically prioritized.That’s not to say there aren’t great songs about love and sex, too. But there’s definitely a more introspective bent to the new R&B, as well as a more adventurous musical sensibility. Though Frank Ocean gets the most credit for charting out this dream space and building a home there, the Weeknd certainly used to know the neighbourhood. Neo-soul mavericks like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Bilal explored it as well. In their own music and productions for FKA twigs, Kelela, Solange and more, the likes of Dev Hynes and Arca approach it from other angles. In any case, Sumney, Sampha, and other sleepy-eyed occupants of R&B’s vanguard made this space just as inviting to listeners this year.
In times of crisis, indie-pop—or twee, or whatever you want to call the sort of pop music thats exquisitely appointed while singing finely tuned chronicles of furtive glances and squirreled-away heartbreaks—is my comfort-food music. Sweater-weather vibes and hummable melodies were in large supply in 2017 both in the U.S. and abroad. Cheeky British act Peaness (pictured) collected its recent output, including the stellar love song "Seafoam Islands," on Are You Sure?; Chicago scrappers Varsity released the spaced-out yet self-protective "Settle Down"; and British trio Girl Ray put out the stunning, exploratory Earl Grey, which triangulated the songcraft of Carole King, the wooliness of mid-90s K Records, and the exacting wit of Squeeze (as well as a prog freak-out or two) into a gorgeous record.A few of the labels from my 90s college-radio heyday—when I first grew heart-eyed over indie-pop—are still at it, putting out lovingly detailed pop albums. The Spain-based label Elefant, which has been operating since 1989, released La Bien Queridas breezy Fuego, which surrounds the chilled-out alto of Ana Fernández-Villaverde in urgent synths ("Si Me Quieres a Mi") and squiggly guitars ("El Lado Bueno"). The 10-inch by the resurgent British act The Primitives, also an Elefant release, soared with "Ill Trust The Wind," which combined a singsong earworm with guitar fuzz. Matinée Recordings launched in 1997 and this year released a slew of records that included the chiming Other Towns Than Ours by Melbournes Last Leaves, which includes three-quarters of the brainy Aussie indiepoppers The Lucksmiths. The 20th-anniversary comp Matinée Idols throws back to the days of various-artists-CD-based discovery with a Last Leaves track as well as the Snapchat-era lament "Me, My Selfie and I" by Scots Strawberry Whiplash and "Postcard" from the sweetly synthy Swedish band The Electric Pop Group. (Postcards also figured into the making of Jens Lekmans gorgeously forthright Life Will See You Now.)The labels that are still kicking almost make up for the sting of losing Fortuna POP!, the UK-based label that announced its shutdown after 22 years in business and punctuated said farewell with the dreamy Flowers track "Say 123," which combines chugging guitars and vocalist Rachel Kennedys spectral soprano. Bittersweet feelings are crucial to indie-pop, though, so the beauty of that song at least made for a fitting goodbye.
Subscribe to the Spotify playlist here.Rap fans over 30 no longer ditch the genre for grown and sexy R&B — throwback rap as a radio format exploded in 2016 nationwide. So its time to start seriously considering rappers in their 40s to be the Greatest Generation in rap. Guys like Fat Joe, Snoop, Nas, Tribe, Mobb Deep, etc came up in the 90s, when budgets and deals and label options were abundant. Their albums were considered failures if they ONLY sold 300K units. You could write 25 verses a year to fulfill one album and be done — no constant mixtapes, features, Soundcloud exclusives, radio freestyles, etc. You had a lot of mystique — people only knew something about you if you said it in a magazine, put it on wax, on a video, or in your CD booklet Thank Yous. To start your career under those circumstances and still want to keep going in a world of $0.06 royalty checks from Spotify really speaks to the character of men who now have kids to put through college.Guys like Snoop, Kool Keith, and E-40 have maximized their personas to attract various revenue streams through TV shows, toys, movies, etc. Indie artists like Aesop Rock and Run the Jewels have adapted to the new economy with extensive merch options, tours, and licensing to movie soundtracks and television. RTJ even tapped into the Marvel Comics audience with multiple comic book covers dedicated to their iconic logo. Fat Joe eschewed an album altogether by aiming for the top with "All the Way Up,” a staple in pro sports arenas, ESPN commercials, and daytime radio. De La Soul crowdsourced a No. 1 album while A Tribe Called Quest recorded their comeback record in secret and performed on SNL with Dave Chappelle the week of its release. Nas, an investor in the razor company Bevel, promoted the crap out of his product on his revitalized smash "Nas Album Done" with DJ Khaled. Ka, who didnt break out until he was 38 years old, caught hell from New York tabloids for his firefighting day job and "objectionable" lyrics about cops shooting black people, all the while self-financing another great album gobbled up by his diehard fanbase. Havoc of Mobb Deep released a surprisingly outstanding solo LP The Silent Partner with Alchemist thats just as dark and nihilistic as any Mobb release in the late 90s. Geechi Suede of Camp Los latest solo single "Phone Check" would fit perfectly next to the groups smash single "Lucchini" in 1997. A Tribe Called Quest made their best album since 1993s classic Midnight Marauders. And Snoop cemented himself as the official rapper for all barbecues with his latest LP Coolaid almost 25 years after the release of Doggystyle.None of this would matter if The Greatest Generation in Rap wasnt as sharp as they were when Arsenio Hall was the apex of hip. This group will most likely be doing it well into their 50s — E-40 is 49 years old, Jay-Z just turned 47. Kool Keith’s age can only be quantified by the color of whatever wig he wears this week. This was a great year for rap fans who now stream their music in minivans.
These days, metal’s eclecticism runs pretty deep, and in a climate where so much unrest is bubbling up to the surface, its gratifying to have all this music provide a place of refuge for those who want/need to look away from the news. Metal has always possessed a degree of defiance and attitude, serving as a counterpoint to a mainstream thinking. And now its added more ambience and a broader range of emotion. Its thought-provoking, ability-defying, and at times just a pure exorcism of rage—totally fitting for 2017.Check out the right-on-point sheer aggression of Full Of Hells "Deluminate," the interstellar sound of Mastodon soaring even higher on "Sultans Curse," and the continuing rise of Power Trip on "Executioners Tax (Swing of the Axe)." Our 2017 survey also includes buzzed-about up-and-comers like Code Orange, hardcore revivalists like Higher Power and Trapped Under Ice, heralded mainstays like Pallbearer, the oft mentioned (and must-hear) 83-minute opus by Bell Witch (pictured above), as well as smouldering southern crew Royal Thunder, and total wrenches in the machine like the spastic Pyrrhon. And those are just some of the many far corners metal stretched into this year. We also saw comebacks from Godflesh and Glassjaw, polarizing Grammy recognition for August Burns Red, and then glimpses of future releases from Windhand, Turnstile, Old Wounds, and Gatecreeper. Theyre all here in our round-up of this years best metal.
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Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
