The Ringer's Best Albums of 2020

One of the most heralded hip-hop artists of his generation, Lil Uzi Vert built no small part of his well-deserved reputation off of the promise of a record nobody had heard. For nearly two years, fans eagerly anticipated the release of *Eternal Atake*, a maddeningly delayed project whose legend grew while tragedy befell some of the Philadelphia native’s emo rap peers, including Lil Peep and XXXTENTACION. With the wait finally over, the patient listenership that made do with running back to 2017’s *Luv Is Rage 2* again and again can take in his glittering opus. Without relying on showy features—save for one memorable duet with Syd on the otherworldly “Urgency”—Uzi does more than most of those who’ve jacked his style in the interim. He imbues the post-EDM aesthetic of “Celebration Station” and the video-game trap of “Silly Watch” alike with speedy, free-associative verses that run from gun talk to sexual exploits. An obvious influence on Uzi’s discography, Chief Keef provides the woozy beat for “Chrome Heart Tags,” reminding that there are levels to Uzi’s artistry.

“I’m honored that people have accepted these songs, that my fans enjoy and that have such feeling in them,” Bad Bunny tells Apple Music about the success of “Ignorantes” and “Vete,” the two hit singles that preceded the surprise Leap Day release of *YHLQMDLG*. The album’s title is an acronym for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana,” or “I Do What I Want,” and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio spends his highly anticipated follow-up to 2018’s *X 100PRE* living up to that promise, luxuriating in the sonic possibilities, presenting exemplary versions of Latin trap and reggaetón while expanding the genres in new directions with elements of rock and global pop. While *X 100PRE* featured a relatively small number of credited vocal guests, the follow-up embraces música urbana’s love of collaboration, pairing El Conejo Malo with an impressive array of features. Reaching back towards reggaetón’s 1990s roots, he taps veteran Yaviah for the hypnotic “Bichiyal” and the inimitable Daddy Yankee for “La Santa,” while linking up elsewhere with contemporary Latin R&B wave runners like Mora and Sech. Bad Bunny talked with Apple Music about a few of his favorites off the album and some of the people who helped make *YHLQMDLG* a reality. **Si Veo a Tu Mamá** “All of my songs come from my experience or are based on a real-life experience of mine. Everyone falls in love in life. Everyone has relationships. Everyone has had someone. There’s something so natural in writing about love, because we all feel love every day and share love.” **La Difícil** “What I like most about collaborating with \[producer duo\] Subelo NEO is how talented they are. They are such humble people who know how to work as a team. They understand the good vibes that I’ve built my fame on, because we shared them at the beginning of my career. I like what they do.” **La Santa** “This was a very special track for me. Working with Daddy Yankee is always an honor and a pleasure. I’ve learned a lot from him in the studio. This one inspired me so much. Always, always, always when I do something with Daddy Yankee, it’s just so exciting, fabulous, and makes me feel very happy and proud.” **Safaera** “This was something that I have always wanted to do. It is a very much a part of Puerto Rican culture and the roots of reggaetón. It was special because I made it with one of my best friends in my entire life, someone I started out with in music and who supported me a lot from the beginning and to this day, DJ Orma. He fell in love with this music just like me, with this type of rhythm—reggaetón, perreo old-school.” **Hablamos Mañana** “I love this one. It’s the most energetic of the album and the most different. In general, there’s a lot of strength and feeling in rock music. I’ll make whatever music that God allows me to. At some point, if I felt like making a rock en español album, I would. If I wanted to make a bachata album, I would.”

When the largely anonymous UK collective Sault released *Untitled (Black Is)* in June 2020, it arrived on the heels of global unrest spawned, this time, by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. That album spoke to the profound grief and rage that so many Black people (and their allies) felt, offering a lifeline and a balm at the perfect moment. *Untitled (Rise)* comes three months later, celebratory in its spirit and poetic in its motion—the fresh air inhaled after a summer of drowning. Soulful disco and buoyant funk inform the album from the outset. “Strong,” complete with regal marching band flourishes, beckons to listeners to get up and move: “We\'re moving forward tonight,” a vocalist commands in the early seconds of the opener. “We won\'t back down tonight.” What follows is a monument to resilience and Black people\'s ability to conjure joy under any circumstances, and the songs keep the freedom of the dance floor (or the square) in their center. “I Just Want to Dance” is an intoxicating collage of percussion, while the loose groove of “Fearless” and the kineticism of “Street Fighter” keep up the energy. Elsewhere, “Son Shine,” with its affecting gospel choral arrangements, connects spiritual history with the present, a reminder that so much of this magic has long been intertwined with the sacred: “Let the son shine through my pain, so we will rise.” Towards the back, the tempo slows into the meditative, strings replace the much of the percussion, and the spaces between lyrics become more prominent leading into “The Black & Gold,” a solemn instrumental that evokes peace or rest. The final track offers one last thematic tie: the pain but also the divinity, a guilty world and the preservation of innocence. At its core, *Untitled (Rise)* is about duality and holding multiple truths in a single heart; it asks and extends levity while ensuring, also, that we do not forget.

You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognize its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, *Fetch the Bolt Cutters* could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless. Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me,” are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channeling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.

If we’re comparing it to the year prior, 2019 was something of a quiet one for Atlanta MC Lil Baby. Sure, he featured on singles by DaBaby, Lykke Li, and Yo Gotti, among others, but ever since 2018’s *Street Gossip*, Lil Baby seemed content simply to share the sauce with collaborators. With the release of *My Turn*, however, Baby has declared that he’s finished letting anyone else spread their wings and is ready to reclaim his spot atop hip-hop’s throne. *My Turn* is of course built on Lil Baby’s verbose and ever formidable bar construction and under-heralded wordplay. Songs like “Grace” and “No Sucker” find him in fine form, rapping, as he admits outright on track 13, that he’s still got “Sum 2 Prove.” Guests on the project lean toward animated yet high-caliber MCs like Future, Lil Uzi Vert, and Lil Wayne, while frequent collaborators Quay Global, Twysted Genius, and Tay Keith hold down the production. Songs like “Emotionally Scarred” and “Hurtin” show a more vulnerable side of the MC, but their respective follow-ups “Commercial” and “Forget That” show us that the turn-up is never far. “Woah,” the 2019 hit that gave an already popular dance a proper anthem, is here, as is the Hit-Boy-produced “Catch the Sun,” which first appeared on *Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack*—two songs Lil Baby may have included to remind us that we’ve always gotten the best of him, even when we’ve wanted more.

Midwestern by birth and temperament, Freddie Gibbs has always seemed a little wary of talking himself up—he’s more show than tell. But between 2019’s Madlib collaboration (*Bandana*) and the Alchemist-led *Alfredo*, what wasn’t clear 10 years ago is crystal now: Gibbs is in his own class. The wild, shape-shifting flow of “God Is Perfect,” the chilling lament of “Skinny Suge” (“Man, my uncle died off a overdose/And the fucked-up part of that is I know I supplied the n\*\*\*a that sold it”), a mind that flickers with street violence and half-remembered Arabic, and beats that don’t bang so much as twinkle, glide, and go up like smoke. *Alfredo* is seamless, seductive, but effortless, the work of two guys who don’t run to catch planes. On “Something to Rap About,” Gibbs claims, “God made me sell crack so I had something to rap about.” But the way he flows now, you get the sense he would’ve found his way to the mic one way or the other.

Colson Baker, the rapper turned pop-punk provocateur known as Machine Gun Kelly, has a somewhat cynical view of fame. At a certain point, he has said in interviews, fans stop rooting *for* you and start rooting against you. Here, on *Tickets to My Downfall*, his fifth LP, he attempts to capture—and potentially reclaim—his crash-and-burn moment. To give the people what he thinks they want. Although the subject matter doesn’t stray too far from Baker’s past releases, musically it’s a sharp left turn. *Downfall* is his project that trades rapping for early-2000s-era pop punk, and was executive produced by blink-182 drummer Travis Barker. It’s littered with middle-finger-in-the-air moments—proud proclamations of recklessness, like going off his meds and \"back on all those drugs I quit\"—but they’re delivered with a certain youthful insouciance. “If I’m a painter, I’d be a depressionist,” he sings on “title track,” a frenetic F-U to his ticket buyers. It feels, at times, like he’s framing the album to be a pile-up of self-pity and angst, but that\'s an undersell; *Downfall* is also emotionally generous, fiercely hyperactive, and ultimately very relatable, full of moments of tenderness and surprising vulnerability. More often than not, Baker is digging around in his pain. “lonely” finds him missing his father, who passed away a few months before the album’s release. “kiss kiss” and “forget me too” are about struggling to break bad habits, be them toxic relationships, booze, or drugs. On the project’s lead single “bloody valentine,” he almost misses a flight because he’s so caught up in love, a tone that calls to mind the boyish romance that underlined many of blink-182’s hits. “There’s a renaissance of guitar-driven music happening in the mainstream,” he tells Apple Music. “This song has been kicking down the door.” The other influence who can be felt throughout these songs is Kurt Cobain, Baker’s childhood idol and rock’s most devoted outsider. Even though *Downfall* is hardly alienating or inaccessible—there’s a song with Halsey, after all—it doesn’t shy away from insecurity or the uglier sides of life. The closing track, “play this when i’m gone,” is a goodbye letter to his daughter, just in case. “I\'m 29, my anxiety\'s eating me alive/I\'m fighting with myself and my sobriety every night/And last time I couldn\'t barely open my eyes/I apologize.”

NO DREAM is the 4th studio record from the Death Rosenstock band full of chords, words, beats and more! Tracked live in a big room for that classic "is that a mistake?" sound by Grammy-nominated recorded "Grammy Jack" Shirley, you are GUARANTEED to have not heard this record before you've listened to it! We hope it makes you feel good, but if it doesn't, that's on you sorry.

If the uproar over the original cover of *Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon*—designed, per Pop Smoke’s wishes, by Virgil Abloh—tells us anything, it’s that hip-hop fans cared deeply for the slain Brooklyn rapper. As Smoke’s official debut and the project following up the well-received *Meet the Woo* mixtape series—not to mention the first one Pop wouldn’t be around to deliver—*Shoot for the Stars* meant enough to fans that they’d object in droves to what they believed was an unfit representation of their hero. What they’d find once they got past the artwork, though, is that Smoke had quite a bit of music diverging from the quintessential Brooklyn drill he was best known for. *Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon* was executive produced by 50 Cent, the veteran MC having formed a mentor-like relationship with Smoke sometime during Smoke’s meteoric rise. “When me and Pop went to go see 50 originally, he told 50, ‘Yo, I\'m working on this album,\' and he was sending 50 songs,” Pop Smoke’s friend and manager Steven Victor tells Apple Music. “\'Yo, get Chris Brown on this song for me. I’m thinking about putting this song on my album. What do you think about it?\' They were already in conversation about his album.” Following Smoke’s untimely passing in February 2020, 50 would take the reins as a means of honoring his friend’s vision. “I recorded three records and then I was like, \'Don\'t let me overkill or *over-50* on Pop\'s s\*\*t,\'” 50 Cent tells Apple Music. “There\'s certain joints there that Steven will tell you—because of my process, I understood what he was doing.” 50 Cent appears on a single song on *Shoot for the Stars* (“The Woo”), which doesn’t make it any easier to determine where Smoke’s aspirations of diversifying his sound ended and 50’s curation began. Smoke flows gruffly over R&B samples on “Yea Yea” and “Diana,” and then chooses to explore the whole of his vocal range on the CashMoneyAp-produced “For the Night.” Attempting to channel a regional vibe, he’s not-so-inconspicuously titled his Tyga collab “West Coast S\*\*t.” UK-based producer and longtime collaborator 808 Melo is all over the album, along with guest appearances from homegrown NYC MCs Rowdy Rebel and Lil Tjay. There are also three separate songs featuring Quavo, as well as appearances from a handful of first-time collaborators who also happen to be some of rap’s most dependable hitmakers (Future, DaBaby, Roddy Ricch). Then there is “Enjoy Yourself,” a feel-good pop-rap collaboration that features Colombian vocalist KAROL G rapping in Spanish. But it is the uniquely charming NYC-bred aggression and sex appeal of Smoke himself that tie together the disparate features of *Shoot for the Stars*. And to let Victor tell it, the project is the realization of where he and Smoke knew the MC was destined to be. “It’s crazy because everything was coming together the way we spoke about it,” Victor says. “The whole idea was we were going to put out a series of mixtapes: *Meet the Woo* 1, *Meet the Woo 2*, *Meet the Woo 3*—however long it took to make his name a staple. Then from there, we would go to the album. After the second mixtape, he was \[already\] making a name for himself.”

Released on Juneteenth 2020, the third album by the enigmatic-slash-anonymous band Sault is an unapologetic dive into Black identity. Tapping into ’90s-style R&B (“Sorry Ain’t Enough”), West African funk (“Bow”), early ’70s soul (“Miracles”), churchy chants (“Out the Lies”), and slam-poetic interludes (“Us”), the flow here is more mixtape or DJ set than album, a compendium of the culture rather than a distillation of it. What’s remarkable is how effortless they make revolution sound.

Proceeds will be going to charitable funds