The Flow sums up the results of 2021 with the support of YouTube Music. This is a new streaming service that is created for music lovers and has all the advantages of YouTube. You can subscribe to YouTube Music Premium here. Until January 1, there is a special New Year's offer: all new users receive three months of YouTube Music Premium for free.
Kids See Ghosts – Kids See Ghosts
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Quality and quantity are characteristics that are usually opposed. So when Kanye announced that he was going to produce and release five albums back to back, the whole world was skeptical. But Kids See Ghosts wasn't just a success, it's the best album of Kid Cudi's career and one of the best of Kanye's career. It seems that this is the album that was least expected from the guys: it is dirty, emotional and not at all pop - this is what wins. Another proof that Kanye West, if not a god, is definitely a genius, although sometimes he goes a little too far.
Coin “Every time”
album “Coloring for adults” / self-released
Monetochka might not have written her main hit - as Lisa herself said, she spied the chorus on the wall of a bar when she was leaving an unsuccessful date. Then three metro stations - that’s where the song “Every Time” was born. After some time, she found a place in all the charts and headphones, a bunch of parodies were made of her with covers, and her performance at “Evening Urgant” was watched more than six million times. Not bad for a girl who, a couple of years ago, was destined for meme fame for one season?
“Every Time” is a song about breaking up with a guy whom the singer disses with the chorus “if I got paid every time, every time I think about you, I’d be homeless near the highways, I’d be the poorest of people.” But a twist intervenes - the heroine not only completely dedicates the track to him, she also lists all the little things that remained in her memory from their meetings: from a crack in the kitchen window to a book they both loved. The girl does not want to forget him, but at the same time she does everything to prove the opposite. And if this is not the most ironic song of the year, then we should be homeless near the highways.
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L'One: "Living my best life"
Anderson.Paak – Oxnard
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Anderson Park seems to be the ideal artist: he plays the drums, sings decently, develops, learns from previous mistakes, doesn’t try to fit into trends and exudes absolutely wild charisma. Everyone has already noted the similarities between Oxnard and To Pimp a Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar. This is a very artistic jazz-funk-hip-hop cocktail that will definitely be included in absolutely every list of the best albums of 2021.
Kanye West - Ye
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Kanye took 2018 by storm as a seasoned bowler, knocking down all ten pins over and over again. However, he stumbled once on the album Nasir by rapper Naz. But it's not his fault, he only wrote music. The main indicator of success is your own albums, and Kanye’s albums turned out great. sounds a little less impressive than Kids See Ghosts, but definitely conveys the same vibe, which is what Kanye was going for.
Mnogoznaal "Hotel "Cosmos"
album “Hotel “Cosmos” / self-released
Mnogoznaal’s music is easy to visualize - we’re not talking about the excellent videos that Gosha Visnu shoots for him, but about the pictures of severe frosts and abandoned panels of the artist’s native city of Pechora, which immediately appear before your eyes. On the album “Hotel “Cosmos”” he continues to create this darkly mysterious atmosphere, but builds the entire narrative around one specific object. The title song is about a real hotel in Pechora, now closed. And the very place where the cold and darkness, where people go crazy and where the paths are forgotten, spreads to the scale of the entire country. Paranoid and shamanic, this song sways in its own vibe (in an interview, Maxim said that he used the rhythm of Miami Bass for it - what a combination of incompatible things) and is quite capable of attracting anyone to it.
Read: Mnogoznaal - about Pechora, phenazepam, failed army career and friendship with The Flow commentators
Travis Scott – Astroworld
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Travis Scott has created a multi-layered and atmospheric album. There's no need to look for interesting lyrics here, just immerse yourself in a sea of distorted synth sounds and deep bass. The title of the album perfectly matches its content: it sounds like a cosmic roller coaster. The authorities in Houston, Scott's hometown, were so pleased with the album that they even came up with an entire holiday, “Atroworld Day,” which will now be celebrated there on November 18.
Ariana Grande – Sweetener
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Ariana Grande recorded her most mature album this year. There are catchy melodies, good lyrics about love, and even an ode to Pete Davidson, with whom she broke up shortly after the death of Mac Miller. Ariana had a difficult year, but it had a good impact on her music. Without all the drama, there would not have been, for example, the hit Thank U, Next, which was released a little later than the album.
GONE.Fludd "Mumble"
album “Boys Don't Cry” / Sony
If you noticed, several songs from this top ten were released at the end of 2021, but have been lying around for a while, waiting in the wings. The song “Mumble” had to wait the longest - it was released as a single in September 2021. And it began to turn into a hit only in July 2018, when the video was released. This rhymes well with the fate of its author, who had to wait more than three years for his popularity.
“Mumble” is a fireworks display of images and references, a joyful celebration of disobedience, a slam in the McDonald’s children’s room. If you listen to the text, it will seem aggressive, but all aggression is reduced to zero by an almost Disney brass sample and an ironic treatment of words (hearing “pussy” there is priceless). Colorful, lively, surprisingly inventive - this was the first impression of “Mumble”, and then everything only got more interesting.
Read: Interview with GONE.Fludd, with whom we opened the third part of our project “New Flow” in June 2018
Cardi B – Invasion of Privacy
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Cardi B's first album reached unprecedented heights. It feels like neither Minaj, nor Beyoncé, nor Rihanna had ever written tracks before her, and for the first time the world saw a black performer rapping upbeat with a light feminist agenda. Cardi may not have come up with anything new, but she definitely made a splash (if only by exchanging her career as a stripper for a Billboard top). That's why it deserves to be on this list.
Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
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“I was just trying to be one of the Strokes, and now look at the mess you made me do,” Alex Turner tells us straight from the threshold of the Arctic Monkeys' first album in five years. It's obvious that before our eyes he's going to pull off a trick like Federico Fellini's 8 and a Half - an introspective look at how he came to live this way. Turner apparently locked himself in a Paris studio with the Arctic Monkeys and recorded a forty-minute concept album (in 2021, this is almost illegal), where the guitars are given a completely secondary role. If there's one thing that comes to the fore at Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, it's the sense of extravagance of it all.
Big Baby Tape "Gimme The Loot"
album "Dragonborn" / Warner
The main success of the 23-track album “Dragonborn” was “Gimme The Loot” - two minutes of rap to a beat with compressed low frequencies. A short track similar to a half-finished demo based on the game Fortnite, with a wonderful line about “your boo,” topped not only the Apple Music chart, but also for some time was the leader in the search for the Genius website (apparently, not everyone understood who “boo” was "). It well sums up all the feelings of a person who, at the age of 18, rose to fame: a lot of energy and pressure, a lot of show-off and bravado, a lot of pum-pum, tu-tu-tu and grrrr. Everything is to the point.
Take: Test based on Big Baby Tape songs - find out who you are: a fuckboy, a shooter or a hoodrich
Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, SZA – Black Panther: The Album
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Black Panther is the best Marvel movie of 2021. Michael B. Jordan is “Man of the Year” 2021, according to American GQ. Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize and rapped King's Dead on a palm tree. What else does it take to be considered the best music album? For example, 14 more fresh hip-hop tracks that we listened to all summer.
Matrang "Medusa"
album "EYA" / Gazgolder
Matranga’s case is interesting because, on the one hand, he is a single hitmaker of the streaming era, on the other hand, right on the rise he was caught by a big label, turning the success of “Medusa” into a story with concerts, a debut album and an expensive video referring to last year’s Oscar ” to the triumphant film.
Taking Meduza through the department of Eljay’s very momentary epigones is not entirely fair: here there is Alan’s hypnotic voice, as if reading a conspiracy, and musical references to Russian pop music of the 90s, and, if we are talking very roughly, a completely legitimate response to The question is how the singer Luna would sound like a man. Side note: translated from Vietnamese “mat trang” is “moon”.
Read: What else should you know about Matranga?
Husky – “Triptych about human flesh”
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Husky, despite all the bans and cancellations of concerts, will still sing his music. And we are sure that he has every right to do this. His “Life-Giving Fleet” will not be able to strangle state structures. This album brings Husky's topical and unintelligible lyrics to life in a new way - just listen to these aggressive and powerful guitar arrangements.
The Carters – Everything is Love
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Whose music do we love more - Beyoncé or Jay-Z? Fortunately, we don’t have to suffer and answer this question, because the main hip-hop couple in the world released their first full-length joint album this year, calling their duet The Carters. The Apeshit video, filmed in the Louvre, is a separate work of art. Well, this track, perhaps, rocks better than others on the record.
Gorillaz – The Now Now
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Damon Albarn is definitely an ace. Even former ill-wishers admit this. Noel Gallagher from Oasis, for example, publicly wished him to die of AIDS in the nineties, and last year appeared on the Gorillas Humanz record as a special guest. Less than a year has passed, and Albarn has already prepared the next batch of music for summer festivals. Differences from previous albums? They are and they are not. Gorillaz's sixth album consists of 11 tracks and features only three guests - rapper Snoop Dogg, soul legend George Benson and house pioneer Jamie Principal. The mood that reigns on the record? This is where we come back to how Albarn is an ace at his craft. He makes it sad, but fun – like on the opening track of Isolation.
Eighteen "Globe"
album “Delight” / self-released
“The Globe” is a song by a man who knows how to dance (a serious background: 10 years in the ballet “Todes” and several more in Katya Kishchuk’s team) and is well versed in how to make others dance. Stylish pop music with a lot of “hooks”: a catchy hook, pumped up two-step beat and unusual vocals, because of which people argued whether a guy sings it or a girl sings it. One can understand such people: changing the swinging flow to falsetto is unusual for today’s scene, where masculine anti-hero scoundrels are in fashion.
Eighteen contrasts this with its super-romanticism and vibrations of light shades, when on the album it sings about natural elements and the surf caressing your feet, and in “The Globe” it invites you to “dive to the beat” on the dance floor, as the Bomfunk MC’s group once did at school discas.
Read: Eighteen comments on every song from his debut album
Thomas Mraz – Hangover
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Thomas Mraz is perhaps the most popular and successful performer on the Booking Machine after Oksimiron. If Markul’s new album entitled “25” disappoints, Mraz’s Hangover, on the contrary, makes us take a closer look at it. He makes you dance in “Kaleidoscope” and “Your Son”, and cry under “Million” and “Xo”, and laugh at the metaphors in “Blue Tears” and “Ultraviolet”. Thomas has retained his inherent mix of falsetto and rapping, so his tracks are recognizable from the first lines, and individuality for a rapper in Russia is already 80% of success in 2018.
Tim Belorusskikh “Wet crosses”
single: “Wet crosses” / Rhymes Music
Another story about a quick path to success: less than six months passed from the release of “Wet Cross” to two hundred thousand subscriptions and soldiers in both capitals.
The song “Wet Crosses” is a turning point in the career of Minsk resident Tima Belorusskikh (not as short as it might seem) and a kind of checkpoint for the pop music of the moment. It turned out that in 2018 a track in which there is no direct kick, no machismo, no vice, or mention of substances can become a hit. Instead - Korzhov’s charm (in the best sense of the word) and simple lines about how to run to her, squelching through puddles - and don’t give a damn about the rain. It worked.
Feduk – More Love
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Feduk has finally released a new album, More Love, for which he received an even larger portion of jokes about the fact that he is pretending to be Drake. Fedya also practically does not change his style, except that he complemented the house beats with low-frequency pop trap and added a couple of acoustic compositions. And for now, conservatism is forgiven him, because the songs were instantly downloaded by almost all the girls in the country anyway.
Photo: giphy.com
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