I moved back (home) to Austin in January of this year and one of the best decisions I made was not buying a TV. Instead, I managed to have the most productive year of my life (edited Real Role Models, started Indisputable, traveled extensively, launched Sneak Attack) and with the exception of Lost, Mad Men and Entourage, spent most of my free time listening to new music or seeing live music.
This was absolutely the best year in terms of concerts for me. I saw Jay-Z in Austin, I saw Keane in D.C., I saw Paul McCartney at Coachella, Kanye West at SXSW, saw Cut Copy at Stubb's, Snoop Dogg own the mic at Lollapalooza, rocked out to DJ-AM just months before his passing, listened in to Passion Pit and Phoenix in Central Park before seeing them both at ACL Festival and saw a slew of buzzworthy acts like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, St. Vincent, The xx, The Field, Grizzly Bear, Girl Talk, Micachu and the Shapes mixed in with resurgent acts like Pearl Jam and Raphael Saadiq.
A good year in live music can only be topped by an even better year in albums. Two-thousand and nine was a helluva year for recorded music. Pearl Jam, Wilco and Dave Matthews Band, three of the biggest names in American music, all put out superb albums. All that dumb "hip hop is dead" talk was put to bed for good with great albums by Mos Def, Raekwon and a slew of up-and-comers like Kid Cudi, not to mention a revival of R&B with the new Maxwell and Saadiq albums. Powerful rock bands like The Dead Weather and Them Crooked Vultures brought forth both power and prestige while indie acts like Animal Collective, The Mountain Goats and Neon Indian made waves on the festival circuit. And I can't leave out Austin-based artists and bands like The Soldier Thread (Shapes) who put out significant material this year.
All that being said, when the albums by those artists don't make my best albums list, you know it was a great year for music. Here are my top 10 albums in 2009:
10. Grizzly Bear - Saw them a couple of times live this year, including a backstage sighting at ACL Fest. The album isn't as good from start to finish as the Animal Collective or Dirty Projectors albums, that just missed my list, but Veckatimest is an album that has two of my favorite songs in all of '09 in "Southern Point" and the ever-popular "Two Weeks" that was remixed in about a million different ways, most effectively with Dead Prez's "Hip Hop".
9. St. Vincent - Well you already saw last Friday's jam, which is just one of the reasons Actor deserves to make this list. Along with "Marrow", "Save Me From What I Want" and "Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood" are can't miss tracks. Saw her at Mohawk with a Philly-based duo called Pattern is Movement that I highly recommend you check out.
8. The xx - Also saw them at Mohawk, just days after their fourth member quit leaving the trio to perform their self-titled album with little improvisation. Still, they played with near maximum precision, sounding pretty much exactly like the CD version of "Crystalised".
7. Rick Ross - He was a no-show at SXSW (Kanye filled in!) but he made up for it with a sick album that wasn't just Deeper Than Rap, it was better than rap. Rick Ross, believe it or not, made a near classic hip hop album. You can't expect Ross to sound or rap like Mos Def or Lil' Wayne, since he lacks both the intellectual wordplay or freestyling ability of those two MCs, but with songs like "Rich Off Cocaine" and "Magnificent Music", he proved Miami is worth a second look as a rap music hub, just short of Atlanta's talent.
6. Clipse - As good as Ross' album is, the true pioneers of coke rap are these brothers who work over Neptunes-produced beats, the duo that I've long considered the best production team of the 00s, to make 'Til the Casket Drops fit nicely alongside their earlier work. Keep in mind, this music isn't for everyone. If it is your cup of tea though, make sure to use sugar instead of the stuff that fills up the lyrics on tracks like "Door Man".
5. Jay-Z - No, I didn't have to go to Dallas or Houston to see him. I stayed home in Austin and saw the biggest hip hop icon there is show why he's not yet ready to become an icon of the past. I don't care how many mixtapes Lil' Wayne does, he's leaps and bounds behind this Mr. Carter if we're talking about hitmaking. Blueprint 3 is full of 'em...from "Run This Town" with Rihanna and Kanye to "Empire State of Mind" with Alicia Keys, Jay-Z proves that he's still the talk of the town (New York isn't exactly a "town") and the hip hop world. Jay-Z, a new member to the 40-and-up club, isn't lying when he raps "Forever Young".
4. Blakroc - Dame Dash may have squandered away millions both during and after his time as Co-CEO of Rocafella Records with Jay-Z, but whatever money he has left is well spent on this Black Keys-meet-hip hop album called Clean. Mos Def, RZA and Raekwon, Q-Tip and others blessed the Keys with some sick verses to make these last few weeks of 2009 extremely enjoyable for fans of rock and rap alike.
3. Drake - He's the most buzzworthy figure in hip hop this year and second only to Pheonix, if you ask me, in terms of owning 2009 music-wise. His So Far Gone mixtape-turned-album was the second coming of Kanye's College Dropout if we're measuring buzz and money generated. And his 2010 (true) debut release will be one of the most sought after albums of the year, and if Lil' Wayne's million-dollar-plus gamble is right, one of the biggest sellers. "Successful" was pretty much my single soundtrack for 2009.
2. Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is such a good album that they could probably pull a Third-Eye Blind and tour on this album for at least one more year. But I hope they don't wreck their careers Stephen Coodigan style. Usually you have to be Incubus or Nickelback to make an album with so many radio-friendly tracks, but they not only pulled off that feat, but they also managed to establish themselves as a band that could join '09 newbies The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Kings of Leon on the headliner circuit. I hope these guys build on the greatness that is/was "1901", "Lisztomania" and "Fences" to make an album that fully pushes them to arena status both in the States and Europe. They're not far off.
1. Q-Tip - The Rick Ross album got snubbed for a best rap/hip hop album Grammy, but the voters can redeem themselves by making sure the former A Tribe Called Quest frontman wins for The Renaissance. This is how good this album was: Q-Tip did an album several years ago called Kamal the Abstract that his record label canned because they thought it lacked sales potential (true)...after The Renaissance's critical success, his label smartened up and polished the old album up for a 2009 release as well.
"WeFight/WeLove" featuring Raphael Saadiq was by far my favorite and most-played song of the year so much so that the song's remix featuring Kanye West and Consequence, another Tribe alum, is my second-most-played song of the year.
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