Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2009/Top 100 Abums of 2009

http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7742-the-top-100-tracks-of-2009/

96. Gucci Mane feat. Plies- "Wasted"

Gucci's music is divisive, like gangster rap should be. He is a hedonist, often emotionally detached and frequently ironic. "Wasted", though, was not an act, and, given his recent legal troubles, has a brutally sad subtext-- you know you have a substance abuse problem when you're failing piss-tests under threat of jail time. It was the party-rap hit of 2009, a track for rap fans tired of the encroaching gloss of Flo Rida's 1980s corpse ****ing formula. Fatboi's gradually layered chainsaw beat was the perfect groggy intoxicant for Gucci and Plies' slurred pitch-imperfect raps. Combined with Gucci's 50 Cent-like ability to ingrain a hook into his listeners' subconscious, and a scene-stealing quote from Plies ("I don't wear tight jeans like the white boys...") made this one of 2009's most memorable singles. It's nice to have an anti-hero again. --David Drake


92. Cam'Ron- "I Hate My Job"

Killa Cam's career-peak infamy hung on elaborate death threats, audacious wardrobe inventories, and lyrics that used the slipperiest words possible to get his point across. "I Hate My Job" has none of those traits, and that's what makes it one of his weirdest tracks. Cam's casually audacious flow lets up on the swagger and rolls out a couple hard-luck stories dealing with 9-to-5 frustration and the even harsher realities of unemployment, and damned if it doesn't work perfectly. Not only does he capture the perspective of a stressed-out underpaid woman ("Ain't no money for new shoes or purses here/ Should've done my first career, nursing, yeah") and an ex-felon trying to join a diminished workforce, his delivery absolutely nails their emotional stress. Skitzo's piano-driven beat is deceptively uplifting, with a choral "yeah yeah yeah" refrain providing a bit of cIassic-soul sympathy, but it doesn't obscure the bitter realities at the core. --Nate Patrin


90. The-Dream- "Rockin that ****"

At the end of each one of The-Dream's drowsy, come-on laden verses, a simple submission: "There's nothing I can say..." Like pretty much everything else he's produced since, "Rockin' That ****" doesn't really need to say much. In a year filled with bottle-service bangers that failed to generate any sort of authentically carnal club-knock appeal, there was something so deliciously simple about a suave-ass grinder that was free of any worn-out sexting tropes. The bombastic tidiness of the chorus-- and the awesome punctuation of that titular line-- played so perfectly up against the sexy shyness of the whole endeavor. Happy to accommodate any sort of cosmic VIP fantasy you're harboring, it shouldn't take much effort to fill in those blanks while surrounded by that celestial synth hook and those impossibly deep drums. --Zach Kelly


86. Drake- "Best I Ever Had"

There's that sexless, pretty-boy, falsetto hook, which floats up into the air-conditioned synths and nearly gets lost; that beat, which sounds like someone sent a 2003-era Roc-A-Fella production through seven different house filters; those sensitive-guy panderings, which are just expertly smarmy-- "Sweatpants, hair tied, chillin with no makeup on/ That's when you the prettiest/ I hope that you don't take it wrong." There is absolutely nothing about Drake that is not cocky, slippery, insincere, and canny-- the dude recites his freestyIes from a ****ing Blackberry, for Christ's sake-- and "Best I Ever Had" synthesizes all of those oily, Clintonian charms into one perfect Summer Jam. If he never releases another decent song in his life, this will be enough. --Jayson Greene


44. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys- "Empire State of Mind"

Jay isn't at his best here. His vocal tone and delivery are a little ragged, and on paper "Empire" reads like the literal endpoint to Jay's "black Sinatra" fascination: a late-period piece that somehow becomes his biggest-charting hit. But then Alicia Keys' elemental voice blows in on the chorus, and suddenly, we are all holding hands together and singing along on top of the Empire State Building. That giddy, heart-swelling whoop is what transforms "Empire State of Mind" from über-schmaltz to, well, transcendent über-schmaltz, the sort of song that bids your singing voice up out of you before your conscious mind can even check it. Take a bow, Hov-- you can loosen the bow tie now. Go backstage and see what Gwyneth and Chris are up to. --Jayson Greene


33. DJ Quik & Kurupt- "9X's Outta 10"

DJ Quik on the beat? Kurupt/Young Gotti on the mic? I mean, how could you go wrong? (Other than commercially that is...) Even compared to the rest of the floaty finesse of BlaQKout, there's nary a wasted second on "9x's Outta 10"-- Left Coast legend Kurupt's stark solo spotlight on the otherwise Quik-dominated LP. Kurupt, in a dazzlingly technical turn, finds himself in rare motion as he twists his tongue around Quik's skeletal skull-smashing beat, sliding into the nooks and crannies of the producer's metamorphic "Grindin'"-like bleacher-basher with this brittle, been-there done-that braggadocio and a showcase of pure MCing skills. "Difficult as calculus" is right; Kurupt circles around, switches out words like he's playing Jenga with the verse, and speeds up without spinning out around Quik's spiraling sampledelic ending. And when it stops, two and a half impossibly short minutes later? It's the kind of thing you want to start again. --Paul Thompson


21. Raekwon feat. Ghostface, Inspectah Deck & Method Man- "House of Flying Daggers"

Sorting through the surface clutter in the extended Wu-Tang discography can be a maddening process, and in part this frustration has its roots in tracks like "House of Flying Daggers", where Raekwon and crew reanimate their cIassic Wu form. It'd be inaccurate to say they make it sound effortless, however, since effort seems to be the crucial ingredient. Every verse here rings with conviction, as Rae, Inspectah Deck, Ghostface, and Method Man are each fully locked-in and engaged, issuing their joint battle cry with an impressively balanced ferocity. With a chorus cribbed from 36 Chambers and top-shelf production straight from Dilla's vault, "House of Flying Daggers" works as both a deliberate throwback and as a welcome, long overdue piece of reclamation. --Matthew Murphy


7. Big Boi feat. Gucci Mane- "Shine Blockas"

That Big Boi's solo album still hasn't seen the light of day is further proof that the record industry is irreparably broken. "Shine Blockas" should be more than a rap blog curio. It's the sort of track that we should hear blaring out of every passing Civic. The track works as a study in contrasts. Even more than usual, OutKast's still-rapping half raps in darting, stuttery little bursts, his flow fighting its way upstream on the beat, dropping syllables in places nobody would expect. Gucci's guest spot does just the opposite. It's a fully intuitive vocal, Gucci's hoarse, marbled monotone drifting lazily over the cascading beat like Gucci was born rapping on it. Cutmaster Swiff's lush, strobing Harold Melvin sample might be fundamentally opposed to the dinky synth symphonies that Gucci generally favors, but he makes rapping over it sound like the easiest thing in the world. Big Boi makes it sound like the most difficult, but he still sticks it. None of these ingredients seem like they should work together, but everything piles on top of everything else, and against odds, the song turns itself into a towering anthem of self-assurance. --Tom Breihan

Shine Blockas is effing dope and Gucci is finally getting mainstream....fwyh

I thought he's been mainstream for a while? He's like Jesus down here in GA.

Also I concur about Shine Blockas.

[QUOTE="fwyh"]Shine Blockas is effing dope and Gucci is finally getting mainstream....TheHimura

I thought he's been mainstream for a while? He's like Jesus down here in GA.

Also I concur about Shine Blockas.

u stay in GA too? what part?

and yea in the south he's extremely popular and even in DC but up north he gets almost no play(except for Wasted) 

[QUOTE="TheHimura"]

[QUOTE="fwyh"]Shine Blockas is effing dope and Gucci is finally getting mainstream....fwyh

I thought he's been mainstream for a while? He's like Jesus down here in GA.

Also I concur about Shine Blockas.

u stay in GA too? what part?

and yea in the south he's extremely popular and even in DC but up north he gets almost no play(except for Wasted) 

Savannah, better known as the C-Port lol. Big Boi is from down here along with local rapper Camoflauge. I've mentioned him here a few times, he put out one popular song, Cut Friends but died in 2003 before he could get big. I think he's dope (pretty much everyone down here does) but a lot of his music is really hard to find.

Shine Blockas is effing dope and Gucci is finally getting mainstream....

Shes a very freaky girl and so icy....come on man. 

Shine Blockas 8)

Good lookin' on Raekwon too

if we all listed our top 10 rap songs of the year how many of these songs would be on them : |rubbersouI

I think Shine Blockas would be on a lot of lists. The rest not really.

[QUOTE="rubbersouI"]if we all listed our top 10 rap songs of the year how many of these songs would be on them : |Orlando_Magic

I think Shine Blockas would be on a lot of lists. The rest not really.

Honorable Mentions

The-Dream- Love vs. Money

You know The-Dream's songs when you hear them, even when they don't have his name on them; the stuttering vocals, the opulent production, the ease in which he bleeds one indelible melody into the next. Love vs. Money is the second stunning solo LP from Terius "The-Dream" Nash in conjunction with right-hand man, veteran R&B producer/songwriter Christopher "Tricky" Stewart. It's a record positively lousy with elegant, flossy Dream-penned tunes, an immaculately paced widescreen romp through Nash's woes in and out of the bedroom (mostly in). Each song, from the gorgeous 'do-messing "Sweat It Out" to the bleepy butt-scoper "Take U Home 2 My Mama" to the extravagant sonic sturm und drang of its two-part title track, seems specifically designed to overload just about every pleasure center you've got. And it works. --Paul Thompson


Freddie Gibbs- The Miseducation of Freddie Gibbs/ Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik

Freddie Gibbs was dropped by Interscope Records. This hardly makes him special-- there are enough rappers in that sad little club to fill a dozen Slaughterhouses-- but what he did next sets him apart. Instead of licking his wounds, the unrelentingly serious Midwestern rapper bounded back with two full-length mixtapes containing some of the year's hardest, most unimpeachable gangsta rap.

As a rapper, Gibbs, very pointedly, does not do anything new; he studiously avoids innovation, treating gangsta-rap heritage with the same "old-time music" deference that Lucinda Williams and Gillian Welch afford Appalachian folk. This reverence grows stifling in the hands of an artist with more awe than talent, but Gibbs is so fiercely skilled that his love for Master P and Too $hort and UGK and Z-Ro glows hot enough to burn. This might help to explain how Gibbs' uncompromising street rap nudged its way into media outlets like The New Yorker; when you are this good, you can make almost anyone pay attention. --Jayson Greene


Maxwell- BLACKsummers'night

When Maxwell announced he was returning from nowhere with his first new album in nearly a decade, one might have expected a clearing-house epic making up for all that lost time. Instead, the singer delivered something more restrained and rewarding, a mere nine-song, less-than-40-minute song cycle (admittedly, the first part of a proposed trilogy) notable for its subtlety and not its excess. If that puts Maxwell at stark odds with so many other chart-toppers, his long self-imposed exile (he was off "enjoying life," you see) indicates he probably couldn't care less. What he does care about is capturing something deeper and more satisfying than surface-smooth. The arrangements here are downright dapper, with horn stabs in all the right places and human interplay emphasized over trendy mechanized programmed. Meanwhile, Maxwell himself sails along in complete control, rising to the occasion without going over the top. Neo-soul? Hardly. There's nothing "neo" about it. --Joshua Klein

Top Albums #50-#1

48. Doom- Born Like This

For his best album in five years and his rawest in 10, DOOM came back from a mysterious hiatus with a hungry, take-no-prisoners ferocity. Born Like This, which takes its title from one of Charles Bukowski's more apocalyptic poems, is a borderline reboot of the comics nut as we know him, throwing a bit of vintage Alan Moore menace into his Jack Kirby trappings. The complex rhymes and truism-flipping still act as DOOM's lyrical catalysts, but they scan even more vividly as true crime warped into surrealist dementia, delivered with a voice that's just raspier and brusquer enough to give it that extra push toward antagonistic malice. Madlib, Jake One, J Dilla, and DOOM himself make up a four-man army of beat creators that give Born Like This that extra layer of grit and haze, combining it with a deep headknock pulse and some memorable guest spots (Ghostface, Raekwon, Empress Stahhr) to seal it as another diabolical masterpiece. --Nate Patrin


40. Mos Def- The Ecstatic

How did Mos Def shift his popular perception from "fallen off" to "best since Black on Both Sides"? It helps that he transitioned perfectly into the post-Stones Throw epoch of indie stoner rap; one of the reasons The Ecstatic is so engaging is that Mos sounds great rattling off short but dense verses over the likes of Madlib and Oh No. But the Jackson Brothers, along with Georgia Anne Muldrow and the obligatory J Dilla beat, are just part of the equation. Along with Mr. Flash's mutant Ed Banger beats and Preservation's heavy-bumping musical flourishes from Latin America and the Middle East, Mos depicts himself as a new kind of international ambassador of hip-hop. His depiction of a jet-set travelogue bypasses celebrity status and focuses on the idea of connecting with as many cultures as possible, spinning abstract free-associations and evocative narratives into a shrinking-world milieu that's left him completely revitalized. --Nate Patrin


25. DJ Quik & Kurupt- BlaQKout

DJ Quik is a So Cal rapper and producer best known for never getting the recognition his fans think he deserves. Kurupt is a Philly-born, L.A.-bred rapper who struck out on both coasts. Both are on the 40 side of 35.

Quik's most inspired lyric on BlaQKout is, "Drinkin' something that I can't pronounce/ And I'm'a spill each and every ounce"; Kurupt's is the chorus of "9x's Outta 10", a 35-word Chinese finger trap where he not only explains the concept of momentum, he illustrates it. They seem to agree on the issue of girls.

A handful of bizarre metaphors aside, Quik is humble at the mic-- he wants to hug the block, get tipsy, get by, and get laid. Behind the boards, he's more complex and ambitious. Party music isn't just his vibe, it's his art-- he's as interested in challenging himself as he is entertaining his audience. But BlaQKout feels like there's nothing riding on it, which is part of what makes it great. It's just two dudes hanging out. --Mike Powell


5. Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II

At a time when many critics have mistaken hip-hop's state of creative flux for the genre's final flatline, it seems simultaneously fitting and frustrating that a sequel to a 14-year-old album is one of the few things everyone can come close to agreeing upon. The long-awaited successor to Raekwon's groundbreaking solo debut doesn't push the art of hip-hop any further outside the boundaries of cIassic 1990s East Coast lyricism or production-- in fact, it doesn't point the way to an exciting new future or direction for the genre much at all. It's an album for people who are comfortable with the way rap sounded in the mid-90s, a work of high-caliber Wu-Tang fan service that acts as a 71-minute buffer zone between the listener and the splintering, agitated state of rap in 2009.

But OB4CL2 doesn't need to push things forward-- it builds upwards, using old foundations to create a permanent monument. Whether Rae, Ghost, Deck, RZA, and the rest of the album's star-studded cast represent a bygone era or not becomes irrelevant once the atmosphere sinks in: this is one of those records where everyone seems hellbent on proving why they're still here and why they still matter. The stories of betrayal, despair, remembrance, and celebration that they tell are relentlessly gripping, and set to the most impressive collection of beats gathered in one place all year; six of the contributing producers can lay claim to being all-time greats. It might not sound like the future, but it'll always be worth going back to. --Nate Patrin

I had no idea Pitchfork loved that Quik / Kurupt album like that...They nailed my top 3 of my top 5 of the year though with Raekwon, DOOM, and Mos Def

Good choices in the end but I would have liked to see UGK4Life, Brother Ali, and Clipse in there

lol @ listening to Brother Ali in 2009. Dude fell off harder than a pile of bricks.

Dope list. Loving that Dinosaur Jr. love at #36...that album is EPIC. Also the Atlas Sound, Phoenix and Antony & The Johnsons love is dope

Rae doesn't deserve to be that high...hmm actually it's debatable.

Felt 3 is one of the most underrated albums this year...

checking out a lot of the non-rap now...really surprised Rae is so high. fat_rob

btw, you should really take a listen to the albums i mentioned...Dinosaur Jr's "Farm," and the new Phoneix, Atlas Sound, and Antony & The Johnson disc...all are dope. The Atlas Sound in particular sounds like something you would like.

lol @ listening to Brother Ali in 2009. Dude fell off harder than a pile of bricks.

Colt45fool

Us was a lot better then Undisputed Truth I thought...I really don't see how he fell off though, his production might have gone down but he's lyrically still on point.

Why do people like " House of Flying Daggers" so much? It's not even the highlight of Cuban Linx 2.ghostphantom563

This is by far the best song on the album.

I already copped Antony & Johnson, Phoneix, and Dino Jr...I love Antony & Johnson's disc, Dino Jr is cool, yet to listen to the Phoneix album. I already read the 100 and copped the ones I thought I'd like...fat_rob

Which ones did you end up copping? Im ight end up getting the same ones becuase I don't feel like reading the whole thing and youtubing songs.

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]I already copped Antony & Johnson, Phoneix, and Dino Jr...I love Antony & Johnson's disc, Dino Jr is cool, yet to listen to the Phoneix album. I already read the 100 and copped the ones I thought I'd like...Colt45fool

Which ones did you end up copping? Im ight end up getting the same ones becuase I don't feel like reading the whole thing and youtubing songs.

[QUOTE="ghostphantom563"]Why do people like " House of Flying Daggers" so much? It's not even the highlight of Cuban Linx 2.Toriko42

This is by far the best song on the album.

[QUOTE="Colt45fool"]

[QUOTE="fat_rob"]I already copped Antony & Johnson, Phoneix, and Dino Jr...I love Antony & Johnson's disc, Dino Jr is cool, yet to listen to the Phoneix album. I already read the 100 and copped the ones I thought I'd like...fat_rob

Which ones did you end up copping? Im ight end up getting the same ones becuase I don't feel like reading the whole thing and youtubing songs.

[QUOTE="Toriko42"]

[QUOTE="ghostphantom563"]Why do people like " House of Flying Daggers" so much? It's not even the highlight of Cuban Linx 2.Colt45fool

This is by far the best song on the album.