.
10. The Carters - Everything Is Love
Following Lemonade and 4:44, the most personal and culturally relevant works by Beyoncé and Jay-Z in quite some time, rumors were stirring that the celebrity power couple would produce a collaborative album. Everything Is Love is that collaborative album, and it's one of the blandest, most forgettable hip hop/R&B releases in quite some time. Beyoncé's typically powerful vocals are weak, Jay-Z is turning in his weakest work since Magna Carta... Holy Grail, and the trendy production combined with the hilariously over-the-top prove that the power couple are immensely out of touch.
9. Nas - NASIR
Nas will of course never come close to replicating the glory of Illmatic, his legendary debut album, but the one-two punch of Distant Relatives and Life Is Good suggested something great from the aging MC. When it was announced that we would release an album produced entirely by Kanye, the excitement levels were off the chart, but the final project is bafflingly disappointing, even worse than Kanye's own misfire, Ye. Kanye's production is okay, but he's not turning in his best work; Nas sounds incredibly bored; and his lyrical content is pseudointellectual, pseudoscientific garbage.
8. Preoccupations - New Material
Preoccupations were once one of the most promising new post-punk bands. Viet Cong is a modern classic, and Preoccupations effectively updates the the dark, eerie sound of post-punk/darkwave bands of yore for the modern era. New Material still attempts to update that darkwave-based sound, but they are never able to move out of the shadow of their influences, and the songwriting has taken a massive step down. It's a dirgey, directionless mess.
7. Superorganism - Superorganism
Superorganism was the premiere indie pop buzzband of 2018, and their overly quirky sound is as irritating as it is derivative and soulless. Their sound is akin to the sound of The Go! Team, but the major difference between the two is that The Go! Team's music has soul, it has life, it's a joy to listen to, and it's incredibly fun. Superorganism manages to be irritatingly over-the-top and soul-crushingly boring at the same exact time, which is quite a feat, but in the most terrible way imaginable.
6. Gas - Rausch
Gas is an absolute legend in ambient music, and Narkopop, his 2017 comeback, was one of my favorite albums of that year. Despite this success, most comebacks don't last long, and 2018's Rausch is a dreary, monotonous mess of an album. Gas doesn't cover any new territory here, every single texture and rhythm here is just a lesser version of the fantastic sound he carved out on wonderful albums like Zauberberg and Pop. Here's hoping that his next album will be an improvement.
5. J. Cole - KOD
My opinion of J. Cole slowly grew as the year went on. From rediscovering my appreciation for Born Sinner and 2014 Forest Hills Drive to marvelling at his wonderful guest verse on J.I.D's "Off Deez", I slowly came to respect J. Cole as a fantastic rapper and producer. Despite this, I still absolutely hate KOD. Cole's music has always been overly preachy, and KOD is his most insufferable album to date. The whole album is like a D.A.R.E. PSA put to music, it's conscious hip hop without any bite or social insight.
4. Jack White - Boarding House Reach
I really do appreciate when artists try and step outside their comfort zone, to step away from a familiar sound into new, daring territory. Boarding House Reach sees garage rock veteran Jack White trying his hand at a new sound, and he does not do a good job. The best tracks here are undeniably the ones that see White stick to his tried and true garage rock formula, while the worst tracks experiment with funk, glam rock, spoken word, and, I hate to say it, but hip hop. Yes, Jack White tried his hand at hip hop, and it's about as stunning of a misfire as you'd imagine it to be.
3. Clairo - diary 001
For better or for worse, diary 001 is a perfect snapshot of the indie music scene in 2018. In the wave of the success of Mac DeMarco, indie rock's gap-toothed goofball, thousands of artists have tried their hand at DeMarco's style of laid-back, jangly bedroom pop. Clairo's music is much more synth-heavy than her contemporaries such as Boy Pablo and Gus Dapperton, but it's just as derivative and terrible. The songwriting on diary 001 is dreadfully forgettable, and the sound itself is just...really unoriginal.
2. XXXTENTACION - ?
Skins is apparently much worse, but I'm not even bothering to listen to that, so ? gets the second top spot on this list. I hate to say it, but I'll admit to somewhat enjoying XXXTENTACION's more abrasive, industrial songs. As soon as he switched to this style of sadboi alternative R&B/emo rap, I lost all interest. ? beckons you to feel bad for XXXTENTACION, to feel bad for his forgone relationships and his girl problems. Knowing what he did to his ex-girlfriend makes that task entirely impossible, rendering ? wholly unenjoyable. It's also really boring and tedious, and none of the songs even feel finished, so there's that too.
1. 6ix9ine - DAY69
I don't even have a blurb for this. Just...why?
