Pitchfork's 20 Best Pop and R&B Albums of 2016

Pitchfork's 20 Best Pop and R&B Albums of 2016

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Anderson .Paak - Malibu
January 15, 2016
Critic Score
81
19 reviews

This is powerful art, not only for people of color, but for everyone who exists beyond societal constraints. It’s for those who’ve been told they don’t quite fit, those viewed through a different lens because of their circumstances.

Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman
May 20, 2016
Critic Score
72
14 reviews

As Minaj says on “Side to Side,” “young Ariana run pop.” This is indeed evident on Dangerous Woman, even if the results are uneven at times.

Beyoncé - Lemonade
April 23, 2016
Critic Score
90
38 reviews

Lemonade is a stunning album, one that sees her exploring sounds she never has before. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity.

Blood Orange - Freetown Sound
June 27, 2016
Critic Score
80
39 reviews

Dev Hynes' third album as Blood Orange is a searing and soothing personal document, striking the same resonant chords as Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly or D’Angelo’s Black Messiah.

Carly Rae Jepsen - E•MO•TION: Side B
August 26, 2016
Critic Score
80
8 reviews

Side B is less a collection of b-sides than it is a continuation of last year's full-length smash, heart-swelling and heart-draining pop that exists in worlds just before or after love. 

Chairlift - Moth
January 22, 2016
Critic Score
74
26 reviews

The songs on Moth feel related and extroverted, pulled together by a common purpose. They have a charming asymmetry, they drift in sometimes oblique and irregular patterns. This is pop that wants to show you what it’s made of.

dvsn - Sept. 5th
April 1, 2016
Critic Score
70
6 reviews
This group is wise and capable enough to eschew nearly every shortcut of today's personality-first music culture and dial into the silence between the noise. It's what confidence sounds like.

Frank Ocean - Blonde
August 20, 2016
Critic Score
86
42 reviews
Frank is 28 now, and his voice has grown stronger and more dexterous, while some of his tales have become more abstract.

James Blake - The Colour in Anything
May 6, 2016
Critic Score
79
34 reviews

In the best way possible, in no way shape or form is The Colour in Anything a rapid departure or reversal of what Blake does well. He still paints in deep blues and greys. His production is still unparalleled, spacious, and impossibly textured. His voice is still chilly and metallic, but maintains all its choir boy charm. His music is still towering and menacingly sad.

Jamila Woods - HEAVN
July 7, 2016
Critic Score
79
6 reviews
With the assistance of fellow Chicagoans Chance the Rapper, Saba, and Kweku Collins, R&B artist Jamila Woods makes vital, resonant protest music that sounds like a children’s playground.

Jessy Lanza - Oh No
May 13, 2016
Critic Score
78
29 reviews

Oh No is a gorgeous and deadly pop music manifesto that proves yet again the sad girls are not vulnerable and silent subjects.

KAYTRANADA - 99.9%
May 6, 2016
Critic Score
80
27 reviews

The genre-defying stew of funk, soul, R&B, and beat and dance music that Kaytranada has cooked up on 99.9% nods back at that heritage of percussion-driven synthesis.

Maxwell - blackSUMMERS'night
July 1, 2016
Critic Score
80
16 reviews

With forever-sophisticated lyrics sung in his still-creamy voice over a band so tight they sound loose, blackSUMMERS’night is probably Maxwell’s most cohesive effort since his sublime (critics panned it; they were wrong) sophomore album, Embrya—and the first since then with no skippable tracks.

Nao - For All We Know
July 29, 2016
Critic Score
79
20 reviews

Her music inhabits the arena of high-stakes R&B, where women’s voices are dominant, acrobatic, and impossible for unsympathetic listeners to tune out.

NxWorries - Yes Lawd!
October 21, 2016
Critic Score
78
23 reviews
It’s another major accomplishment in .Paak’s continued rise.

Olga Bell - Tempo
May 27, 2016
Critic Score
74
8 reviews
The results resemble dance music as glimpsed through a funhouse mirror: strangely distorted, sometimes goofy, and deeply pleasing on a simple, almost childlike level.

Rihanna - ANTI
January 27, 2016
Critic Score
70
38 reviews

ANTI is a rich and conflicted pop record, at its most interesting when it’s at its most idiosyncratic. It’s not crammed with bloodthirsty, dance-oriented jams and feels distinctly smaller, more inward-facing than her previous records, as if it were intended as a kind of spiritual stock-taking, a moment of reckoning for both Rihanna and her fans.

Solange - A Seat at the Table
September 30, 2016
Critic Score
88
30 reviews
Even though it’s been out less than a week, it already seems like a document of historical significance, not just for its formidable musical achievements but for the way it encapsulates black cultural and social history with such richness, generosity, and truth.

KING - We Are KING
February 5, 2016
Critic Score
81
11 reviews

KING harkens back to a time when there were clearer distinctions between R&B, pop, and hip-hop, when acts like Jodeci and SWV ruled the airwaves, and the music was lighter and more sensuous. We Are KING recalls the best of that era without completely rehashing it.

Original Source: http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/9988-the-20-best-pop-and-rb-albums-of-2016/
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