Flashback- 5 Best International Music Albums Of 2017

When looking at the best albums of 2017, it was clear that we were blessed with an embarrassment of riches. In a world that is shifting under our feet faster than we can measure, music was something that we could constantly depend on delivering nothing short of excellence. Artists seemed to know this; this was a banner year for not only surprise returns, but the refinement of craft - even for those already sitting at the very top of their game.

* Vince Staples- ‘Big Fish Theory’

“How I’m supposed to have a good time / When death and destruction’s all I see?” Vince Staples ponders in the latter half of his sophomore album Big Fish Theory. Few other lyrics spoke to the surreal experience of living through 2017 with such direct impact, and few other records released this year embodied the ideal of hitting the dancefloor as the most radical form of escape.

* Kendrick Lamar – ‘DAMN'

it’s difficult to assess all the ways in which DAMN. is an utter stroke of genius, but a valuable exercise is to stack it against its predecessor, To Pimp a Butterfly. Where Butterfly is a colossal sprawl of form and style, DAMN. is compact beyond belief, tightly wound like a spring ready to snap. Where Butterfly is a richly-woven tapestry of the African-American experience writ large, DAMN. is a measured study of the self, Kendrick Lamar as an individual. Both are equal masterpieces of music, genre entirely irrelevant.

* Lorde – ‘Melodrama’

Teenagerdom has been mythologized by so many people, in so many ways, so many times over, that there is surely nothing of any remote originality left to say about it. Wrong, thanks to Lorde. The freakishly-mature, 21-year-old New Zealander has pulled off a feat so rare it no longer seemed possible: creating an artifact of adolescence that is both ultra-personal and ultra-relatable, let alone one she created essentially in real time, admonishing truths of the universal teenage experience while she was still in the middle of it.

* SZA – ‘Ctrl’

I said it before in our best tracks of 2k17 post, and I’ll say it again – what would the music universe look like this year if SZA never released Ctrl? At the beginning of 2017, this was a very real possibility, and now, by the end, it seems laughable. Homegirl is up for a whopping five Grammy awards and with one listen of her debut studio album, it’s easy to hear why.

* Tyler, The Creator – ‘Flower Boy

Resorting to allusions of Tyler, The Creator ‘fully blossoming’ on an album called Flower Boy may seem cringeworthy, but they are entirely warranted. This is – beyond any doubt – the record that Tyler has been waiting to make his entire career. Rap’s most notoriously obtuse outsider has finally let us in, and the result is not simply his warmest offering to date, but his most profound.