It’s that time of year again!  This time around, I’ve shortened the countdown from 30 to 20 of my favourite albums to come out in 2014, and we’ll be counting down to Christmas rather than New Years Eve (I have something different planned for then 😉 ).  For my newer readers, what I’ll be doing is writing short album reviews each day leading up to Christmas, covering my personal top 20 favourites, so keep checking back here daily!  To start things off, here are some honourable mentions that didn’t quite make my top 20, in alphabetical order:

Common – Nobody’s Smiling

I dig Common going for a more serious tone with this album, but some of the hooks on these songs were actually annoying to me (something Common doesn’t do to me often).

 

CunningLynguists – Strange Journey Volume 3

While it doesn’t have the cinematic feel of their official albums, this addition to CunninLynguists’ Strange Journey series is filled with a collection of dope songs, with guest features voted on by the fans.

 

Nitty Scott, MC – The Art of Chill

A solid debut independent album by my favourite woman in hip-hop, where she gets deeply introspective but also finds the time to just jam out.

 

Souls of Mischief & Adrian Younge – There Is Only Now

A dope concept album with a continuous story told throughout, it sounds good hearing Souls of Mischief bounce off each others’ rhymes over Adrian Younge’s live instrumentation.

 

Statik Selektah – What Goes Around

Statik Selektah recruited some great emcees to rap over his beats, and we got one of the best rap verses of the year among many dope tracks on this album.

 

Remember to check back here tomorrow to see which album came in at #20!

Also check out the CulturedVultures Top 25 Albums list I helped contribute to, it covers a wider range of genres: http://culturedvultures.com/top-25-albums-2014/