#12 - Ame - "Degree" (prod. Royal, y2tnb, Brycenknwn, Ame)
One of my favorite scenes/sounds this year was Regalia, a regal style pioneered by producers like Royal, Reset, and Gloyourkrazy and rappers like Devstacks and Iayze. This is trap’s imperial era: court music made for monarchs lying on stacks of gold coins, richly Auto-Tuned vocals wrapped in a tapestry of synthwork and fragile piano cascades. After years of popular “no melody” tracks with stark, dissonant bass-beats, here is Regalia with its decoration and excess.
No rapper has risen to the decadent heights of these beats better than Ame, who knows just how to stretch his voice and distort certain phrases to maximize the sound’s thrill. Peep how he warps his flow practically a dozen times on “Charger,” from singing to speed-rapping to hollering “ri-dee-dim-dim” like a gleeful power-mad maniac. On “Degree,” which he helped produce along with Royal, y2tnb, and Brycenknwn, Ame is a savant solving a dense puzzle: he raps and moans and whimpers, often all at once in separate layers, filling up every pocket between the frenetic hi-hats and cavernous bass thuds. It’s faintly redolent of the more stately and choral Migos tracks but taken to the most indulgent extreme. It sounds simultaneously primeval and distantly futuristic, like an 800-year-old artifact dug up from a lost Atlantis but also a creation beamed in from 800 years forward.
The list:
#25 - Destroy Lonely - “NOSTYLIST”
#24 - elusin - “Elksling”
#23 - skaiwater - “#miles”
#22 - Wednesday - “Bull Believer”
#21 - islurwhenitalk - “pink neon lights”
#20 - Two Shell - “home” & “Memory” (tie)
#19 - Luci4 - “ON GANG”
#18 - Harto Falión - “{*______*}” (prod. evilgiane, whitearmor, Gud)
#17 - lecie - “ex post facto”
#16 - Yung Lean ft. FKA twigs - “Bliss”
#15 - DJ:ReCode - “adhd” ft. tobre & “keeper” ft. goji! & BIO (tie)
#14 - Uffie - “dominoes”