- News & Reviews FeedThe Best Albums of 2010 - Our Critics Picks!
It is always fun at the end of each year to celebrate the best of that year. And 2010 had a lot of great music.
And so we've lassoed our music critics to each pick their favorites, which we've assembled below in alphabetical order (by artist name). These are uniformly releases with which you can't go wrong -- or so our critics say. Looking for a Christmas gift for a music lover? Then spend some time with these winners.
The toughest part of this is limiting the choices, but, imperfect as they are, here are the selections from Peggy Oliver (PO), Detrel Howell (DH), Reg Jones (RJ), Chris Rizik (CR), L. Michael Gipson (LMG), Melody Charles (MC), J Matthew Cobb (JMC) and Howard Dukes (HD). Also, each album cover is a link to either CD Baby or Amazon, where you can generally listen to clips from the disc or where you can purchase it.
We know these picks will have SoulTrackers talking. So be sure to comment below to let us know what we did right and what we missed!
Posted December 19th, 2010 by administrator
Comments
while i may differ on some
bigtrain67 - December 20th, 2010
while i may differ on some of the choices of albums, there is one VERY glaring omission...where is ERIC BENET...LOST IN TIME? your writer gave it an excellent review, and in my opinion should be one of the top 3 albums. In my list I would also include:
Kem- Intimacy-Soul at its best...Feel the music.
Cee-Lo Green- Nothing else to say about this masterful album that hasn't already been said...
Jaheim- Another Round...His best all around album
Angela Johnson-It's Personal...Very Nice..
John Legend and The Roots...Never a big Legend fan, but the re-makes that were picked mixed with the fact that he was with the Roots made this album very enjoyable...
Frank McComb- A New Beginning-Very nice album...just listened to it...
Zo-Sunstorm...Love the diverse musicianship...
Those are some of the albums that I loved...have to check out some on ur list that I missed...
Love ur site!!!!
I do agree with you,
prayzehymn - December 20th, 2010
I do agree with you, bigtrain67.
Eric Benet should have been on the list. Not sure if that was a slight mistake or if it's because we were bogged down with personal favorites, but EB's album was delicious. In my opinion, MORE rewarding than R Kelly's Love Letter or some of the other choices profiled. But we all have different tastebuds, I guess.
J. Matthew Cobb
ST Contributing Writer
Hey, Mr. Cobb...thanks for
bigtrain67 - December 21st, 2010
Hey, Mr. Cobb...thanks for the feedback...
The reason I love your site so much is because of the reviews...While music is subjective to one's ear and personal tastes...the reviews that you and the other writers give are on point for the most part...Not like some places where a record exec has obviously written it and then it is less than desired...haven't listened to R. Kelly's album yet...Is it any good? there hasn't been a review which is surprising...Any feedback is always appreciated....
Clothe a solid groove with
startycat - December 27th, 2010
Clothe a solid groove with warm and colourful melodies and you're onto a winner!
I really like this website and generally agree with most of the opinions and sentiments expressed therein. This said, I'm a bit surprised at some of the above album selections.
Some of the albums presented in the above list sold very little, spin very rarely and in my view, rightly so. I think that many albums not even mentioned above were at least as good as some of the sets mentioned e.g. albums by Faith Evans, Jazmine Sullivan and Erykah Badu.
Having said this and for me, 2010 has been quite a disappointing year musically in terms of Urban Contemporary Black American Music forms expressed as albums. In fact unearthing lost gems from the past - and the occasional unreleased gem from the present - has delivered far more listening pleasure to me personally than most of the contemporary albums on offer throughout 2010. To underline the point, who can honestly point to a single album from 2010 containing more than 3 really good tracks? Ok admittedly a bit of an overstatement but can anyone honestly/seriously recommend any of this past years album releases into the top 100 album releases of all time in this genre?
For my money, two things have typified this year:
1, 2 and 3 track albums and the continuing backward look or retro flavour - some things never change and this is not necessarily a bad thing! Examples abound but how about the sets recently offered up by R Kelly or the vastly underrated Conya Doss.
There's no doubt that we have some fantastic talent on offer at this moment in time. I believe however that we have a similar situation now to what obtained during the 1980s. During that decade there was an abundance of talent on offer but the dominant musical culture of the day added to various economic factors, determined that much of this talent was hidden behind a wave of synths and electronic drum machines. In my view, the major artistic challenge for today's recording artist is that what is popular, is in general quite bland but nevertheless tremendously influential in terms of what aspiring recording artists produce or are exected to produce. This said, it's good to see how some of today's artists are creatively rising to this challenge.
Finishing positively, although for me genuinely good albums have been a bit thin on the ground in 2010 in this genre, nevertheless I think that we have been blessed with some really good individual tracks during this period. It's my pleasure to recommend the following 12 gems:
Alain Clarke, Too soon to end
BSlade - On we go
Carmen Rodgers - It's Me
Dwele - My people
Floetic Soul - Need you
Jameil Aossey - Melodies
Jazmine Sullivan - Excuse me
Monica - Ain't Nothing
Omarion - Truth
Ronald Isley - What I miss most
R Kelly - Not feelin' the love
Will Downing - Get to know you
Looking forward to 2011. Peace to you all.
