Camiele’s Top 25 Albums of 2014

3. Flying Lotus – You’re Dead!

Without a doubt there’s no other place this album could’ve been but in my top three. It’s just so very… FlyLo! Experimental, wild, frightening, uncomfortable. However, everything about it went above and beyond the call of duty as far as this genius producer’s concerned. With collaborations with legends Herbie Hancock and Snoop Dogg, as well as giving us probably his best piece of music to date with Kendrick Lamar (track Never Catch Me), You’re Dead! is a powerful piece of music.

There is no doubt in my mind this album didn’t get the recognition or respect it deserved. While many bemoaned its bizarre nature, others were still stuck on how the sound didn’t strike them as cohesive as in albums Cosmogramma or 1983. However, You’re Dead! for me was probably Flying Lotus’s most compelling piece of music to date. It’s familiar yet still so completely off the wall and left of center that it sparks the mind to imagine things, conjure up imagery that perhaps many are too stuck in their comfort zone to even try.

2. Epik High – Shoebox

Without a doubt the album with the most impact in Korea in 2014 was veteran hip-hop group Epik High’s first album in two years. Shoebox came blasting through with lead single Born Hater, effectively flipping the bird to an oversaturated industry, and they were rewarded for it in the end. Beyond the bravado of some of the tracks, the album is a bittersweet love note to the memories we hold on to even as time turns their sharpness soft and their impact into little more than a tickle on the psyche.

Shoebox also featured arguably the year’s best rendition of the popular Eyes, Nose, Lips (from labelmate Taeyang, who we saw earlier in the list). It’s not just a bit of sentimentality thrown in for the sake of giving listeners something softer. It was a snarl and bite, a song that gave us the darker truth of a breakup. It’s not all tears and Baby, come back. Oftentimes it’s more along the lines of F*ck off and die. And that’s what we love about Epik High. That even within the confines of a very saccharine pop industry, they deliver a little sour and spicy.