A Non-Exhaustive "Best Tracks Of 2012" List

Look, journalists like end of year lists because they’re easy to read and stuff like forming paragraph structure is really difficult when you’re typing while standing, because you’ve got one eye on the screen and another on the mulled wine steadily running out at the bar. Which is why pretty much every music round-up starts as a sincere and comprehensive look back, then just ends up being a quivering pile of “WHY HAVEN’T YOU INCLUDED GRIMES AND FRANK OCEAN?! AT LEAST PRETEND INDIE WAS STILL A THING IN 2K12” reader complaints.

So to counter that, in no particular order, and with the strict intention to either jog your memory or rile you into pointing out all the stuff I missed and what a terrible person I am and, ugh, what a dickbag, why am I allowed to write about music…here’s a list of my personal top ten favs this year. Enjoy!

Videos by VICE

1. Chronik: “Man In The Boot”

Look at that adorable and welcoming face of Chronik’s. How could anyone not fall in love with the constant air of terror during “Man In The Boot”? For really real though, after years of skulking around grime, this track was the first of Chronik’s that I kind of got obsessed with, all the more because of the threatening as fuck video that sucks you in, only to do that whole “ahhh, it was all a joke” thing at the end. Jesus.

FILE NEXT TO: Shut up abut grime being dead.

Trim

Everything JME will ever be involved in.

2. Nicki Minaj Feat. 2 Chainz: “Beez In The Trap”

Damn right I’m listing something by Nicki Minaj in my top 10. “Beez In The Trap” reminded everyone what promise she had before she became a hateful, money-grabbing cartoon of her former self. I think it was also the first track that I realised 2 Chainz was actually a real thing that was happening and it was completely OK to shout-sing along to him.

FILE NEXT TO: Saying ‘yes’ to ratchet pussy.

Juicy J’s renaissance

2 Chainz

3. Two Inch Punch: “Moonstruck”

Aside from being a total babe, producer Frame Two Inch Punch straddled this weird grey area of British electronica and sort of very modern sounding R&B. “Moonstruck” though all chopped-up and robotic sounding, demonstrated to me that ~sexy~ didn’t have to be all bass licks and Jeremih talking about ploughing bitches.

FILE NEXT TO: New school Brit talent.

Disclosure

Syron

4. Action Bronson Feat. RiFF RAFF “Bird On A Wire”

Well, yeah, obvs ride or die for Action Bronson and VICE records 4evs, but the combination of him, RiFF RaFF actually being comprehensible and Harry Fraud’s ridiculous, smoked out production was a DREAM.

FILE NEXT TO: Rap that snooty rap fans call “real” rap but doesn’t make the rest of us cringe

All Harry Fraud everything and everyone he worked with this year

Aaron Cohen

Joey Bada$$

5. Popcaan: “The System”

This song got rinsed in our office, and every time it came on the weird kinda tropical melancholia it brought up just made me want to turn my desk over and elope to the equator with that guy that sometimes gives me free coffees at Pret.

FILE NEXT TO: DRINKIN’ RUUUMMM AND RED BULL!

Major Lazer (because the “Get Free” tune was forever, shut up.)

Konshens

Frame

6. TNGHT (Hudson Mohawke x Lunice): “Higher Ground” Frame

If I remember right, TNGHT were initially kinda slated cos everyone was all, “you can bash out tracks like that in like five minutes on Fruity Loops”. But then it was like, “yeah, but TNGHT bashed them out first, sooo…awkward.” I found the whole EP initially really tough to get into at first, like drinking lager or Breaking Bad, but once I was into it, I was REALLY into it, and it was “Higher Ground” that made me want to punch walls until my knuckles bled.

FILE NEXT TO: Production that doesn’t sound that hard to make but probably really is

Rustie

Cooly G

7 Wavy Spice: “Bitch I’m Posh”

First of all, shout outs go 90s-tastic production of Metro Zu’s Freebase. But secondly, Wavy Spice was just one of many young and, for want of a better word, New York hipsters (read: hipster meaning creative people having more fun than you, whose clothes you would sneer at on the train.) that came slightly out of leftfield this year.

FILE NEXT TO: New York artists that will double as models in high end fashion mags in 2013

Zebra Katz

Gita

Kilo Kish

8. Chief Keef: “I Don’t Like”

Yeah, another rap track, fuck off. The thing about Chief Keef though, was that he brought uneasiness back to the genre in 2012. Hip-hop seems to have spawned so many popular facets in the last two years, but Keef’s unrelenting house-party track “I Don’t Like” plus his inability to really interact with the media how they wanted him to, made the Chicago scene feel really alien and scary, but exciting for an average bitch from England like myself.

FILE NEXT TO: It’s my party and it’s actually quite menacing to dance with my bro-friends topless

Katie Got Bandz

Gunplay

9. Schoolboy Q: “There He Go”

I gave Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city a 10/ 10 in any context in which I had to comment on it, cos frankly it was easier than weathering the fallout of saying otherwise and having to listen to serious-faced, hip-hop hand-wringers lamenting the death of lyricism AT me. GKMC is excellent…but IMHO it was Schoolboy Q that was the real mega-talent from Black Hippy. Like, seriously, suck me, if “There He Go” doesn’t have you putting on that stupid voice in the chorus and involuntarily dancing.

FILE NEXT TO: I’ve run out of “file next to” lines, but wanted to say something about Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar, I guess.

10. M.I.A.: “Bad Girls” and anything on the Noisey channel

Because, duh, #HumbleBrag. From MIA to Jessie Ware to Bodega Bamz to Danny Brown to Die Antwoord to, erm, Jaden Smith we had some good’uns premiered on Noisey’s YouTube channel of *cough* current count 148, 000+ subscribers and have many more to come. No biggie.