The Best Music Album of 2017

A year of new discoveries and sounds, with related confirmations that are still very much to be hoped for in the future of music.

We present our ranking of the best albums of 2017.

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN.

Through reflections on balance, karma and ego, Kendrick Lamar explores the intersection between divinity and humanity.

An inner monologue resounds throughout the album, prompting Compton's rapper to seek his place in the world, in his community, in his body and in his next life.

Tyler, The Creator -  Flower Boy

For years, in his songs, Tyler, The Creator, has tried to get to the root of his loneliness, and it is in Flower Boy that you get closer than ever. Slimmer and more concentrated, this is his most disarming and accessible collection of songs: submissive, melancholic, permissive and recognizable.

Flower Boy is personal and complicated, revealing long-held thoughts about race and sexuality: "Tell these black kids," he sings in "Where This Flower Blooms." And inside these dazzling songs, he picks up his own advice, coming out in the light for the first time.

King Krule - The Ooz

Like King Krule, the intransigent Londoner Archy Marshall, has always manifested itself in a darkly melodic trip-hop that never strays from bringing to light its deepest fears and emotions.

In The Ooz, he scans the detritus of everyday life, banging against what he perceives to be his artistic limits as he examines the consequences of a failed relationship.

Marshall is a master in creating atmospheres, creating whole ecosystems that coexist within his own work, giving an immediate and compelling listening experience.

Arca - Arca

Alejandro Ghersi, in his first album of the same name, exploits the jagged edges and natural imperfections of his singing, sinking into meditations on intimacy, solitude and death.

Few can claim Bjork as their mentor, but Alejandro Ghersi proves more and more to be worthy of this honor.

 Moses Sumney - Aromanticism

For many years, Moses Sumney won first place as an artist on which he had more hope for his debut album, not surprisingly, David Byrne, he had already grasped the talent inviting him to play with him in 2016.

Aromanticism proves to be more than up to expectations, bringing its unearthly voice, reminiscent of a saxophone with an old cane, and its complex layered writing, directly on an ethereal plane.

The 26-year-old from San Bernardino finds new ways to talk about loneliness, distance relationships, the ability to see each other but not to be held back. All brought back to a now lonely, broken and repressive world, where one is unable to love.

It was since the days of D'Angelo, Frank Ocean and Jeff Buckley, that a singer-songwriter did not debut with such a singular and brilliant album. Sumney is an enigmatic singer-songwriter, capable of a beauty beyond words and tied to the deepest and most instinctive threads of the heart.

Mac DeMarco - This Old Dog

The thing that leads people to love Mac Demarco, is the same that leads them to hate him. For fans, he is a decidedly unpretentious singer-songwriter with a strange sense of humor. His out-of-school antics are proof that we do not take ourselves too seriously, and rightly so, he thinks that rock gives space to fun and madness. For his detractors, however, these acrobatics are an annoying mark of an artist, who in their opinion, does not want to reckon with age.

At this point a radical change for Mac DeMarco would not make sense, it has its own style, it works. But it is with This Old Dog, the third album for the Canadian artist, that there is a sudden growth.

The new album is less cumbersome, there is more acoustic guitar and less processing that frees it from the post-chillwave context that had previously led to previous works.

Mac DeMarco is a boy, who despite living improvising, composes timeless songs inconveniencing songwriters of a bygone era.

Kamasi Washington - Harmony Of Difference

In Harmony Of Difference, Kamasy Washington strengthens its role even more as the leading jazz artist of his generation.

The ep, though not as ambitious as its previous work The Epic, a dreamlike journey divided into three hours, always resonates in Washington's commitment to spread peace and love through its music. The final track, Truth, is a true work of art.

LCD Soundsystem - American Dream

In 2011, magically ended, with a concert at Madison Square Garden, the extraordinary career of LCD Soundsystem. At the end of the evening, after almost ten years in which the American band had revolutionized the concept of dance music and brought it to punk, the balloons fell from the ceiling and the fans began to cry.

But like a new Odysseus, James Murphy, he still felt the need to explore new sounds and compositional techniques, realizing at the beginning of 2015, more songs than ever had produced in his career.

Seven years after This Is Happening, comes American Dream, an album that apparently might seem a criticism of current American politics, but where the main theme is the disillusionment that is felt during aging, the end of the dreams of a past youth.

That's all we could ask for in an LCD Soundsystem album in 2017. For nearly 70 minutes of music, Murphy creates a world where all his sins can be eradicated and, in a sense, it's a dream come true.

Drake - More Life

The playlist of World Music, which manifests itself in More Life, is the natural realization of what was already visible in VIEWS. A mixture of South African house, dancehall, grime and pop-rap.

The music is wider and the roster is more varied, but there is still the same Drake in the sounds and accents. A paranoid star in search of comfort, a king of the rap still not sober of his achievements.