Content
Skip to Main ContentAccessibility Help
Q

#1 Kendrick Lamar — q's top 20 albums of 2015

Californian emcee takes the #1 spot in our countdown of the best albums of 2015. Listen, and start your year off right!
CBC Radio ·
A man sings into a microphone.
American hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar performs at the Roskilde Festival in Roskilde, Denmark, on Friday, July 3, 2015. The Roskilde music festival is one of the largest festivals in Europe (Gregers Tycho/Polfoto/The Associated Press)

Happy New Year! Today we reach the pinnacle of our top 20 albums of 2015 — our annual list of must-hear albums — by handing the honour to many rappers' favourite rapper: Kendrick Lamar.

The Californian emcee, who continues the Golden State's legacy of wide-screen, funky, decidedly political hip-hop, broke the mould this year with To Pimp A Butterfly. On this album he mines the recent history of African-American popular music, from jazz to g-funk, to create a personal meditation on black life in 2015. It's bold, relevant and supremely listenable, and it's #1 on the q Top 20.

WEB EXTRA | From To Pimp A Butterfly, here's the music video for Alright.

More from this episode