The Best Songs of 2021
Written, Designed by Nathan Evans
50: dvsn & Ty Dolla $ign ft. Mac Miller - I Believed It
Like a vintage blue-eyed soul record, dvsn and Ty Dolla $ign spin a (possibly unreliable) tale of romantic betrayal atop sampled strings and blaring klaxon. Mac Miller, from the beyond, sounds right at home.
49: Leon Vynehall - Mothra
The lead single to his new record, one of dance music’s sonic nomads gifts us a brooding, heavily-textured techno floorshaker that calls to mind Aphex Twin’s ‘Alberto Balsalm’.
48: YTK - Let It Off
For this to even exist is peak 2021. Baltimore rapper YTK carries Mariah Carey’s breezy ‘Shake It Off’ with all new, murderous lyrics. There’s a lot of posturing in hip-hop, with many trying to give their best street thug impression, but hearing YTK’s voice dance across the high notes as he sings: “Better not hear you say my name 'fore my n*ggas blow your brains” - it’s so oddly unhinged that you can’t help but believe him.
47: Rejjie Snow - Grateful
Irish rapper Rejjie Snow’s brief prelude to his sophomore album has a beat so charmingly adorable, it was a challenge to even get to the rest of the LP.
46: DARKOO ft. Buju & TSB - Bad From Early
As her anthem ‘Gangsta’ still cracks into setlists two years on, Lagos/London artist Darkoo continues to build upon her style of Afroswing with a melancholic hook and ear-perking horn.
45: DJ Seinfeld - These Things Will Come To Be
Sweden’s own DJ Seinfeld saw right to switch from the lo-fi house scene he first made ground under. ‘These Things Will Come to Be’ keeps the longing feeling of his previous work in full condition, but is captured with a more progressive, high-def sound.
44: Pi’erre Bourne - 4U
One of Pi’erre’s best ever beats, the dreamscape he conjures on ‘4U’ allows his hushed raps to float in the clouds.
43: Mychelle - The Way
London songwriter Mychelle created a tender little moment of acoustic guitar, vocals and gentle atmosphere, and released it fairly early in the year. However, ‘The Way’ has managed to stick through spring, summer, autumn and into winter.
42: Boldy James, The Alchemist & Benny the Butcher - Brickmile to Montana
The Alchemist consistently makes his case for GOAT producer status, and this year he pulled no punches. The beat of ‘Brickmile to Montana’ has a Shining-esque sinisterness to it, but its gutty bass punctuate Boldy James and Benny the Butcher’s intimidating wordplay.
41: Justin Bieber ft. Daniel Caesar & GIVĒON - Peaches
Remarkably, Bieber has come up with the ‘Slide’ of 2021. That is, a pristine rooftop-down summer single.
40: Armand Hammer & The Alchemist ft. KAYANA - Black Sunlight
‘Black Sunlight’ is a rare moment of bliss for the otherwise grim raps of Armand Hammer, caught grinning with “incisors flashing” and haze burning. The scene is wrapped in another impeccable beat by The Alchemist.
39: Arca - Incendio
In 2021, Arca unloaded an anthology of work to complete the year-old ‘Kick’ series. From the inflamed third instalment, ‘Incendio’ feels like it compresses gigabytes of mind-altering data into one file.
38: Pinkpantheress - Just For Me
Bedroom experimenter Pinkpantheress is giving the pop music of 20 years ago an internet-influenced uplift. With a beat that Craig David would have rode in his prime, ‘Just For Me’ marries the nostalgic with the bleeding edge.
37: Lil Nas X & Jack Harlow - INDUSTRY BABY
Fireworks rupture, marching drums boom, gates collapse. ‘INDUSTRY BABY’ celebrates the triumph of giving a new, proud voice like Lil Nas X the keys to the exorbitant excess of pop music.
36: Remi Wolf & Dominic Fike - Photo ID
Remi Wolf’s enjoyably goofy production tactics lend themselves quite well to the sugar-laced hooks on ‘Photo ID’. She works DIY funktronica into 2000s pop, and the vibe is carefree.
35: Hiatus Kaiyote - Red Room
Slumped into a fat, bass-heavy mix, Hiatus Kaiyote leader Nai Palm pens a motif about the beauty of having a perfect place to yourself for a short time every day.
34: Cochise & $NOT - Tell Em
Turbo-charging Playboi Carti’s style of plugg rap into a hyperactive power surge, Cochise & $NOT perfectly generate the feeling of gorging the entire length of a Fruit Winder (or Roll-Up) in rap form.
33: Sonder & Jorja Smith - Nobody But You
A rain-on-the-window breakup duet between two of R&B’s biggest, ‘Nothing But You’ sees Brent Faiyaz pleading to a despondent Jorja Smith as they navigate the last traces of sentimentality and regret they have towards each other.
32: Brittany Howard, Fred Again… & Joy Anonymous - Stay High Again…
Brittany Howard’s slow drip of bliss from 2019 receives a heavenly house reimaging. The key changes, darling!
31: 21 Savage, Young Thug & Gunna - Emergency
On a beat that conjoins the shimmering and intense, Thug and Gunna create wicked flows that fit the corpse-grinding horror of the Saw film franchise.
30: Vanjess - Slow Down
Sedate and understated, ‘Slow Down’ is nonetheless fragrant with sex appeal.
29: Backroad Gee ft. Lethal Bizzle & JME - Enough Is Enough
The gruff doberman of British rap flexes his one-of-a-kind delivery alongside legendary figures Bizzle and JME. The drill-sergeant motivation of the track should be noted: “Life was rough / I woke up, said enough is enough,” Gee barks.
28: Erika De Casier - Polite
The Sade comparison invites itself upon the first hit of the congos, but Erika De Casier’s soft power over her mystery lover on ‘Polite’ is modestly shown in the chorus. She can seduce a boy into shape without breaking a whisper.
27: Denzel Curry, Kenny Beats & Smino - So.Incredible.pkg (Robert Glasper Version)
Jazz pianist Robert Glasper adds Tropicália vocal scatting, an insatiable rhythm breakdown and a cheeky Kraftwerk sample to one of the most invigorating freestyle verses in recent memory.
26: Jazmine Sullivan ft. Anderson .Paak - Price Tags
Sensual and quintessential R&B, Sullivan serves a chorus that draws a throughline between sexuality and financial empowerment. “That money keeps that pussy wet,” she sings candidly.
25: Squid - Paddling
Frenetic art punk band Squid aren’t known for making the hookiest of songs, but the stickiness of ‘Paddling’ is as present as their usual, joyously nerdy ideas.
24: SG Lewis - Back to Earth
Mining into the golden ages of dance music, SG Lewis forms a glowing track that tingles with the excitement of a night out. Oh, and the tune is topped off with a Van McCoy-esque flute.
23: Mac Ayres - Every Time
Mac Ayres has the secret formula to the warmth of R&B. Almost casual in delivery, ‘Every Time’ is a set of the most syrupy vibrations and inviting hooks.
22: Wizkid ft. Tems - Essence
‘Essence’ is distilled Vitamin D enhanced with the magic well of depth in Tems’ vocal performance. Its global success marks a landmark moment - and possible sea change - for African music, and will undoubtedly be a summer anthem for years to come.
21: Injury Reserve - Outside
Given the task of opening their revelatory new album By the Time I Get to Phoenix, ‘Outside’ does so with a volcanic bath of synthesizer to stay just afloat in.
Silence of the Lambs is my personal favourite film of all time. Laced in detail and commentary, one of the inner tragedies of its plot is that of character Buffalo Bill - a serial killer who suffers from gender dysphoria. Though his solution to the issue is hardly agreeable, there is some level of sympathy that can be given to the film’s lead antagonist, who was denied gender reassignment surgery.
On ‘Cimmerian Shade’, Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine write elegantly from the perspective of Bill, pulling out the inner cry for help inside him and soothing it like a mother to her baby. The familiar Sufjan Stevens intimacy encapsulates the vocals and circling guitar refrain before swelling into an angelic falsetto - “I just want you to love me / I just wanted to change myself.” Such is the strength of their songwriting together, ‘Cimmerian Shade’ is proof that Stevens and De Augustine have the capability of literally convincing you of the good in a serial killer.
Tyler, the Creator has had a habit of sharing his most classy productions with Lil Wayne, and ‘HOT WIND BLOWS’ have yielded the best results yet. The pair bring an element of glamour to the sort of tropical jazz fusion you simply don’t hear anymore (punctuated even more by the fact it samples a 48-year-old Penny Goodwin track).
Tyler’s verse is a frank explanation of how he’s in a different league to other rappers, relaxing in the finest, most beautiful world locations and “playing hide & seek with the passports”. Wayne, on the other hand, delivers one of his best performances ever, controlling his flow as he shifts through all the gears and even a few that go over the limit. “The wind beneath my wings, Desert Eagle underneath my coat” caps the verse off with one final knockout line. Travelling the world is a luxury, but it’s a testament to Tyler’s creativity that he has managed to make it his flex.
In the lustrum between his first and second album, TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad suffered from addiction to drink, and dips his toes into that period on ‘Headshots (4r Da Locals)’. Swirling in a foggy neo-soul hallucination, his slugged-out raps allude to a quick death, the cause of which can be swapped out for a gunshot or from drink and work all the same.
But it’s the chorus that steals the show here. Matching the topic, ‘Headshots’ has an anxiolytic hook that sounds like it was plucked straight from the ATLiens/Aquemini era of OutKast’s discography.
The key to understanding the genius of ‘Road of the Lonely Ones’, and ergo Madlib, is that the soul singer sampled across it never once says the track title. Anatomically, the hip-hop producer re-structures the original Ethics track ‘Lost in a Lonely World’, adding crisp drums atop it that fit each other like a horse and saddle. But figuratively, using the power of reinterpretation, Madlib was able to find new meaning by the mere suggestion of a track title.
From losing his producing companion in J Dilla early on in his career, to his Madvillainy partner in crime MF DOOM who passed just weeks before the track’s release, ‘...Lonely Ones’ is dedicated to those truly singular minds he’s met in his life. The lonely ones who forged a road of their own and influenced a generation of hip-hop in the coming years. That includes Madlib himself, because when it comes to recontextualising lost music, the man is inspirational.
serpentwithfeet created ‘Fellowship’ as a prayer to the power of friendship. In a way, making a song about friends takes more care than a love song, as the topic is not nearly as over-explored. The experimental R&B artist has clearly chewed it over, pruning each element of ‘Fellowship’ like topiary.
Over its rickety percussion, he considers the cutesy activities he can only do with his friends - watching Christmas films in the summer, making last-minute outfits, sending each other into laughing hysterics, he’s grateful for all of it. Instrumentally, the density of each section, such as the choir-like chorus performance featuring Sampha, feels like a small group performance befitting the togetherness of the song. Enamoured with platonic joy, ‘Fellowship’ is mellow, but very much at peace.
70s soul experienced a notable comeback in 2021, and ‘Ask Me’ borrows from the source to create one of the funkiest, cleanest grooves of the year. The organic strut of the sampled organ is intoxicating, and shots of vocal trembles add to the soul of this tune. A-Trak and Armand Van Helden, together as Duck Sauce, are top of their game.
Like the rest of Vince Staples’ subtly brilliant self-titled album, ‘LAW OF AVERAGES’ is a mission statement to protect what he holds. In this case, the hook is a commitment to not be swindled out of his money in exchange for cheap respect. Kenny Beats’ rugged production hardly makes a dent in the spotlight, instead hiding in the background with creaking metal and pinhole vocal samples.
Staples has never minced words, such is the appeal of his character, but on this track he sounds uncaring by this point, as though his straight-talking statements are the result of people chiselling down his patience. By the second verse, he embodies the stance of the troll under the bridge, waving away every visitor to his area with a gun.
“I’ve been living on an island, too”, croons the pitch-shifted chorus of ‘Charmander’, a line that tells a lot of rapper Aminé’s state of mind in 2021. Voluntarily stowed away from the noise, he has created adventurous hip-hop that sidetracks from the genre’s usual tempos.
‘Chamander’ is exactly the sort of pristine funhouse Aminé can make, this time using a neutered drum & bass rhythm with the insular, headphone-ready bounce of IDM. All the while, he casually flaunts his cognoscenti status as a style icon: “Without me they’d be done / Where the fuck would you get all your mood board pictures from?” The momentum seems to only ramp up as the track goes on, so infectious and rapid is the tune. Once the outro cleverly cuts the beat to half-time out of car speakers, the track is begging you to go right back through the funhouse entrance again.
Bakar has a knack for spinning enlightening points of view into tight statements, as evidenced by ‘The Mission’. Featuring French electropop production from SebastiAn that compliments the song with voltaic effect, London-born, Yemen-descended Bakar writes about the mindset of a second-generation immigrant in Britain. He yearns for a stable income first and foremost, and for his “kids to have some nepotism”, an interesting twist on what is usually seen as a negative social trait. In a country that pathetically ignores its rife population of Islamophobics, ‘The Mission’ is an unwavering assertion that Bakar intends to prosper. It’s also bloody catchy.
Porter Robinson took seven years between his debut and new album, seemingly feeling the need to start from scratch. In destroying his proverbial sandcastle, he built emotive and tasteful EDM worlds away from the tried-and-tested.
‘Look at the Sky’ is an emotionally-mixed meta-analysis of the struggle to create the vision in his head, darting back and forth between searching for the reasons and remaining hopeful. The song itself took four years to complete, and shifts between peering home recordings and IMAX-scale ascensions. It’s like simultaneously hearing the final product and watching the long, draft-heavy journey to the song’s completion. It’s fantastically mesmeric.
As the producer himself said on Twitter, “making fast french house and passing it off as garage has been my best party trick this year I reckon”. As self-dismissive as it is, Manchester producer salute brought his production A-game to split this atom, ‘Want U There’ being a garage-house hybrid that has enough torque to launch space shuttles.
In addition to having one of the best songs of 2021, salute had one of the best EPs, which you can read about here.
‘family ties’ is utterly box-office, even past the headline-grabbing event of Kendrick Lamar’s first verse since 2019. The regal horns of the first beat settle the throne for King Kendrick later on, but Sire Keem still tirelessly attacks the track to put on a glorious show. He works to be his own hype man, in moments like the sheer giddiness in his voice when he squawks “chopper doing circles, it’s a bird”. His objective is beyond hyperbole - literally rapping “I’m fucking the world, I unzip my pants” - and he will not rest until we’re all standing in Hades, burning up in flames.
Lamar, though, is everything the hype put before him suggests. One can practically see him turning green with disgust as he's writing this verse, targeting anyone who prompted him such as the Billboard visitors and overnight activists. The outlandish “amazing, brother” section introduces yet another voice in Lamar’s still-expanding library of them to invigorating effect. Chucking in a few references to Meg Thee Stallion and Kanye West, Lamar implies that though he’s been silent, he hasn’t missed a beat. With a loose kitchen-sink assault, Keem and Kendrick delivered everything ‘family ties’ promised in the lead-up.
From the outside, it can seem crazy what some people restlessly think about. The lead single from James Blake’s Friends That Break Your Heart doubles up as a meta-commentary on his place in the industry and dealing with his career not panning out to where he envisioned. It’s difficult to imagine given the emotions he’s capable of stirring, especially when backed by the track’s lullaby-ish chords and background vocals with the delicacy of glass.
Line by line, he begins piecing himself back together, accepting his average qualities and becoming content with the role of a niche artist than his mega-famous friends. In the midpoint, his vocals switch from dejected to downright stunning, in potentially a career highlight. The production around him backs away to give him his moment, as he hits a final high note that is one of the most unsettlingly beautiful moments in his discography.
Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s introduction to the world as Silk Sonic is so luxurious that it can only be described as a cocktail recipe:
Bruno Mars Cognac - velvety with a range of showstopping notes
Anderson .Paak Rum - thick, wooden, musky, aged for a timeless quality
Enticing cherry wine - known aphrodisiac
Extract of vintage soul record à la The Temptations, The Isley Brothers, Soul Train and Motown
Milk bass liqueur
Zesty drum punch
Spiced key changes
Served with liquid gold.
FYI: This isn’t supposed to be a drinkable drink. It’s a metaphor, sis!
The primary cut from the best EP of the year, ‘Duo’ is a funk-ridden piece of dance-pop whose groove is utterly ubiquitous.
Everything in the track serves to bolster its muscly swing, from the deep bassline to the stabs of piano that commence the beat. Gellaitry packs in a myriad of sonic details: the little bongo hit at the end of a bar; the vocoder underpinning the vocals in the chorus; the synth scribbles at the end of the second chorus. All of these, as well as the 80s guitar and keytar in the post-chorus, have a dash of Discovery and Cross to them.
Lyrically, Sam pens a chasing-the-girl narrative in his own obtuse way, preeing the people in the girl’s circle puppeting her away from Gellaitry. He writes in a refreshing cross between frank and poetic, and when the topline hits “they think you can do better, all alone”, it’s a golden moment. Though criminally short, ‘Duo’ sounds like the blueprint to something massive.
It’s so simple. At its most emotive, Kanye’s music has the ability to tap into the imagination of a child, and ‘Moon’ soundtracks the filmic moment of a kid gazing up at the stars, dreaming of its infinite possibilities. Ye orchestrates this with a placating guitar passage and hopeful verse from the Man on the Moon himself Kid Cudi, who does well not to complicate the moment: “here we go, strap in, we up”.
Then of course, there is Don Toilver’s divine falsetto. The unexpected vocal range Toliver pulls from was the topic of amazement upon the parent album’s release. And after the surprise wore off, the soft conviction of his small but significant performance glows like The Avatar State.
It’s interesting that Kanye himself appears merely as background vocals. Because in spite of this, his presence, his childlike spirit moves through the music.
Banger of the year. Pa Salieu released one of the best UK rap debuts in recent memory in Send Them To Coventry (which I sadly caught onto a month after last year’s Album of the Year list, it would have made a case for top three!), and ‘Glidin’’ is a vivid beacon signalling his arrival.
The misty intro has the potential for iconic intro status, before giving way to a venomous Afroswing-accented beat that both Salieu and slowthai can slip into with ease. The former’s deep and ever-contorting vocal inflections bring visceral energy and endless quotables (“me nah care me nah care!”), building his case as one of the most inventive rappers in the UK. Meanwhile, slowthai’s raucous feature barrels through a breakdown that takes the kinetic momentum even further.
While ‘Glidin’’ can be read as a stake for the chart success, the fact that Pa Salieu can nail the entire package - visuals and music video included - first-time is laudable, and it’s all without stylistic compromise. The sound of Pa Salieu is expanding by the song, and each time it does, it threatens to take the UK scene by storm.
Mustafa finds hope in the most hopeless of situations. Initially released in 2020, the Toronto artist’s single ‘Air Forces’ played a central role in his 2021 album When Smoke Rises. Atop a bed of frosty folk, the song is a dialogue with a family member who is going out for gang-related motives. As though this is a regular occurrence, Mustafa knows that they are putting themselves in danger and is afraid to tell him, and he reads their body language expertly, “you say it’s okay, but you touch your chain”. He sings at a volume that projects his grief while not risking upsetting the neighbours.
To an extent, ‘Air Forces’ mirrors Marvin Gaye’s legendary ‘Inner City Blues’ in its concern. However, where Gaye created a bleak round-up of the social issues faced by the black urban population, Mustafa zeroes in on the human impact, the individual households that are affected. He questions why his aspirations are clipped, and why he is forced to hope for things that others are bestowed with. Somberly, he sings: “they don’t want us to climb”.
That the song uses folk music to deliver its message separates it from the percussion-heavy instrumentals that most inner-city tales are crossed with - there’s no beat to hide behind, the stark reality is laid bare. In the hopes of changing his course, Mustafa promises to care for this person regardless of the life they are sucked into. Like a guardian angel, he quietly croons, “I’ll be awake”. The issues of the black population have become more prominent than ever, but Mustafa communicates them with grace.
How different the world we live in as adults is from the one promised when we were children. BROCKHAMPTON’S ‘WHEN I BALL’ begins with member Dom McLennon letting us into a touching scene with his mother. The way the rapper tells the story is precise and understanding, noting that from the moment he was born, they knew they were each others’ rock. As he grows up, McLennon sees family members go to prison before he knew the realities of being a black man in America, forcing his mother to give him “The Talk”. It is here where the rapper leaves his verse, painting a final image of him and his mother embracing.
The track centres around the group’s motherly bonds and how they defined their aspirations. A second verse from Matt Champion recounts the day his parents gave birth to him as if he was out of his mother’s womb already. His calm confidence eases through lines about his parents’ previous stillborn child, and raps about how that personality came from the faith his parents had in him, treating him like a miracle. ‘WHEN I BALL’ is orange with nostalgia, especially in the soul-soaked beat that unsurprisingly has a co-producer credit from the Neptunes’ Chad Hugo.
For the hook, BROCKHAMPTON uses innocent vocals singing cuttingly: “you always used to tell me I could be anything I want to be / but it’s hard to see, it’s hard to be”. Though the world they were told about is not how they imagined it, growing up with the leadership of their mothers still gives them hope.
No song this year felt more like an anthem, not because of a chantable chorus or booming horn section. Nay, Little Simz’s ‘Woman’ is an anthem for how it speaks for and to an entire population of black women worldwide.
In its purpose, ‘Woman’ relates closely to Drake’s ‘Nice For What’ from 2018. Both talk to women directly with a manner of admiration, but where the latter song feels like a generalised, commercially-motivated approach to women (from a man’s perspective, no less), Little Simz’ is an honest-to-god tribute to black femininity. It’s telegraphed in the sumptuous hook from Cleo Sol that reads like an Instagram hype comment to a friend “I love how you go from 0 to 100, and leave the dust behind / you’ve got this, all action no talk”. There’s an unmistakable classiness to ‘Woman’, and Simz’s flow across all of her verses is silky and unshaken. She observes her subjects as wise, inquisitive and tough, and show that by how it appears in the regular everyday.
The song oozes unconditional pride, and has the presentation to match - a foray into neo-soul that has the musicality of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. It shines in the ‘oo-oo’ harmonies that run parallel with the pocket-targeting bassline, and an organ as exquisite as the palace its pristine music video is set in. The instrumental progresses botanically to incorporate lavish strings, chucked guitar as it moves from section to section. It all makes the heart flutter, which is most likely its intent to match Simz’s thesis statement of the supreme opulence of women everywhere.