Best albums of 2010

10 Caribou – Swim (City Slang/V2)
Perhaps surprisingly, the first entry in this year's global chart comes from North America. Caribou, a.k.a. Canadian percussionist, multi-instrumentalist and mathematician Dan Snaith, released a truly genre-defying electronic album this year. Swim adds an overt house influence to the eclectic Caribou mix.

9 Various Artists – Ayobaness! The Sound of South African House (Out Here Records)
In Europe, house has got a bad reputation nowadays – and justifiably so, because in the last 25 years it’s gone from an innovative underground subculture to become the second most conservative genre of popular music after heavy metal. In South Africa they do things differently, and the well-known 4:4 beat gets overlaid with all sorts of southern African rhythms, creating a sound all of its own. House music can still be an innovative, exciting genre; you just need to look southwards for it.

8 Archie Bronson Outfit – Coconut (Domino)
The existence of a genuinely innovative English blues rock album in 2010 is something of a miracle, but it should be no surprise to fans of Archie Bronson and his trio's previous output. Like their last album Derdang Derdang (2008), this is noisy blues rock as played by people who are intimately familiar with the dynamics of electronic music, particularly disco, and have fully figured out how to transfer those dynamics into a fuzzy, analogue context. Disco distortion blues: there's nothing like it.

7 The Jolly Boys – Great Expectations (Wall of Sound)
They’re in their 80s, they’ve been together since 1955, and they’re cooler than you will ever be. The Jolly Boys play mento, which was the main music in Jamaica before ska, reggae and dub came along.
Their comeback album is a covers set, where they rework Western alternative music classics by the likes of Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Blondie and New Order. This approach has been tried before, most notably by French hipsters Nouvelle Vague and German/Dominican band Senor Coconut and his Orchestra, but the Great Expectations takes global reinterpretation of the alternative canon to a whole new level

6 Eedris Abdulkareem – Unfinished Business (Kennis Music)
The return of one of the Friday Ripple's all-time favourite rappers does not disappoint. As you'd expect, the Unfinished Business in question involves a proudly African form of hip hop, topped by blistering attacks on Nigeria's political elites. While there's nothing truly surprising here, this is a formula (Public Enemy meets Fela Kuti) which should not be tampered with or diluted. Lead single We Ain't No Terrorist is perhaps Eedris's most upbeat single ever, but still remains absolutely furious.

5 Balkan Beat Box – Blue Eyed Black Boy (Nat Geo Music/Crammed Discs)
Israel's kings of Balkanbeat reclaim their crown with this, their third album. Veering from huge party tunes to political commentary, and from Middle Europe to the Middle East, this is global fusion at its best.

4 Die Antwoord - $O$ (Cherrytree/Interscope)
Finally officially released! It's a strange time in the record industry, and this year US label Interscope threw huge amounts of money at globally releasing an album which, for the greater part, was available free online in 2009. We can assume the rationale was that most of the potential audience (regular Friday Ripple listeners excepted) were not paying much attention to web releases by obscure South African rap-rave bands. We should thank Interscope for this gamble, because finally Ninja (a.k.a. Waddy Jones, Max Normal, Metatron One etc etc etc) is getting long-overdue recognition as one of the best rappers, and best conceptual artists, of our era.

3 Abraham Inc - Tweet Tweet (Table Pounding Records)
Klezmer funk! There's a whole new genre happening here, thanks to the supergroup of klezmer-hip hop pioneer Socalled, klezmer/jazz clarinettist David Krakauer, and funk godfather Fred Wesley. The seeds of this sound can be found in Socalled's previous releases, and those of David Krakauer's Klezmer Madness project, but here the dominant presence of Fred Wesley (best known as the late James Brown's bandleader and arranger) takes the funk element to an entirely new level.

2 Various Artists - Yes We Can: Songs About Leaving Africa (Out Here Records)
The second entry in this chart for Munich's Out Here Records, who regularly get an enormous amount of hype on this show because they're light years ahead of any other label in Europe dealing with contemporary African urban music. Yes We Can mixes previously-released (in Africa) hip hop tracks with specially-commissioned compositions, all on the topic of African migration. This is hip hop at its realest: no bling here, just heartfelt commentary on issues like poverty, social alienation, migrants' obligations to their families back home, and optimism for the future.

A short note before we reach the Number 1 album:
Obviously, there's a certain ridiculousness in “best of” lists like this. It's questionable enough to rank albums from even one genre; claiming to have objective grounds for comparing a North American klezmer-funk album to a Jamaican mento album to a Nigerian hip hop album is just silly. What you're getting here is a bunch of personal preferences, very loosely filtered through a set of prevailing cultural standards of what constitutes “cutting edge”. Treat the numbering system with appropriate suspicion. However...

However.
There is one album from 2010 which I would genuinely argue stands head and shoulders above everything else released this year. And it is:

1 Richy Pitch – Ye Fre Mi Richy Pitch (BBE)

Until recently, Richy Pitch was best known as the resident DJ of London's long-running Scratch hip hop nights. But then, two years ago, he moved to Accra in Ghana. He returned to Britain this year with an album that absolutely no-one could have seen coming.

Richy Pitch – Ye Fre Mi Richy Pitch |foto: BBE

Ye Fre Mi Richy Pitch (“They call me Richy Pitch”) is one of those hip hop albums which can be describes as a genuine game-changer – if, indeed, we can call it a hip hop album. It's hip hop, hiplife, highlife and electro all fused into one. That description could probably be shortened to “basically unmarketable in any one genre”, which might explain the disappointing lack of mainstream coverage of this amazing record.

The achievements of this album are numerous. Firstly, on the production side, it jumps between all of these genres without ever losing its own, consistent sound. Secondly, on the vocal side, Richy Pitch has managed to work with almost every top-level star in Ghanaian hiplife: from scene godfather Reggie Rockstone to contemporary stars like M3nsa, Wanlov and Samini, they're all on the mic here - and not with throwaway rhymes either; every vocalist is fully on top of his or her game. Thirdly - and most importantly – there's the finished tunes. Most albums tend to have at least one or two “filler” tracks, but not here: it's non-stop hits from start to finish. In short: buy this album! It's a game-changer for hip hop, it's a game-changer for hiplife, and it's a game-changer for international collaboration in electronic music. Album of the year, no question.

Load up the Radio Wave Jukebox archive, and listen to the highlights of this year's Friday Ripple top 10. You can stream it under Friday Ripple > 17.12.2010. The full playlist looks like this:

Caribou – Odessa (City Slang/V2)
Caribou - Found Out (City Slang/V2)
Pastor Mbhobho – Ayobaness (Out Here Records)
DJ Mujava - Mugwanti/Sgwejegweje (Out Here Records)
Archie Bronson Outfit - Shark's Tooth (Domino)
Archie Bronson Outfit – Hoola (Domino)
The Jolly Boys - Blue Monday (Wall of Sound)
The Jolly Boys - Rehab (Wall of Sound)
Eedris Abdulkareem - Unfinished Business (Kennis Music)
Eedris Abdulkareem - We Ain't No Terrorist (Kennis Music)
Balkan Beat Box - Move It (Crammed Discs/Nat Geo Music)
Balkan Beat Box - War Again (Crammed Discs/Nat Geo Music)
Die Antwoord - Enter The Ninja (Cherrytree/Interscope)
Die Antwoord - Super Evil (Cherrytree/Interscope)
Abraham Inc - Abe Inc Techno Mix (Table Pounding Records)
Abraham Inc - Moskowitz Remix (Table Pounding Records)
Abraham Inc - Tweet Tweet (Table Pounding Records)
Ize feat. Omrane - Oh Narina (Out Here Records)
African Boy - Lidl (Out Here Records)
Boobah Siddik feat. Muntu Valdo - Hustle Jacket (Out Here Records)
Richy Pitch - Black Star Feat. M.Anifest (BBE)
Richy Pitch feat. M.Anifest, M3NSa, Wanlov - Living Drum (BBE)
Richy Pitch feat. Reggie Rockstone & M3NSA - Visa Connection Man (BBE)
Richy Pitch feat. Yasmeen - Dey Suffer (BBE)