The Worst Songs on 2016's Best Albums

Image via Complex Original

Album: Lemonade

Remember, this a list of the worst songs on the best albums of the year. So I'm not saying "All Night" is a bad song by any means. But it's the relative weak spot—key word: relative—on a mostly flawless album. One of the things that makes Lemonade so great is that it features angry, scorned, no-fucks-given Beyoncé, fully unleashed for the first time. Especially in the first half of the album, when she's swinging a baseball bat and stalking after-hours spots in six-inch heels. By the time we hear "All Night" at the album's close, she's forgiven Jay Z, everything is wrapped up with a happy-ending bow, and she's back to lighters-in-the-air pop-ballad Beyoncé. Now, all Beyoncés are great, for sure—but "suck on my balls, pause" Beyoncé is the best.

Album: Malibu

This is part of the chorus to "Silicon Valley": "Open your heart/What's behind those tig ol bitties?" Get it? It's a song about wanting to know someone's interior self, and how hard that can be because of large breasts and/or insecurity. "I just wanna know what's under/That tender titty meat." Paak is a creative, chance-taking songwriter, and this is what happens when you roll the dice and lose. 

Album: The Life of Pablo

When the best thing you can say about a song is that the new version is "better," you know you're in trouble. When Kanye first dropped "Facts," his diss track at one of the most recognizable companies in the world, it was brash and petulant (and, it bears mentioning, incorrect), but it wasn't a good song. It got a new beat from Charlie Heat, making it listenable for the first time, but "better" and "listenable" don't warrant any song's inclusion on one of the best albums of the year. 

Album: Coloring Book

The critics who find Chance to be saccharine, who find his worldview grating or too sunny to be convincing—this is the best evidence for that argument. It also doesn't help that the reprise of this song is so god-level it makes the first iteration feel even more unnecessary. 

Album: We Got It From Here...Thank Your 4 Your Service

We Got It From Here is a long album. At two discs (although, if we're being real here, who's listening to this on a CD?) stretching over 16 tracks, cuts could have easily been made. And this song is a bump in the road between two really strong songs ("Enough" and "Black Spasmodic").

Album: Blank Face LP

Even Q knows this is the one. And it's not even that the album can't accommodate a softer moment—"Whatever U Want" is good. This song just doesn't...work.

Album: Slime Season 3

Young Thug is a singular talent, the kind of rapper who can, at will, redefine what good rapping sounds like. Basically, there's no one else quite like him. Which makes the prospect of a Thug-led posse cut an exercise in dilution, as this song goes to show. 

Album: The Divine Feminine

For Mac Miller, love is sex. Which, cool—physical intimacy as a conduit for emotional intimacy is dope. Sex is fun. But "my dick on business trips"? If there were a competition for Bad Sex in Hip-Hop, this song would win it.

Album: Anti

Though Anti is rightfully hailed as Rihanna's strongest album to date, it doesn't quite stick the landing. Closer "Close to You" is not only the weakest song of the LP, it's also a victim of poor sequencing. Ending an album with three straight ballads is a daring move that Rihanna nearly pulls off—"Love on the Brain" is a cool throwback anthem, and "Higher" is arguably the best song on the entire project. "Close to You," unfortunately, is a clunker, paced too slow, and lacking any of the bold, unapologetic attitude that otherwise defines Anti.