The Best Albums of September 2013

The record industry had a big month in September; narrowing down a list to the ten best albums released during this period wasn't easy.

Diversity is the first word that comes to mind when looking over these selections. While EDM may not have had quite the same impact on the charts as in years past—Zedd's "Clarity" feels like the last major crossover anthem—the genre is still flourishing creatively and (especially) on the festival circuit. Khal of Do Androids Dance weighs in on the latest release from an underground electronic music scene based in Chicago. Our own Insanul Ahmed, meanwhile, takes a look at a record from an established star who may have slipped commercially, but retains—and even improves on—a familiar creative formula.

Take a trip to South Korea and explore the music of one of the country's biggest stars with Donnie Kwak. In Jamaica, Vybz Kartel has dominated the news, but Rob Kenner takes a look at another star who's giving dancehall new life. Music editor Dave Bry, meanwhile, takes a look at a collaborative album between an older British rock star and some of his American hip-hop fans. Meanwhile, Jacob Moore, David Drake, and Foster Kamer take a look at some of the work of new artists who made their first big splash last month. So here they are, the best albums of September 2013.

Written by David Drake (@somanyshrimp), Insanul Ahmed (@Incilin), Rob Kenner (@boomshots), Dave Bry (@davebry9), Jacob Moore (@PigsAndPlans), Foster Kamer (@weareyourfek), and Khal (@khal).

RELATED: The 50 Best Albums of 2016

Back in mid-2012, right when we were first getting warmed up to this trio of sisters known as Haim, they covered Fleetwood Mac's "Hold Me," and it set the tone for what to expect. It's pop music, but these girls know their way around a guitar riff, and they quickly gained a reputation for putting on an excellent live show—something many new pop artists struggle with these days, when production sometimes outshines instrumentation.

Throughout the rest of 2012 and into early 2013, Haim proved themselves to be more than just a retro pop group with one or two flashes of brilliance. Single after single, they delivered with powerful choruses and great songwriting—and they never flopped. They took their time with the debut, waiting over a year from when they first started buzzing to put out an album, and the best thing of all? The standout songs on their albums are the ones we didn't see coming. "My Song 5" sounds ilke nothing Haim has ever done—it combines their live instrumentation with a minimal backdrop and a stomping beat. And it's the best song on their album. —Jacob Moore

Shaggy is known the world over for chart-topping reggae-flavored pop tunes like "It Wasn't Me" and "Angel" (both from his certified diamond 2000 album Hotshot). What most people don't know is that the Jamaica-born Brooklyn-raised entertainer came up in the dancehalls of Flatbush, spitting lyrics alongside the hardest visiting artists from yard—when he wasn't on active duty as a U.S. Marine. The only thing pop about his life back then was the pop-pop of gunfire in the Biltmore Ballroom or on the battlefields of Operation Desert Storm.

On his latest album Shaggy re-connects with his rub-a-dub reggae roots by collaborating with the legendary "Riddim Twins," drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare. Additional production on the album is handled by Shaggy's longtime beat-tweaker Sting International and Lenky Marsden, the man behind the massive "Diwali" riddim (among others) who give Sly & Robbie's throwback grooves a thoroughly modern sheen. Shaggy's guest list on this record is extensive, ranging from R&B singers like Ne-Yo, Joe, and Jimmy Cosier to Jamaican reggae stars Beres Hammond, Cocoa Tea, Tarrus Riley, and Peetah Morgan to young guns like Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley, Konshens, and Chronixx—not to mention strong female vocalists like The Voice contestant Tessanne Chin and newcomers Samira and Melissa Musique.

While traditional roots reggae now seems to be more popular outside Jamaica than in the land of its origin, there is simply no denying the power of a sweet melody and a one-drop beat. "Can't Fight This Feeling," Shaggy's combination with Beres, is already approaching modern classic status. Although this album is unlikely to move 10 million copies, it will always hold a special place in Shaggy's catalog—and rightly so. It may not be another Hotshot, but it's a certified Boomshot. —Rob Kenner

It must be tough to be 2 Chainz. He spent the early part of his career overlooked as Tity Boi. Then he switched his name to 2 Chainz, got hot on the mixtape scene, translated that into mainstream success, and dropped an underwhelming debut album, Based on a T.R.U. Story. That album still managed to debut at No. 1 and go gold. So now, he’s more successful and famous than ever before (also infamous, as the confession “I been locked up more rapping than I did tryna get a brick” explains). But there’s only one problem in 2013: he's been pretty cold. Sure, he still makes the rounds—allegedly earning $100,000 a feature—but he hasn’t had anything on the level of 2012's “Fuckin’ Problems” or “Mercy.” Plus his own single, “Feds Watching,” stalled out at No. 66, unable to match the success of any of his last album’s singles.

And yet, this time around, he made a much better album.

It’s not that his debut was all that bad. But it felt like Chainz put out so much material in 2012 that by the time his album rolled around, he had run out of steam, his punchlines wearing thin. This time, he sounds re-energized and ready to explore more ideas. You expect the laugh-out-loud punchlines, and he delivers those. Opening up his bag of tricks, he experiments with different sounds and structures on songs like “Mainstream Ratchet” and "So We Can Live" (although the Iamsu!–assisted bonus track "Livin'" sounds way too much like “I’m Different”.

Straight-up bangers like "I Do It" (which features Lil Wayne and Drake) are balanced out nicely with more heartfelt odes like “Outroduction” and "Beautiful Pain.” In the end, Me Time is an album that features everything you love about 2 Chainz, and some things you might not know he had in him. —Insanul Ahmed

Janelle Monáe has an otherworldly confidence in her mastery of the breadth and depth of American popular music. Hers is a talent that has overwhelmed and underwhelmed listeners in equal measure: fans include high-profile auteurs like Prince and Erykah Badu, both of whom appear on her latest album The Electric Lady. After she wasn't invited to perform at the BET awards, Prince even made a phone call on her behalf to the network.

Meanwhile, critics compelled to prioritize innovation dismiss her as a pastiche artist, retro-fetishism gone mad. Her methods do create a distance between her and the listener. Monáe constructs a stage show in which the music (and a highly conceptual plotline) create effect after effect, but rarely seem to tap into anything resembling a raw emotional connection. Everything feels highly composed, each reference point—including everything from Innervisions-era Stevie Wonder to Prince to the cod-reggae lilt that closes the album—rendered in perfect approximation of a past legend.

The overall impact of the album is like that of a particularly eclectic DJ mix, an unpredictable roller coaster ride through musical history. But her critics' focus on Monáe's lack of a connection feels misguided. Her work is all about showmanship, a performative focus on craft in the vein of artists whose connection with the audience is based on rehearsed perfection. Furthermore, there is a connection to be made between the listener and Monáe. It's that sense of confidence, that ability to make the entire history of music her birthright. —David Drake

2013 has seen EDM rise to new heights, and with the mainstream push, one thing you automatically see is the growth of underground styles. Chicago's footwork scene is one of those. Footwork grew out of the ghetto house and juke movements, which finds the 160-ish BPM dance craze peppered with repetitive samples, complex rhythms, and a hip-hop sensibility for building tracks. While the crowds have fallen in love with DJs like Rashad (who was recently featured on Grand Theft Auto V's FlyLo FM) and Spinn, one of the pioneers of the sound, Traxman, has released a stunning, 21-track opus TEKLIVE Vol. 3: The Architek.

One thing that immediately hits you when listening to this project is Traxman's love of sampling. You'll recognize a number of the sources, but even if you don't, the way he builds tracks by manipulating these found sounds is as hypnotic as it is inspiring. Sampling can be a lost art in the hip-hop scene these days, and hearing someone excel at it in a genre that's foreign to the ears of many? It's priceless. Hailing from the West Side of Chicago, Traxman's high-energy juke and footwork soundscapes are a perfect showcase of not only what the scene is capable of, but how to properly blend these sounds into a vibe that isn't the norm, but makes you feel right at home. —khal

"Don't you think it's boring how people talk?" It's the first line of "Tennis Court," the opening track on New Zealand teenager Lorde's Pure Heroine. It's also one hell of a rhetorical question to open up your debut album with. For one thing, it's an immediate challenge in that whatever comes next should really, really avoid being boring. Besides, don't only boring people get bored?

Maybe not. Because on the list of things Pure Heroine and Lorde (real name: Ella Yelich-O'Connor) have to offer, 'boring' doesn't even remotely register. What does? Invigorating, refreshing, youthful shoegaze-flecked pop, in all the right and unfakeable ways teenage music should be. These are songs about wanting to get out of town ("Tennis Court"), about having mass-produced culture you don't give a shit about shoved in your face (the unmistakable doo-wop of "Royals," the dreary hip-hop of "Team"). It's about drinking with the bad older kids ("400 Lux") and about, of course, aging ("Ribs").

Few pop stars, let alone seventeen-year-old pop stars, can pull off songs about getting old; Lorde does it with panache: "This dream isn't feeling sweet/we're reeling through the midnight streets." But in two lines on "Ribs," Lorde conveys the essential truth of being young while aging: All the things you wished for, like freedom from adults, aren't as great as they initially seemed. And she hasn't even started paying that much in taxes, yet, either. These songs add up to an inverted version of Teenage Dream: Instead of crystalline, saccharine-sweet pop indulging ideas about young love and lust and partying and friends and listening to the radio, Lorde turns inward, and decides that none of it adds up to as much as the dreams about what might be beyond it. In other words: Fuck high school. Fuck relationships. And fuck the radio (incidentally, Lorde recently rejected an offer to open for Katy Perry on tour).

All the catchiness of her razor-sharp choruses aside, or the muffled, hazy production of those tracks that are as of-the-moment as musical ideas get, it's Lorde's voice—an unmistakably smoky croon—that's the real gunpowder in her songs. It drives through lyrical foxtrots and off-beat rhythmic cartwheels, lighting the way through thumping, cavernous beats, headlights in deep fog, as much an atmospheric setting as it is an instrument onto itself. And it retains a great, rare quality among female singers right now: Charisma. From Bobby Gentry to Cat Power and Beth Orton and back, it's nice to hear that the future of pop might not be in American Idol-style show-stopping vocals. Lorde's voice is a triumph against pop triumphalism.

Pure Heroine delivers on the aspiration of its title. It's an album about being a teenager, a great piece of Young Adult Art in the same way The Breakfast Club or The Perks of Being a Wallflower were. Still, you don't have to be a teenager to enjoy it. Or believe it. Or be wowed by it, for that matter. Within Pure Heroine is a world-weary level of songwriting talent and a throaty register that not only lacks precociousness, but that comes complete with a level of believability and realness and almost disturbingly innate talent that accomplished artists twice her age have yet to tap into. The kids aren't alright, and they're so much more, too. —Foster Kamer

Drake's Nothing Was The Same seemed to slightly underwhelm the fans who loved Take Care, at least in its first few days. Given the massive popularity of his last release, this in itself is no small accomplishment. The most evocative moments from Drake's latest endeavor—"Too Much," "Connect"—suggest a maturity and honesty that is anathema to the fanbase roped in by the neurotic interpersonal drama of Drake's most popular work. (Also, it just has fewer "bangers.") Not that the old Drake has left, exactly. Songs like "305 to My City" and "Own It" are full of that mix of oblique aphorisms and stripper-saving you'd expect from the rapper who's transformed being a "nice guy" into a larger-than-life rapper archetype.

Sonically, Nothing Was The Same tightens the focus, as Drake and 40 strip the production to sparse piano lines, giving the entire record a colder ambiance. Appropriately, Drake seems more distant than ever before. Despite the implication that he's a more "personal," open, and emotional rapper than his contemporaries, this is a guarded record. Drake jumped on a Lil Reese track in 2012, but its hook could easily describe Drake's 2013, as he sits at the lonely apex of his career: "At the top, it's just us." —David Drake

Ariana Grande is an unexpected rookie-of-the-year candidate, a chaste-seeming Nickelodeon star whose "The Way" with Mac Miller rebirthed Big Pun's "Still Not a Player" pianos as an anthem for '90s babies, rather than late-'90s clubgoers. Her vocal style is reminiscient of Mariah Carey[ (including an ability to cram many, many words into elongated melodic lines), which is no small praise. In addition to the obvious Mariah connection, her music makes quite literal '90s references throughout: the refixed Lil Kim beat on "Right There" (which suggests Big Sean might have a gift for R&B guest spots), or the "Real Love" remake "Lovin' It," possibly the album's best track.

But despite the clear love of '90s hip-hop source material, the actual production and songwriting (which includes assists from R&B legend Babyface) have an unashamed immediacy more reminiscient of late-'90s/early-'00s pop music. There's a tendency to layer hooks-on-hooks, and a smooth audio aesthetic that disguises all the moving parts in one efficient sunshine machine. There's an exuberant breeziness, a sugary generosity that prompted Gawker's Rich Juzwiak to describe the album—as a compliment, primarily—as the "Pizza Hut" of R&B records. —David Drake