The Best Canadian Albums of 2020

Image via Complex Original

Label: Independent

Released: March 18

A couple months prior to his tragic death in May, Houdini told Complex Canada he felt like a work in progress. "I'm still making my way," the Toronto rapper said in my interview with him. "Like, I never peaked yet, you know? I'm still finding my sound. I'm still trying to see how I can elevate." But even as an unfinished sketch, the 21-year-old was transcending—he was one of Canada's most-streamed independent rappers and among our 20 Canadian Artists to Watch Out For in 2020. On underGROUND, Houdini continues to experiment. He plays with more unusual flows over glacial, '80s-indebted synths and propulsive, glitchy drums—yet still sounds as effortlessly tuneful as ever. Showing out for the city's underground, he boasts about his fast-paced lifestyle ("Big Time") and mourns the friends who've fallen as a result of it ("Part of Me"). It's a short but solid showcase of Houdini's natural gift for melody—the way he casually offered up earworm hooks like loose change from his pockets. He clearly had a lot left to give. Fly high, Hou. —Alex Nino Gheciu

Label: Reps Up Entertainment/Empire

Released: October 16

On Link Up, Reps Up honcho Preme and OVO Sound’s dancehall king Popcaan keep the family close, proving that their chemistry is far from imitable. The EP is entirely produced by Toronto’s Jaegen, and it’s a chuneful fire starter. Preme and Popcaan go back and forth on every track, melodically flexing through a variety of topics. You can drip or drown on “Freeze” (“Diss OVO man, yuh wi' get pebble/Reps Up killy sen' yuh ah heaven”) or get lost in your feelings on “Love Cost Too Much” (“Got my heart broke 'cause I played the game wrong”)—it’s your choice. Everyone comes correct on Link Up, showcasing that camaraderie like this doesn’t just happen overnight. The formula is airtight and hopefully this project is merely setting up the groundwork for more to come. —JJ Bottineau

Label: Musique Nomade

Released: February 28

Anachnid’s Dreamweaver is a beautifully integrative album, amalgamating an array of genres within a wondrously cohesive dreamscape fueled by the cultural—and historical—realities of her Indigenous heritage. Throughout the project, Anachnid juxtaposes social, political, and racial injustices against intrinsically traditional values and beliefs, empowering the marginalized whilst denouncing oppressive ideals of colonization and capitalism. From speaking in Algonquin on “Animism,” transcending on “Sky Woman,” denoting the strength and significance found in “Braids,” to the Indigenous genocide of “America,” Anachnid lets us know she is an Oji-Cree and Mi’kmaq artist first and foremost, and Dreamweaver goes all the way in. —JJ Bottineau

Label: Island Records

Released: December 4

We've heard the early knocks on Shawn Mendes' new record: it's all about his love for girlfriend Camila Cabello, and that's boring. But the way we see it, writing sadboi jams is easy. Try penning an interesting hit about a healthy, stable relationship. On Wonder, our boy keeps the jig going for nearly 14 tracks. He's out here singing about date night ("Higher") and daydreaming of getting a mortgage with bae ("24 Hours"). He sounds, and looks, extremely 22—and I mean, hey, there's an audience for that. Still, despite his hardcore monogamy, Mendes flirts heavily with sonics outside his guitar-pop wheelhouse here—the songs reach sky-scraping, wall-of-sound climaxes. "Dream" swells into an ocean of M83-esque synths; "Song For No One" explodes into a horn-blowing, soulful chant-along. The record isn't entirely about love—"Monster," Mendes' duet with Justin Bieber (produced by Frank Dukes and co-written by Mustafa and Daniel Caesar) tackles the anxieties of young stardom. But while Bieber's take on marital bliss, Changes, came off anodyne, Mendes' Wife Guy energy is ambitious and loud, with stakes. Imagine what he'll sound like once he and Camila have their first fight. —Alex Nino Gheciu

Label: Black Box Recordings Inc

Released: October 30

Three-person punk collective The OBGMs take their final form on The Ends. The unrelenting tempo persists throughout the 10-track album, where the trio depart from their previous dance-punk sound and venture wholly into punk rock. Even without an affinity for the genre, their confidence and chemistry resonates on tracks like “All My Friends” and “Karen O’s.” It’s also worth mentioning that there is something refreshing and radical about seeing a punk band that is two-thirds Black, in a genre that is often overwhelmingly white. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: Bastard Jazz

Released: October 30

To say that Vancouver production duo Nick Wisdom and AstroLogical are unapologetic disciples of the late, great Detroit producer J Dilla would not be a stretch. Their sonic reverence has been rewarded by consistent collaborations with the much-lauded producer’s brother Illa J and close collaborators like Slum Village co-founder T3 and Frank Nitt. On their third album Mellow Fantasy, Potatohead People use their penchant for sloppy, sumptuous low-end beats as the foundation for their own impressive musical evolution, adding bolstered production and arrangement flair. Fusing appearances from veterans like Posdnuos of De La Soul, Moka Only, and the aforementioned T3 alongside emerging talents like vocalists Kendra Dias and Clear Mortifee, Potatohead People easily exceed well-meaning retread territory. —Del Cowie

Label: Heart Lake

Released: March 24

Conceptually rich and rewarding, Witch Prophet’s latest album DNA Activation draws heavily on her Ethiopian and Eritrean roots with every track being named after a family member. Consequently, the album runs the emotional gamut, ranging from the joyful lauding of the sartorial swag of her grandfather (“Tesfay”) to unapologetic stridency (“Makda”), devotion (“Darshan”), and admonishment (“Ghideon”). Co-produced by longtime collaborator Sun Sun, the project’s soulful beats are layered by Ethopian jazz-infused instrumentation snaking through the tracks and Witch Prophet’s unapologetic multi-lingual approach intuitively weaving English, Amharic, and Tigrinya into a cohesive and heartfelt achievement, rightfully landing it on the Polaris Music Prize shortlist. —Del Cowie

Label: Innovative Leisure

Released: June 21

On Jonah Yano’s stunning debut, we hear some of the strongest lyrical storytelling of the year. Forgoing genre conventions, he shares vivid memories of separation and loss in a subdued acoustic sonic atmosphere. The 11-song LP has the narrative focus of folk on tracks like “congratulations, you’re in first place” and the levity of alternative pop on smooth standouts like “delicate." On “monarch,” Jonah incorporates the unstructured expressiveness of jazz as his voice soars over loose saxophone riffs. Perspective is one of the main themes on souvenir: tracks are told from the POVs of each of his parents as he sets the scene for their separation. But as he shifts from each of his parents’ points of view, he is rooted in his own voice. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: XO/Republic 

Released: May 8

On the first of Nav’s triad of 2020 full-lengths, the Rexdale native continues to cement himself as an elite rapper du jour, not just the man behind the boards. In his monotone, auto-tuned twang, which is now his highly-distinctive signature, he trades bars with some of his most successful contemporaries. On that note, Good Intentions has one of this year’s most exciting selection of features, with verses from Lil Uzi Vert, Travis Scott, and Gunna, to name a few. Nav even secured a feature from Pop Smoke; on “Run It Up," the late Brooklyn drill rapper’s rich, growling baritone cuts through Nav’s nasally flow to create a contrast that stands out on the album's nearly hour-long run. Good Intentions is an album so immersed in the sonic culture that it was released into, it sounds like now and fits seamlessly into rap’s dense tapestry. For other artists, this would be redundant, but for Nav, whose production was foundational to this sound, it’s the tried and tested formula for a hit. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: Avant Garden/Island Records

Released: February 28

Vocalist Yoni Ayal and guitarist Pierre-Luc Rioux perform alchemy together as Chiiild. Synthetic Soul transmutes the ordinary into the romantic, with lusciously trippy, psychedelic R&B offerings that slice through the doldrums of 2020. In a sense, the project’s title is a bit of a misnomer. Synthetic Soul is actually made up of entirely natural ingredients: love, life, and death. However, it’s the synthesis of these ideas, housed within a blissfully euphoric seven-track EP, that seizes our attention and leaves us with feelings of hopefulness when it’s all said and done. If Chiiild can make it work during the worst of times, I can’t imagine what they’ll do when things get better. —JJ Bottineau

Label: Independent

Released: July 24

2020 was the year that DijahSB came into their own. Their tight, bouncy 23-minute debut is an upbeat assertion of their signature style. Dijah opted for Kaytranada-esque electro-R&B instrumentals to fuse those genres with their catchy rap flows. The tone of the album is refreshingly honest: where most rappers speak to their financial gains, Dijah has entire tracks (“I’ll Pay You Back on Friday” and “Broke Boi Anthem”) dedicated to their deficit, without dropping the mood or taking a patronizing approach. 2020 the Album is multi-faceted in its independence: the project was released without a label’s backing and it’s essentially feature-free. In fact, the only other voice we hear is from Dijah’s frequent collaborator, Cola, who spends most of his verse hyping Dijah up, as he should. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: Independent

Released: May 28

For Montreal’s Backxwash, the world has been a cruel place, and on God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It—this year’s Polaris Music Prize winner—she lets her story be known. Conceptually, and contextually, she remains resolute, unwavering in her unrepentantly violent apotheosis stemming from a lifetime of torturous conditioning. At its core, the album provides a respite from societal norms, rebuking everything they have to say. It’s aggressive, therapeutic, and cathartic; it’s Black trans retribution backed by a jarring horrorcore soundtrack screaming at the system. She's seizing self-acceptance through a raucously loud refusal to conform. Within 20 minutes, Backxwash reckons with biblical-sized concepts of self-identity, family, and religion—all while securing the bag with her Polaris win. —JJ Bottineau

Label: OVO/Republic Records

Released: May 1

In the midst of the quarantine, Drake gifted us with an album of demos to tide us over until Certified Lover Boy comes out next month. In under an hour, Dark Lane Demo Tapes embodies the experimental spirit of a demo tape. Drake tries his hand at new flows over grime and drill beats. He even dabbles in Soundcloud rap on the leaked “Pain 1993,” which features a verse (and signature ad libs) from Playboi Carti and production from Pi’erre Bourne. By tapping emerging talent, like Fivio Foreign and Giveon, for features and samples, Dark Lane is forward-facing yet self-referential. Some of the album’s high points—"Losses" and "Not You Too," featuring former nemesis Chris Brown—are deeply reminiscent of Drake’s broody Take Care-era slow jamz. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: Independent

Released: July 10

It's Not How It Sounds captures the Clairmont The Second doubling down on betting on himself. In the past five years, in particular with projects like Lil Mont From the Ave and Do You Drive?, the Toronto-based MC, producer, and multi-instrumentalist has established himself as a fearless creative, gradually chiselling his expansive talents into increasingly focused artistic statements. On INHIS’ largely minimalist soundscape, Clairmont is tired of being overlooked and underestimated. Wary of untrustworthy associates in life and in business, Clairmont is lyrically unsparing in airing out his frustrations and vulnerability, while reasserting his resilience and dogged single-mindedness as an admirable act of self-preservation. —Del Cowie

Label: 3-5 Playa Production Inc.

Released: January 24

As a self-described music nerd, Junia-T was excited to play orchestrator on his Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted album Studio Monk. He took a step back, moving away from his previous front-facing work (as one half of Smash Brovas and his 2014 rap effort Eye See You) and instead focused on becoming a champion of collaboration. Along the way, he had an epiphany during Addy Papa’s Riot Club sessions in L.A. It was his Bitches Brew moment, where you send in a pivotal memo to your record company—or in this case, when Junia-T realized he had a knack for making shit sound dope behind the boards as much as he can on the mic. As such, conducting an ensemble like the one gathered on Studio Monk is no easy feat, and Junia-T is appreciative from the jump. On “Tommy’s Intro,” you hear a shout—“Whole band getting live, baby!”—that sums Studio Monk up to a T. It’s a smorgasbord of talent starring a who’s who of the Canadian underground. It’s like the hip-hop equivalent of a Shinichirō Watanabe feature, and it’d definitely be Yoko Kanno-approved. Studio Monk is a collaborative success of unbridled energy relative to an effort helmed by Quincy Jones. For a standout album where every track is a highlight, Junia-T—the now super-producer—and his chosen collaborators complement each other superbly. —JJ Bottineau

Label: 4AD

Released: February 21

On Miss Anthropocene’s penultimate track, “Before the fever,” Grimes softly recites, “This is the sound of the end of the world”—one of the clearer signifiers throughout the project. On a concept album focused on trying “to make climate change fun,” it becomes obvious that this is the stuff of nightmares, phantasmal in nature but as clear as day. Fortunately, there’s a haunting beauty found in catastrophic planetary devastation. If you had to judge Grimes’ fifth album by the portmanteau that makes up its name, you might think we’re all fucked. “Misanthrope” combined with “Anthropocene” equals Miss Anthropocene. Abstractly, it reminds me of “Hey Ya!” by Outkast: a disgustingly catchy pop anthem that wasn’t really happy at all—it was about failed relationships. It’s musical subterfuge at its finest. That’s what Grimes accomplishes over the course of ten existentially threatening tracks; she disguises real-life tragedies—our relationships with the planet and ourselves—within her fantastically well-produced magnum opus. In the end, Miss Anthropocene is an ethereal post-a-pop-calyptic nu-metal cosmic space fairy tale of dystopian proportions. It may dulcify our impending doom, but the situation remains dire, nonetheless. When it’s over, we’ll ask, “Who killed the world?” And Grimes will tell us that we did: We’re the culprits. And while it may be unsettling to say, Miss Anthropocene is completely on point. —JJ Bottineau

Label: FMLY/Island

Released: March 27

What you see is what you get with Jessie Reyez. Earlier this year, the Toronto singer belted the Canadian national anthem from the top of the CN Tower before a Toronto Raptors NBA playoff game taking a knee in solidarity with the uprising in the U.S. following the brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. Not long afterwards she called out the Canadian music industry—including her own label—for its lack of diversity in its hiring practices. It’s this same uncompromising attitude that Reyez brings to her music. On Before Love Comes to Kill Us, the Toronto singer-songwriter delivers her now inimitable brand of unfiltered candour with no traces of artifice. Even though this is Reyez’s debut album, coming after two EP releases and the 2016 breakthrough of her single “Figures,” Reyez emits the air of a veteran presence. Yet the album finds Reyez displaying her malleability and versatility as an artist. She is equally adept at being a seductress on the hyperactive “Dope,” helplessly in love on “Coffin” featuring Eminem, and fiercely protective on standout track “Intruders.” Reyez effortlessly locks into everything from bare-bones guitar instrumentation to elaborately layered atmospheric R&B (“Imported” with 6LACK), giving her a myriad of options on future projects. Often delivering deliciously blunt couplets, she remains thematically steadfast. Reyez loves hard and her demand for reciprocity or repercussions, and an allegiance to doing the right thing, is reflected in her life as well as her music. —Del Cowie

Label: Same Plate Entertainment/RCA Records

Released: October 21

On the soulful follow-up to his 2019 debut STILL, TOBi put his versatility on full display. Like the cover shows, each track taps into a different facet of the Nigeria native’s range, from singing softly over celestial strings on “Shine” to flowing over “Dollas and Cents,” the jazzy opener produced by Juls. His bars are catchy and easy to decipher, but it never comes at the expense of his storytelling. “Family Matters” turns the lens inward, giving insight to his motivations thus far. ELEMENTS has a short but impressive sampling of features from fellow rising Toronto artists LOONY and Harrison, as well as Seattle producer Sango, whose specialties range from baile funk to bounce music. On each track, TOBi skates from topic to topic, bobbing and weaving through different flows and producer signatures, all while sounding wholly like himself. The 10-track EP has the same autobiographical tone as STILL, but takes a step deeper, with TOBi sharing his musings on topics like lost love and student loans. Shortly after the release this fall, TOBi took to Instagram to confirm that ELEMENTS Vol. 1 is the first in a series of ELEMENTS projects, and given its range, the next installment can go in any direction. —Sumiko Wilson

Label: OVO Sound/Warner

Released: April 17

In a particularly strong year for Toronto’s juggernaut of R&B talent, Dvsn’s third album A Muse In Her Feelings can stake a viable claim to be at the top of the pile. On their first two albums, Dvsn established Daniel Daley’s aching vocals and Paul “Nineteen85” Jeffries’ understated and accomplished sonic proficiency, playing to their formidable strengths as a collaborative unit. However, this time around, the duo open up their creative process to other high-profle collaborators such as Future, Ty Dolla $ign, and Summer Walker as well as hometown talents like Jessie Reyez and fast-rising Scarborough singer Shantel May. The results have expanded their palette, without disturbing their core sound.

Indeed, the Buju Banton-assisted “Dangerous City” and a Gardiner Expressway-inspired Popcaan on “So What” find Dvsn comfortable enough to authentically tap into their diasporic West Indian backgrounds in a masterful mid-album club sequence helmed by Nineteen85. However, on either side of that uptempo suite of tracks, Daley and Nineteen85 incorporate and acknowledge their encyclopedic knowledge of nostalgic '90s R&B, delivering a romantic narrative in three acts that gives Daley ample room to lyrically and vocally mine the character arc that heartbreak, denial, lust, and resolution affords on standouts like “No Good” and “A Muse.” Meanwhile, this is arguably the best showcase of Nineteen85’s production versatility to date, knowingly paying homage (“Between Us”), successfully experimenting with kinetic beats (“Keep It Going”), and imperiously flexing power-ballad muscle (“For Us” and “Again…”). Beyond Toronto, A Muse In Her Feelings is one of the most accomplished R&B albums released anywhere this year. —Del Cowie

Label: XO/Republic

Released: March 20

I don’t need to tell you how good After Hours is—judging by the numbers, you already know. It had the biggest streaming week ever for an R&B album when it dropped in March. "Blinding Lights" is quite possibly the biggest song of all time, setting the record for longest-running Top 5 and Top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100. Abel Tesfaye is, unquestionably, a motherfuckin’ starboy. He's come a long way from being a homeless kid trying to prove his worth in the Screwface Capital (which he recounts, very literally, on album standout "Snowchild"). And yet, as the Recording Academy made clear by negging him this year, he is still, somehow, an underdog.

Regardless, this is The Weeknd’s finest era. After Hours is the most fully-actualized version of the artist we’ve heard yet, effortlessly blending the seedy, brooding noiR&B of his early Trilogy mixtapes with the arena-sized pop that catapulted him into superstardom. At the same time, the album is surprisingly uncompromising, its weird ’80s space-odyssey aesthetic akin to nothing else in the mainstream. Despite drawing on several disparate genres—the shimmering synth-pop of "Save Your Tears," the drum-and-bass skitter of "Hardest to Love," the codeine-dripping R&B of "Escape From L.A."—it's also his most cohesive LP in years. The connective tissue is the singer himself, updating his self-loathing Lothario persona with a little more self-awareness—he pops pills, he fucks, but this time, he repents—and expanding it into a grand, cinematic, Casino-meets-Lost Highway narrative. This is Tesfaye's singular vision, his Thriller moment, and something only he could've manifested himself. Notice that this is his first album with no features, and while Illangelo and Max Martin helm much of it, Abel's also got a production credit on nearly every song.

In his Variety interview earlier this year, Tesfaye admitted he was initially worried about the reaction to "Blinding Lights." "When I made this song I was nervous because I felt like I went overboard with the ambition—I'm ambitious, but I thought maybe this is too much," he said. We're lucky he saw it through. After Hours has been one of the few beacons getting the world through this soul-destroying year. Great artists taking brilliant creative risks should be celebrated and valued. If anything, it encourages great art to keep getting made—and we could all do with some more of that right now. So, let’s call After Hours what it is: the best Canadian album of the year, period. Go home, Grammys. You’re drunk. —Alex Nino Gheciu