Best Albums of 2011
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
Watch the ThroneTwo of the biggest artists alive building a monument to their own wealth, and it is far more fun than that sounds.Read the review
Take CareEighty minutes of expensive melancholy that invented the default mood of the decade that followed it.
21A breakup album written and sung so well that it stopped being a record and became furniture in millions of houses.
Live. Love. ASAPThe free mixtape that made Harlem sound like Houston and turned cloud rap into a career.
House of BalloonsThe record that taught a decade of pop how to sound like a comedown at four in the morning.
Born This WayMaximalist, absurd, sincere and completely committed, and it holds up better than any of it should.
nostalgia, ULTRAA free release built on other people's songs that instantly made him the best writer in R&B.
Section.80The blueprint for everything after it, made on a tiny budget by a young man determined to prove he can write.
Sailing Soul(s)The free mixtape that introduced Jhené Aiko's hushed, confessional R&B, already sounding like nobody else.
The R.E.D. AlbumTwo years of delays, a famous name reduced to the interludes, and against the odds a genuine rebound.