The 10th Best Album of 2025
We've finally arrived, the top ten! And we're kicking it off with a throwback to 2000's chipmunk soul/hip hop with John Michel and Anthony James' Egotrip.
I think whether you love this album or not depends almost entirely on your sense of nostalgia and a little on how important you think vocal performance is on rap albums. I think the beats/instrumentation here is absolutely top notch. It's jazzy and smooth and soulful and idk it reminds me so clearly of something like college dropout and that early 2000's sound. I haven't heard anything that captures that sound so well since it happened, and I didn't realize how much I missed it until I heard this album.
The rapping is also good, maybe even quite good. But I do think there are times when it doesn't quite live up to the beats it's over. It's lyrically good not great also, it's not super cliched garbage but I don't think there's anything super insightful here either. The beats and instrumentals are the star here, and the rapping is good enough to not bring that down. This is the first collab album between Michel and James and needless to say I'll be highly anticipating their future output.