2006 was a subpar year for music. It was also a subpar year for music sales, and while you could blame that on the kids and their broadband, people have been downloading like crazy for 6 years now. The album sales issue and the quality issue are not unrelated. I think that people really will buy full albums if there's a consensus that they're good enough, but if the buzz isn't there they'll download the single and skip the album. 2006 was a download-the-single year. I kinda never heard anybody say "sure the Rick Ross single is great but wait til you hear the album..." "yeah there are some real desert island deep cuts on this Jim Jones album..."

The only album I bought and enjoyed start to finish was Mastodon's "Blood Mountain." Potpourri prog-metal for non-metalheads? Maybe. Did I enjoy the whole goddamn thing start to finish? Yes, yes I did.

Second place: Clipse, "Hell Hath No Fury." It's funny to see rock critics run off at the mouth about this record, unable to accept that there might not be more to say about it beyond "witty, well-written hustler rap with bangin' minimal beats." Is there bravado? Is there menace? Is there pathos? Sure, because good writers work all the angles. This is really just an album about two guys with the gift of obsessive focus. The Thornton brothers are two very perceptive writers who sat down and said "let's take the topic that works best for us and just MURDER it for an entire album." And they did. This isn't first place because I can't figure out what the hell happened with a couple of these beats. Rumor was that Chad Hugo was absent for these sessions, and that's how it sounds on about five of the songs - like someone was supposed to show up and add some basslines and strings and other instrumentation but there was a falling-out and whoops, there's our deadline, let's get this out before it gets bootlegged any worse than it's already going to get bootlegged.

Third place: Lupe Fiasco, "Food and Liquor." Starts great, ends great, middle kinda eh. Enormous props for putting on a bunch of unknown beatmakers and for producing a lyrically fresh positive (religious, even) rap album in 2006. This album's marketing was botched to a terrible degree by people who must not have actually listened to the man's lyrics. The fact that Lupe rides a skateboard and carries around a Nintendo DS does not mean suburban skaters and video gamers will rush out to pick up a serious LP full of message songs with religious overtones. They should have marketed this to Nas fans and Kanye fans, the older crowd, and really little kids, like 13 year olds. Seriously. Because the older heads are the ones who appreciate lyrics these days, and the little kids are the ones who have ears to hear something like "Instrumental" or "American Terrorist" and really ponder it in a way adults won't. If you're college-aged and a song about how TV is bad for you is actually revelatory, I feel for you.

There's a lot more out there that I either haven't actually heard or don't want to weigh in on. I would like to hear other people's best ofs - drop me the name of an album you really liked if you would.

And the best rap verse of the year was Andre 3000 on DJ Unk's "Walk it Out." 20 or so bars of Flavor-Ice. Can't leave rap alone, Andre, the game needs you. Tell Rico Wade to meet you and Big Boi in the Dungeon with a reel to reel, an SP-1200, and a Kleenex box full of brown herb. And no, you can't bring your Thelonious Monk outfit or your Goldie LPs.

Gotta go, I'm about to get into this Young Jeezy album. Maybe this will be a late addition to the list.