These are my personal Top 10 Worst Albums of 2022.  The rankings of these records only reflect my personal lack of enjoyment of each album.

10.Kid Rock - Bad Reputation

Kid Rock is #10 and sucks — Genre: Country Rap

Listen

This man has been rapping with the same flow for 33 whole Jesus years. The intro is hilariously bad with a fantastically bad hook. He is an absolute caricature of a human being and his music embodies that perfectly in theory and in execution. It was bad upon first listen when I was 3 and it’s still bad now. He’s a feces stain on not only the Culture of Hip Hop, but also the American traditions of Outlaw Country. His voice is so grating and the compressed mixes don’t really help. Though I don’t know if a reverb heavy kid rock is a better option, to be honest. Maybe it’s a favor. I tapped out after listening to 5 tracks.

9. DaBaby - Baby on Baby 2

The beats are incredibly shoddy. Dababy’s flow become offbeat when he isn’t holding onto the pocket of his admittedly iconic flow at this point. Like you actually can’t deny Dababy’s impact. But this album’s mixes are really rough. On top of that, it has some of DaBaby’s worst writing on any project. It doesn’t help that his concerts are buy one get one free and that at this point he’s gonna have to perform in a diaper on stage in order to redeem his previous album release successes. This album is petty dogwater and a very low effort release. I listened to the entire thing but I’m definitely not willing to return to it.

8. Drake - Honestly Nevermind

I’m over Aubrey. This is low effort house music. But Drake fans will eat anything he serves up at this point. Of course it hits like elevator music in the background. It’s Drake. He’s the only rapper that would fly in a dentist office at this point. But when you listen into his lyrics, you realize that this album was actually written by a 36 year old. At this point I have been a professional Drake Hater for 13 years now, so I will leave it at that.

7. Meghan Trainor - Takin’ It Back

I only heard “made you look” and I had to go find my Green Book. I know that she herself is obviously a very kind person and not at all a racist, and a lot of black people do love them some Meghan Trainor. However, my Spidey senses do genuinely tingle when I hear her music. The mix and production of this album is still really impressive and Meghan can hit vocal harmonies really well, but aesthetically it reminds me of the musical Hairspray and recalls images of Sundown Towns and fire hoses in my head, and I as a Black Male immediately run in the other direction at the sight or sound of the 1950s Suburban Boom. Again, it’s not her fault. She’s probably super nice and her Tik Tok marketing strategy is genius. But to me, her music just happens to unwittingly embody the spirit of Robert Moses and J Edgar Hoover in a very clearly systemic way that she herself cannot help. “Whites Only” is very much the ethos of this record after attempting to listen to the rest of it (from my perspective), and that very much turns me off from her music.

6. Ken Carson - X

I heard 3 tracks and the rough mix started irritating my ears. This album is supposed to be rage music, but I got really bored really quickly. Ken’s bars are also very bad and offbeat. This album was very lazily produced and not at all written. I barely remember his music other than he sounds like a watered down version of Playboi Carti or Yeat. Yeah I don’t want to listen to this again.

5. MGK - Mainstream Sellout

Yeah it’s a really bad pop punk record. I would rather listen to Blink 182 or old Green Day. At least they have better songs and far more youthful energy. I feel like I’m hearing a 32 year old try to act like a high schooler and I would rather not do that. What’s more is that he leans into the obnoxious “yeah I sold out! Screw you anyway!” themes on this record so much, it makes me wonder what was in that deal. Is it actually as appealing as it should be? Or are you hamming this rebelliousness up as a means of desperately trying to maximize revenue from this like a dweeby conforming corporatist with debts to pay? It’s weirdo energy to emit on a record in my opinion.

4. Valeria Almeida - Secrets

This album is obviously so bad that it’s good. She markets herself as a Selena Gomez impersonator, so her music very much sounds like an experimental parody of Selena Gomez’s music. The instrumentals sound like they were lifted right off of a royalty free site and she does a lot of very avant garde performances to put it very lightly. It reminds me of Farrah Abraham’s bizarre album. It very much scratches the same absurd itch. There’s a very weird sense of freedom in her vocal manipulations and autotune applications all over this record, as well as dub. Give it a listen, it’s a very pointless and stupid listen but it doesn’t overstate its welcome and it’s a fun time. Let’s Go, Hm hm hm.

3. Lil Baby - It’s Only Me

Before I trash Lil Baby, know that I love his song the Bigger Picture. It’s the best Lil Baby song. If you disagree with this, you may not be the biggest fan of conscious rap in general, which is perfectly fine. Just know that even from a backpacker rap fan’s point of view, that is one of the best songs about a relevant political issue at the time in hip hop, period. His legacy among the students of the Game is cemented, like him or not. That being said, his music can get really one dimensional and incredibly underwritten when his albums are neither heavily redacted or thematically varied. It’s Only Me is exactly that, which is perfectly fine. Lil Baby made this album knowing that he continuously drops hits that people pull from his albums into streams, which I also do. But 23 straight tracks of Lil Baby musically running on the exact same gear and rapping the exact same flow can get incredibly tiresome. I was bored by the 5th track.

2. Black Eyed Peas - Elevation

Listening to a new Black Eyed Peas album in 2022 is like hearing about a fiery self-inflicted car crash created by 3 daredevils who have been known for pulling death defying stunts for over 20 years, crash their car AGAIN, and you head on over to the crash site with your phone out recording and shouting out “Worldstar” right as firefighters bring out the Jaws of Life. I felt the heat in the form of the most overcompressed mix I’ve heard this year slap my face, the firefighters pulling me back with incredibly confused anger, the paramedics in the form of features trying to treat the burns while also cursing me out, and all three of them escaping their cars and avoiding them explode in the form of their terrible vocal performances and awfully applied production. Everyone cheers as they all slap me upside my head being like “why did you even run up to this crash? You could’ve died” like they didn’t even repeatedly cause the fiery self inflicted car crash in the first place. Your last great album was Elephunk. After 20 straight years of car crashes, why am I suddenly the bad guy for running up close and getting a good look at it?

1. Island Boyz - 17

Are they for real? They’re actually trying to be rappers? And they cut their dreads? There is a seven and a half minute track called “Head”. They sound terrible. Their performances are really poorly executed. The production and their vocals are very poorly mixed. After the third phase of Head, I tapped out. I can’t continue listening to this, as the performances get increasingly headache inducing. This album invokes my gatekeeping instincts. An overhaul in aesthetic and performance is essential if they want these guys to make listenable music in the future. I need to go lie down.

Top 10 Worst Albums of 2022