In no particular order, these below are my personal five favorite albums that I enjoyed listening to in 2015 when I took off my critic cap. That distinction is important, to me at least, because Kendrick’s album is obviously incredible and I’ve written about it and listened to it a ton, I just don’t revisit it as a leisurely experience as much as say Rocky or Drake. I also was big into FKA twigs’ M3LL155X, but I didn’t play it as much as I wanted. This was a great year for hip-hop and R&B, in particular, just an onslaught of releases (an essay I badly wanted to write, yet sadly didn’t get around to…) that I’m still trying to consume. To that end, list.