Page 46 - Esquire - USA (Winter 2020)

the Big Bite
THE 10 BEST ALBUMS OF
THE DECADE. . .
Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly 2015
You can’t understate the influence To Pimp a
Butterfly has had on hip-hop and politics. “Alright”
became a Black Lives Matter rallying cry, while
the album sent the genre to a new stratosphere.
Robyn, Body Talk 2010
The crying-in-the-club anthem is its own genre in the pop
sphere now, but each entry traces its origins back to Robyn’s
magnificent, mascara-streaked opus.
Frank Ocean, Channel Orange 2012
The most influential debut studio album of the decade,
Channel Orange established Frank Ocean as a visionary new
voice who helped redraw hip-hop, pop, and R&B.
Arcade Fire, The Suburbs 2010
The album in which singers and real-life couple Win Butler
and Régine Chassagne spool their very intimate anxieties about
family and growing older into arena-rock catharsis.
David Bowie, Blackstar 2016
After spending five spellbinding decades darting among
glam rock, art pop, and all the nameless spaces in between,
music’s otherworldly son left his fans with a perfect parting gift.
Beyoncé, Lemonade 2016
The most important chapter in Bey’s narrative, Lemonade
is a brilliantly realized multimedia vision with the pulse
of strength, motherhood, and black female empowerment.
Margo Price, All American Made 2017
With lyrics that rail against the pay gap and the patriarchy,
Price cemented her status as this generation’s
Young or Nelson: a stark truth-teller of the first degree.
St. Vincent, St. Vincent 2014
Between her virtuosic technical ability and her dazzling
songwriting skills, St. Vincent is a futuristic, forward-thinking
guitar god in an era of preprogrammed beats.
Rihanna, Anti 2016
The most dizzying DGAF album of RiRi’s career. An ode to
toking up, coke-fueled trysts, and Tame Impala, Anti is Top 40’s
Barbadian princess at her loosest.
Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 2010
His many public-persona faults aside, Kanye knows what the
masses want to hear before they know they want to hear it—and
this sonic vision is the supreme example of that.
—Matt Miller and Madison Vain
40 Winter 2020_Esquire
1. Between the World and Me,
by Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 This
lyrical meditation on blackness in
America announced Coates as a
major thinker and writer.
2. The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena
Ferrante 2012–15 The saga of a 60-
year friendship formed in poverty,
mired in complexities, and set amid the
political strife of a changing Italy.
3. Less, by Andrew Sean Greer 2017
Masterfully blends absurdity, heartache,
and joy; an unforgettable comic novel.
4. Lincoln in the Bardo, by George
Saunders 2017 A profoundly inventive,
deeply moving examination of the mind
of Abraham Lincoln as he grieves the loss
of his son while waging the Civil War.
5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot 2010
Erudite science writing about the long-
overlooked figure at the heart of one
of the greatest medical discoveries ever.
6. There There, by Tommy Orange 2018
The author enlarges the American canon
with this instant classic about urban
Indians living and dying in Oakland.
7. These Truths, by Jill Lepore 2018
A new history of our country, just right for
our times; includes plenty you were never
taught in high school but should have been.
8. Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell 2011
A phantasmagoric novel that fuses magical
realism, American mythmaking, and
deep lyricism—set in Florida, of course.
9. Concussion, by Jeanne Marie Laskas
2015 The book that changed football as
we know it; a tour de force of nonfiction
storytelling.
10. The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh
Nguyen 2015 Eloquently explores the
duality of the immigrant experience
as a darkly hilarious cold-war spy thriller.
11. Just Kids, by Patti Smith 2010
The singer’s memoir captures a moment
that changed the future of culture.
—John Kenney, Matt Miller, and
Adrienne Westenfeld