Best of 2018

Music

The best album of each genre was based on my ratings of songs on Jriver Media Player that I recorded during the year.   I figured ratings gathered over several months were more reliable of my overall impression than a snapshot of my tastes over the the last month of the year while writing this post.

There was some really good hip-hop this year that got marred by excessive auto-tune.  I can handle some amount like what Future has become a multi-millionaire doing.  But, as an example, the excellent music on Khalid's Suncity was overshadowed on much of it by autotune that did not add anything and distracted from great music.

The difference between the number of tracks I really liked on albums 5-24 was one song.  The top 4 were a cut above with Chris the clear standout. Here is my top 24 albums from 2018.

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Rank	Artist	Album
1	Christine and the Queens	Chris
2	Masego	Lady Lady
3	Ariana Grande	Sweetener
4	Kali Uchis	Isolation
5	DJ Koze	Knock Knock
6	Empress Of	Us
7	Mr Twin Sister	Salt
8	NAO	Saturn
9	Nicki Minaj	Queen
10	The O'my's	Tomorrow
11	Amos Lee	My New Moon
12	Blood Orange	Negro Swan
13	Bob Moses	Battle Lines
14	DJ Spinn	FABRICLIVE 100: Kode9 & Burial
15	Les Big Byrd	Iran Iraq IKEA
16	Low	Double Negative
17	Metric	Art Of Doubt
18	Mitis	Til the End
19	Peter Bjorn and John	Darker Days
20	Petite Noir	La Maison Noir / The Black House
21	Roy Montgomery, Julianna Barwick	Suffuse
22	Still Corners	Slow Air
23	Tom Misch	Geography
24	Usher & Zaytoven	"A"

Best Synthpop
Chris by Christine and The Queens with the strongest tracks being Les yeux mouillés, Goya Soda, Damn, dis-moi (feat. Dam-Funk), 5 Dollars, Goya ! Soda !, The Stranger, and Follarse.

Best Hip-hop/Rap

Beach Hou$e III by Ty Dolla $ign.  Best tracks were Lil Favorite, Ex, Don't Judge Me, Love U Better, and Famou$ Amy.

Best R&B/Pop

The  Lady Lady album by Masego.  Highly rated tracks included Shawty Fishin' (Blame The Net),
Prone, Tadow, I Had A Vision, Sugar Walls, and Black Love. 

Best Contemporary Pop (with a jazzy twist)  

Salt by Mr Twin Sister.   Highly rated songs were Alien FM, Buy to Return, Set Me Free, and Tops and Bottoms.

Best Psychedelic Rock 

Iran Iraq IKEA by Les Big Byrd.  A couple really good tracks were A Little More Numb and I Tried So Hard.

Best Electronic Album

Was Knock Knock by DJ Koze   Top tracks were Illumination (feat. Róisín Murphy), Baby and Moving in a Liquid (feat. Eddie Fummler).

Best Video

I watched a lot of bad videos.  This was a bad year for music videos for me!  Either the music sucked and the video was innovative or vice versa.  This was the only video I found with good music with a fun and creative video.  It doesn't hurt that Kali is cute and that was the name of my beloved calico cat.  Also, lyrics of the year,  "Ah, Whatever goes around eventually comes back to you. So you gotta be careful, baby,  And look both ways before you cross my mind.......".  Check it out!

This is my Honorable Mention video.  Good music and creative video.  The problem for me is the images are disturbing because it really hits too close to what I imagine dying might be like - beautiful and terrifying at the same time.  Here is Low's, Fly video from the album Double Negative.

I'll call this Rap Video of 2018.  Catchy song and Lil Wayne is so weird looking as to be hyptonizingly fascinating to watch.

Food

Recipe

Recipe of the year is Duck Fat Potatoes. 

Diet

Not really a diet per se because it doesn't restrict what you eat, but, intermittent fasting or time restricted eating (TRE) has really worked for me.   In a nutshell, do all your eating and drinking anything besides water (that includes coffee) to an 8 hour window.  

This 10 minute vid explains how it works along with some other cool info on salt, glucose, diabetes, and other info on how the body works that your doctor either doesn't know or thinks you are too stupid to understand.   Even if you are not going to try TRE this is need-to-know body info unless you are trying to eat yourself to death. 

Restaurant

Mister Jui's in San Francisco was a fun dining experience where I enjoyed Cantonese food elevated to probably one day a Michelin star.  

All thoughtful comments appreciated though moderated for spam!