It’s that time of the year again.
As the year comes to a close, TIME has revealed its annual list of the 10 best albums of 2022, which is made up of a diverse group, including Rosalía’s Motomami and 070 Shake’s You Can’t Kill Me.
Kendrick Lamar had fans waiting five long years for a new album and he finally delivered with Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. The long-awaited project, which featured Kodak Black and Summer Walker, lands at No. 8 on the magazine’s list.
“If Mr. Morale isn’t an epoch-defining masterwork on the level of Good Kid, m.A.A.d City or To Pimp a Butterfly, it’s still a fantastically rich portrait of an artist in crisis,” writes the magazine.
Pusha T told us he had the hip-hop album of the year with It’s Almost Dry, and TIME seems to agree. The magazine put him at No. 5, higher than any hip-hop album, hailing it as an “immersive gangster epic that’s brutal yet stylish, materialistic, and psychologically probing.”
Queen Bey lit up dance floors and earned critical acclaim with her seventh studio album Renaissance, which finished at No. 3 on the TIME list. Bey’s first act in a trilogy received nine Grammy nominations and spawned the “song of the summer” with “Break My Soul,” proving that “Beyoncé is and forever will be that girl.”
But not even Queen Bey could dethrone Bad Bunny, whose album Un Verano Sin Ti took top honors, with TIME declaring it “genre-defying, intergenerational, and groundbreaking.”
See the top 10 below.
TIME’s 10 Best Albums of 2022
1. Un Verano Sin Ti – Bad Bunny
2. 19 Masters – Saya Gray
3. Renaissance – Beyoncé
4. Chloe and the Next 20th Century – Father John Misty
5. It’s Almost Dry – Pusha T
6. Electricity – Ibibio Sound Machine
7. Big Time – Angel Olsen
8. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers – Kendrick Lamar
9. You Can’t Kill Me – 070 Shake
10. Motomami – Rosalía