VMP Magazine

First Of The Month is our monthly rap column, and instead of compiling a list of the 10 or 20 best rap albums--since the genre isn't as album-dependent as the other genres we've done Best of 2016 lists for--our columnist counts down the songs, mixtapes, and albums that defined the genre this year.

Video games are in a very weird place in 2016. Three years since release, home consoles like the PS4 and Xbox One have yet to achieve the need-filling ubiquity of the machines that came before them, and backbone triple-A titles like Titanfall 2, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and Watch Dogs 2 are failing to recoup expenses. Much like the film industry, gaming’s middle class is disappearing faster than ever. Technology is becoming more and more consolidated, and the idea of owning a physical device to - specifically - play video games is only going to get more niche. In a world where not even Infinity Ward can hit their quota, I wouldn’t blame anyone in the industry for fearing the worst.

But in moments like this, it’s important to remember that creativity has a way of asserting itself, no matter what the sales figures say. From long-forgotten franchise reboots, to bedroom projects, to star-studded, thoroughly marketed sequels, I’ve had a lot of fun playing video games this year. The following 10 are worth your time for many reasons, but we’re featuring them here for their particularly memorable score. If you’re not a gamer and have a negative impression on the industry as a whole, I’d hope that these soundtracks might contextualize the hobby, and prove that there’s real people with commendable passions working behind the scenes.

Musical guests on late night television are one of the last remaining monocultures of music consumption, enjoyed by both the mainstream and underground alike. Where we all make contact with music on our own terms, increasingly divided across platforms and curators, late night has always felt like a common thread — a space for us all to be, even if just briefly, in the same audience for a night. As every other aspect of our cultural landscape morphs and realigns, late night music programming has remained surprisingly intact. It’s enduring, but nonetheless still kicking with vitality. The artistic gestures created for and documented by national television can capture uniquely an artist’s grand introduction to their latest work, setting the tone for how we understand their vision. Elsewhere, bands can shift a stubborn narrative they find themselves locked into after delivering a cultural touchstone that resets their perception. This power is singular to the platform; we no longer listen to the radio together, read the same blogs, or attend the same concerts, but at least we together still watch these same performances. Here’s to the best moments of the medium over the last twelve months, and long live late night.

Deaf Forever is our monthly metal column.

Since we’re nearing the end of the year and this is a countdown of the best stuff that came through my speakers during it, I’ll say what I've said all 2016: you can say a lot of things about this year, but the thing I think we can all agree on is that it’s been a really strong year for music, but especially folk. Below are the 20 Best Folk (or something resembling it) Albums of 2016 and while they are in some sort of order, outside of my #1 album you could talk me into any of the other 20 being #2 depending on the day. Here’s hoping 2017 provides us with as much good music as 2016.

Digital/Divide is our monthly electronic column.

No one really knows how many albums are released each year. With free mixtapes sites, Spotify, and Bandcamp opening up their loving arms to any album made by anyone, the best estimates are that there are around 75K albums made each year. If you wanted to keep up and listen to them all, you’d need to listen to 1442 albums a week. If you figure the average album is about 35 minutes, you literally don’t have enough hours in the week to listen to everything released each year. Some things are going to fall through the cracks.

That’s where we come in: Here’s our list of the 15 most overlooked albums of 2016 that we think deserved more attention than they got. But that’s not all: We believe that these albums are not only worth listening to, we think they’re worth owning as well, so you can purchase each and every one of these albums in the VMP Store, right now.

Without further ado, here’s our list of most overlooked albums from 2016.