2. Lil Wayne: Tha Carter III

This was a tough decision. Tha Carter III is something I've been waiting for a long time: Wayne's ascendance to absolute stardom, an actual straight-up album from a guy who seemed like he'd be happy kicking stoned, unhinged mixtape freestyles for the rest of his life. This is Wayne's moment. Right now, middle-schoolers across America are reciting his beyond-silly nonsense on school buses, and that's a beautiful thing. But Tha Carter III has tracks that I skip: "Comfortable," "Mrs. Officer," the second half of "Don't Get It." Stay Positive doesn't, and that difference is enough to decide who gets #1. What's interesting to me about that is that, weird as they are, those skippable tracks are Wayne's attempts to fill in the blanks, to make album-tracks that pander to specific audiences: the girl song, the fuck song, the half-baked political song. But Tha Carter III has become the colossus it now is largely because it exploded that received conventional wisdom, going heavy into Wayne's swampy misfiring brain rather than trying to translate his style into some imagined pop audience. I love the story about 50 Cent calling Hot 97 on the day Wayne's numbers came out, saying how baffled he was at this thing. Because right now Wayne's challenging ideas of rap stardom, glorifying messy compulsive stoned insanity rather than the hard focus-grouped control that somebody like 50 evinces. Wayne seems like he barely knows what's going on half the time, and it's been a while since we've seen a rap star give off that sense. And yet the album isn't the unfocused autotuned mess that the last couple of mixtapes had me fearing; it's Wayne channeling his dizziness into something purposeful and ferocious, into actual songs with hooks that kick hard, finding a balance between punchline-drunk delirium and world-conquering confidence. And plus there's that Fabolous verse.

3. Portishead: 3rd

I sure didn't see this one coming: A group best known for essentially inventing a particularly dated form of languid fuck-music (really great and sad languid fuck-music, but still) coming back years after we'd all stopped waiting with a vengeful burst of absolute dread, cut with the sort of analog synths that used to drive B-movies when B-movies were better. Someone fucked up the release date here: this stark, evil bad-vibes stew is most assuredly not summer music. If today found me in a January frame of mind, 3rd would be my #1, no question. Even with its seasonal displacement, though, 3rd is still a towering achievement, a singularly assured tightrope-walk between luminous beauty and clanking, sputtering hate. More than ever, Beth Gibbons's voice sounds like a ghost in the machine: a thin, ethereal spectre floating above the churning groove. Those tracks, meanwhile, ditch the dusty, comforting boom-bap of old for a forbidding form of psyche-rock, a hugely compelling marsh of Black Sabbath slow-burn doom-gurgle and Kraftwerk ticcy sparse repetition and John Carpenter drone-apocalypse. For the past couple of months, I've been putting 3rd on whenever I've been too stressed to function, not because it alleviates the feeling but because it enhances it, turns it into something total and immersive. It's a dark world unto itself.

4. Cut Copy: In Ghost Colors

Someone needs to make New Order albums now that New Order's not doing it anymore. Except that's not quite right; New Order always held back a bit, and they only very rarely threw themselves headlong into dizzy dancepop joy. That's what Cut Copy does over and over here. They've got that same sense of flailing gawkiness, of not quite knowing what to do with the grooves they work up. But the bits of French filter-house and bubbly Euro-pop we hear on In Ghost Colours aren't just shades or accents; they're full-on sloppy embraces. Cut Copy go for euphoria, for the liberation that dance-music promises. But the traces of fragile crybaby guitar-fuzzed indie-pop that remain aren't incidental; they're completely vital to the naive starry-eyed swooning here the same way Justin Timberlake's bushy-tailed boy-band past was essential to the cutting-loose joy of FutureSex/LoveSounds. This is basically Portishead's polar opposite: Glimmering goofy-grin summer pop that demands nothing and washes over you painlessly.

5. The Roots: Rising Down

Now that "Birthday Girl" is a nonissue, we can focus on what's great about this: the harsh and buzzing electro synth-burps, the breakneck enunciation, the shattering breakbeats, the Afrobeat guitar-pings, the inspired guest-shots, the hard and bleak production, the pure and omnidirectional ire. With all that working for it, I have no problem forgiving the occasional wack yowly chorus. Over the last couple of albums, it's amazing how completely these lifers have managed to strip away all their excesses, something that can't be easy when your touring lineup numbers in the double-digits. This isn't an album about what's wrong with rap; it's an album about what's wrong with everything, and the icy head-knock intensity of its fury perfectly matches the freaked-out consuming panic of its worldview. Tracks like "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)" and "Get Busy" are damaging experiences; they start out pummeling and never let up. And so "Rising Up," works as an unexpectedly joyous palate-cleaner, a rare glimpse of hope after a long wallow in pessimism, sort of like the sounds that play over the end-credits of Children of Men.

Voice review: Harry Allen on the Roots' Rising Down

6-10. Rich Boy: Bigger Than the Mayor, Bonnie Prince Billy: Lie Down in the Light, Be Your Own Pet: Get Awkward, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Montgomery Gentry: Back When I Knew It All