Idolator

The most recent issue of electronic/hip-hop/indie lifestyle mag Urb features their picks for best singles, albums, remixes, and live shows of the year (the lists are so far unavailable online, as far as we can tell). Unlike just about every other paper and online rag trying to cram as much music as they can into lists that stretch to 100 albums or more, Urb only throws its weight behind 10 albums, seven singles, six remixes, and five live gigs, all unranked. It's also the first entry in our year-end list analysis to feature Lil Wayne's double-CD mixtape Da Drought 3, which you can probably expect to see a lot over the coming weeks. The full (brief) lists are after the jump, but for now, some cursory judgments.

THE GOOD: Quibble all you like with their picks, but it's still nice to see a publication favor brevity when it comes to compiling their year-end wrap-up lists. Do you really care what some magazine thought was the 76th-best album of 2007? (At least with long singles lists you stand a chance of having time to listen to all 100 entries.) A not-so-well-kept secret: Even professional listeners are largely bullshitting when attempting to seriously rank albums after about No. 20 or so.
THE BAD: All that said, this list is not at all surprising if you're even a little familiar with Urb's editorial remit, drawing entirely from 2007 faves widely-acknowledged by folks from the non-Paste/Harp side of indie, whether it's hip-hop (Wayne, Kanye, the Flosstradamus/Spank Rock axis), dance rock (LCD Soundsystem, Klaxons), or miscellaneous (Battles). Many of these are excellent records of course, but the uniform hipness of it all is pretty suffocating.
THE WHAAA?: Forget placing in the Top 10: There's no way that The Good, The Bad, And The Queen album was the best anything of '07. Except maybe "the best way to give Tony Allen and Paul Simonon a little well-deserved extra spending money."