Alongside SZA's album, this has had a lot of talk around over the year surrounding its release. Evidently most of it was warranted as Kelela's Take Me Apart sits here at my number 11 spot just whispers away from a top 10 spot.

After catching her set at Sonar Festival last year I was sold. I'd heard a few singles beforehand but after seeing her perform my eyes were opened. If you get the chance to see her at a show in the new year - take it. You will not regret it one bit. Sonically and visually, Kelela is out of this world.It's not often that you'll go to a show a find yourself torn between closing your eyes to immerse yourself in the sound and keeping your eyes open to keep track of the visual performance. Kelela gives you both and even just by looking at her video for "LMK" you can understand what I mean.
 
Being her first studio album this definitely Kelela starting s she means to go on. Her earlier tracks still show off her talent well but this album brings everything full circle. The tracks that I've spun the most since it was released have to be "Frontline", "Onanon", "Turn To Dust", "LMK" and "Truth Or Dare". I think after listening to "Turn To Dust" for the first time I actually said that Kelela sounds a bit like this new generation's Mya. The tone is reminiscent but the two's concepts are relatively different. Just by listening to these few tracks I can see a whole repertoire full of quality material unfolding in front of Kelela and I look forward to getting to listen to it.

Tomorrow we get into this year's top ten, if you've stuck with it all month - kudos. If you're just jumping in now; keep your eyes peeled.

The album that's probably jumped about on the list the most, in at seven here's Kaytranada's 99.9%. It's crazy to think that this time last year, the only thing I really knew about Kaytranada is that he produced The Internet's song "Girl" and now his album is taking up the majority of my most played list this year.

Essentially, my entire summer was sponsored by Kaytranada. Almost every single flight, car journey, heck even tram journey I took after this album was released, featured at least one song from it. I actually remember the day that I listened to this album for the first time - I was sitting in the office trying to get on with some kind of work and I know my colleagues must've been annoyed because my foot was tapping for damn near every single song! The instant hits for me were "Vivid Dreams" and "Bullets". The instrumental on Vivid just comes through so hard, I was close to flailing my arms in the office on first listen and as soon as I heard Yukimi's voice on "Bullets" I was sold (and obviously that first drum fill was pretty convincing too).

Since the release of this album nobody has been able to stop Kaytranada - he. is. EVERYWHERE. Some of my favourite albums this year include features from him, production credits from him, wherever there is good music, there's usually some help from Kaytranada there. He has one of the most unique production sounds around at the moment - as soon as I hear one of his beats, I know that it's him. As well as being a huge plus for him this may become a bit of a vice - nobody really wants one of their songs to sound like it would go better on somebody else's album. However, let's not count him out, as good as he is now, he hasn't hit the glass ceiling yet - the next few years for him will be interesting for sure.

After catching his set at Sonar Festival earlier this year, although great, I could see room for improvement there. The only reason I say this is because, Kaytranada is one of the most talented producers around at the moment and he still has mounds of potential - more is indeed possible! I look forward to the sophomore.

Finally, here's a quick clue about what the rest of the days of Christmas might look like - this album is the only debut album to make the list! I guess that says enough.