album

Post Malone burst onto the music scene with the 2015 hit single White Iverson. The song peaked at number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100, cementing Malone, also known as Austin Post, as a performer to keep an eye on.

He’s now up to four studio albums with the recent release of Twelve Carat Toothache. The hip-hop artist has certainly had his ups and downs and he’s been a bit of a controversial music figure. However, his staying power and popularity are undeniable.

He’ll never make the lyrically raw music of someone like Kendrick Lamar, but Malone has found a lane that works for him and is cruising in it beautifully.

Stoney: Post Malone’s rocky start

Stoney, the first studio album for Malone, is admittedly a bit of an inauspicious start to his music career. There are certainly good tracks on it, like Congratulations, Go Flex, I Fall Apart and others. However, it’s a very hit or miss album.

While White Iverson arguably got the music world’s attention, it’s not a particularly great song. It’s not the best on this album, and his later albums have even more superior tracks.

The Stoney era is also an interesting one for Post Malone’s overall career. He’s often found himself in the middle of pop music and hip-hop, without a clear place in either.

Now, he’s comfortable doing his own thing. In the past, particularly in the Stoney era, he tried to be what he wasn’t. There was a time in Malone’s career when he appeared to be leeching off of hip-hop and just riffing on what popular hip-hop artists did.

He was trying to sound like them, write like them and more or less be them. That’s not who he is and it resulted in a lackluster album that largely serves as a reminder for how far he’s come.

Stoney isn’t an awful album. There’s plenty to like, but there’s also a lot to ignore. For a debut album, that isn’t a major surprise, but it does firmly make this his worst album to date.

Beerbongs & Bentleys: Perhaps there’s more to Malone

With Beerbongs & Bentleys, Post Malone began to shed the label that had followed him around for Stoney. He began to make his own music and stopped worrying about being someone else.

There are still a few misses on this album, such as Candy Paint, Same B*****s or Zack and Codeine. It’s also probably too long, which is ultimately a product of the streaming era.

Still, some of the tracks on this album hold up among his best work, even almost five years later. Otherside is tremendous. Spoil My Night has perhaps Malone’s most iconic lyric delivery and a nice Swae Lee feature. Sugar Wraith, while admittedly a bit self-indulgent, is an absolute hit.

When looking back at his albums in order, it’s easy to see a lot of growth. That’s evident from Stoney to Beerbongs. Naturally, he kept growing and kept getting better, but this is a good album nonetheless.

Twelve Carat Toothache: This is who Post Malone is

Malone’s fourth studio album Twelve Carat Toothache debuted in 2022 and comes in just shy of the top spot in this list. It can certainly be argued that it’s his best work yet, too. It feels the most Post Malone of any album he’s put out yet.

Even with two bonus tracks, it’s shorter than his other albums. Finally, he shed the idea that more is better and stripped the album down to its best parts. Some of those parts, like Euthanasia or Waiting for a Miracle are pretty rough listens.

However, for the most part, the rest of the tracklist ranges from solid to incredible. It’s a shame the original version of the album doesn’t have Waiting for Never because it’s perhaps the quintessential Malone track and it’s perhaps his best to date.

Not to be outdone, the original tracklist does have When I’m Alone, which is again one of his best songs yet. His pairing with The Weekdn on One Right Now has most music fans begging for the two to work together on a full album.

The features, with the exception of Roddy Ricch’s verse on Cooped Up are really good, too. Doja Cat spins a delightful verse on I Like You (A Happier Song) and Gunna fits right in with I Cannot Be (A Sadder Song).

Lemon Tree is the most experimental song on the album and it’s yet another classic for Malone. The way he croons “better” throughout the song in a stark country twang is something no one else in the pop or hip-hop genre could pull off and it’s beautiful.

There’s a little bit of self-reflection on the artist’s part here, too, but not too much. Malone is, after all, more interested in fun than being brutally honest on his songs.

Hollywood’s Bleeding: The experiments paid off

Hollywood’s Bleeding edges out Twelve Carat Toothache by a hair to be Malone’s best album yet. It features a maturity not found on Beerbongs & Bentleys or Stoney and it’s out of the box enough to feel like exactly who the singer is.

In fact, it’s as if Malone just threw together artists and song ideas at random and it works. Malone has never been about precision or subtlety and this album doesn’t even pretend about that.

The simple fact that he put Ozzie Osbourne and Travis Scott on the same song is incredible. The fact that it’s actually a good song is even more mind-boggling. Pairing rapper Future and pop singer Halsey together was light work after that one.

The standouts here, and there are a lot, are really good. Saint-Tropez is a wonderful song- it’s a true shame it’s so short. Hollywood’s Bleeding is the best opening track a Post Malone album has had yet.

Sunflower, thanks to its place in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, has become a cultural phenomenon. It also features a brilliant Swae Lee. A Thousand Bad Times and On the Road are very different songs that are both excellent.

It’s a Malone album, so it’s not without a couple of skips. Internet is not a good song and Wow. and Enemies with DaBaby are mediocre. Still, the consistent quality across the board is better than any other Post Malone albums yet.