bet album of the year Archives

This year’s AOTY Nominees List at the BET Awards is as stacked as ever. From Beyonce’s dance odyssey, Renaissance to Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, it’s anyone’s guess which album will come out on top. Today, we’re looking into the commercial success and wide-ranging influence of each of the respective nominated albums for the 2023 BET Awards AOTY.

GloRilla – Anyways, Life’s Great

Memphis’s rap scene has experienced a resurgence over the past few years, and GloRilla’s currently at the forefront of the sound. Anyways, Life’s Great is certainly an accurate title regarding the 22-year-old’s star-ridden success. Off the heels of her burgeoning Crunk anthems, she took home the win for Breakthrough Hip-Hop Artist Of The Year at the 2022 BET Awards. With the support of hip-hop icon Cardi B on “Tomorrow 2,” GloRilla is back for more in 2023.

Anyways, Life’s Great is brief, running at nine tracks. However, it’s probably wise for a young artist still looking to find her footing. Her debut EP certainly sets her in the right direction as GloRilla audaciously blends gangster rap with crisp snares and rumbling drums. Still, Anyways, Life’s Great isn’t a straightforward collection of rap anthems. She’s been through poverty, abortion, and personal betrayals, she’s effective at expressing her personal shortcomings on the 26-minute project. GloRilla is perfectly positioned to push forward Memphis’s hip-hop landscape for years to come.

Chris Brown – Breezy

It would be a lie to say that Chris Brown’s nomination isn’t a mild shock to hip-hop fans. It’s been just about a decade since the peak of the high-octane vocalists’ relevancy. Since then, his discography has been littered with one lackluster album after another. However, R&B fans still remember a time when Chris Brown carried the genre on his shoulders. When the genre was being shunned in favor of pop anthems, its resurgence can largely be attributed to the 34-year-old.

Luckily for Chris Brown fans, the Virginia native knew he had to do something different on Breezy. At an hour and a half, there are plenty of snoozers. However, at least, he’s not shooting for the 3-hour film layouts of previous projects. The “short” timeline works in his favor. “Harder” contains heavy D’Angelo influence in its sonic and vocal pallets, while “Forbidden” is an exhilarating throwback to Chris Brown’s chart-topping days. While there are plenty of flaws, Breezy has just enough moments where the R&B veteran is at his best.

DJ Khaled – God Did

If DJ Khaled really wanted to, he could ditch the whole music thing and play golf for a living. As long as it’s on video, he’ll have millions of fans re-posting his content. Over the past few years, the Miami multi-millionaire has become just as well-known for his downright goofy antics as he has for a deeply impressive hip-hop discography. However, the commercial success of God Did was always going to make it difficult to leave off of BET Awards’ 2023 AOTY list.

Solidifying his role as a savvy curator, all of the heavy hitters are on God Did. Drake, Lil Baby, 21 Savage, SZA, and Don Toliver are only a few members of the hall-of-fame cast on DJ Khaled’s most recent delivery. Outside of DJ Khaled being slightly more omnipresent, the plodding beats and rapturous autotune are all indicative of what he’s done over the past decade. While God Did has brief moments that hint at a creator who may want to push the boundaries, they’re too few and far between. However, DJ Khaled still does what he does best: curate the big numbers on a project that demands a listen off of feature notoriety alone.

Drake & 21 Savage – Her Loss

The North and South collided on 2022’s hit collaboration, Her Loss. In many ways, the project signified a return to form after an up-and-down few years for the Canadian rapper. That isn’t to say that Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind was a failure. However, there’s no denying that the dance anthems yielded mixed results at best. Her Loss got the duo back to what they do best; bar out amidst heavy trap-laced beats.

Even if the quasi-collaboration album is hit or miss, Her Loss’s booming commercial success and the addition of bangers such as “Rich Flex” and “Treacherous Twins” makes it more than worth a listen. While each has already solidified their respective legacies, Drake sounded far more revitalized on Her Loss than he did on his previous two albums. Sure, the chemistry isn’t always there between Drake and 21 Savage since the project occasionally feels like a Drake project that simply happens to contain the occasional contribution from 21 Savage. However, Her Loss is the best we’ve heard from Drizzy in years, which is more than enough to land the project a 2023 BET Awards AOTY nomination.

Kendrick Lamar – Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

If Kendrick Lamar had stopped releasing music after DAMN., he would still be an all-time great. However, fans were always going to want more from the 35-year-old. Returning after a five-year spiritual hiatus, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers sees the Compton MC as introspective as ever. Questioning his own biases and reflecting on the Black plight, tracks such as “Savior” or “Crown” features a level of soul-searching introspective that we haven’t seen from Kenny.

However, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers isn’t just a collection of harrowing or dark ballads. Kendrick Lamar spends too much time around Baby Keem for that to be the case. “N95” and “Die Hard” are more light-hearted in their approach, contributing to Kendrick’s recording breaking worldwide tour for the project. If there was a shoo-in nomination for BET Award’s 2023 AOTY, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers was probably it.

Beyonce – Renaissance

Beyonce returned to the dancefloor on Renaissance. A rich celebration of club music and the spirit of a Friday night after work, the pop icon just wanted to have fun after an extended run of deeply conceptual albums. Renaissance is a direct response to the pandemic, packaged as an hour of exhilarating fan service that’s intended to be listened to outside. At 41 years old, Beyonce is still finding ways to extend her sonic pallet beyond the growing discography of critically acclaimed albums.

Spearheaded by “Break My Soul,” Renaissance debuted at Number One on the US Billboard 200 Charts. Did we even have to say it? Beyonce has been at the top of the game for decades and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. At its core, Renaissance is an ode to Black Queer icons and their unmatched influence on House and dance music at large. However, it’s a sound that’s bound to latch onto any ear it graces. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s not entranced by the ’90s-infused house anthems on Beyonce’s Renaissance.

SZA – SOS

The wait was worth it for SZA’s raging fanbase. Months after the release of the wildly successful Ctrl, stans were already crying out for her next project. Unfortunately for them, they’d have to wait another four and a half years for SZA’s shimmering vocal range to once again grace the charts. Consequently, SOS is over an hour long. Spearheaded by “Kill Bill,” her sophomore studio album dominated the charts for months, making it a more than a logical addition for BET.

Her most daring project to date, she tackles new sonic territory that mirrors inspirations such as Joni Mitchell or Minnie Riperton. We even get a folk ballad in the form of “F2F,” while the Phoebe Bridgers-aided “Ghost in the Machine” shoots for an ethereal soundscape mirroring SZA’s struggles with loneliness. In fact, much of SOS sees her reflecting on failed past relationships and new beginnings. It’s mirrored in the Princess Diana-inspired album cover, where SZA is engulfed in the solemness of the ocean. Both solitary and beautiful, SOS is arguably the 33-year-old’s best work to date.

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