Reader Best of 2010 - Swiper Bootz

FourTet

Name: Kari (aka Swiper Bootz)
Location: New York, NY
Website: http://swiperbootz.wordpress.com
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Four Tet - "Angel Echoes" - There is Love in You

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Something so beautifully simplistic... Four Tet opened the year with a sonic ray of light, and assumed anomaly; There is Love in You was a calm catharsis and captured the most basic genuine human essence: love. Kieran Hebdan orchestrated an ode to the innate goodness of the individual, in the midst of a year where exorcisms reigned as the only means of expression - Hebdan brought humanity in the midst of the year of the monster.

Kanye West - "Power" - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

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Toast to the douchebags, toast to the assholes... Power is the ability to laud them, then let them burn - this is Kanye's voyage, Westward bound, breaking bad in pursuit of the G.O.O.D.

Rick Ross - "Maybach Music 3" ft. T.I., Jadakiss, Erykah Badu - Teflon Don

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Rick Ross came into his own this year, and brought more heat than Riley. In a year where Miami became the pop cultural capital, in more ways than one, Ross gave the city a sonic aesthetic, and the scene a soundtrack: hustle harmonized, faded neon strobes from the rear-view of a pitch black Lamborghini on South Beach, the heavy swelter, and the spectacular struggle - Teflon Don is bawse beats.

Janelle Monae - "Dance or Die" - The ArchAndroid

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"Some will pull the gun because they want to be stars; now I'm not saying it's better to bailar, but you can pull the trigger or you can build you an ark."

Major Lazer x La Roux - "I'm Not Your Lemonade (Heroes and Villains Mix)" - Lazerproof

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This was a cultural convergence and sonic cacophony of the highest kind - the bonfire around which the future tribes of music will dance: this is the kindling.