Whether you were, like Kanye West, contemplating how good and screwed the country was in the confines of your impeccably furnished abode, or sitting in a Mike WiLL Made It-soundtracked party staring into into the abyss, it was a year of raps that sounded like everything collapsing. About the only respite from all this simmering hopelessness was oddball underground types, either swallowing their own syllables and falling down a Auto-Tune rabbithole laid down by Future, or riding the lyrics-are-cool-again zeitgeist of Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper, seemingly rapping to keep from crying. Let’s all slap a smile across our faces and put down the syrup in 2014, maybe? Never stop yelling about privately-funded prisons and other institutionalized fuckery, though.

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