50 Best Albums of 2015 - 50 Best Albums of 2015 | Rolling Stone 

Kendrick fought the power, Adele soared higher, D’Angelo shocked the world and more

As the curtain falls on 2015, it might be hard to remember any albums released this year besides Adele\'s record-breaking, generation-uniting, triple-platinum-and-counting

. But there was so much more to hear. Kendrick Lamar\'s Molotov-cocktail-tossing hip-hop, D\'Angelo’s razor-sharp R&B and Kamasi Washington\'s restorative jazz all made major statements, feeling like three crucial dispatches from the #BlackLivesMatter protests under three black-and-white covers. Over on the pop charts, Halsey celebrated the "New Americana" (rhymes with "Biggie and Nirvana"), and some of 2015\'s best albums upended the old one: Upstart Chris Stapleton sang country songs like Sam Cooke, Jason Isbell made roots-rock that shouts out Sylvia Plath, and both Rhiannon Giddens and Bob Dylan took turns running the American songbook through their unique prisms. This year saw some fantastic releases from Rock & Roll Hall of Famers (Keith Richards, Don Henley, Darlene Love), along with a few strong returns from the alt-rock heroes of the Nineties (Blur, Sleater-Kinney, Wilco). R&B innovators like the Weeknd and Miguel walked a reverb-saturated lane into the future and past, while rappers like Drake, Future and Rae Sremmrurd brought cohesive, immediate statements for the Internet\'s insatiable now. Here are the 50 records that defined our year.

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