Year In Music, 2009 : Short 2010 Revision!

I feel really proud of my Year In Music post I posted on Christmas Eve. I think I mentioned all the artists and albums that deserved praise, and appropriately dogged any artist or album that didn't. However as I was reading through the other day, there are Two HUGE omissions that I need to shed a light on right now before it's too late.

For one, I wanted to congratulate Trey Songz on a pretty incredible 2009 on the R&B charts. I mentioned Usher, Chris Brown and Ne-Yo as reasons why Mario was never able to become the King of R&B. Those same artists are to blame for not letting Trey get his shine on all these years since his debut album "Gotta Make It" in 2005. Additionally, his music kind of sucked. I've always liked him and thought he deserved better material, though he managed to get at least one great song on each album. His best song being 2007's "Can't Help But Wait".
This year, I have no idea what happened. Either he got a new Team behind him, or he just really focused on making some Hit-making songs. Whatever happened, it worked for him in a huge way. It seemed like at any given point in 2009, Trey had at least TWO HIT songs on R&B radio. Starting with Stargate's Pop-leaning "I Need a Girl", the Gucci Mane and Soulja Boy assisted "LOL Smiley Face". Than came the collaboration off of Drake's Mix-Tape, "Successful" that ended up becoming a working single for Trey's own "Ready", his third album which debuted in the Top 5 on Billboards Pop Albums. Even at the end of the year, Trey had another Two big singles on the radio with "I Invented Sex" and "Say Aah".
He hasn't fully crossed over to the Pop side, like Usher and Ne-Yo seemingly have been able to do off and on. Still, Trey pretty much OWNED R&B radio this year and it looks like he has a pretty bright career ahead of him.

Secondly, and I really can't believe I didn't mention this song at all in the blog as it was a pretty big staple of the year. When you talk about Anthem's that cross over to not only different radio outlets, but a song that EVERYBODY knows or wants to know, Jamie Foxx and T-Pain's "Blame It" was definitely that Anthem for 2009. Not only did it have one of the catchiest hooks in Music History, (you all know it... sing along... "Blame It on the A-A-A-A-A-Alcohol. Blame it the Goose got you feelin Loose") but it's also a very well constructed Urban single. It has great production value from Christopher "Deep" Henderson, which is actually a pretty simple track but the details make it sound so whole. It also includes one of T-Pain's Best verses in his career, and although his voice is auto-tuned out of this world Foxx turns in a very playful and fun vocal delivery on this track. "Blame It" Owned 2009, and I'm so mad at myself for forgetting about it. I think Jay-Z's "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)" stopped T-Pain's career dead in it's track (which was another thing I wanted to mention on my Year in Music blog post, but thought better of it), so both Pain and Foxx were obviously after thoughts at the end of the year. I had to go ahead and give Pain, Foxx and Songz their dues for making impressive waves this year.