Miami's Best Albums, EPs, Singles of 2012

Photo by Smallz & Raskind

Heavy bass, ear-shredding distortion, booty beats, syrupy synths, and prime rhymes.

Even though the 305 is a sunny city, it's definitely got a weird, dark, and dirty side. So while this year's top local releases were often sexed-up and fun-obsessed, they were also experimental, X-rated, drugged-out, deeply gritty, and unrepentantly strange.

No doubt, an appropriately unpredictable soundtrack for these subtropical shores, lousy with clubs, coke, crime, punks, metalheads, party kids, art junkies, and a million other contradictions.

Here are Miami's best albums, EPs, and singles of 2012.

See also:
-EDM's Ten Best Tracks and Albums of 2012
-Worst Songs of 2012: Lil Wayne to LMFAO



Rick Ross: God Forgives, I Don't (Def Jam/Maybach Music Group)
The Bawse's latest album isn't just an aural peak into his extraordinary world of riches. It's an abrasively personal record, peppered with too much information that we were all dying to know, but simply too scared to ask. For example, we'd always wondered what triggered Rozay's in-flight seizure. And thanks to "Maybach Music IV," we now know that oral sex played a critical role in the Bawse's brain spasm: "Yea, such a breath of fresh air/Get a blow job, have a seizure on a Lear." Does Ross ride the white horse? No, we learned that on "Amsterdam," when he raps, "These boys snort lines, I'm fine just sipping wine/Amsterdam in the air, tomorrow on my mind." Is the house paid for? Are there any tax liens? "Fornicate in my fortress, 40K still my mortgage/24K, my toilet, all my taxes reported." Clearly, nothing can hold Rozay back. Not even the IRS. Unnngggh. Victor Gonzalez