The 15 Best Canadian Albums of the 2010s

This decade has been one big fat W for Canada. In the 2010s, we finally colonized the American pop landscape, with acts like Drake, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber making themselves at home atop the Billboard charts (at one point even simultaneously). And they brought company with them—a surfeit of other Canuck artists have also blown up stateside, from Shawn Mendes to Grimes. Suddenly, industry eyes are all focused north of the border. No longer are we just making poor man's versions of U.S. pop music (sorry The Moffatts; you were no Hanson), we're actively influencing it. This period may well go down as the 10 coolest years in history to be Canadian.

But the 2010s also marked a shift in what it means to sound Canadian. After decades of our culture being defined by plaid-and-beards rock n' roll, our most recognizable musical exports now all have sonic influences rooted in hip-hop, R&B, and electronic. For once, the rest of Canada gets to be heard, too. And it turns out the world really likes what it hears.

Ranking the country's finest musical output of the past 10 years, then, involves more than just making a list of killer LPs—it requires one to take stock of the collections of songs that best define this brave new Canadian sound. So we did just that. Thank us later. These are Complex Canada’s picks for the 15 best Canadian albums of the 2010s.

15. Alessia Cara, 'Know-It-All'

Label: Def Jam Recordings

Released: 2015

Well before cancelled-plans memes were a thing, Brampton, ON's Alessia Cara was repping hard for introverts everywhere. The then-18-year-old's antisocial anthem "Here"—a swaggering, minor-key soul track about being at a party and loathing every second of it—made such a congagious case for lonerdom that it blew her cover wide open, making her a viral sensation. Cara's loose, self-assured vocal performance on her debut album Know-It-All certainly wouldn't help keep her calendar empty—it would thrust her into pop's center, eventually earning her the Grammy for Best New Artist. Whether or not she liked the attention, it's easy to see why she attracted it—amid the robotic, forced enthusiasm of the day's major-label pop, her defiant, no-bull pop-R&B was hella refreshing. Armed with savvy lyrics and the most novel take on the teen experience since Avril, Cara's been declining an onslaught of event invites ever since. —Alex Nino Gheciu

14. Shad, 'TSOL'

Label: Black Box Recordings

Released: 2010

Maybe you know Shad nowadays as the funny, whip-smart host of Netflix's Hip Hop Evolution, but once upon a time, the London, ON native was mostly just a rapper. Still, much as he'd eventually do as a broadcaster, he told stories and spoke to audiences with eloquence and charm. 2010’s TSOL is the masterpiece of Shad the MC, a brilliantly crafted album with varied tones and themes—the glue being Shad taking every opportunity to effectively flex his wordplay without ever stepping out of his nice-guy persona. With inspired production from Rich Kidd and Classified, as well as guest spots from Ian Kamau and members of Broken Social Scene, this record will remain a banner for Canadian-crafted hip-hop in the 2010s. —Chayne Japal

13. Purity Ring, 'Shrines'

Label: 4AD/Last Gang Records

Released: 2012

When Purity Ring surfaced—seemingly out of the ether, but actually from Edmonton—in 2012, they were the fully realized, ultimate version of themselves. The juxtaposition of Corin Roddick’s dark, trappy beats and Megan James’s shy, mysterious vocals and lyrics make for an unlikely pairing and, of course, it’s exactly the reason why they’re so good together. Albeit brief, the anticipation for Shrines was quickly and thoroughly satisfied by a duo that understood themselves and how their partnership should work with a maturity far beyond their years. Every single synthed-out slapper on the record stands as a testament to their chemistry. —Chayne Japal

12. Tory Lanez, 'Chixtape 2'

Label: Self-released

Released: 2014

Already brimming with confidence and superhuman songwriting chops heading into this project, Brampton-born Tory Lanez also found a new management team and go-to producer Play Picasso to hold him down for the rest of the decade. His bold, take-over-the-world attitude is manifested in this tape which sees Tory completely abandoning his sharp raps to effortlessly croon out sensual, atmospheric, hazy mood-setters over reworked ’90 R&B smash hits. While his prolific, consistent output and touring efforts over the following years have brought him closer toward the level of stardom he deserves, 2014’s Chixtape and its three successors will always hold a special place in the hearts of his core fanbase. —Chayne Japal

11. Carly Rae Jepsen, E•MO•TION

Label: 604/School Boy/Interscope Records

Released: 2015

If ever an artist seemed destined for one-hit wonder status, it was Carly Rae Jepsen after “Call Me Maybe”—and maybe she knew it, too, because her follow-up album E•MO•TION was eager to please, in the best sense possible: huge choruses, propulsive synths, soaring vocals. It’s like every track here is convinced it’s the last pop song you’ll ever hear and wants to pull out all the stops—an approach that might be overkill if Jepsen didn’t hit her target, oh, 9 or 10 times in 12 tracks. Lyrically, thematically, E•MO•TION isn’t exactly a great leap forward; it’s not Jepsen’s Lemonade. But if it were easy to make pop records this reliably catchy, we’d get more than just a few per decade. We’re sorry we doubted you, Carly. —Tim Kennedy

10. A Tribe Called Red, 'We Are the Halluci Nation'

Label: Radicalized Records

Released: 2016

The music of A Tribe Called Red—“powwow-step,” combining elements of First Nations music with hip-hop, reggae, and electronica beats—is so conceptually interesting that a lot of critical writing about the group gets bogged down in egghead-y discourse about postmodernism and anti-colonial politics. Those politics are front and center on their third and most lavish album, We Are the Halluci Nation, but make no mistake: this stuff fucking slaps, too. Earthshaking production, fire-spitting guest verses, spoken-word interludes that can stop you in your tracks—the album couldn’t be more contemporary but also feels like a spiritual throwback to a lost golden age of politically urgent hip-hop. It makes the future of the artform exciting again. —Tim Kennedy

9. Justin Bieber, 'Purpose'

Label: Def Jam Recordings/School Boy Records

Released: 2015

Corey Haim. Macaulay Culkin. That kid who played Anakin Skywalker. The list of childhood stars who’ve flamed out spectacularly is vast and ever-expanding. So props to Justin Bieber—who, by 2015, had sullied his squeaky-twee reputation via a shitstorm of DUIs, assault charges, and an abandoned monkey—for righting the ship with this, his public-apology album. Is it the sincerest mea culpa out there? OK, no. But it’s undeniably the best-sounding, boasting an embarrassment of hits—from the tropical-house cross-questioning of “What Do You Mean?” to the Skrillex-and-Diplo-assisted emo-step of “Where Are Ü Now”—that have easily made their way into the 21st-century canon. It was always going to be the songs, not quantifiable personal growth, that would decide Bieber’s redemption or ruin. Luckily, dude’s got songs. Apology accepted. —Alex Nino Gheciu

8. Haviah Mighty, '13th Floor'

Label: Self-released

Released: 2019

13th Floor packs a lot in: swagger rap (“In Woman Colour”), Caribbean bounce (“Wishy Washy,” in which “Lauryn and the Fugees” get a shout-out), scorching polemic (“Thirteen,” as in the amendment that ended slavery in the U.S.), fun raunch (“Kiss It”). It’s the kind of reach you’d expect from an artist trying to stave off a third-album slump—but this, incredibly, is 27-year-old Haviah Mighty’s solo debut. She raps like a pro, sings almost as well, and brings an enthusiasm to the mic that grounds even the record’s most scattershot moments. 13th Floor is the thrilling sound of a hungry newcomer who knows she has your attention and will play every card in her hand to keep it. —Tim Kennedy

7. Drake, 'Take Care'

Label: Young Money Entertainment/Cash Money Records/Republic Records

Released: 2011

Your take on his “best” may vary, but there’s no denying Drake’s been a dominant force in music in the 2010s, and Take Care certainly feels like the most important album of the eight (!) he’s released this decade. There’s club-friendly singles featuring Rihanna, the Kendrick Lamar-featuring CanCon of “Buried Alive”—he even name-checks Pearson’s Terminal 1 and 3 in “The Ride"...which is kind of a weird flex, but then again, Drizzy’s also the king of weird flexes. Introspective yet sweeping, Take Care can be seen as Peak Drake, even though Drake was far from peaking back in 2011; it’s not just one of the decade’s best Canadian albums, it’s one of the decade’s best—no additional qualifiers needed. —Rick Mele

6. Daniel Caesar, 'Freudian'

Label: Golden Child Recordings

Released: 2017

“Get You,” the opener and one of many highlights from Daniel Caesar’s Freudian, is a song equal parts sleepy and sexy, as if Caesar and guest vocalist Kali Uchis just woke up together and are in no hurry to get out of bed. Track two, “Best Part,” makes the subtext text, with a whole verse about morning delight, if you will. I can’t think of an R&B album that better captures the feeling of lazy morning-after bliss than Freudian, and Caesar sings the whole thing, gorgeously, like he hasn’t fully opened his eyes yet. Even the break-up songs sound halfway to lullabies. —Tim Kennedy

5. Kaytranada, '99.9%'

Label: XL Recordings/Ultra Records

Released: 2016

The debut studio album from Kaytranada, 99.9% took the Haitian-born Canadian DJ/producer from SoundCloud to a Polaris Prize victory over bigger names like Grimes and Carly Rae Jepsen. (Here’s where I’m obligated to point out that awards, no matter how prestigious, aren’t inherently a 1:1 indicator of quality, but right now, it’s evidence I’ll happily use to help make my case.) A seamless blend of genres—from house and hip-hop to soul to the Tropicália-influenced “Lite Spots”—the result is an album that feels every bit as dynamic and exciting in 2019 as it did back in 2016. —Rick Mele

4. BADBADNOTGOOD, 'IV'

Label: Innovative Leisure

Released: 2016

After establishing themselves as a bit more than a talented jazz band flipping hip-hop classics with III and their dream collab album with Ghostface Killah, IV was an opportunity for Toronto’s BADBADNOTGOOD to spread their wings. There’s a number of paths they could have taken, as they navigated uncharted waters with basically no comparable acts to them around in 2016, but they chose correctly: confidently straddling the line between experimentation and accessibility, they traded in a touch of their hip-hop vibe to lean a bit more into jazz, soul, and lounge. Yet, the album’s standout is the synthy Kaytranada collaboration “Lavender,” which Snoop Dogg remixed and created an extremely controversial music video for to bring the band an even bigger audience. Among that audience: Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen, who called Snoop's mockery of the government in the clip "disgraceful." In light of recent events, that's pretty rich—and so is this album. —Chayne Japal

3. Grimes, 'Visions'

Label: 4AD

Released: 2012

If you want to swap this out for her more expansive, ambitious follow-up Art Angels, I wouldn’t blame you; picking a “best” Grimes album of the decade is basically a toss-up. Still, ignoring her late-decade evolution into a public persona worthy of a Bond villain (dating a billionaire tech mogul, claiming to have undergone experimental eye surgery, etc.), Visions was a true breakthrough for Montreal's Claire Boucher. And thank Christ for that, because she apparently put herself through hell to record it, deliberately attempting to induce insanity by locking herself away in a dark bedroom and avoiding human contact for three weeks while fasting, chain-smoking, and tweaking on amphetamines. The result was even more idiosyncratic than you'd expect, an intoxicating lo-fi meets high-tech sound that felt borderline revolutionary at the time, mixing new age atmospherics, Kraftwerkian techno, R&B melodies, and bubblegum hooks in a way that sounded irresistibly listenable. It only feels more prescient now given the wealth of alt-pop imitators who’ve attempted to follow Grimes’ lead in the ensuing years. Minus the whole eye surgery thing, that is. —Rick Mele

2. The Weeknd, 'House of Balloons'

Label: XO

Released: 2011

Nowadays, good luck finding someone who doesn’t know who The Weeknd is, but back in 2011, there was a real mystique around House of Balloons—which dropped unexpectedly as a free mixtape—thanks to a Drake co-sign, a murky backstory, those creepy R&B soundscapes, and that voice. Named the Best Album of 2011 by this very publication, House of Balloons was simply a massive debut for an artist who seemingly came out of nowhere to be, well, everywhere. He'd also rearrange the face of R&B while at it, taking the genre to its eerie and dreary outer limits. Sure, the record had the requisite let's-get-it-on-vibe, but claustrophobic, woozy auras (courtesy of producers Doc McKinney and Illangelo) and foreboding lyrics referencing weird sex acts ("Trust me, girl, you wanna be high for this") hinted at some unsettling shit going down at the after-hours club. Much like Drake, The Weeknd displayed a knack for peddling sadness, only he seemed to have much scarier demons to exorcise—ones that lingered long after the drug-fuelled, lecherous nights turned to zombified, regretful mornings.

That disquieting mixtape ultimately rewrote the rules of what R&B singers could sing about, and spawned a dark, emotional Toronto sound that would change the direction of Drake's Take Care ("Crew Love," "Shot for Me," and "The Ride" were all originally supposed to be House of Balloons tracks) and the course of contemporary pop music. The Weekend has since become a mega-celebrity who dates statuesque supermodels and wrestles Adam Sandler in Hollywood movies, but everything he does will forever be measured against that earliest work—a lush and moody comedown that made 65 Spencer a legit Toronto tourist attraction and Abel Tesfaye a superstar. —Rick Mele

1. Drake, 'Nothing Was The Same'

Label: OVO Sound/Republic Records/Young Money Entertainment/Cash Money Records

Released: 2013

“Just give it time, we’ll see who’s still around a decade from now,” Drake harrumphs on Nothing Was The Same’s marathon opener “Tuscan Leather.” We're at a good seven years since then, and it's clear Aubrey Graham isn’t going away anytime soon. That he called it back in 2013 is really a testament to how far he’d come in just four years: from sitting in a wheelchair on Degrassi to sitting in a throne atop the rap game. By this point, his status as the genre’s biggest crossover star was becoming undeniable—he’d won the sales races against Kanye basically since emerging on the scene (Thank Me Later outsold My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010; Take Care outsold Watch the Throne in 2011) and already broken the record for most No.1s on Billboard’s Rap Songs chart. Nothing Was The Same, then, was Drake going for the jugular—solidifying his reign as rap’s alpha dog and demanding respect from his peers. Fittingly, it’s the finest record in his catalogue.

Really, this LP’s exceptional caliber is evident right from that intro—the triumphant, ever-morphing state-of-the union “Tuscan Leather” seguing into the broody, introspective “Furthest Thing” is one of the greatest album-opening one-two punches of all time. Led Zeppelin IV’s “Black Dog/Rock and Roll”; OK Computer’s “Airbag”/“Paranoid Android”—name any, it’s up there with best of them. It also sets the tone for the rest of the record: Drake beats his chest from the summit of the rap mountain, then retreats into his cave and gets all emo. It’s lonely at the top.

But loneliness is Drake’s power-up food, and the man feasts on this LP. All his strongest qualities are on HGH here; his rhymes are at their most nail-spitting (“Took a while, got the jokers out of the deck now/I’m holdin’ all the cards and niggas wanna play chess now”), his singing is at its least unwieldy (“Wu-Tang Forever”), his pop tunes at their catchiest (“Hold On We’re Going Home”), his punchlines at their corniest (“Look, just understand that I'm on a roll like Cottonelle/I was made for all of this shit”), his confessions at their most candid (like when he goes in on his whole family on “Too Much”). All this, across a tight, seamlessly sequenced 13 tracks that sound like he and 40 recorded them all in the same hazy, nocturnal session in a Toronto studio. This is the perfect crystallization of Aubrey and Noah’s vision; the moment when all the sounds and themes they’ve been building since first linking up at 15 Fort York became fully actualized in a way they never would again. It will stand as their most concise and flawlessly executed work, before the economics of streaming motivated them to max out the number of tunes on their track lists. Sure, Drake's gone on to claim more Hot 100 Top 10 hits than the Beatles, but nothing else he's done has been quite the same.

Every Hottest Rapper Alive has that album that decides whether they’ll fall off or reach king status. For Jay-Z, it was 1999’s Vol. 3... Life and Times of S. Carter; for Lil Wayne it was 2008’s Tha Carter III. Nothing Was The Samewas Drake’s—an album cementing this good ol' Canadian boy's spot in the hip-hop firmament. Started from the bottom, now here’s here—and will be for decades to come. —Alex Nino Gheciu