Best Music 2012: JoJo Discusses Her Favorite Albums Of The Year

Robbie Daw | December 31, 2012 6:56 am

The year 2012 is nearly over, and it’s time to present you with the final artist we talked to about their favorite music from the past 12 months: JoJo. The raven-haired beauty released her second mixtape Agápē earlier this month (on her 22nd birthday, no less). And while we spoke to her about her own new material, JoJo also clued us in on the records by other artists that were giving her some inspiration in 2012.

“I loved Frank Ocean‘s album. I loved Kendrick Lamar‘s album and I was really excited by the energy that fun. brought this year with their big success,” JoJo told Idolator. “I thought that it just felt like something fresh and it felt important.”

JoJo was hardly the first person to mention Frank Ocean’s debut album Channel Orange when asked what her favorite of the year was: we included it on our own Best Albums Of 2012 list, and Bridgit Mendler chose Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” as her favorite song. And so we were curious about what exactly it was that the 22-year-old took away from Ocean’s LP.

“There was such a confident vulnerability in the record for me,” she said of Channel Orange. “And it was very bold with its message, with its format — or non-format. I love the interludes. I love that it was an experience, it was a journey. It’s just such a great body of work. I feel like it’s something that should be experienced all in one sitting if possible, because you can really lose yourself in it. And that’s how I feel about Kendrick’s album, as well.”

And what is JoJo’s favorite way to experience an album like Channel Orange? “Those are my favorite type of records — ones that you can just literally take a long car ride and really just go somewhere,” she explains.

JoJo isn’t the only one voicing up on her favorite albums of 2012 — we also posted the results of our readers poll on the year’s best LPs, where you all let us know what your top picks were.