It was a quite a year in Latin music. Ups and downs abounded: Shakira set the globe shaking with her World Cup anthem "Waka Waka," while Argentinean icon Gustavo Cerati tragically slipped into a coma after suffering a stroke. Narcocorridos went as mainstream as they could: Los Cuates Valenzuela got their own reality show on Mun2, and young narco artists gobbled up market share with minimal radio support. Meanwhile, Latin alternative music got its own radio show (its second, actually) with NPR's Alt.Latino, and cumbia — once your aunt's shabby dance music — suddenly went viral and showed up in clubs around the globe. Chilean emcee Anita Tijoux ended up on many critics' year-end lists, and pan-Latino pride seemed to be on the resurgence, evident in projects from Ruben Albarran's Hoppo to Calle 13's new masterwork. And then of course there was Enrique Iglesias, who made it into the charts with a song entitled "Tonight (I'm F**king You)." *Sigh.*But that shameful incident aside, 2010's musical heights have been dizzying. We take you through 20 of our absolute favorite Latin albums this year. Did we miss something? Did we love something you hated? Jump in the mix and let us know! And, to hear an extended playlist of this year's best Latin albums, click here.
20.
CamilaDejarte De Amar
Their second release took its sweet time, but that's kind of Camila's M.O.: they start slow, build to a crescendo, and wallop you with emotion until you sink back, sated. But while the insanely popular Todo Cambio kept R&B as its guiding artistic light, we enter the realm of the rock ballad on Dejarte de Amar. Each song travels a fairly predictable trajectory — intimate meditations build to rocking catharsis before crashing into a sensitive coda — but the great singing and solid hooks make this the follow-up fans have been waiting for. — S.B.
If anything marked world music this year, it was the lack of any big, defining story. In recent years, there's usually been a movement of some kind: gypsy music, desert blues. But 2010 was a year of fragments. The stalwarts continued to release big, commercial albums: 
Finding an American equivalent to the Colombian pop star 
When they started out, 
Call it Mexico's gangsta rap. The lyrics are violent, the language is littered with slang, and making paper is the order of the day — pretty much exclusively through drug smuggling. You can even hear the music shaking apart car trunks all over the United States, but that's where the comparisons between gangsta rap and Mexican narcocorridos end. Narcocorrido artists' instruments of choice aren't the sampler and mixing deck: think tuba and accordion, and the rhythmic up-and-down of a guitar. And while most gangsta rappers boast of their own exploits, narcocorrido singers detail the dramas of real-life drug kingpins in Mexico. And singing them can get you killed.
Earlier this year, 
The drone. It's a sustained note that hangs, while music happens (or doesn't happen) around it ... and when you start digging, you can find it everywhere: in 
Sesame Street launched in 1969, back when New York was still trash-strewn and poor people actually lived there (yes, pre-Giuliani) — and when it was still revolutionary to show children of all races playing together on TV. The world has changed a lot since then, and many shows have intervened to loosen the Street's hold on the ratings, but to this day, nothing holds a candle to it for sheer inventiveness. A lot of that inventiveness streamed from Jim Henson, whose puppets initially merited just short skits but quickly came to occupy the show's center stage. Henson's brand of humor infiltrated the entire show; when you remember classic skits, chances are they involved puppets. Remember the Yip-Yip Martians? ("Yip, yip, yiiip. Nope, nope, nope.") Guy Smiley interviewing a loaf of bread? Kermit reporting at the scene of Humpty Dumpty's fall? We thought so. 
The Charleston. The 
Ever wonder where 
Editor's Note: Listen to a selection of the songs mentioned here on a playlist at the end of this post, or click through to listen to all of the artists listed here on Rhapsody. If you're not a member, 
What is the Latin Alternative Music Conference? It's the only gathering in the world dedicated solely to Latino artists who are making hip-hop, electronic music and indie rock, and it's happening in New York City between from July 6 through July 10. LAMC turns 11 years old this year — here's to staving off the adolescent blues with good music — and it's bringing an absolute boatload of excellent shows to New York City this week.
Sports fans the world over are obsessing over the World Cup right now (it's the quarter finals! yeah!), but over here at Rhapsody we're obsessing over something a little different: the World Cup opening celebration concert. We're wondering what it said (or at least wanted to say) about Africa. Yes, that's right. We're music nerds, and we care.
Think of a singer who defined a decade for you. Was it 
We aren't experts in futebol over here at Rhapsody, but we do pride ourselves on knowing good play — be it in music or on the soccer pitch. So as the world spends the next month in the grips of World Cup fever, we bring you our uniquely musical take on the game and its players. We've got a monster playlist of the 
In the world of hip-hop, American or otherwise, female emcees are a rare breed. A quick glance at Rhapsody uncovers about five women among the top 100 hip-hop artists, and only a few of them are actual lyricists. (Hint: Not 
Spring has sprung and new albums seem to be sprouting up like dandelions in the lawn of, um, some tortured analogy. (Okay, let's leave analogies to the poets.) It's been a mixed season in the worldly realm, with
some false starts and some great surprises. Let's tour through them.
The music of the Chieftains is
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Carolina Chocolate Drops
We all knew music was gonna be big in the Obama administration. After all, 
Since a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, people around the world have mobilized, searching for ways to help this tiny nation in its time of need.
The news out of Haiti is bad, to put it mildly. International aid efforts are still only a trickle, hardly enough yet to help hundreds of thousands of people who have no shelter, no water, little food and a lot of death around them. The world is watching obsessively, visions of Katrina and the tsunami not exactly dancing in our heads. Get it right this time, we all seem to be silently imploring the powers that be. 
At some point during the last decade, America's self-imposed musical exile from the rest of the globe came to an end. Gypsy music seduced the punks, Bollywood ravished hip-hop, and tango invaded electronica, setting up shop in chill rooms everywhere. In a bit of a reversal, bluegrass conquered new territory -- in 
SoundTreks: A regular feature on the music the other 97 percent of the globe is listening to.
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