Amazon released its Best of 2011 selections for music today which, undoubtedly, will ignite a fury of Internet commenters to opine and whine about why certain albums are so high and why certain singles don’t even appear on the list. From Amazon’s press release:

Each year the Amazon Music team digs deep into a handful of musical genres–editors listen to as much new music as possible and vote on the very best albums and songs. The goal of creating a thoughtful “best of the year” list is to help customers discover amazing new music and to make it easy for customers to explore new artists or bands. The Best of the Year Music Store is now live on Amazon.com and offers customers a large variety of music to browse, along with unique lists such as “50 Outstanding 2011 Albums You Might Have Missed.”

“Our customers enjoy discovering new music and we hope there’s something for everyone’s taste in our Best of the Year for 2011,” said Craig Pape, Director of Amazon Music Content Acquisition. “Our editors love to listen to new music and highlight the best of the best such as Adele’s rich sophomore effort ‘21.’ ‘Rolling In The Deep’ has become an anthem for 2011 and is the top song in our Customer Picks.”

The anthem of 2011? Really? Having never heard of it, I consulted with an insider at the Internet (i.e., the search engine called Google) and have confirmed that ‘Rolling In The Deep’ is in fact that song that has been playing in every car, mall, commercial, bar, bathroom, coffee shop, radio, and occasional earworm all year. An anthem it is, then. At any rate, Amazon’s editors have compiled multiple Best Of lists to accomodate for multiple tastes, such as Best Pop, Best Country Music, and Outstanding 2011 Albums You Might Have Missed.

A noticeable genre missing from Amazon’s compilation of Best Of lists was a Best Rap/Hip-Hop category. In a year that saw album releases from top names like Drake, Jay-Z & Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, Wale, Rihanna, Talib Kweli, Lupe Fiasco, The Beastie Boys, and Raekwon as well as more recent breakouts like Tyler, The Creator, Yelawolf, and Wiz Khalifa (to name a few), no link or mention is found on Amazon’s Best of 2011 music site. Granted, lots of genres were not given their own list on Amazon, and that’s a fair argument, but with so many of Rap/Hip-Hop performers presently active in the mainstream it’s peculiar that Amazon would give Classical music more attention than Rap/Hip-Hop.

What do you think of the lists Amazon compiled? Hate them? Agree with them? Comment below.