Bruno Mars w/ Janelle Monáe

No musician had a bigger breakout year in 2010 than Bruno Mars. In addition to co-writing a couple of the year's biggest pop singles, including B.o.B.'s “Nothin' on You” (on which he also sang) and Cee-Lo's “Fuck You,” the Hawaiian born singer-songwriter also scored a couple of No. 1 hits under his own name: the sentimental “Just the Way You Are” and the melodramatic “Grenade,” both from his debut Doo-Wops & Hooligans. Mars' tour mate Janelle Monáe hasn't enjoyed that kind of commercial success, but the soul singer's 2010 full-length debut The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III) was one of last year's best-reviewed albums, an epic mélange of funk, hip-hop and glam-rock that plays out as an eccentric science-fiction fantasy.