Voodoo Chili

Here's my list of Favorite Albums of 2025, the year that it currently is. Just in time, once again.

Wait, you say it's January 2nd? Sorry, I have been busy. But I listened to and loved a lot of music this year, and this blog post is one of the few times a year I get to do any personal writing. So here it is, I hope you enjoy.

In case you missed my songs list, check it out here.

The playlist is at the bottom, but first here are my thoughts.

10. Silvestre - Fantasma: Fantasma, the brilliant collection by Portuguese-speaking Bay Area producer Silvestre is certainly the most obscure album on my list. I am not even sure how I stumbled upon it, maybe through a Bandcamp Daily recommendation, or by idle scrolling through SoundCloud. However I found it, I am glad I did, as it was one of my favorite worlds to get lost in this year. Silvestre is shockingly versatile, with a deep knowledge of niche subgenres that he uses to turn Fantasma into a shape-shifting set that consistently surprises. Fantasma kicks off with “Dead,” featuring a rage rap instrumental with 2-step percussion and echoing keys, leading into “Coming Of Age,” a liquid DnB heatrock with the propulsive energy and haunting atmospherics of a Metroid Prime boss level, into “Skip The Ad,” one of the few songs with vocals; home to tossed-off rhymes over skeletal marimbas and Detroit rap bass. The opening triptych is indicative of the see-sawing journey Silvestre takes us on with Fantasmas, never staying in one sonic realm for longer than 3 minutes, but never losing control of the vibe. Additional highlights include the bass-heavy happy house “Lineage,” the underwater Jersey club “Morto Vivo,” and the morphing lo-fi “Not Enough.”

9. De La Soul - Cabin In The Sky: For decades, De La Soul brought an inimitable sense of playfulness to hip-hop, never taking themselves too seriously while being very serious about their craft. Two years ago, what should have been a triumphant moment for the group–resolving their tangled legal issues and bringing their classic albums to streaming services–turned bittersweet, as Trugoy The Dove, aka Dave, aka Plug Two, passed away just weeks before the release. The two-man dynamic between Dave and Posdnous had always been the lifeblood of the band, and while Pos and Maseo found creative ways to perform in 2023, I would never have dreamed that they had another excellent album in them. I was wrong: Cabin In The Sky is a sibling of sorts to A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here, another Native Tongues album that commemorates a legend while adding a new jewel to a legendary catalog. Cabin In The Sky doesn’t reach the levels of excellence of De La’s classics like 3 Feet High & Rising, De La Soul Is Dead, and Buhloone Mindstate, but it comes much closer than it has any right to. Trugoy’s presence hangs over the album, as Pos and Mase promise to carry on the group’s legacy, never stopping lest the memory of their partner fades. De La bring an extensive guest list–including producers like DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and frequent collaborator Super Dave West, and rappers like Q-Tip, Black Thought, and Killer Mike–and Trugoy appears on several songs, but Posdnous carries the emotional load, putting on for his late bandmate by packing his verses with pearls of poignant wisdom. Pos balances sorrow with silliness, bringing levity to what could have been an emotionally overwhelming listen. The album reaches a peak with its closing 2-piece: “Cabin In The Sky,” Pos’s final farewell to his friend, and “Don’t Push Me,” a joyous, self-produced Trugoy solo track, which allows The Dove to have the last word.

8. Ben LaMar Gay - Yowzers: International Anthem, the Chicago-based avant-garde label, has become a genre unto itself these days, distributing daring, non-notated, improvisational music that intersects with jazz, while bucking the genre’s staid traditions. Windy City native Ben LaMar Gay is one of the label’s standout signees, bringing folkloric tunes to life with futuristic sounds, jazz chops, and invigorating spoken word. Yowzers is a bracing and bewildering listen, creating a joyous cacophony to undergird Gay’s deeply personal lyrics. Arranged for quartet–Cornet, guitar, and percussion, with a variable fourth instrument (often piano)–Gay’s compositions spring from deceptively simple melodies, hammered home with hypnotic variations and incantatory repetition. The artist infuses Yowzers with a sense of gonzo unpredictability, fitting polyrhythmic grooves (“damn you cute”), spiritual a capella (“i am (bells)”), epic narratives (“John, John Henry”), and much more into his rich tapestry.

7. Cory Hanson - I Love People: As a member of Wand and on his past solo efforts, Cory Hanson established himself as a modern guitar hero with his epic psychedelic jams and distorted axe theatrics. On his 2025 album I Love People, Hanson turns down the volume and sits down at the piano, replacing the thunderous buzz of his usual guitar attack with a studio orchestra. The artist flexes a writerly muscle that I frankly did not realize he had, delivering a cycle of songs that could have been recorded by The Wrecking Crew during their ‘60s peak. Opener “Bird On A Swing” sets the tone, an easy-breezy country tune with a plainspoken poignancy, creating a vibe that Hanson sustains throughout the album: “I'm a lonely bitter soul/I got sadness in my skull/And I'm only kind to strangers/They're the only people I don't know.” The Leon Russell-esque stomp of the title track is a highlight, as he declares his love for the fortunate and downtrodden alike, punctuating each pronouncement with a joyously obnoxious horn fanfare: “I love people who teach children to swim,” he sings "It's nice of them." I Love People is a timeless bit of cosmic Americana, an unholy mix of Neil Young, Gene Clark, Glen Campbell, and Glenn Frey, tied together with knowing humor and a deep dedication to craft.

6. Nino Paid - Love Me As I Am: The DMV street rap scene has been going crazy for several years now, but it has long lacked a breakout star. KP Skywalka is too regional, Tommy Richman is too pop, Goldlink is, well, Goldlink. Luckily, Baltimore’s Nino Paid is here to assume that mantle. On Love Me As I Am, the 24-year-old rapper puts a twist on his region’s sound with his superb ear for production, favoring instrumentals that combine the cloudy atmospherics of plugg with the thudding low end that defines Baltimore/DC crank. Weaving through those instrumentals with his double-time flow, Nino cuts a sympathetic figure, elegantly elucidating his thoughts and feelings about escaping a rough past, without forgetting about those he left behind. Songs like “Joey Story,” a testament against losing hope inspired by a friend’s suicide, “Something To Live For,” and “Play This At My Funeral” show off Nino’s sharp songwriting, which starkly relays the realities of street life through fleshed-out vignettes that zoom by in two minutes or less. The somber moments are highlights, but Nino never lets the mood get too grim: he can shit talk with the best of them, as proven by bonus track “Cooln,” a ping-ponging collab with fellow breakout Babychiefdoit, and the twinkling “Progress Report.”

5. billy woods - G*LLIW*G: My singles list was full of party anthems and escapist fantasies, but I counted on billy woods to bring the real shit. He is one of the few artists who truly captures the ugliness of our ignoble present, taking a magnifying glass to the issues most would prefer to ignore. A spiritual sequel to 2022’s Aethiopes, which is still probably my favorite woods album, 2025’s G*LLIW*G is a tour-de-force, providing some of woods’s most haunting and unsparing tales to date. “BLK XMAS” spotlights an eviction in his neighborhood, the family in question leaving their belongings on the streets and their neighbors feeling sorry for a short time before picking at the remains like vultures. The DJ Haram-produced “All These Worlds Are Yours” unites woods with his Armand Hammer partner E L U C I D and London woodwind wizard Shabaka Hutchings, pulling no punches as it examines the human cost of “first-world” comfort: “Today, I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my home/The drone flew real low, no rush, real slow/He curled up into himself, a fetus in the womb, womb was the Earth/Grenades landed at his feet and he scrabbled in the dirt.” Kenny Segal’s “Born Alone” illustrates the inextricable connection between woods’s tragedies and triumphs, his baby’s bare foot reminding him of his cousin who died decades ago, “laid out in the streets, no kicks, limbs askew.” Over and over again, woods imagines himself as a victim of violence, lending his voice to the helpless and respecting their pain, remembering the fallen as he fights for a better world.

4. Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up: With his craggly voice and poetically plainspoken lyrics, Friendship frontman Dan Wriggins draws inevitable comparisons to late legends like David Berman of the Silver Jews and Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Co. It’s a lofty standard that most songwriters, no matter how good they are, struggle to meet, but on Caveman Wakes Up, Wriggins proves worthy of that formidable legacy. Accompanied his band’s ambling and amiable country-fried grooves, Wriggins wrings profundity out of the mundane, waxing rhapsodic about chilling on stoops, buying dirt-cheap cigarettes, playing survival horror video games, and finding God while doing yardwork. Never one to be pinned down, Wriggins also occasionally finds mundanity in the profound; “Hollow Skulls” shrugs off the vast cosmos as if they’re no big deal: “Never have I seen the stars so boring,” he sings. Time after time, the ghost Wriggins’ substance abuse raises its ugly head, as he reminisces about weeping over an advertisement in “Betty Ford” or wastes his life away on the couch on the self-loathing “Resident Evil.” Caveman Wakes Up is a testament to the daily struggle to stay sane, even as the forces of nature and society seem to be conspiring against you. “Only natural to dream,” he sings on “Free Association.” “I’ve been having some bad ones.”

3. Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones: Nourished By Time recorded my favorite album of 2023, Erotic Probiotic 2, and his 2025 follow-up The Passionate Ones is just as good. Blessed with a bigger recording budget, courtesy of XL Recordings, NBT’s Marcus Brown uses those resources to flesh out his sound and indulge his every artistic impulse. The core of his appeal remains–80s freestyle mixed with avant-pop and nu-skool R&B–as do the preternaturally wise lyrics and plentiful vocal stims (“BABY BABY! BABY BABY!”), but The Passionate Ones is shaggier and looser than his previous efforts, leaving more space for transcendent musical moments that only Nourished By Time could provide: the ringing piano arpeggios that close “Jojo,” the house breakdown that starts and ends “9 2 5,” the stuttering chorus of “BABY BABY,” the “Walk This Way” drum break that anchors “It’s Time.” Brown has emerged as an excellent and emotional vocalist, leaning into his natural quaver to emphasize the questions posed by his lyrics: “May you always have a fight/Be it wrong or be it right/Shed a raindrop when you cry/But beware of sedatives and passing time,” he sings on “9 2 5.” Brown makes clear that he refuses to abdicate on the key moral issues of our time, even as he searches for a way to enjoy his time on this dying planet. The album reaches a stunning emotional climax with the final two-piece of “When The War Is Over” and “The Passionate Ones,” the latter of which punctuates Brown’s quest for answers with a sighing falsetto: “Am I a ghost? Am I history?/Have I lost my reflection?/I’ve got no protection.”

2. Dijon - Baby: Dijon’s magic trick is his ability to push the sound of music forward without seeming to break a sweat. His album Baby fights against the mores of this frictionless, algorithm-driven era, offering clanging guitars, smashed vocal samples, muddy drum sounds, and wild variations in volume to discourage passive listening. It’s an album that forces you to lean in and pay attention, rewarding close listeners with its idiosyncratic rhythms and grainy timbres. If any of this makes Baby seem like a difficult record to listen to, I assure you it isn’t. Dijon is an ace songwriter and a melodic savant, following the North Star of legends like Prince (someone online described the sound of this album as sounding like “64kb Prince MP3s") and D’Angelo, turning out mini-masterpieces like “Yamaha” and “Another Baby!” that paint a lush and sensual portrait of domestic bliss. Baby feels like a landmark, as Dijon and his collaborators (including my other fave Mk.gee) have landed upon a new signature pop production style for this decade, one informed by earlier eras (80s adult-contempo pop, 90s R&B, 2010s Hip-Hop), but not beholden to nostalgia. Expect a lot more albums to attempt to sound like Baby in the very new future, but expect few to reach the original’s combination of sonic adventurousness, raw emotion, and ace musicianship.

1. Annahstasia - Tether: On a highlight from Gang Starr’s Hard To Earn, Guru famously proclaimed “It’s mostly the voice that gets you up.” He was talking about hip-hop, but it’s an aphorism that casts a much wider net. In a year with plenty of great albums, I made my number one choice by considering what Tether has and nothing else does: Annahstasia and her bewitching, all-powerful voice. Annahstasia emerged fully-formed with Tether, her debut album, wielding her contralto (she might even be one of the rare female baritones!) like a knife, cutting through to the heart of her songs with power and grace. Her stretched syllables and breathy vibrato defy easy comparison, echoing at different times artists like ANOHNI of ANOHNI and the Johnsons, Tracy Chapman, Moses Sumney, and even Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile. Annahstasia supports herself with spare arrangements, spotlighting her own accomplished acoustic guitar playing and adding speckles of piano, orchestra, and choir to provide color, rising and falling in intensity to suit the rhythm of the songs. Opener “Be Kind” sets the tone, beginning with sighing a capella before her knotty guitar enters, her poetry enhancing the drama of her performance: “I deserve to rest In a California king bed/With my arms outstretched/And my dreams bleeding from my hеad/Into the sheets instead,” she intones. Many of the album’s highlights, including “Unrest” and “Slow,” a duet with Obongjayar (who also has a strikingly unique voice), keep a similar subdued palette, but the album soars when Annahstasia lets loose. On lead single “Villain,” her voice crescendoes to an emotional climax, as soft horns make their presence felt and a gospel choir brings it home: “Say that I'm the villain of the story.” Closer “Believer” brings a heavier guitar sound, echoing confessional indie rock masters like Songs: Ohia or Sun Kil Moon, burning slowly until the singer unleashes her full vocal power with a plea for uninterrupted intimacy: “Can I be lonely here with you?” A product of nearly a decade of behind-the-scenes toil, fighting with labels and vocal coaches who tried to mold Annahstasia into something she wasn’t, Tether is a triumph, marking the arrival of a vital new voice and a decisive blow against the forces who wish to turn beautiful music into consumerist sludge. I can’t wait to hear what she does next.

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Thank you so much for reading! As promised, here is the Spotify playlist featuring selections from my full list of 100 Favorite Albums of 2025..

Playlist:

Full list:

Annahstasia - Tether

Dijon - BABY

Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones

Friendship - Caveman Wakes Up

billy woods - G*LLIW*G

Nino Paid - Love Me As I Am

Cory Hanson - I Love People

Ben LaMar Gay - Yowzers

De La Soul - Cabin In The Sky

Silvestre - Fantasma

Juana Molina - DOGA

DjRUM - Under Tangled Silence

Lelo - New Detroit

Herbert & Momoko Gill - Clay

keiyaA - hooke’s law

Makaya McCraven - OFF THE RECORD

Lucrecia Dalt - A Danger To Ourselves

Titanic - HAGEN

Sudan Archives - The BPM

Greg Freeman - Burnover

Rio Da Yung OG - F.L.I.N.T. (Feelin’ Like I’m Not Through)

Ringlets - The Lord Is My German Shepherd

SML - How You Been?

Hannah Frances - Nested In Tangles

Yves Jarvis - All Cylinders

snuggle - Goodbyehouse

Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes - Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes

EsDeeKid - Rebel

quickly, quickly - I Heard That Noise

NoJoy - Bugland

Niontay - Fada<3of$

Westerman - A Jackal’s Wedding 

KP Skywalka - I Tried To Tell You

Bad Bunny - DeBí TiRaR MáS FOtoS

Rochelle Jordan - Through The Wall

Real Lies - We Annihilate Our Enemies

Saba & No I.D. - From The Private Collection of Saba & No I.D. Vol. 1

Stereolab - Instant Holograms On Metal Film

The Tubs - Cotton Crown

Steve Hauschildt - Aeropsia 

The New Eves - The New Eve Is Rising

K-lone - sorry i thought you were someone else

Jim Legxacy - black british music (2025)

Teethe - Magic of the Sale

Hayden Pedigo - I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away

Pino Palladino & Blake Mills -  That Wasn’t A Dream

Lindstrøm - Sirius Syntoms

Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love

Oren Arambarchi - Ghosted III

Disiniblud - Disiniblud

PinkPantheress - Fancy That/Fancy Some More?

Navy Blue - The Sword & The Soaring 

Zukenee - SLAYTANIC / KNIGHT SHIFT

Armand Hammer - MERCY

Cameron Winter - Heavy Metal

Playboi Carti - MUSIC

The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie

Flock Of Dimes - The Life You Save

Sharp Pins - Radio DDR

Defcee & Parallel Thought - Other Blues

U.S. Girls - Scratch It

Cate Le Bon - Michelangelo Dying

Duval Timothy - wishful thinking

water margin - Gleaming Cursed

Saya Gray - SAYA

Amaarae - BLACK STAR

Bickle - Gut Feeling 

G Herbo - Lil Herb

Horsegirl - Phonetics On And On

Barker - Stochastic Drift

Oklou - choke enough

Lunchbox - L.B. Cooper

Cold Specks - Light For The Midnight

Paul Wall & DJ.Fresh - The Tonite Show

Fly Anakin - (The) Forever Dream

$ilkMoney - Who Waters The Wilting Giving Tree…

Monaleo - Who Did The Body

Geese - Getting Killed

Water From Your Eyes - It’s A Beautiful Place

George Riley - More Is More

Acopia - Blush Response

Mexiko Dro - Still Goin the EP

Thirteendegrees - Clique City Vol. 2 / BLACK FRIDAYZ

Zelooperz - Dali Ain’t Dead

S.G. Goodman - Planting By The Signs

Home Front - Watch It Die

Bloody! - So Wavy Luciano

Home Is Where - Hunting Season

Anthony Naples - Scanners

Destroyer - Dan’s Boogie

Shabason, Krgovich & Tenniscoats - Wao

Adeline Hotel - Watch The Sunflowers

Laurie Torres - Aprés coup

Panda Bear - Sinister Grift

Pulp - More

Rosalía - LUX

DaBoii - HEART OF A LION

Khadija Al Hanafi - !OK!

Sam Prekop - Open Close

There's a classic Jewish joke that has been repeated every Passover since time immemorial: "they tried to kill us, they didn't., let's eat."

That's how I feel about these intros to this annual list. The world had a bad year, but music was still good. Let's eat.

Here is a list of my favorite songs of 2025, the ones that stood out from the morass and made me lean forward in my metaphorical chair. Scroll down to the bottom for my Spotify playlist. Hope you find something you love!

And now, without further ado...

MY FAVORITE SONGS OF 2025

25. Young Dro & Zaytoven - “Ballin” ft. Trouble: 2025’s rap scene was heavily saturated with tributes to mid-00s Atlanta music, from BunnaB's candy-colored “Bunna Summa” to the block party vibes of Metro Boomin’s A Futuristic Summa to the thug motivational anthems emerging out of the “New Dallas.” It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that some of 2025's best music in this style came from the veterans of that original era. “Ballin’,” from Young Dro and Zaytoven’s 10 Piece Hot, is a glorious bit of ATL rap comfort food, a collaboration between the city’s chief trap sound architect and one of its most colorful characters that hits just as hard as it would have in 2006. Dro is one of Southern rap’s great enunciators, and on "Ballin'," he bounces off Zay’s effortlessly funky keys with his guttural drawl. It is lovely to hear the late, great Trouble on the hook, his laid-back demeanor an ice cold complement to Dro’s fire-breathing.

24. Khadija Al Hanafi - “Always Treat U RiTE”: Tunisian DJ Khadija Al Hanafi doesn’t mess around, eschewing the usual swells and builds of club music in favor of instantly-gratifying blasts of euphoria. “Always Treat U RiTE,” from her 2025 album !OK!, sounds like a 2-step classic played at 1.5x speed, gliding by with bouncing piano chords and an irresistible chipmunk soul chorus. The bite-sized banger is over in two minutes, practically begging you to play it over and over.

23. Westerman - “Nevermind”: Westerman built his reputation with immersive soundscapes and sharp sophisti-pop songwriting, crafting sonic worlds that evoke “masculine men feeling things” classics like The Blue Nile’s Hats and David Sylvain’s Secrets Of The Beehive. The majority of “Nevermind,” my favorite song from his 2025 album A Jackal’s Wedding, does away with expansive arrangements, shining the spotlight on the man and his acoustic guitar. The song’s lyrics are composed of half-finished sentences, gently muttered as if he regrets opening his mouth at all. Still, the approach makes room for stark imagery (“She fingered the muddy ground/And sold me all the luck she's finding”) and the ballad is all the more powerful for leaving space for what he could have said, but did not. "What I said, though I forgot, I meant it," he sighs, “Never mind.”

22. Mexiko Dro - “No Date”: As a producer, Mexiko Dro helped define the sound of ‘10s internet rap, the ubiquitous “plugg” producer tag of his Beat Pluggz giving the name to a genre that blended drugged out rhymes with blissful soundscapes and thudding low-end. As a rapper, Dro drops all those pretensions, assembling blue-collar trap bangers by stacking growled hustle-hard mantras atop one another. “No Date” begins like a spaceship taking off, but Dro’s concerns are grounded in his day-to-day reality. He makes it clear that he treats this rap shit as a job first, and an avenue to fame dead last:“Money first, complete the work, n****, then I dip,” he spits, later adding “I ain't doin' all that punk-ass shit to go viral.” It’s an anthem for those happiest in the trenches, building brick by brick without taking any shortcuts.

21. Deer park & Ivy Knight - “Pharmacy”: I was unfortunately disappointed by this year’s Bar Italia album, but, thankfully, Deer Park and Ivy Knight were there to supply my required dose of murky, conversational indie rock for late nights. Trading verses atop a snaking, reverb-drenched guitar line, the two artists spin a twisted yarn on "Pharmacy," telling a tale that recalls Grimm-like folklore, featuring arrows piercing eyes, misshapen faces and heads, and figures that morph into ethereal beings under the neon lights of motel signs.

20. Shallipopi - “Laho”: Nigerian artist Shallipopi’s simmering, menacing “Laho” was my Afrobeats banger of the year. It has the kind of groove that summons spirits, with dramatic string section stabs, insistent log drums, and an incantatory chorus. The kind of song that makes you feel like something bad is gonna happen to you if you don’t immediately report to the dancefloor. There are remixes out there with Burna Boy and Rauw Alejandro, but I most often return to the haunting original.

19. NBA YoungBoy - “Shot Callin”: It has been true for a long time, but after this year, no sane person can deny it: NBA YoungBoy is the most popular rapper of his generation. After breaking out at age 17, YB struggled to overcome legal problems, which left him in house arrest, unable to tour, but with nothing to do but record as much music as humanly possible. In 2025, YoungBoy finally embarked upon that tour, selling out dozens of dates and moving grown men–who have been waiting years to sing along with their idol in the flesh–to tears.  This year brought us “Shot Callin,” YoungBoy’s first solo mainstream hit. It was on the radio and everything. “Shot Callin’” isn’t more polished or gentler than your typical YB song, but it is an extremely well-executed version of the artist’s usual neck-snapping Dirty South sound. Producers Tayo, TrillGotJuice, and Cheese supply an instrumental that evokes the swampy funk of Baton Rouge great Mouse On Da Track, with a seasick swinging groove and accented minor key pianos. YB throws his entire soul into his vocal performance, his consonants crackling like pop rocks: “Bitch, I'm real American made, run with Chargers like Vin Diesel/Bitch, I come from Medicaid, diamonds all on me like some measles.” Tell LiAngelo Ball this is how real Louisiana music sounds.

18. Ringlets - “I Was On That Roof Once”: Auckland, NZ’s Ringlets proudly continue the Kiwi nation’s rich lineage of boundlessly clever jangle-pop bands. “I Was On That Roof Once” is as silly as it is dynamic, rising and falling over its four minute runtime with circular guitar riffs and a stankface-inducing behind-the-beat drum groove. The group pack a notebook full of puns and bon mots into the lyrics without ever losing scan: “The Lord is my German Shepherd/TIME FOR WALKIES,” they chant to open the song, and only escalate from there, writing a chorus that uses words that I am not sure I have ever heard in any song before: “prapañca,” “fountainhead,” “aphorisms,” “balderdash” (as in “spewing aphorisms rolled in glitter balderdash”) and the immortal phrase, “I am foaming from the algae that’s inhabited my gob.” It sounds like a lot but the band skillfully makes it digestible, packing in enough musical ideas to keep the mood buoyant, and adding a shout-along wordless chorus for good measure.

17. snuggle - “Driving Me Crazy”: Copenhagen appears to have a bottomless supply of alt-pop geniuses roaming the streets, drinking at the Espresso shops, crossing The Bridge from The Bridge, and doing whatever else the Danish do. Snuggle, the duo of Andrea Thuesen Johansen and Vilhelm Tiburtz, is one of my favorite new acts from that fertile scene. They specialize in synthesizing bubblegum pop out of 90s alt sounds, putting their own spin on that familiar milieu with dreamy arrangements and hazy ambience. “Driving Me Crazy” combines a Smashing Pumpkins guitar line, a trip-hop bassline, and Moby-esque synth strings into an irresistible confection, with a brightness that masks the deep pain hidden within: “That’s how you live/That’s how you live/Drink to forget/Drink to forgive.”

16. Rauw Alejandro - “Caribeño” ft. Saso: Rauw Alejandro has long been one of Latin music’s great pop experimenters, using his angelic tenor as a Trojan horse to sneak some wild sounds onto the radio. “Caribeño” is a mutating banger, oscillating from Tropigoth to skittering pop to reggaeton and back. Bronx-born Dominican artist Saso is an ideal partner-in-crime, his motormouthed flow providing necessary grit to counteract Rauw’s supernatural sweetness.

15. Neko Case - “Wreck”: Music, and American culture at large, is terminally obsessed with youth and being young. There’s a whole generation of kids (or at least a loud, and very online segment of that generation) who are convinced that life ends at 25. As a 35-year-old, I promise there is plenty of life to live once you pass the quarter-century mark. I am glad to report that Neko Case, one of our* greatest living singer-songwriters, isn’t bogged down by that miserable perspective. “Wreck,” her best song in years, is an effervescent tribute to finding love after 50, proving that songs of experience can be just as romantic as songs of innocence. “Do I blaze freckles onto your face?,” she asks, “I bet, I bet, I bet I do,” as strings crescendo and harps imitate a fluttering heartbeat. *Maybe all the time she spent with Canadian indie rockers The New Pornographers explains her more rational outlook on aging

14. The New Eves - “Rivers Run Red”: British group The New Eves’s brand of folk punk has an intensity that would be scary if it weren’t so much fun. “Rivers Run Red” is a perfect example of what they do well: music for slamdancing around a maypole. Kicking off with a primal guitar-and-flute groove, “Rivers Run Red” escalates into a feverish, incantatory trance, with otherworldly harmonies girding the rhythm section’s forward motion until you’re ready to burn a wicker man with Nicolas Cage inside it.

13. Myaap - “Fairy”: YOP YOP! Myaap (pronounced like “Mya P”) is a boundless font of positive energy, able to turn any instrumental into a Milwaukee party jam. The instrumental for “Fairy”, which comes courtesy of producer christiangetbizzy, is as mystical as the title implies, with a triple-meter harp floating over, and fighting against the familiar Milwaukee lowend hand claps to create a fascinating rhythmic push-pull. Inspired by the beat’s mystical nature, Myaap speaks in tongues, stringing together ad-libs into a full verse before she starts directing dance floor traffic. “Big Myaap, I just look little,” she declares.

12. Verraco - “sobe sobe” ft. MC Yallah: It seems like an unlikely, cross-continental collaboration between a Colombian producer and a Kenyan emcee, but “sobe sobe” couldn’t feel more natural. Verraco layers pounding percussion under dreamy synth soundscapes, leaving plenty of space for MC Yallah to lay into the track with her life-affirming, multi-lingual bars (in addition to her usual, Kiswahili, Luganda, English, and Luo, Yallah throws in a little bit of Spanish as a salute to her producer). Yallah is the only vocalist, but “sobe sobe” is a true duet, as she drops out halfway through to let Verraco’s glitches and breaks do the talking.

11. Laurie Torres - “Intérieurs”: A hypnotic piano melody. An understated jazz beat. Put them both together and you have “Intérieurs,” a wonderful little composition by Montreal multi-instrumentalist Laurie Torres, fully entrancing for all of its 94 seconds. If you need a little more than just a piano melody to get you going, the great Jeremiah Chiu (of SML and solo fame) remixed the song, creating a new world within the song’s melody with glowing synth pads, percolating marimbas, and swirling woodwind arpeggios.

10. Cameron Winter - “Drinking Age”: During the streaming age, many listeners have come to prize “frictionlessness” above all else in their music experience. The services encourage users to create free-flowing playlists, automatically play “similar songs” after those playlists end, and organize songs into mood-based playlists, discouraging active listening and encouraging curation of background vibes. It shouldn’t be surprising, in this environment, that an artist like Cameron Winter is controversial, his distinctive baritone and non-linear songwriting appealing to some, and repulsing others. As someone who relates to David Berman’s famous lyric, “all my favorite singers couldn’t sing,” I have never been afraid to embrace a weird voice, but I will admit I didn’t buy into the Cameron Winter/Geese hype at first. “Why is he singing like that?” I thought, as did many others, but I understand the value of having an easily-recognizable, and imitable, voice: just ask Neil Young, or Tom Waits, or, sure, Bob Dylan. Winter is obviously not a songwriter on that level, but he definitely has some juice. “Drinking Age,” and particularly his piano performance of the song on Jimmy Kimmel Live, was the song that made me a believer. At first, it’s hard to take note of what Cameron is singing, but easy to appreciate how he’s singing it, with dramatic elongated vowels that evoke a hound howling at the moon. It is a deceptively skeletal lyric, with very few words and a lot of syllables (many of which are nonsense sounds like “brrbrrhrrrbb”), a eulogy mourning the now-22-year-old singer-songwriter’s youth, and all the possibility it implies. “From now on,” he croons, “this is who I’m gonna be.” He looks in the mirror and does see his childhood fantasies reflected back: “I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be a piece of sh*t.” Say what you want about Cameron Winter, but one must acknowledge that his music is anything but streaming-age wallpaper. He forces you to lean in, pay attention, and, finally, to be a critic. Do you like what you hear?

9. S.G. Goodman - “Snapping Turtle”: Kentucky artist S.G. Goodman is a writer’s writer, unearthing the essence of her Appalachian home with vignettes that would make Flannery O’Connor proud. The centerpiece of her album Planting By The Signs, Goodman’s “Snapping Turtle” compares the downtrodden creature, beaten to near death by teenagers with sticks before the narrator’s intervention, to Leanna, a small town girl whose life ground her down in a similar fashion. Over a simmering country-fried slow burn, Goodman delivers lines that contain worlds (“Grew up hard on bottled land Where only crops should grow”), regretting that she couldn’t “play god” and stop Leanne from meeting her fate, like she could for the titular reptile. ”Small towns where my mind get stuck,” she repeats, lamenting the fate of those like Leanne, who deserved much more than their lot in life.

8. These New Puritans - “Bells”: British chamber pop warhorses These New Puritans have been among the indie scene’s most underrated acts since their 2006 debut. They traffic in grand, sweeping majesty, and at their best, their songs make you feel like you are ascending to a higher plane of existence. Their 2025 epic “Bells” is certainly the band at their best. “Bells” is arranged as a series of arpeggios, which swirl on top of one another, reaching for the skies like a waterspout. Both haunting and dreamlike, "Bells" taps into a latent spirituality by digging into the infinite cosmos that exist within each human being: “The sea is wide and the sea is long/the silent conductor of a distant song/And if you know it and even if you don’t/sing it out from down below”

7. Stereolab - “Transmuted Matter”: Legendary Marxist avant-pop wizards Stereolab came back in 2025 like they never left. It was a nice surprise, but it wasn’t a shock. They’ve been in top form on several recent tours, lead singer Laetitia Sadier recorded an excellent solo album last year, and guitarist/co-songwriter Tim Gane continues to push music forward with his outfit, the Caverns of Anti-Matter. Also unsurprising: some of the music on their new album, Instant Holograms on Metal Film, is as strong as anything they released in their heyday. “Transmuted Matter” recalls the frictionless funk of the band’s late period (Dots & Loops, Cobra Starship..., etc.), complete with the liquid basslines and memorable synth melodies for which they are known. Sadier’s mantras are as oblique as ever, but instead of offering ideological polemic, she preaches the importance of getting in touch with one’s true self, to “see through the eye of the heart.” For once, she is able to overlook society's many ills and tap into a deeper essence that our corporate overlords can’t take from us, no matter how hard they try. 

6. Dijon - “Yamaha”: Sometimes you hear a song and you know you will never forget the melody as long as you live. Dijon’s loping melody for “Yamaha” is one of those, maneuvering around suspended chords in a gentle lilt toward euphoria. Dijon complements his outstanding melody with memorable sonic flourishes, including a “Darling Nikki”-esque choral intro, and crushed vocal samples that interject like ad-libs. By the outro, Dijon has fully immersed us into his world of domestic tranquility, where familiarity has not led to loss of passion or infatuation.

5. Thirteendegreesº - “Da Problem Solva”: Chicago rapper Thirteendegreesº has a frankly unacceptable amount of nostalgia for an era that really wasn’t that long ago. He frequently invokes Tumblr–that’s right, the website you’re reading this on–as if it only exists as some kind of childhood memory, rather than the bustling platform we all know it to be. So yes, Thirteen is deeply inspired by the internet rap of 2013, mixing the candy-coated soundscapes of Chicago bop with the see-sawing melodies of 1017 Thug. But as he says, “everything comes from somewhere,” and his take on the rap of not-so-long-ago is genuinely fresh, especially “Da Problem Solva,” my favorite rap song of the year. “Da Problem Solva” is built around an incredible flip of Stevie V’s hip-house hit “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” (courtesy of producer Gyant) that chops, screws, and stretches the original’s earnest vocals and bright synths into a taffy-like brew. Thirteen effortlessly slides between the vocal samples, stacking outlandish punchlines in cascading cadences, approaching levels of out-of-pocket absurdity reached by his heroes like Young Thug and Chief Keef: “Why'd I caught her on Hinge?,” he cries.

4. SHERELLE - “SPEED (ENDURANCE)”: I didn’t get out to the club much this year (I’d bring my 18-month if I could, I promise) but UK artist SHERELLE’s “SPEED (ENDURANCE)” is my club anthem of the year. It’s a feverish mix of cross-Atlantic sounds, blending footwork, DnB, and Jersey club into a supersonic heatrock that steams ahead at 160 BPM. As the title implies, the song is an endurance test: can you keep up with the furious tempo for 5 and a half minutes without collapsing like a flapper at a dance marathon? Probably not, but it is fun to try.

3. Nourished by Time - “When The War Is Over”: All Marcus Brown of Nourished By Time needs to devastate you is a few plaintive piano chords, a freestyle beat, and his off-kilter baritone. “When The War Is Over” is most powerful for what is left unsaid, as Brown looks for love to help him make a meaningful time in this slowly dying world. In a way, it’s a sequel to last year’s “Hell Of A Ride,”; Brown abandons that song’s devil-may-care attitude after finding a love that makes it worth weathering the storm.

2. Panda Bear - “Anywhere But Here”: Brian Wilson’s ghost hung over my 2025 listening like a raincloud on a summer’s day. For about a month after his passing, I fell into a Wilson hole, listening to everything The Beach Boys ever did, in a fruitless attempt to understand his harmonic genius. Wilson’s influence is incalculable, but one way he has notably manifested is as the patron saint of Indie Pop. Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, erstwhile of Animal Collective, has always been one Brian’s most devoted acolytes. He shares the great songwriter’s ability to view complex topics through a child’s eyes, and to refract those perspectives through his quietly psychedelic music. More inspired by the Louvin Brothers and Everly Brothers than the Wilson Brothers, “Anywhere But Here” is one of Lennox’s finest songs, perfect for dreaming your life away on a remote coastline and watching the sun set. Drenched in reverb and evoking the tape delay effects of Jamaican dub, “Anywhere But Here” drifts by like a Cirrus cloud, the naivete of its refrain contrasting the philosophical heft of the Portuguese spoken word passages, which reflect upon our human responsibility to treat others well. “I guess I'll wait until/The voices inside my mind/Are out of time,” he sings, “And in a place close by I'll occupy/Until its end.

1. PinkPantheress - “Illegal”: Ultimately, there was only one choice for my number one song of the year. Picking “Illegal” feels, well, against the rules, like saying your favorite food is cotton candy. PinkPantheress’s fun-sized masterpiece is more nourishing than that carnival staple, but it hits similar pleasure centers of the brain. Let’s start with the sample, which hails from Underworld’s epic 1994 anthem “Dark & Long,” arriving nearly 8 minutes into the song. Pink milks those two chords for all they’re worth, sinuously winding between the contours of the 2-step beat with her flirtatious banter, packing more hooks into the song’s two-and-a-half minutes than many songwriters can cobble together in an entire career: the heavy breathing, the 8-bit treble synths, the surreal unreality of the opening lines (“You were recommended to me by some people” - what??), the canned “wow” sound effect that hits before the outro, and the inconspicuous camera flash noise that ends the song. It’s perfect pop in a year where we all needed a bit of bubblegum. 

________________________________________________________________

Thanks for reading, hope you found something you love!

Here's the full playlist:

And here is the rest of my list, from 26-100:

I'm typing this on a groggy New Year's Eve, my first one as a dad. It's been a life-changing year, to be sure. But as much as my life has changed, I still made a point to listen to new music–the thrill of discovery never goes away.

I am rapidly fading, so I will keep this short! It felt, to me, like an exceptional year for music. I've compiled my 100 favorite albums of the year, and I easily could have found 100 more. Read on to hear great new albums from Portugal's coasts, the rainforests of Brazil, the wards of New Orleans, and the deserts of the Sahara.

Check the blurbs for my thoughts and feelings about the best music 2024 had to offer, and scroll down to the bottom for a playlist I compiled of selections from the full list of albums.

Oh, and if you were wondering what kind of music my 7-month-old digs, he mostly likes The Traveling Wilburys. Something about Jeff Lynne's spit-polished studio sheen really calms his tiny little nerves.

And now, here are my favorite albums of 2024.

10. Mdou Moctar - Funeral For Justice: Mdou Moctar’s music reverberates with a righteous fury. Funeral For Justice, the Tuareg artist’s second album for Matador Records, is an incendiary screed against the foreign and domestic forces attempting to rob his home country of Niger blind. He takes aim at African leaders in the title track, excoriating them for protecting foreign interests to enrich themselves and their kin while their citizens’ “rights are trodden upon.” “Imouhar” is a plea to his Tuareg people to preserve their language and culture, no matter where they travel or what domestic pressures may arise. “Modern Slaves” painfully details the horrific practices of foreign (mainly French-owned) mines that work citizens to death and extract resources without providing their bounty for the local communities. Even if you can’t understand the lyrics, sung in Moctar’s native Tamasheq, you can’t mistake the rebellious intent of his searing guitar playing. Funeral For Justice trades some of the intricate picking and twisty songwriting of previous album Afrique Victime with a dose of pure muscle, turning the distortion up to ear-splitting levels. Moctar’s punishing guitar assault hits like a balm in trying times–as many other artists look to provide escapism, Mdou and his band are not afraid to confront oppressors head-on.

9. Being Dead - EELS: While nostalgia-crazed zoomers valorize the early ‘00s gestalt of “indie sleaze,” it’s important to remember that there was plenty of indie wholesomeness around, as well. Acts like Animal Collective, The Moldy Peaches, and The Unicorns strived to approach their music with a childlike wonder, delighting in experimentation, not caring whether something sounded "right" as long as it felt right to them. Austin, TX duo Being Dead brings back that attitude in a big way. I was charmed enough by their debut album When Horses Would Run to rank it in my top 20 albums of 2023, but for 2024’s EELS, they added some new arrows to their quiver. The duo of Falcon Bitch and Shmoofy (yes, those are the names they have chosen to use) have weaponized their naive, Sarah Records-style harmonies, turning rockers like “Firefighters” and “Godzilla Rises” into thrilling experiences. At times, like on album highlight “Van Goes,” they sound like a Goth version of the B-52s, while songs like “Ballerina” and “Blanket Of My Bone” channel the mutated rockabilly of early post-punks like Devo. They splatter ideas on their musical canvas like Jackson Pollock, with songs like “Big Bovine” warping from a pleasant motorik groove to a halting, shouting jingle (that reminds me of nothing less than “Palm Tree Girls” from I Think You Should Leave) and back again, while keyboard experiments like “Storybook Bay” and the closing “Lilypad Lane” (maybe recorded on this toy cat sound keyboard)  provide brief, but catchy breaks in the action. Just when the tweeness threatens to become overpowering, they unleash moments of true beauty, like the haunting “Gazing At Footwear” and the sighing “I Was A Tunnel.” At no point when listening to this glorious record will you know what’s coming next.

8. DJ Lycox - Guetto Star: Born in Lisbon, DJ Lycox is one of the foremost purveyors of batida, a style that blends sounds from Portugal and Africa into a percussive slurry. Lycox’s blend of batida, as shown off on his excellent album Guetto Star, is a particularly intense and aggressive one, each track layering several interlocking percussion parts to create head-spinning rhythms. The result can be intense and punishing, as on the visceral “Pedale Ku El,” with its trash lid snares and squelchy 808s underlying chaotic vocal samples, and the closing song “Energia,” which sounds like if Berghain moved under the sea to Rock Bottom. Just as often, though, Lycox plays around with lighter sounds: the guitar-driven “Edson no Uige” echoes the feathery bounce of Ivorian coupé-decale, “Staring At The Moon” beguiles with panpipe melodies and rubbery synth bass, and the glorious title track coasts by with a gentle, Afrobeats-style gallop, the signature batida 5-beat pattern adorned with playful vox synths and splashy pianos. It’s a record that works equally well in your earbuds on the subway or at a beachside Portuguese club.

7. Stacks - Want: Amsterdam-based label Knekelhuis consistently releases music that is so cool that it's nearly intimidating. The coolest of them all is Stacks, a duo of Belgian brothers, Jan and Sis Matthé, a pair of brilliant atmospherians who craft icy synth landscapes, over which they stack (duh) and manipulate their vocals until they resemble a choir of sorrowful robots. Seeming to emanate from an isolated corner of the Arctic (or a bedroom studio in Antwerp), their 2024 album Want is as stark and barren as an expansive tundra–the skeletal ”Seagulls” sounds like the ghost of Kraftwerk, while the enveloping “In Mazes” floats with the cold precision of a Gregorian chant. But the duo’s frigid affect is merely a mask for deeply romantic feeling: the propulsive “On The Heels” waits for a lover who may never return; “Is It Ever” pleads to reverse unrequited affection. Aching with melancholy, but never losing hope, Want is as sophisticated as the best 80s synth pop. Never resorting to nostalgic signifiers, it instead evokes the era through loving songcraft and a palpable sense of yearning. 6. Wishy - Triple Seven: What flavor of 90s rock do you prefer? Gauzy shoegaze? Slacker poetry? Doomy grunge? Indiana band Wishy makes it so you don’t have to choose, throwing all of the decade’s alternative styles into a blender and pureéing them into a sugary noise pop package. With bands like Teenage Fanclub, Mazzy Star, My Bloody Valentine, and Dinosaur Jr. as lodestars, Triple Seven is an album that revels in pulling guitars into strange shapes, from the graceful acoustic strums of “Just Like Sunday,” to the flanged-out bliss of “Triple Seven,” to the punishing brick-walled riffage of “Game.” These genre exercises would come across as mere imitations of a classic sound if the performances weren’t so tight, and the hooks so sticky. To their credit, Wishy doesn’t sound like a band from a bygone era, but a modern group with songs that work best in a 90s sound font, and like the best of that era’s guitar music, they create a wall of noise thick enough to swim in.

5. Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk: Magdalena Bay have dedicated their careers to uncovering the mysteries that exist within the digital ether. Part Joseph Campbell and part Weird Science, Imaginal Disk lloosely tells the story of an android that rebels against its creators, searching for meaning and humanity through the power of music (I think?). If there’s anything I love in an album, it’s a goofy, borderline incomprehensible concept (aliens have taken over Earth and have banned rock music…but a teenager has discovered the world’s last remaining guitar!), but the real draw is how the story provides a through-line for Mica Tenenbaum and Matt Lewin’s immaculately-arranged and compositionally-intricate take on pop music. Each song has a calling card that keeps you coming back: the driving 12/8 shuffle of “Killing Time”; the rubbery robot funk of “Image”; the spritely piano rhythm of “Death & Romance”; the theatrical bubblegum of “Tunnel Vision.” The record reaches an even higher gear in the final four songs, as the story of Tenenbaum’s character draws to a close, especially the brain-teasing “That’s My Floor” (which features the blown-out distortion that OG Mag Bay fans will recognize), and “Cry For Me,” a sweeping ballad with a grandeur that evokes peak ABBA. When the album’s introductory melody recurs in “The Ballad of Matt & Mica,” it’s a satisfying and cathartic conclusion to the album’s journey, and the emotional coup-de-grace on one of the most ambitious pop albums of the decade so far.

4. Chief Keef - Almighty So 2: In the decade since the release of his classic mixtape Almighty So, Chief Keef has been following his own muse, spawning new genres with offhand experiments, never trying the same thing twice. Released after several delays–he was tinkering with the album up to the very end–the self-produced Almighty So 2 feels like a conscious attempt by Sosa to make a classic album. I understand fans who prefer him off-the-cuff–or in the sneering smack talk mode he achieved in DIRTY NACHOS, his other 2024 full-length, produced by Mike WiLL Made It–but I was inspired by the totality of the artist’s vision: he structures his verses with a crescendoing intensity, giving weight to his boasts and bite to his punchlines; he piles kick drums atop one another, giving his epic soundscapes a footwork bounce. It’s an album of incredible moments, like the delayed entrance of the horns on the Wilson Pickett-sampling “1,2,3,” or the choir and piano breakdown in “Treat Myself,” or the bizarre hunting-related rant from “Believe” (“I could live in the jungle and come out with a hyena hat”), or the crunk horn riff that echoes through “Grape Trees,” or the impish flutes from “Drifting Away,” or Tierra Whack’s career-best verse on “Banded Up.” What sticks with me the most is how grateful Chief Keef seems to be to be alive and thriving: “How life been? It's been beautiful/Seven thousand square feet, n**** coming from a damn cubicle,” he spits on “Drifting Away.”

3. Mk.gee - Two Star & The Dream Police: According to the Book of Genesis, mankind once shared a common language. Uninhibited by communication issues, humans were able to build the Tower of Babel, a structure so great that it threatened the power of God, who struck down the tower and cursed humanity to speak a variety of unrelated tongues. Enter Mk.gee, a legendary mumbler, who seeks to return humanity to its pre-lingual glory through the power of emotional exhortations and chorused guitars. Forgive the labored intro! I mentioned in my Best Songs of 2024 post that I can hardly understand a word that Mk.gee says. But the man born Michael Gordon is better than almost anyone at communicating a feeling through sticky melodies and fleshing out his compositions with simple, yet effective musical ideas (my favorites include the underwater talkbox-esque guitar on “Rylee & I,” the splattering snares on “Candy,” the gauzy, “Crimson & Clover”-style riff that runs through “Breakthespell”). He seamlessly melds wildly divergent sensibilities, echoing high-budget ‘80s MOR (like solo Sting, or Mr. Mister, or Mike and the Mechanics) and blog-era bedroom pop (like Toro Y Moi or How To Dress Well) in equal measure. His enigmatic approach encourages close listening, inviting us to clock the intricate detail that lies beneath the lo-fi murk. He creates a world both inviting and foreboding, whispering sweet nothings even as he keeps the listener at arms length. When the skies open up, though, on highlights like “Alesis,” “Candy,” “Are You Looking Up?,” and others, it is glorious, hinting at new possibilities for pop music’s relationship with its past.

2. Cavalier - Different Type Time: When we tell the stories of our lives, we often think of the big, earth-shattering moments that change our trajectories and shape us who we are. But those momentous occasions are a mere fraction of our experiences. We mostly spend life, well, living–waiting for a subway, sitting on a windowsill, idling away the hours with an active mind. The music of New Orleans-via-Brooklyn rapper Cavalier revels in the spirituality of these small moments: the sleepless nights on the couch spent watching surreal infomercials; the offhand mistake that spawns an inescapable new nickname; a glance at a map that reminds you of all the places you will never visit. A return to music after a six-year sabbatical, Cavalier’s Different Type Time is a remarkable achievement, the product of a veteran in full control of his considerable abilities, and with a surety of purpose reflected in the wisdom of his internal monologue. Like most signees of billy woods’s Backwoodz Studioz, Cav can rhyme in dense, dazzling, labyrinthine circles (and he does, c.f. the “Tydro ‘97” outro to “Deja vu”), stacking entendres that reward repeat listens. Cav is a student of hip-hop, peppering his rhymes with references to the genre’s history and effortlessly evoking its greats: “Told You” feels like a lost track from Nas’s early days in Queensbridge, while “Badvice” echoes the soulful, loping vibe of Common’s Resurrection and “Yeah Boii” features a particularly epic sample of Flavor Flav’s signature ad-lib.

But despite that lyrical complexity, Different Type Time is very approachable, with warm production and distinctive sounds that tease the ear: the Hawaiian slack key guitar on “Pears,” the out-of-tune upright on “All Things Considered,” the early-digital bloops on “Doodoo Damien”–while Cav spins his webs. With its only guest rap appearances coming from “The Unhoused Brothers,” two homeless artists that Cav welcomed into his studio, Different Type Time inspires you to take stock of your life, encouraging us to be our best selves and to pause every once in a while to reflect on the beauty we experience every day. 1. Amaro Freitas - Y’Y: I listen to a lot of music and write a lot of words but I scarcely have the musical vocabulary to describe Y’Y, the latest album by Brazilian composer and pianist Amaro Freitas. The concept of Y’Y (pronounced “eeh-yeh, eeh-yeh,” an indigenous Brazilian phrase for water) is relatively simple: the album’s first half is dedicated to the buzzing rainforests and rushing rivers of Freitas’s native land, paying tribute to the crucial ecological zone and the life-giving oxygen it provides. Freitas’s piano resembles cascading raindrops and clapping thunder, as he attempts to render the fearsome beauty of his homeland into musical form. In the past, Freitas has spoken about his desire to “decolonize” Brazilian jazz–which in its dominant styles like Bossa Nova has often incorporated European song form–using his training to distill a new style that could only have emerged from Brazil. He prepares his piano with muted strings, transforming the instrument into a percussive force, giving heft to his polyrhythmic playing. The statement piece of the first half is the avant-classical epic “Danca dos Murtelos,” which double-tracks Freitas’s traditional piano with his rattling prepared instrument–when his left hand enters at the track’s halfway point, it feels like the descent of a vengeful god. While the second side isn’t as transportive and revolutionary as the first, it still brings some of the finest jazz I’ve heard all year, and furthers the artist’s mission to bring indigenous Brazilian sounds in the global jazz scene. He works with luminaries like London woodwind maestro Shabaka, searing guitarist Jeff Parker, and prolific harpist Brandee Younger to create a suite that implements his grand theories into action. On the title track, Amaro’s clattering left hand accompanies his traditional right, while Shabaka provides ethereal flute filigrees. “Mar de Circandeiras” finds Freitas and Parker trading solos as they work around a hypnotic theme. The final song, “Encantados,” is the culmination of the album’s many theses: arranged as a quartet, it combines polyrhythms, piano cascades, panpipe melodies, and dime-quick tempo changes, giving a thrilling preview of the shape of jazz to come.

Thanks for reading and happy New Year to all! Check below for the full list of 100, and find a Spotify playlist featuring selections from my favorite albums HERE

Amaro Freitas - Y'Y

Cavalier - Different Type Time

Mk.gee - Two Star & The Dream Police

Chief Keef - Almighty So 2

Magdalena Bay - Imaginal Disk

Wishy - Triple Seven

Stacks - Want

DJ Lycox - Guetto Love

Being Dead - EELS

Mdou Moctar - Funeral For Justice

Naima Bock - Below A Massive Dark Land

454 - Casts of a Dreamer

ScHoolboy Q - Blue Lips

Fievel Is Glaque - Rong Weicknes

Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu, Marta Sofia Honer - The Closest Thing to Silence

SahBabii - Saaheem

Tapir! - The Pilgrim, Their God and The King of My Decrepit Mountain

Fabiana Palladino - Fabiana Palladino

Chanel Beads - Your Day Will Come

Vampire Weekend - Only God Was Above Us

Arooj Aftab - Night Reign

E L U C I D - Revelator

Hana Vu - Romanticism

upsammy - Strange Meridians

Brijean - Macro

Milan W. - Leave Another Day

Moin - You Never End

Nilufer Yanya - My Method Actor

Empress Of - For Your Consideration

Caxtrinho - Queda Livre

Total Blue - Total Blue

Helado Negro - PHASOR

Ka - The Thief Next To Jesus

Kelly Moran - Moves in the Field

Nino Paid - Can’t Go Bacc

Clairo - Charm

glass beach - plastic death

Dummy - FREE ENERGY

Geordie Greep - The New Sound

Josh Johnson - Unusual Object

XAVI - Next

Six Organs of Admittance - Time Is Glass

The Cure - Songs of a Lost World

Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch

La Luz - News of the Universe

Anysia Kim - Truest

Astrid Sonne - Great Doubt

Rema - HEIS

Nala Sinephro - Endlessness

Loe Shimmy - Zombieland 2 

Myriam Gendron - Mayday

Mach-Hommy - #RICHAXXHAITIAN

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - Woodland

Howie Lee - At The Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery

Loidis - One Day

Kendrick Lamar - GNX

Shane Parish - Repertoire

Sideshow - F.U.N. T.O.Y.

Bilal - Adjust Brightness

Church Chords - elvis, he was Schlager

Djrum - Meaning’s Edge

Future - MIXTAPE PLUTO/We Don’t Trust You/We Still Don’t Trust You

Saagara - 3

SML - Small Medium Large

WizKid - Morayo

El Cousteau - Merci, Non Merci

MESSIAH - The Villain Wins

FLO - Access All Areas

MAVI - Shadowbox

Blue Bendy - So Medieval

This Is Lorelei - Box for Buddy, Box for Star

Mike & Tony Seltzer - Pinball

Tems - Born In The Wild

Chuck Johnson - Sun Glories

Valebol - Valebol

CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso - BAÑO MARÍA

LL Cool J - The Force

Sinkane - We Belong

Reymour - NoLand

RiTchie - Triple Digits [112]

Nidia & Valentina - Estradas

Crumb - AMAMA

Vayda - VAYTRIX

Yasmin Williams - Acadia

Sisso & Maiko - Singeli Ya Maajabu

Liquid Mike - Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot

FearDorian - FearDorian

Amen Dunes - Death Jokes

Raphael Roginski - Zaltys

Lucky Daye - Algorithm

Che - Sayso Says

Kelly Lee Owens - Dreamstate

Floating Points - Cascade

Salute - TRUE MAGIC

Chow Lee - Sex Drive

Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee

G.S. Schray - Whispered Something Good

Boldy James - Across The Tracks (w/ Conductor Williams) / Penalty of Leadership (w/ Nicholas Craven)

MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

Charli XCX - brat 

2024 is winding down, and as turbulent as it was a year in politics in the culture at large, it was another big year for tunes. It feels like I write something like that every year–I think we're finished with non-turbulent times. But one thing that I am grateful for is the sheer volume of excellent music that is instantly available at our fingertips. It's a daunting volume, but if you dig, you will find gems.

In 2024, I didn't feel like I had to dig very deep. I vibed with a lot of hits this year, whether they were chart-conquering #1s or viral favorites, and I felt more in step with the critical consensus than I have in years. In past years, I might have interrogated my taste to figure out why I was following the crowd. But as a new dad, I figure I should celebrate being "with it," before "it" becomes something else!

Below are my 100 favorite songs of the year, plus blurbs that explain why I think my top 25 are so special. There are 4000 words ahead, so I will stop talking for now, and just say: happy listening, I hope you find something you love!

Scroll down to the bottom of the blurbs to find my full playlist in Spotify form, plus a curated, sequenced 2024 sampler featuring many of the year's best songs. And now, the 25 best songs of 2024, plus 75 more.

25. El Snappo - “Back2Serve’n”: I am an absolute sucker for slinky, twangy Southern rap that borrows its groove from blaxploitation soundtracks (as filtered through UGK, Three 6, and 8Ball & MJG). PNutt’s palm-muted guitar scritches and walking bassline deliver that feeling in spades on “Back2Serve’n,” providing a red carpet for Broward County emcee El Snappo to waltz down. Wielding a sing-songy flow reminiscent of his fellow Floridian Trapland Pat, El Snappo makes the most of his moment, shouting out his heroes and establishing his hustler bonafides with a charmingly sly drawl.

24. Pa Salieu - “Dece (Heavy)”: Pa Salieu would never let something as small as a two-year prison sentence get in the way of his run as the UK’s most exciting rapper. He emerged from the pen this year on a ridiculous tear, wielding a book of lyrics he compiled while inside and retaining the lockstep timing and percussive flow that makes him special. “Dece (Heavy),” the highlight from Pa’s new album Afrikan Alien, is a virtuosic display, as he deftly navigates a tricky polyrhythm with thudding monosyllables (first verse), toe-tagging precision (hook), and, (during the song’s mind-spinning second verse) rapidfire flourishes that slice through the intricate percussion with ease.

23. Arooj Aftab - “Raat Ki Rani”: On her breakout, Grammy-nominated 2021 album Vulture Prince, Pakistani singer and composer Arooj Aftab drew from influences that ranged from Billie Holliday to Mariah Carey to Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet. “Raat Ki Rani” adds another muse to that considerable collection: Sade Adu. Soothing as a balm, but still stinging with the pain of regret, “Raat Ki Rani” ripples like a cloudy night sky. Aftab smolders atop majestic harps, mournful pianos, and a galloping rhythm, singing of a “queen of the night” who seductively approaches, perhaps in a dream. She aches with the pain of unfulfilled expectation, longing for a love that remains just out of reach. 

22. Fabiana Palladino - “Stay With Me Through The Night”: The scion of a musical family–her father is the legendary session bassist Pino Palladino–Fabiana Palladino effortlessly compresses sounds and sensibilities from several eras and genres, filtering them into a style of her own. Unlike her mentor and frequent collaborator Jai Paul (who executive-produced her album and contributed to this track), Fabiana feels no need to hide behind cultivated mystique or lo-fi murk. She synthesizes grooves that move, imbuing them with emotions that last. “Stay With Me Through The Night,” the best song on her excellent self-titled debut album, is an impassioned attempt to forge ahead in love with a clean slate. Adorned by classy, reverbed piano chords and propelled by a halting and deeply funky drum & bass groove by Steve Ferrone and Pino himself, the song somehow triangulates the sweet spot between Silk Degrees, The Seeds of Love, and The Velvet Rope. As the song progresses, Fabiana’s breathy pleas grow more impassioned, and the question of staying the night grows more and more rhetorical.

21. BossMan Dlow - “Get In With Me”: BossMan Dlow writes rhymes designed to be shouted back at him at full volume. On “Get In With Me,” the first and best real deal viral rap hit of the year, Dlow makes use of pregnant pauses to structure each of his lines as a call-and-response: “Left wrist on froze…look like a bag of ice/I’m driving the Bentley Bentayga…like I don’t love my life.” I, for one, think that BossMan Dlow should be a bit more careful when whipping his luxury cars, but I can’t get enough of his tales of his bottomless budget for shoes and watches.

20. NLE Choppa - “Slut Me Out 2”: Since emerging onto the scene as a teenager with the “Shotta Flow” series, NLE Choppa has become one of hip-hop’s most colorful characters. He’s a vegan, chakra-pilled, “wellness” enthusiast with a winning smile, who is full of himself, but doesn’t take himself too seriously. The gleefully raunchy “Slut Me Out” series (which, along with the three main installments, includes a country remix with J.P. and the hit offshoot “Or What” featuring 41) has been his greatest accomplishment, injecting a much-needed dose of camp into the modern rap landscape. Over a beat powered by sucky-sucky synth bass and insistent club percussion, Choppa doesn’t rap as much as he sashays, his explicit come-ons echoing the sprechgesang delivery of a ballroom house diva more than standard rap machismo. Whether or not he’s aware of his auto-homoerotic undertones (“There’s nothing freaky I wouldn’t do to me, to me”), "Slut Me Out 2" is a blast, an “I’m Too Sexy” for the brainrot generation.

19. Kendrick Lamar - “Not Like Us”: Enough ink has been spilled about "Not Like Us," which we will be hearing for the rest of our lives, but here’s one of many things I appreciate about Kendrick Lamar’s 2024: he illustrated the arbitrariness of the dividing lines that fans and journalists draw between scenes, sub-genres, and artistic approaches. In 2014, it would’ve been easy to imagine Kendrick’s cerebral, hyperlocal storytelling and Mustard’s post-ratchet pop wave existing in separate universes. That was never true: they’re simply different flavors of L.A. shit, with a shared lineage that stretches back to World Class Wrecking Cru and DJ Quik. The West Coast, united, can never be defeated.

18. Nia Archives - “Crowded Roomz”: Behold, the shy DJ. In this voyeuristic Boiler Room era, being a DJ increasingly involves surrendering yourself to the watchful eyes of spectators, who scrutinize your every move. Nia Archives spends a lot of time in packed clubs, and on “Crowded Roomz,” she dramatizes the intense alienation that can come from being the center of attention. As a devoted junglist, however, she doesn’t let her self doubt stand in the way of a banger: she complements punishing drums and space-age sound effects with plaintive guitar and her own yearning vocals, creating a going out anthem for introverts.

17. Astrid Sonne - “Give my all”: Astrid Sonne is a master of building anticipation–she stacks unresolved chords to the stratosphere until her left hand descends upon her piano like the hammer of Thor. On “Give my all,” Sonne lays everything on the line, as she dramatizes her longing for a departed lover with an entrancing, haunting theme, first brought to life with new age synths (complete with strings and panpipe sounds that spring straight from the CD section of a 90s nature store), before it repeats towards the end of the song with pizzicato strings and jaunty woodwinds. As “Give my all” continues, Sonne’s narration grows more unreliable, and her romantic longing seems to curdle into a dangerous obsession. The song’s disparate elements don’t so much blend as they uneasily exist beside one another, like letters torn out of a magazine for a ransom note.

16. Good Looks - “If It’s Gone”: A breakup song both sardonic and kind, Good Looks frontman Tyler Jordan wrote “If It’s Gone” when his longtime girlfriend left him on the first day of the pandemic (we all know exactly what day that is; for me it felt really real when they canceled the Big Ten and NCAA Basketball tournaments). Though there is plenty of venom, the lyrics betray a residual fondness that lingers even after sudden heartbreak, and showcase a good sense of humor that convinces me that there’s no hardship Jordan can’t weather (“And I don't believe in Jеsus, God, or Buddha, or beyond/Okay, a little bit in Buddha—trying to keep from hanging on,” he sings). Adorning the song with gently jangling guitars, tinged with just the right amount of melancholy, Jordan’s bandmates accompany him with a friendly, ramshackle groove that makes the song’s five-and-a-half minutes glide by. By the end of the song, Jordan has earned his revenge by living well, but he still can’t resist the urge to pen one last kiss off: “I hope you find true love and money, many orgasms, and fame/And if you're somehow still unhappy, find somebody else to blame.”

15. Mk.gee - “Alesis”: Year-end time inspires me to dig deep into the songs I’ve enjoyed most, but truth be told, I am not really a lyrics guy. I forget the words to many of my favorite songs, and I can count on my fingers and toes the number of songs with lyrics I know by heart. But the melodies…the melodies, I remember. Such is the power of a great melody: I am moved by mouth sounds, entranced by intervals, caught off guard by unusual syncopation. I’ve listened to “Alesis” a couple dozen times this year, but until now, it has never occurred to me to look up what Mk.gee is on about. Even now, after listening closely to this song for this blurb, I couldn’t recite one lyric. I’ve decided to let the mystery be. I don’t want language to disturb the reverie the artist induces with his muddy, chorus-laden bass and an organ humming in the distance. I can tell you my favorite syllable though: it recurs each chorus, probably around the third line, when the melody leaps up an octave, and it sounds something like this (bolded for emphasis): “Why beeee/Weh we wo HA too.”

14. Nourished by Time - “Hell Of A Ride”: Since releasing Erotic Probiotic 2 (my top album of 2023), Nourished By Time's bedroom symphonies have grown more ambitious and confident. Buoyed by a bigger budget courtesy of XL Recordings, Marcus Brown (who goes by they/them pronouns) is able to flesh out their soundscapes without sacrificing any DIY charm. Kicking off with a guitar riff worthy of a sports movie montage, “Hell Of A Ride” settles into a propulsive keyboard-driven groove, deepened by buzzing synth strings and wailing guitars. Over this bed of controlled chaos, Brown rages against the dying of the light, attempting to reconcile their personal triumphs and increasingly happy life with the horrors unfolding in the world around us: “Young breathin' in them toxins/Used to have a third place, now they got no options/And I don't see that shit stoppin'.” In the end, Brown takes a position of hopeful defiance: if the world is gonna end sooner rather than later, we might as well go out with a bang.

13. J.P. - “Bad Bitty”: The biggest hit of Milwaukee’s current rap wave, and the catchiest 99 seconds of 2024, came courtesy of an erstwhile small forward at UW-Stevens Point, a 20-year-old who radiates an unnatural amount of “unc energy.” “Bad Bitty” benefits from J.P.’s “aw shucks” delivery and supreme vocal talent, as he layers his harmonies like an R&B heartthrob, scats like Ella Fitzgerald, and unspools melodious syllables as easy as he breathes. He may not ever score a hit as big as this again but no matter what, he will still be J.P.

12. Cassandra Jenkins - “Delphinium Blue”: Channeling Laurie Anderson and Emily Brontë in equal measure, Cassandra Jenkins explores the thin line between the transcendent and mundane in “Delphinium Blue.” Her narrator works at a flower shop, surrounded by beauty, and performs the necessary grunt work to maintain that earthly Garden of Eden. The colors of the flowers remind her of her beloved, and like the flowers, love requires constant maintenance to preserve its vibrance. “Cut the stems,” she intones, “to make them last.”

11. Star Bandz - “Yea Yea”: I first heard Ahmad Jamal’s “Pastures” as a sample in Jay-Z’s “Feelin’ It,” which turned a two-chord loop from the jazz classic into one of the most easy-going songs on Reasonable Doubt. 28 years later, Chicago native Star Bandz (who was…negative-12 when “Feelin’ It” came out)  and producer CyrusXO! took “Pastures” in a very different direction with “Yea Yea,” turning Jamal’s rippling arpeggios into menacing reflections of Star’s chaotic energy. Easily navigating the busy instrumental, Star lives up to her name, making it very clear that she’s already lived several lives at 16. Never feeling the need to raise her voice to get her point across, she establishes herself with one of the most striking introductions in recent rap history: “What's up? How are you doing?/I'm the man, my name is Star/I'm 16 doin' shows, and I rock out like a guitar”

10. Tashi Wada - “Grand Trine” ft. Julia Holter: Titled after a rare astrological phenomenon that occurs when three planets exist in symmetrical harmony, “Grand Trine” is a product of a similarly harmonious union between experimental musicians and life partners Tashi Wada and Julia Holter, written in celebration of their daughter’s birth. It is at once a triumphant bit of chamber pop and a meditative new age dreamscape, the elements alternating seemingly at random in a manner that mimics the joy and chaos of parenting a young child. The spritely fanfare of a chorus is designed to hit you deep in your soul, while Wada’s harpsichord fantasias and Holter’s wordless incantations combine to inspire an overwhelming tidal wave of emotion, especially in new parents like yours truly.

9. Hannah Frances - “Bronwyn”: On the cover of her album Keeper of the Shepherd, Hannah Frances lays prostrate in the throes of mourning upon red clay soil, a bracing image that prepares you for the emotional power of “Bronwyn,” the album’s opening track. “Bronwyn” opens with Frances’s acoustic guitar as she picks out suspended chords, unresolved as she waits for her lover to return. It quickly becomes clear that Frances is hoping against hope–the atmosphere grows more turbulent, with distorted drums and violent electric guitar, and she sings of her incomprehensible grief: “The heart swells to loosen the ribs/Loosen the ribs.” While the rest of the album didn’t really move me, “Bronwyn,” achieves Frances’s lofty aims, reaching the celestial heights of folk classics like Joni’s Hejira and Joanna Newsom’s Ys.

8. Ka - “Borrowed Time”: When Ka passed away earlier this year at the age of 52, it came as a shock. The Brownsville, Brooklyn native and firefighter by trade was a paragon of independent integrity, existing outside the mainstream rap apparatus, working nights and weekends to perfect his grimy sound and lyrical koans. It seemed like he could keep making albums like this year’s The Thief Next To Jesus for decades to come. However, as I’ve listened back to Ka’s discography over the past two months, I realized that the person who would’ve been least surprised about his untimely fate is Ka himself: his lyrics frequently focus on the inevitability of his eventual end, and stress the importance of setting things straight with your people and your higher power before it’s too late. Built around a bluesy guitar sample and sirenic organ, “Borrowed Time” is a typically excellent Ka song, defined by the rapper’s gravelly delivery and his pearls of jagged wisdom. Ka speaks of a life lived without compromise, recounting numerous hardships but never expressing regret–it’s all part-and-parcel of escaping the circumstances of his birth: “Must admit it's some vicious pictures in this tapestry.” Ka’s two line hook was powerful at first listen, but is now almost too devastating to bear: “I hope it's borrowed time when my time come/'Cause all my time wasn't kind, son.” Ka might have viewed the last few decades of his life as borrowed time, but I wish he could’ve borrowed a bit more.

7. Vampire Weekend - “Connect”: Fifteen years after bursting onto the indie scene in a cloud of controversy, Vampire Weekend have settled into a comfortable middle age as one of the tightest and best-arranged bands around. They’ve always packed their songs with musical bits that hook just as deeply as their vocal choruses, but their 2024 album, Only God Was Above Us, establishes a new compositional frontier for the group. “Connect” is the flashiest, and proggiest, song on the album, powered by Chris Baio’s melodic bass and frontman Ezra Koenig’s (truly impressive) baroque piano. Koenig’s lyrics are as abstract as ever, but they seem to mourn his loss of his sense of childlike wonder, as he is increasingly unable to find joy in the little things that used to occupy his curiosity. His piano unspools like his inner child dancing out of frame, on the backs of ascending diminished sevenths and dancing arpeggios.

6. MCVERTT - “Hate The Real” ft. 41: Rap trio 41 (Jenn Carter, Kyle Richh, and TaTa) consistently pushes the boundaries of New York drill, avoiding the sinister sliding 808s that have gone stale and finding sounds from further afield. Their most fruitful creative partner is Newark producer MCVERTT, who redefined the sound of Jersey via his club rap collaborations with Bandmanrill, and has consistently provided 41 with his most inventive productions, including the trio’s breakout hit “Bent.” My favorite rap song of 2024, “Hate The Real” is the perfect “Bent” follow-up, complementing the trio’s speaker-knocking energy with what might be the chillest beat in Jersey club history. The most cerebral of the group, Jenn Carter, takes the mellow instrumental as an opportunity for introspection about her trauma and mollifying drug use: “Roll up a blunt, not expressin' my pain/Like fuck, this shit hurt every day.” Kyle and TaTa, on the other hand, see no reason to change up their usual steez; Kyle describes his bachelor revelries, while TaTa watches TikToks in the club. A confluence of unexpected sounds and colorful personalities bouncing off each other, “Hate The Real” is invigorating, relaxing, and endlessly replayable.

5. Burial - “Dreamfear”/“Boy Sent From Above”: Still shrouded in mystery after all these years, club legend Burial made a brief return in 2024 with two of his finest ever tracks. On “Dreamfear” and “Boy Sent From Above,” released as a 2-track EP, Burial decides to stop messing around with the ambient and atmospheric textures characteristic of his recent work. Instead, he creates a pair of unrepentant bangers, as ferocious as any in his formidable discography. Opening with an ominous line reading from the Assassin’s Creed video game series, “Dreamfear” is a punishing taste of The Prodigy-esque hardstyle rave, as Burial wields “Amen” breaks like blunt force weapons, inserting vocal samples that lighten the mood with their sheer goofiness (“Back from the dead, fucked in the head”; “I am the lord of ecstasy!”). I prefer the B-Side, “Boy Sent From Above,” which hasn’t gotten nearly as much love on year-end lists, but offers a much purer pleasure. It’s a shameless take on happy house, layering major key synth fanfares over skittering Miami bass percussion. As the cherry on top, Burial makes a point to use the Euro-trashiest lead sound he can find to bash away charming melodies that echo both “Axel F” and Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin’ Bout You."

4. MJ Lenderman - “She’s Leaving You”: At first, I didn’t understand the hype behind Indie rock hero du jour MJ Lenderman. He has a way with plaintive melodies and a slacker’s sense of humor, kind of like Stephen Malkmus, combined with a ramshackle rowdiness that evokes Neil Young & Crazy Horse. Or at least he did in theory–as much as he emulated those legends, I felt there was a big piece missing: their sui generis songwriting talent. A simple, but powerful ballad, “She’s Leaving You” is the song that won me a seat on the Lenderman bandwagon. “She’s Leaving You” has it all: Economical, devastating lyrics that hint at a deep-seated sadness (“It falls apart, we all have work to do”); dueling guitar riffs that sound vaguely familiar, but only because their melodies are so instinctual and satisfying; a climactic, J Mascis-lite guitar solo that screams the chorus melody. Add it to the canon of rock’s great  self-pitying masculine tearjerkers, next to modern classics like The Hold Steady’s “Lord, I’m Discouraged,” and classic classics like Thin Lizzy’s “Fight Or Fail,” Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” and the Stones’ “Let It Loose.”

3. Tinashe - “Nasty”: Tinashe’s long-overdue mainstream comeback continues a noble pop tradition of deeply sensual songs that get the point across without using explicit language. Each line is sexually frank enough that it barely qualifies as innuendo, but there’s nothing on there that TV or radio can object to! (Another song that does this, albeit in a sillier and even filthier way: “Milkshake” by Kelis) Beyond that clever gamesmanship, “Nasty” is a brilliant bit of songwriting, mixing hearing test keyboards with ultra-crisp 808s and an inventive bassline that plays off the unusual minor key substitution in the verse (the verse’s C Minor chord leads into an A Flat Minor chord, when you would expect A Flat Major in the song’s C Minor key!) Tinashe’s tone is pure and playful, her delivery toe-tagging each handclap and bass bounce in a way that is fun to imitate, but hard to replicate. Her freak, it turns out, is not so easily matched.

2. Mabe Fratti - “Enfrente”: Experimental cellist Mabe Fratti uses her instrument as a springboard to new worlds. At times, she plucks the cello like a bass, and at others, her sweeping bow adds cinematic grandeur to her innovative compositions. Shining with a crystalline intimacy that reminds me of Bjørk’s Vespertine, “Enfrente” boasts the coolest collection of sounds I heard all year, with ice cavern synths, prominent breakbeats, and Fratti's supremely funky pizzicato cello. To Fratti's credit, she fashions an incredible, shapeshifting destroyer of a song around these elements–like so many songs on this list, “Enfrente” chronicles a search for connection in an increasingly hostile world. The conclusion sounds like an avalanche, as the love and warmth she's been searching for tumble hopelessly away.

1. Geordie Greep - “Holy, Holy!”: I first heard the band Black Midi on YouTube and didn’t think much of it. I was impressed by their musicianship at such a young age, and amused by their devotion to once-uncool influences like the aggressive prog of Van Der Graaf Generator and 1980s King Crimson, but never compelled to return to their songs after an initial listen. The lead singer, Geordie Greep, sang in an exaggerated, throaty manner that reminded me at times of the cartoonish snarl of Cameo’s Larry Blackmon. So when Greep released his debut solo single over the summer, I didn’t expect my mind to be so thoroughly blown. Exhilarating and blood-curdling, “Holy, Holy!” grabs you by the throat from its first roaring guitar riff. The opening groove is immense, with a muscular rhythm section and guitar that purrs like an unmuffled Ferrari. It sounds like 80s Earth, Wind, and Fire and Eno-era Roxy Music, if they entered the machine that turned Jeff Goldblum into The Fly. Crooning like Cronenberg Bing Crosby (or Donald Fagen from the Black Lodge), Greep knocks us off balance with his first line, accompanied by syncopated guitar stabs: “I could tell you were lonely, from the moment you walked in.” As the song progresses, the Afro-Latin and orchestral Brazilian influences grow more and more apparent, and the song’s narrator grows more and more deranged–you can practically smell the gin on his breath as he brags of his virility and his sterling reputation with the “revolutionaries” and “Jihadis” who stretch from Havana to Tokyo. The bottom falls out when the song’s driving bass is replaced by a cascading piano and a heavenly choir–Greep matches the beauty of the arrangement with skin-crawling skeeviness. He unloads his deepest desires to his object of affection, who, as it is now clear, is a sex worker whom he has bribed to reassure him of his misplaced sense of confidence: “And I want you to tell me I'm a perfect dancer/And I want you to tell me I smell great/I want you to make me look taller/Could you kneel down the whole time?/How much will that cost?” Sometimes when I choose my favorite song of the year, I consider how it deeply affected my life, and mirrored what I’ve been going through (c.f. 2020 or 2023). Other times (like in 2021), I have no choice but to pick the most undeniable banger. I’m happy to say that the grandly ambitious steamroller that is “Holy, Holy!” fits squarely in the latter category.

Find the playlist HERE

Listen to my Best of 2024 Mix HERE (for best results, set crossfade to 12 seconds)

The Full List:

Geordie Greep - "Holy, Holy!"

Mabe Fratti - "Enfrente"

Tinashe - "Nasty"

MJ Lenderman - "She's Leaving You"

Burial - "Dreamfear" / "Boy Sent From Above"

MCVERTT - "Hate The Real" ft. 41

Vampire Weekend - "Connect"

Ka - "Borrowed Time"

Hannah Frances - "Bronwyn"

Tashi Wada - "Grand Trine" ft. Julia Holter

Star Bandz - "Yea Yea" (Prod. by CYRUSXO!)

Cassandra Jenkins - "Delphinium Blue"

J.P. - "Bad Bitty" (Prod. by J.P. & P The Producer)

Nourished By Time - "Hell Of A Ride"

Mk.gee - "Alesis"

Good Looks - "If It's Gone"

Astrid Sonne - "Give my all"

Nia Archives - "Crowded Roomz"

Kendrick Lamar - "Not Like Us" (Prod. by Mustard)

NLE Choppa - "SLUT ME OUT 2" (Prod. by EMRLD BEATS & Synthetic)

BossMan Dlow - "Get In With Me" (Prod. by DonteMadeIt)

Fabiana Palladino - "Stay With Me Through The Night"

Arooj Aftab - "Raat Ki Rani"

Pa Salieu - "Dece (Heavy)" (Prod. by AoD, Felix Joseph & Tudor Monroe)

El Snappo - "Back2Serve'n" (Prod. by Pnutt)

Nilufer Yanya - “Mutations”

Jessica Pratt - “Life Is”

Anysia Kim - “#71 (Again & Again)” (Prod. by Anysia Kim)

Kelly Moran - “Butterfly Phase”

Magdalena Bay - “Cry For Me”

Rema - “OZEBA” (Prod. by Rema & ThisIzLondon)

Djrum - “Crawl”

Floating Points - “Vocoder (Club Mix)”

Cash Cobain - “Fisherrr” ft. Bay Swag (Prod. by Cash Cobain)

TitoM, Yuppe, S.N.E. & Eeque - “Tshwala Bam” (Prod. by TitoM & Yuppe)

Shawny Binladen & Baby Gates - “Crazy Day” (Prod. by Jet Stanley)

Church Chords - “Warriors of Playtime”

Loe Shimmy - “Pray For Peace” (Prod. by Bailey Sample & Jordan Michael Davis)

Helado Negro - “Best For You and Me”

Chanel Beads - “Embarrassed Dog”

Nadine Shah - “Topless Mother”

Chuck Johnson - “Broken Spectre”

FLO - “Check”

Xavi - “La Diabla”

upsammy - “Aqualizing”

Mike & Tony Seltzer - “Pinball” (Prod. by Tony Seltzer & Mikey Fleece)

WizKid - “Karamo” (Prod. by P2J)

Chief Keef - “Believe” (Prod. by Chief Keef & Bobby Raps)

Hana Vu - “Dreams”

Empress Of - “What Type of Girl Am I?”

Halo Maud - “Catch The Wave”

Kanii, Riovaz & Nimstarr - “Tell Me” (Prod. by Gray Toomey & Zetra)

Mach-Hommy - “Sur Le Pont d’Avignon” (Prod. by Conductor Williams & Sam Gendel)

Clairo - “Juna”

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings - “Empty Trainload of Sky”

Los and Nutty - “THE REASON” (Prod. by 28MadeThisOne & Vinxia)

Johnny Blue Skies - “If The Sun Never Rises Again”

Caxtrinho - “Vó Jura”

Elucid - “IN THE SHADOW OF IF” (Prod. by Jon Nellen)

Christopher Owens - “Beautiful Horses”

Belong - “AM / PM”

Rachel Chinouriri - “The Hills”

Erika De Casier - “Lucky”

Myaap - “Smackin” (Prod. by Azcaviar)

Mary Timony - “No Thirds”

ScHoolboy Q - “THank god 4 me” (Prod. by Kal Banx, DJ Fu & J.LBS)

Fantastic Cat - “So Glad You Made It”

Tems - “You In My Face” (Prod. by GuiltyBeatz)

BabyChiefDoit - “Doit The Best” (Prod. by DrakoMade, FoxWhyYouSoGodly & JATEK ONE)

HiTECH - “DETROIT MONEY PHONE” ft. G.T. (Prod. by HiTECH)

Maxo Kream - “Bang The Bus” (Prod. by Evilgiane)

The Cure - “And Nothing Is Forever”

oso oso - “all of my love”

MESSIAH - “burden of truth” ft. Malaya (Prod. by TwoTone)

Loidis - “Wait & See”

Chicken P - “People’s Favorite” (Remix) ft. 42 Dugg (Prod. by Niizzy)

Sexyy Red - “Get It Sexyy” (Prod. by Tay Keith & Jake Fridkis)

Future - “MJ” (Prod. by Wheezy, Romil Hemnani, Bryan Yepes & 2forwOyNE)

Tapir! - “Hallelujah Bruv!”

Eem Triplin - “stephanie” (Prod. by Sauron & Imitation Therapy)

Lupe Fiasco - “Samurai” (Prod. by Soundtrakk)

Little Simz - “Far Away” (Prod. by Jakwob)

Durand Bernarr - “GPS”

Ovrkast - “CUT UP” (Prod. by Ovrkast)

The Smile - “Eyes & Mouth”

Beyoncé - “RIIVERDANCE” (Prod. by Beyoncé & The-Dream)

Big Boogie - “Left, Right” (Prod. by Yung Dee & DMacTooBangin)

BigXThaPlug - “Meet The 6ixers” ft. Ro$ama & Yung Hood (Prod. by Tony Coles)

Rels B & Junior H - “Un Desperdicio” (Prod. by Krizous, Omar Alcaide, Andres Yuma & Cesar Posada)

Pablo Skywalkin - “Dress Shoes” (Prod. by ???)

Hiatus Kaiyote - “Cinnamon Temple”

The Narcotix - “The Lamb”

Sinkane - “Everything Is Everything” ft. Tru Osbourne

Papo 2oo4 & Subjxct 5 - “Ooo” (Prod. by Subjxct 5)

CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso - “El Único” (Prod. by Federico Vindver & Felipe “Pipe” Bernal)

Popstar Benny - “Wiz” ft. Vayda & SadBoy (Prod. by Popstar Benny)

Kareen Lomax - “Remedy”

Goat - “Ouroboros”

Kelly Lee Owens - “Time To”

The world of music is in a strange place. It is constantly moving forward, with microtrends popping up in an instant and stars being born overnight, yet in a strange stasis, with the stars of the past ruling over commercial fiefdoms with iron fists. One thing that has remained the same is that the sheer volume of music released is higher than ever, and it keeps growing. It's a bit intimidating, but I love it! It’s in my nature to seek out the fresh and new, and I am faced with a bounty of goods every day–I press play on every record believing, honestly believing, that it could become one of my favorites ever.

While I didn’t find any all-time favorites this year (give it time), I did find dozens of albums worth recommending. I listed 75 here, and could have listed 75 more. And I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of the great music that came out this year alone. Nothing you can do but keep digging!

Here’s my list of my favorite albums of the year, with blurbs for the top ten. Scroll down to the bottom to find selections from all 75, plus some honorable mentions.

10. Lankum - False Lankum: This June, the skies burned. Wildfire smoke from northern Québec funneled into New York City and stayed a while, filling the air with toxins and turning the sky blood red. My soundtrack to that apocalyptic moment was False Lankum, the latest by the Irish group Lankum, an album that sounds like the last gasp of a dying world. Spellbinding with both traditional tunes, like the stunningly haunting version of “Go Dig My Grave,” and excellent originals, False Lankum is one of the year’s most harrowing, transporting, and life-affirming listening experiences, underlying spare folk music with ominous drone. Sometimes, the noise builds slowly, like on “Lord Abore and Mary Flynn,” but in other songs, like “Netta Perseus,” the atmosphere collapses at once, drowning beauty in an all-encompassing darkness. Facing down that darkness armed with only their gorgeous harmonies, Lankum sound like the remnants of a lost society, protecting the embers of civilization and refusing to surrender to the void.

9. bar italia - Tracey Denim: Tracey Denim is the musical equivalent of a text translated into a foreign language and then back into English: the original text is The Velvet Underground & Nico, and the translating software is the thousands of bands that album inspired. Tracey Denim subsumes decades’ worth of alternative music into its existential murk. At times, Bar Italia sound like The Modern Lovers on anti-anxiety meds, at others the most melodic incarnation Pere Ubu, or a version of Pulp with every ounce of romanticism beaten out. The band creates miniature psychodramas out of the moments when a night’s vibe shifts from hedonism to malaise, its three vocalists passing the mic back and forth to recreate the profoundly banal conversations that occur after the party ends and only the saddest attendees linger. The real trick of Tracey Denim is the way it transforms this murky malaise into something truly enjoyable–it’s a world you want to revisit, a dogged companion for late nights. 

8. Meshell Ndegeocello - The Omnichord Real Book: Invented in 1981 by the Suzuki Corporation (not the car company but given the dual domains of Yamaha, I would understand why you’d think so), the Omnichord is a rudimentary drum machine and synthesizer, producing a tinny approximation of a string section, along with several pre-programmed basslines and drum rhythms. In the hands of an artist as versatile and intelligent as Meshell Ndegeocello, the limitations placed by the Omnichord are a mere starting point for flights of fancy that reach the cosmos, the innermost regions of the soul, and back again. With The Omnichord Real Book, Ndegeocello creates perhaps her most ambitious work to date, surrounding the titular synth with a universe of post-bop brilliance, created by a diverse and accoladed ensemble of musicians that includes guitarist Jeff Parker, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusure, harpist Brandee Younger, jazz pianists Jason Moran and Cory Henry, drummer Deantoni Parks, saxophonist Josh Johnson, vibraphonist Joel Ross, and fellow Gen X singer-songwriters Joan As Policewoman and Thandiswa. The 72-minute epic is as soulful as any record by Roy Ayers and as adventurous as any by Prince, but radiates a warmth and wisdom that could only come from Meshell.

7. ML Buch - Suntub: The latest album by Danish guitarist-songwriter ML Buch is a gooey, tactile record, filled with sounds that shift and mold into different shapes like Playdough. Many of the songs on Suntub don’t so much as progress as they burble like a mudpot at Yellowstone, melding heavy shoegaze guitars with lumbering drums, airy synths, and a litany of found-sound effects to create a euphonious mush. With song titles like “River mouth,” “Pan over the hill,” and “Clearing,” it’s not surprising that this is an album best enjoyed outdoors, where the guitars can fade into the atmosphere and become one with streaking rays of sun. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn’t. I know I can’t say anything more convincing than this meme.

6. Amaarae - Fountain Baby: Blessed with sharp songwriting sensibilities and the voice that could charm snakes, Amaarae is a pop star perfectly suited for our international age. Fountain Baby is the pop album of the year, stacking bangers back-to-back-to-back, each elevated by Amaarae’s sensual singing and IG-ready bon mots. Using the syncopated rhythms of Afrobeats as her bedrock, the Ghanaian-American singer creates an enchanting tapestry of border-crossing bangers, borrowing elements of Bollywood, alternative R&B, and Neptunes-era hip-pop to fill out her sound. Highlights? Look no further than the majestic “Co-Star,” a charming astrological lyrical exercise, “Counterfeit,” which transforms the Clipse’s “Wamp Wamp” into a tropical dancefloor filler, “Wasted Eyes,” soaring atop thumping bass and a subcontinental swing, and the bold, brash “Princess Going Digital.”

5. Jonny Nash - Point of Entry: A singularly absorbing bit of ambient folk, Point of Entry glistens like morning sunshine. The soundscapes are intimate, but expansive, each pluck of Jonny Nash’s guitar echoing through the cosmos. As the founder of the New Age label Melody As Truth and a member of the group Gaussian Curve with Marco Sterk and Balearic legend Gigi Masin, Nash is heavily experienced in creating understated bliss, and Point Of Entry is most likely the best work he’s been involved with to date. True to its title, the album is a sonic doorway, slowly but surely transporting the listener to a poignantly tranquil new reality.

4. The Tubs - Dead Meat: Formed from the ashes of Welsh punk band Joanna Gruesome, The Tubs is the brainchild of the band’s former guitarist, Owen “O” Williams, in which he is free to be his jangliest, nerviest self. The London-based outfit’s debut album, Dead Meat, melds the best of 80s college rock into a fresh package, at times echoing the romantic cynicism of The Wedding Present (on the strutting, feedback-laden “Sniveller”), the pop maximalism of Bob Mould’s Sugar (on “I Don’t Know How It Works”), and the chiming beauty of Felt (check the gorgeous closer “Wretched Lie”). While the familiarity is comforting to a record nerd like me, it wouldn’t mean anything if the songs weren’t excellent, and Dead Meat is lean, mean, and full of enough excellent riffs and melodies to last far longer than its 26 minutes. Throughout, Williams belies the taut instrumentals with a serrated sense of self-deprecation, painting one of the finest pictures of a hopeless sad sack since A Confederacy of Dunces. On “Sniveller” alone, he admits that he is a "bootlicker," who “wriggles like a worm” and “cowers in the dark,” prostrating himself in the most unflattering of ways to win the affections of his intended. On Dead Meat, he doesn’t need to debase himself to win our sympathy–he just needed to write nine crackling tunes.

3. Sufjan Stevens - Javelin: Twenty years ago, Sufjan Stevens announced himself as indie folk’s premier auteur, wielding orchestral grandeur, raw nerve emotion, and exquisite songcraft like a weapon. Arriving after a time of incredible hardship–marked by the death of his longtime partner, a bout with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and more–Javelin is perhaps Sufjan’s most devastating record to date. No longer hiding behind geographical oddities or childhood stories, Sufjan confronts his trauma head-on. On “Goodbye Evergreen,” a plaintive lullaby gives way to cacophonous chaos, as Sufjan seems to experience all five stages of grief at once. The nakedly vulnerable “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” articulates a feeling that we’ve all had while illuminating nuances we might not have considered: to the Sufjan of “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”, to be loved is to be free; to be seen in full and unshackled from earthly concerns, finally able to ascend to true selfhood. The album’s centerpiece is the astounding “So You Are Tired,” an almost unbearably sad and beautiful ballad in which Sufjan struggles to see a path forward without the person who gave him that kind of love. Javelin ends on a hopeful note, a lyrically re-arranged cover of Neil Young's "There's A World," as Sufjan finds solace in his faith: his lover isn’t gone, he is everywhere; in the trees, the air, and the ocean. Even if I don’t share Sufjan’s faith, I am still inspired by the singer’s strength, as he journeys through hell and back.

2. Veeze - Ganger: Before 2023, Veeze was the Winston Niles Rumfoord of the Detroit rap scene, appearing at irregular intervals to slay a guest verse or drop a new excellent single before disappearing back into the studio. His unkempt appearance and laid-back-bordering-on-comatose delivery added to the mystique, making him one of his city’s most mercurial figures. Years in the making, Veeze's first full-length album Ganger delivered on the hype and more, demonstrating once and for all why he's your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. The 21-track project is as dense as a dying star–Veeze packs punchline after punchline into his songs, his barely-there rasp unfurling dismissals and flexes with an astonishing hit percentage. Each listen, I find a new favorite bar, and am surprised anew by an unexpected reference: on "Not A Drill," he relegates his enemies to the "UIP" (unimportant persons); on “OverseasBaller,” he arranges his multi-colored racks into an edible arrangement; on “SEXY liar,” he apologizes for accidentally flexing on his opposition before he “throws shells like taco food”; on “7sixers,” he cracks himself up when he says his money is as fat as Norbit. The first half of Ganger culminates in “Boat Interlude,” a stylistic curveball in which Veeze goes toe-to-toe with Lil Yachty and delivers one of the verses of the year. If the first half of Ganger demonstrates Veeze’s bar-for-bar supremacy, the glistening second half is a testament to his ear for production. DDotFreezing lives up to his name with his frigid beat for “tramp STAMP”; G-Lok’s beat for “Weekend” mixes gentle acoustic guitars and ambient pianos with a Michigan drumbeat that subtly shifts the song off-kilter; 614ASE’s blissed out “Kinda$” is a tape highlight, allowing Veeze to push the tempo; Rocaine and Koncept P’s “Safe 2” is trap music for the chillout room, as Veeze works a sing-song flow before succumbing to the atmosphere and slurring his words to oblivion. That’s a lot of words, and not a lot of insight, but what can I say? These are just very, very good rap songs by one of the funniest and most skillful street rappers in Detroit, or anywhere else. It’s a crowning achievement, possibly the defining album of the deepest and most exciting rap scene of the 2020s.

1. Nourished by Time - Erotic Probiotic 2: One thing about me is that I absolutely LOVE sensitive, dark-night-of-the-soul sophistipop that attempts to elucidate the human condition over a bed of luscious synthesizers–think Prefab Sprout, The Blue Nile, Tears For Fears, Peter Gabriel. I was under the impression that people stopped making this kind of music as soon as they heard the drums hit in “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but Marcus Brown, the artist known as Nourished By Time, created a worthy successor to that noble lineage. Erotic Probiotic 2 is a showcase for Brown’s deep reservoirs of wisdom, laid over primitive synths and driving beats that take inspiration from freestyle. The soundscapes are warm and inviting, giving gravitas to Brown’s spiritual pronouncements, which they deliver in a graceful, throaty baritone. Opening diptych “Quantum Suicide” and “Shed That Fear” immediately set the tone, as Brown pleads for us to transcend our mortal selves and prepare for the next life. Track three, “Daddy,” breaks the reverie and drags us to the club, adding a bit of ballroom campiness as it floats over a programmed 4/4 stomp. “The Fields” and “Rain Water Promise” bring the best of both worlds, offering revelry and profundity in equal measure. “Soap Party,” with its dancing piano breakdown, begins the comedown, while closer “Unbreak My Love” ends the album by repeating the titular mantra until all tension dissipates into the ether. In an uncertain year, Erotic Probiotic 2 was a balm, a paean to the power of positive thinking–a radically optimistic work that dares to posit that a cold and unfeeling universe can become joyous and loving, if only you play the right notes. Nourished By Time plays those notes for me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading! Below are a bunch more albums that I loved this year, and please check the Spotify playlist sampler that contains music from all these albums and more.

Another year of bangers is in the books, friends. As the future world (and the overall environment of the recording industry!) seems to more and more uncertain and chaotic, one thing we can all take solace in is the sheer volume of excellent songs that hits us on any given day! If you're not finding great new music, you ain't tryin'.

Buuut if you don't feel like trying too hard, I have done the work for you! My top 100 for 2023 is an eclectic list, and I hope you'll find something new to love. Oh, and I wrote about 3500 words on these songs, so you're gonna have to at least skim through 'em (or, uh, scroll all the way down, I guess) to get to the Spotify playlist. *This list represents nothing but my own personal opinion! Songs by artists I have worked with in a professional capacity are marked by an asterisk. 25. Rae Sremmurd - “Flaunt It/Cheap”: Nearly a decade after emerging onto the scene, Rae Sremmurd have transformed their initial burst of chaotic energy into a studied professionalism. “Flaunt It/Cheap” brings back some of the old Sremm magic, collapsing decades worth of rap history into one beat-shifting banger. The time traveling track borrows sparse percussion and tongue-twisting flows from the 80s golden era, booty bass from 2 Live Crew, modular synths from The Neptunes, triplet turns of phrase from Atlanta, and reversed cymbals from The Bomb Squad. With a few tweaks, this could’ve easily appeared on Missy Elliott’s Under Construction, and might have taken over the radio if it came out in 2003. In 2023, though, it’s still a reliable dancefloor filler, and evidence of the Sremm brothers’ continuing reign as our premier pop rap savants.

24. Libianca - “People”: As a downtempo and melancholy ballad in a usually celebratory Afrobeats genre, Libianca’s “People” stood out in 2023, climbing charts throughout the year, and becoming a fan favorite at festivals and a go-to jam for pre-show DJs. It gently lopes along, riding a mellow bed of electric keys as it loops through a series of indelibly fragile hooks. The Cameroonian-American singer radiates a wounded pride as she pleads for someone, anyone, to send her an angel.

23. Animal Collective - “Defeat”: I was afraid the 20+-minute song was a lost art. I don’t mean a Grateful Dead-style 5 minute song pushed to 20 minutes with an extended jam. I mean an actual song, a musical journey that springs from a sung melody, unfolding into a room with many doors. Thankfully, Animal Collective, a band always in search of the next creative mile-marker to pass, is around to show us that prog ain’t dead, it’s just been resting.

Like the granddaddy of rock mega-suites–Yes’s Tales Of Topographic Oceans–”Defeat” challenges the listener to meet the band in the literary, meditative milieu where they live. The swelling, drumbeat-free intro lasts a full nine minutes, before transforming into a jaunty bit of Nuggets–style psychedelia. Before you get too comfortable, the bottom falls out once again, with only Avey Tare’s vibrato and Geologist’s hypnotic soundscapes keeping the proceedings afloat. The tension grows nearly unbearable over the course of the next eight minutes, the bog deepening, the resolution never seeming to arrive. And the resolution never comes…the song ends in as uncertain a place as it starts. Only you, the listener, have changed.

22. ISMATIC GURU - “A Nice Man”: The last song was 20 minutes, this one barely surpasses sixty seconds. Practitioners of a niche brand of punk rock that the internet calls “egg punk,” ISMATIC GURU take no time at all to work up an unstoppable groove. On "A Nice Man," the bass player kicks it off with a line as funky as anything Mike Watt ever dreamed up, before the rest of the group saunters in with squeaky synths and nervy guitar melodies, played high up on the neck. ”A Nice Man” needs that unsettling groove to peer inside the mind of its misanthropic narrator (perhaps the character from this oft-memed R. Crumb comic) who can’t hide his revulsion when faced with an everyday, pleasant individual–a nice man who holds the door. After sixty seconds of herky-jerk grooving, the song ends on an incredible punchline that I simply cannot spoil here.

21. Myaap - “Automatic”: Milwaukee rap is no stranger to audacious, obvious samples, and the city’s emcees are colorful enough to make even the most well-known number their own. Gliding atop a reconfiguration of a Pointer Sisters classic, Myaap radiates a bratty charisma on “Automatic,” her voice meshing with the indelible Pointer harmonies and the insistent “Lowend” handclaps (a Milwaukee scene signature) to create a miniature symphony of exuberance. “I won't ever let a broke n**** have me,” raps Myaap, “I ain't stoppin' 'till I win me a Grammy.”

20. 03 Greedo - "Industry"*: 03 Greedo finally finished a 4.5 year prison sentence at the beginning of this year, but while he was away, he was still keeping a very close eye on things. Over a haunting instrumental by Cypress Moreno–an appropriate setting for the return of the Wolf of Grape Street–Greedo unleashes a fevered missive that succinctly summarizes the state of the rap game on "Industry," attacking predatory record execs, taking note of the rise of women in hip-hop (name-checking Latto as his favorite current rapper, no less), and working through a paranoia driven by years of surveillance and the insatiable greed of others ("Seen this money turn a mom against a son, a twin against a twin"). Most poignantly, Greedo mourns a series of peers who perished during his time inside, praying that he won’t be the next name on a t-shirt: “Cause after Bankroll, Drakeo, Dolph, and Nip, feel like the next to die.”

19. MIKE - "Stop Worry!" ft. Sister Nancy: Bronx rapper MIKE made moves with a rare sense of confidence this year, releasing multiple excellent projects, gathering the underground for a show in Central Park, and working to grow his 10k label. But perhaps none of MIKE’s big swings took as much courage as sharing a track with Sister Nancy, who has dominated every track she’s touched since blessing the world with “Bam Bam” in the early 1980s. Forty years later, Nancy is just as powerful a presence–on “Stop Worry!,” MIKE employs her with the force of a megaphone, bookending the song with her clarion call to action: “NO SLEEPING IN BED!,” she commands. In between Nancy’s thunderous toasts, MIKE asserts his place in the world, displaying his comfort in his role as a leader of the new school: “Growing up I learned to play a crowd, but I know when to lead/Too much substance for the faint crowd, don't know when to keep/Tryna cut it, I'm a strange flower growing out the creek.”

18. Maryyx2 - "I DON'T KNOW!!": I don't remember where I found this gem...maybe a No Bells tweet? At any rate, “I DON’T KNOW” is a grade-A banger. Lagosian singer Maryyx2 races atop spindly guitar arpeggios and crackling live percussion, expressing an existential uncertainty in her high-pitched tone. It’s a whirling dervish of a tune, generating a universe of sounds in just 93 seconds.

17. defprez - “Endless”: As a Steely Dan connoisseur, intimately familiar with every second of their initial 7 album run, I’ve long thought that “Midnite Cruiser” is one of their most underrated songs. One of the rare cuts from the discography sung by someone other than Donald Fagen (the drummer Jim Hodder took his turn on this one), the song is an indelible slice of AM gold. One moment, in particular–the minor turn that closes out the song’s instrumental intro–stands out to me as the single moodiest moment in the entire Steely Dan discography.Defprez producer knowsthetime clearly agrees, using that moment as the bedrock for “Endless,” one of the best rap songs of 2023.

Doing their thing above Fagen’s rippling piano, emcees Defcee and CRASHprez spin dueling verses about the immutability of time. Defcee fritters away the moments at his desk job, counting the seconds until he can indulge in his passion for rapping once more: “At my job feelin the temperature buildin/Direct deposit dropped, confetti fell from the ceiling/Gotta wait two more weeks for relief/If I can’t, then breathe through looseleaf and a beat.” CRASHprez, meanwhile, attacks the ruling class head-on with a handbook for civil disobedience: “Best practice: hit ‘em in the tax bracket/Class action, make it fashion/Say what fam is, make it fascist.”

16. KP Skywalka - “A Bipper’s Blues”: The DMV rap scene was one of the most exciting to follow in 2023, and KP Skywalka is the region’s most promising star. KP proffers a swinging, lazily melodic, and emotionally direct style of street music, his cartoonishly expressive voice hanging in a pocket slightly behind the beat. “A Bipper’s Blues” offers a revealing peek into KP’s love life, as the Washington D.C. native reels after seeing his main squeeze post a suggestive TikTok. But instead of getting mad, KP’s infatuation seems to deepen at her display of confidence, his second-person rhymes growing more and more flirtatious until he nearly overwhelms the soulful vocal sample with his come-ons. Though it’s maybe not as affecting as his 2022 opus “GRANNY HOUSE” (if I heard it early enough, it would've placed extremely highly on my 2022 list), “A Bipper’s Blues” floats by on KP’s indefatigable charm–it’s as good evidence as any that he’s going to take the DMV sound to newfound heights.

15. Ratboys - "Black Earth, WI": Ratboys impressed me in 2020 with the album Printer’s Devil, a glistening bit of indie folk that seemed to combine the sound of every early ‘00s Saddle Creek Records band into one glorious hodgepodge. Their new album, The Window, keeps that energy, but mixes in maximalist moves straight outta the classic rock canon. “Black Earth, WI” is as FM-ready as any indie rock song released this year, with a titanic 8:34 run time and an easygoing rollick that recalls classics like The Faces’ “Debris” and, the king of all disaffected epics, The Velvet Underground’s “Oh Sweet Nuthin’.” Unlike the melancholy men who sing those songs, Ratboys lead singer Julia Steiner imbues her own epic with a sense of wonder, as she describes a cosmic journey through the heart of Wisconsin with a nursery rhyme-like cadence. The real star of the show is guitarist Dave Sagan, who effortlessly drops a solo that soars, but never bores, for a full five minutes.

14. Mk.gee & Two Star - "Are You Looking Up": This one snuck up on me. I hadn’t heard it until I saw it place on a year-end list in early December, and it promptly took over my life. This ballad by artist-producer Mk.gee (pronounced "McG" like the Charlie's Angels director) has the minimalist feeling of a demo, built around not much more than a muted guitar, hand percussion, and a vintage electric keyboard that joins in about halfway through. As skeletal as it is, “Are You Getting Up” packs a potent emotional punch, Mk.gee’s voice fraying at the edges as he makes an impassioned plea for the subject to take her life into her own hands. Brace yourself for a reductive comparison: if Blonde-era Frank Ocean enlisted Jeff Buckley to record Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin,” it would sound a little something like this. ("Are You Looking Up" also seems to be an absolute stunner in a live setting)

13. Anycia - "BRB": Effortlessly dismissing rubes without as much as raising an eyebrow, the terminally laid back Anycia is a special talent. She has the rare ability to soothe and intimidate, her breathy monotone conveying multitudes as she molds instrumentals to fit her tempo. “BRB” is so chill that it can be easy to miss how sharp the bars are, as the Atlanta native economically dismisses her competitors without breaking a sweat: “Roof is off the coupe, I'm super cute, you bitches out the loop/You don't tell the truth and that is why I do not fuck with you/Yeah, yeah, I do not fuck around/See me goin' up, you bitches stuck, you bitches on the ground.”

12. Anjimile - "The King": Employing Glass-ian vocal arrangements with fire-and-brimstone flair, Anjimile’s “The King” is one of the more singularly haunting listening experiences of the year. Anjimile tells an eras-spanning tale that touches on Daniel in the lion’s den, the Black Plague, and more, as he condemns those who remain silent on the sins of our age (Climate change? Fascism? Racism? All of the above?). The choirs encircle like a host of heaven adjudging your mortal soul and determining its fate. It soon becomes clear where their judgment lies, as infernal arpeggios burrow deep within you and drag you to hell.

11. Ice Spice - "In Ha Mood"*: Watching Ice Spice in late 2022 and early 2023 was like watching a young basketball star embark on a career-defining playoff run. She’d generated so much hype that each new single was practically an elimination game–could Ice Spice continue to execute in the 4th quarter? The answer was an emphatic yes, as she upped the ante with each release until suddenly, she was winning rings with PippenPantheress–I mean, PinkPantheress–in the Billboard Top 10. The real championships, as always, were the baddie friends we made on the way. Even after all her superstar team-ups, movie tie-ins, and Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, “In Ha Mood” is the Ice Spice song that speaks to my soul. Producer RIOTUSA crafts a potent underlick with a symphony of sped-up vocal samples, depositing that angelic chipmunk choir atop propulsive percussion that combines the best aspects of drill and Jersey club. Ice works her deceptively quick flow, remaining calm and collected as she unfurls earworm after earworm: “she’s a baddie with ha baddie friend”;“going viral is gettin’ ‘em sicker”; “and I’m makin’ ‘em wait, hold awn.” Like, damn.

10. Niontay - "THANK ALLAH": Certain songs come on and just change the chemistry of a room. Niontay and producer SexafTerchurcH achieve that rare effect with "THANK ALLAH," mesmerizing with droning electric keys, thunderous Detroit-style bass, and real raps. Ascending to the microphone as if called by a higher power, Florida's Niontay calmly blacks the fuck out, capably filling the beat’s negative space with universal truths: “Preacher man and a dope boy, it ain't no difference/N**** pimpin hoes ain't too far off from politicians.” Just when you’ve gotten used to the drumless atmosphere, the beat thunders in, putting an exclamation point on Niontay's verse and ending the song with a 30-second ovation. 9. Nourished By Time - "Rain Water Promise": Marcus Brown, the artist who performs as Nourished By Time, operates with an extreme level of emotional intelligence, effortlessly injecting a weathered wisdom into their wistful pop tunes. “Rain Water Promise” is the best of an excellent bunch on their album Erotic Probiotic 2, teetering between hope, despair, and acceptance as the artist takes the ultimate risk of asking someone to let them into their life. The singer wields their throaty bellow above programmed drums (perhaps he went straight to the '80s freestyle source with a Linn drum?) and chords that gather like a fine mist. Brown cuts through the reverie with their raw nerve musings: “My prayer Is for our clouds to collide/But I have to face/The possibility/That I'm wasting my time.” Brown synthesizes all the things they can’t put into words into a 16 note riff, which cascades like the falling water in the song’s title.

8. Freak Heat Waves - "In A Moment Divine" ft. Cindy Lee: “In A Moment Divine” is a house anthem for introverts. Blessed with delicate vocals from Cindy Lee (the drag alter-ego of Patrick Flegel, former lead singer of the band Women), the gorgeous song voices aloud the inner monologue of anyone too shy to approach a beautiful person at a party. Freak Heat Waves–the duo of Steven Lind and Thomas Di Ninno–conjure a dreamlike atmosphere out of vintage pads and a gently-swinging breakbeat, depositing other elements when the moment fits: a woodwind filigree here, a plaintive piano melody there. “Don’t leave me breathless,” pleads Cindy Lee, “in a moment divine.”

7. Junior H, Peso Pluma & Gabito Ballesteros - “El Tsurito”: My old piano teacher had a theory about great rock singers. He said, the best rock singers sound like a guitar, with screeching tenors and effortless vibrato echoing their band’s lead instrument. A great singer of corridos, then, must have the piercing clarity and honking charisma of a trumpet. Nobody in modern Mexican music quite fits that profile like Peso Pluma, whose honking baritone immediately becomes the focal point of any track it touches. “El Tsurito” connects El Doble P with two fellow stars in the corrido community: Junior H, with his heart-on-sleeve tenor, and Gabito Ballesteros, who brings a smooth, more traditional mariachi vocal style. Together, they’re a formidable three-man weave, navigating the banda’s shifting rhythms as they tell a story of drug-addicted hitmen and  corrupt federales, culminating in a bloody climax. The vocals are excellent, but the banda is the true star here, switching effortlessly in and out of half-time, with accordion blasts toe-tagging the syncopated percussion like the rain of bullets in the song’s story. For the ultimate effect, check out this live performance.

6. Slowdive - "shanty": More than 30 years into their career, Slowdive are still pushing the boundaries of their sound, stretching their signature blend of soft-focus shoegaze as far as it will go. The opening salvo from their new album Everything Is Alive, “shanty” is one of the best songs of the venerable English band’s stellar career, up there with heavy hitters like “When The Sun Hits,” "Alison," and “Souvlaki Space Station.” It’s a driving, room-enveloping masterpiece, which seamlessly blends modular synth arpeggios and breakbeat-esque drums into a lavender haze.

5. Everything But The Girl - “Nothing Left To Lose”: Everything But The Girl returned with their first album in 24 years, and they didn’t miss a beat. It helps that Tracey Thorn has always carried herself with a regal air, calmly presiding over dancefloors with wit and wisdom. “Nothing Left To Lose” was the first single from the Fuse album, and it was an appropriate choice. It feels like the ur-EBTG anthem, with a simmering wub-wub bassline, midtempo 2-step drums, and synths that screech like seagulls. Thorn delivers an imperious vocal performance, adding every ounce of her gravitas to the achingly dramatic lyrics: “Kiss me while the world decays, kiss me while the music plays.”

4. Sexyy Red - “SkeeYee”*: In his review of the album Hood Hottest Princess, Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre described Sexyy Red’s music as “straight-up standing on the table raps.” I will never top that description, and I won’t try. No song was more fun to rap along to this year, on top of tables or otherwise, than "SkeeYee." The best rappers induce a Pavlovian need to imitate their voices and Sexyy passes that test with flying colors–each ad-lib is memorable, each line a hook. Never in my life did I ever think I'd see or hear an NFL football player enthusiastically rhyme the words “Bitch lookin’ bad and got a stupid butt,” let alone a whole team of NFL football players, but such is the power of Sexyy Red.

3. Asake - “2:30”: Asake’s rousing strain of Afropop uses group vocals and amapiano-esque log drum to foster an atmosphere that is as spiritual and inspirational as it is danceable. Released at the beginning of the year, “2:30” represented a leap forward in Asake’s sound, using harder percussion and mantra-like repetition to create an unassailable banger, the best smiling-through-the-tears-on-the-dance floor anthem this side of, well, Everything But The Girl. It’s impossible to play “2:30” without repeating it at least three more times.

2. Car Colors - “Old Death”: In 2003, Charles Bissell and his band The Wrens recorded The Meadowlands, a devastating masterpiece that is in my opinion the best rock record of its decade. For 20 years, a combination of fastidious perfectionism, health scares, and a lucrative day job prevented Bissell from finishing its follow-up–it's the Chinese Democracy of indie music. The rest of the band, led by fellow songwriter Kevin Whelan, grew sick of Charles’s shit, eventually splitting up and creating their own side project, Aeon Station, and releasing an album in late 2021. Whether Charles finished his new songs, or simply decided to stop tinkering, he is back. He chose a new name for himself, Car Colors, but his first single in two decades has plenty of the old Wrens magic. “Old Death” is a 7-minute epic, starting with Charles’s furiously strummed acoustic guitars, joined shortly afterward by a distant horn section and a cacophonous symphony of dissonant guitar riffs. Listen closely to the lyrics and the realization dawns: “Old Death” is an autobiography, a eulogy for the singer’s old band and a recounting of his recent past. He fights for his life, fights the urge to give up on his dream, and borrows from Greek mythology to describe the Herculean (or Odysseyan, perhaps) effort of getting the new album off the ground. “Old Death” indeed sounds like the kind of song it would take 20 years to live and god knows how long to write, but now it is finally out. And while it might be scary to at long last release an artwork that had been kept inside for so long, Charles Bissell should rest assured that he made a god dang banger.

1. Jamila Woods - "Tiny Garden" ft. duendita: Like Charles Bissell, the legendary Peter Gabriel released his first new album in 20 years this year, collecting 12 songs and 24 mixes into an excellent album called i/o. In a strange twist of fate, however, it was Jamila Woods who recorded the best Peter Gabriel song of 2023: "Tiny Garden," a masterwork that approaches, and even succeeds, the epic scope, soaring melodies, and enduring pathos of the best songs on So. Woods, along with producers Chris McClenney (a former NYU classmate of mine, good shit Chris) and Wynne Ashley Bennett, use a Manu Katche-esque drum loop and stadium-sized keyboards to tell a story of small gestures, revealing a universal truth about love. Hollywood wants us to believe in a “just add water” kind of love, one that springs in an instant with a flame that burns forever. On “Tiny Garden,” Woods–aided by guest artist duendita, who delivers a self-proclaimed “weird verse” during the bridge–calmly explains the reality: love is like a plant, one with strong roots, but one that needs daily attention to keep from wilting. The Chicago native sings with an uncommon warmth, calmly and contentedly bouncing atop the percussion as she elucidates the theme in the bridge: “It's not gonna be a big production/It's not butterflies or fireworks/Said it's gonna be a tiny garden/But I'll feed it everyday.” I would like to think I don’t need Jamila Woods’ encouragement to feed my own tiny garden, but I am grateful to her nonetheless. Domestic happiness isn’t a clean cut, shiny thing–it’s full of dirt, covered in bugs, and sensitive to the weather. Love takes work, but if you take it day-by-day, you can create something sustaining and beautiful. Hear these songs, and the rest of my Top 100, in this Spotify playlist. Thanks for indulging me, and happy listening!

The story of the 2020s–the years keep getting harder, the music keeps getting better. There's nothing I get more pleasure from these days than exploring the vast universe of new music that we are so lucky to be able to access with just a few keystrokes. Keeping up with everything can be overwhelming, but it's so so rewarding.

Here are my favorite albums from a very deep year–there's probably a smaller gap between my #1 and my #25 than ever before. But unranked lists are for cowards!

Check the bottom for the full list and a Spotify playlist with selections from every album.

Onward we go!

10. Fievel Is Glauque - Flaming Swords: Perhaps no album released in 2022 was as jam-packed with seemingly contradictory musical ideas as Flaming Swords. Fievel Is Glauque songwriter/bandleader Zach Phillips aims for sensory overload, cramming complex chords, modal key changes, free jazz freakouts, and hyperactive drum beats into his miniature prog-pop masterpieces. Nearly each one of these 18 songs has a moment of unexpected virtuosity, whether in the composition or the performance. The song that best represents the album’s messy ideal is “Save The Premonition,” a one-minute forty-six second sprint through moments of harmonic inspiration, never settling down for more than a measure at a time.

From my description, it might seem like Flaming Swords is a difficult listen, but though it takes some time to get used to the hyperactivity, these songs are targeted missiles aimed directly towards the pleasure centers of the brain, with sonorous saxophones and liquid keyboards augmenting the dulcet Francophone tones of lead singer Ma Clément. This is pop music filtered through a prism, separating the traditional elements of sound into their essences and reconstituting it into something entirely new.

9. Caracara - New Preoccupations: Philadelphia emo band Caracara isn’t afraid to mine the “embarrassing” sounds of the past in its search for catharsis. If you told the 2005 version of me that one of my favorite albums of 2022 would crib from bands like Snow Patrol or Relient K, I would’ve told you to buzz off before cranking up the volume on “Stay Fly” by Three 6 Mafia. But New Preoccupations won me over with its aching sincerity, its full-throated realization of the melancholy behind mundane moments (“I was listening to the Dirty Projectors in a Volvo by the freeway funeral pyre,” singer Sean Gill exhorts in highlight track “Colorglut”), and some powerhouse performances by the band. Producer (and Memory Music label head) Will Yip keeps things interesting, finding a guitar sound that would’ve fit nicely into WPLJ’s Hot Adult Contemporary lineup in the mid-90s and adding contemporary touches like programmed drums and rolling pianos. My favorite moments on New Preoccupations happen when the band grows tired of midtempo rockers and goes balls to the wall. They bust the door down early on the dissociative anthem “Hyacinth,” and put a bow on the proceedings with the achingly raw “Monoculture”: “I’M FINALLY FREE TO LET GO.”

8. Cash Cobain & Chow Lee - 2 SLIZZY 2 SEXY (Deluxe): 2 Live Crew changed the game in the late 80s by combining the compulsively danceable Miami bass sound with some of the raunchiest songs known to man. Luther Campbell and crew were so gleefully horned-up that they changed America’s copyright laws forever. Nearly 40 years later, NYC duo Cash Cobain and Chow Lee are bravely following in 2 Live Crew’s footsteps, providing a fresh spin on the dominant dance music of their region (in this case, Jersey/Philly club) to further their noble mission to make the horniest music of all time. So yes, Cash and Chow are sex-crazed to the point of obsession, but they’re making some genuinely game-changing shit. Cash is one of the best producers on the planet, a master of flipping a familiar sample into something fresh and unrecognizable. He saves his best beats for himself, from the ethereal and speaker-slamming J. Holiday flip on, um, “JHOLIDAY,” to the audacious Stevie Wonder sample on “SLIZZY LIKE,” to the absolutely beautiful “FREAK OF DI WEEK.” Cash and Chow combine their otherworldly instrumentals with an energy that mirrors teenagers at their first sleepovers after learning all the curse words, bouncing off each other in a competition over who can be the most out-of-pocket (Chow usually wins that competition). Don’t sleep on the deluxe edition, which brings even more brilliant beats and shamelessly lowers the bar X-rated bars even further, inviting some of the best rappers in the Tri-State area to meet them on their libidinous level.

7. Cloakroom - Dissolution Wave: Cloakroom exists on the bleeding edge between shoegaze and stoner metal, overwhelming with punishing soundscapes and entrancing with spectral melodies. Their 2022 album Dissolution Wave is lean and mean, clocking in at 39 minutes (Cloakroom hadn’t previously made an album shorter than 60 minutes), delivering a confident complement of space-age rockers. No album this year was better synthesizing such an intense beauty, its crushing walls of sound enhancing the heartfelt songwriting. On a few songs, including the midtempo “A Force At Play” (featuring keys from Matt Talbott from Cloakroom’s stylistic influence Hum) and the devastating countrified ballad “Doubts,” the band proves that they don’t need fuzz to make a major emotional impact. My favorite headphones album of the year.

6. billy woods - Aethiopes: billy woods is an astonishing wordsmith, crafting bars that can collapse hundreds of years of traumatic history into a single couplet. He’s at his best when he’s shining a light on the grimiest aspects of our society, and our society is grimy enough for multiple albums per year, all of them good, usually created in tandem with a producer. Aethiopes, produced in full by underground hero Preservation, is woods’ grimiest and greatest yet, packed with an array of industrial instrumentals that grind like the gears of a lurching, lumbering, ill-intentioned contraption.

The beat for “Wharves” clinks and clacks like a skeleton playing its own ribcage like a xylophone, a fitting backdrop for woods' story that touches on cannibalistic tribes and the Atlantic slave trade. “Heavy Water” invites Breeze Brewin and El-P to tag team an unbearably tense slice of boom-bap, as woods calls himself “the multiverse Benzino.” “No Hard Feelings” swirls with detuned woodwinds and ethereal synths, sounding like the warmup anthem for a closer on Hell's favorite baseball team, providing a bed for woods to show out in his trademark style–he rhymes with escalating intensity, his booming voice rising along with the music. The tension built in the first three quarters of the album dissipates with the final run of soul-samplers, but those outwardly gorgeous songs contain some of woods’s ugliest bars. From “Remorseless”: “Three rooms filled with Incan treasure/Still strangled the king cause it's now or never/It's a freedom in admitting it's not gonna get better.”

5. Naima Bock - Giant Palm: Naima Bock’s Giant Palm gleams like a greenhouse during golden hour, organic and synthetic elements operating in harmony to create an album unlike any I’ve heard before. The album is a spiritual successor to Mort Garson’s horticultural synth music and Vashti Bunyan’s insular, pastoral ballads, with strains of folk from Brazil and England mixed in for good measure. Created in collaboration with co-producer/arranger Joel Burton, the former Goat Girl bassist’s solo debut is structured like the tree of its title, a variety of frilled fronds emanating from a knotty heart–in this case, everything stems from Bock’s endless wonder at the marvels of our natural world, which she expresses through plaintive, immersive, and unpredictable ballads. Some of my favorite moments: the psychedelically eerie call-and-response that begins “Every Morning”; the whimsically bluesy piano in “Instrumental”; the dissonant waltz that undergirds the haunting “Campervan”; and the beautiful harmonies that adorn the Portuguese-language bossa nova ballad “O Morro,” which ends the album on a nostalgic note.

4. Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You: Big Thief is in a special kind of creative groove right now. Frontwoman Adrienne Lenker has a seemingly bottomless arsenal of amazing songs, and her band has the adventurous mindset, telepathic chemistry, and ace musicianship to execute any of her ideas. The natural next step for a band on this kind of run: dropping a double album to show off the breadth of what they can do. The unwieldily-titled Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You fits that bill, packing in some of their best songs while pushing their sound forward. You want classic Big Thief ballads? They’ve got them, including the immaculate “Change” and plaintive “No Reason.” Prefer the hard-rocking side of the band that they perfected on 2019’s Two Hands? Take “Little Things” or the cathartic “Love Love Love.” They even unveil some new tricks, like the trip-hoppy “Blurred View” and the minimal Magnetic Fields-meets-Springsteen experiment “Wake Me Up To Drive.” My favorites on here, though, channel what the music critic Greil Marcus called “The Old Weird America,” an energy that powers the cosmic hoedown “Spud Infinity,” the slinky and percussive “Time Escaping,” and the joyous, countrified “Red Moon.”

3. Earl Sweatshirt - SICK!: Earl Sweatshirt has been famous since he was sixteen years old, something that must feel particularly strange to the self-professed introvert. On his latest album SICK!, the now-28-year-old rapper seems to open up, inspired by his newfound fatherhood and embracing his role as the leader of a rising wave of left-of-center lyricists. The song sketches that populated 2018’s Some Rap Songs have (mostly) been replaced by fuller statements, its grainy, drumless loops giving way to slicker sounds.

The beats on SICK! are spectacular, from Theravada’s sorrowful and operatic “Tabula Rasa,” to The Alchemist’s menacing and cinematic “Old Friend,” to the multiple soundscapes crafted by Black Noi$e (especially the jazzy closer “Fire In The Hole”). Earl doesn’t rhyme over the instrumentals as much as he inhabits them, his resigned sigh painting contours and filling negative space, and effortlessly unfurling assonant and tangled bars like (from “Tabula Rasa”): “The calcium on my teeth fade/Streets are blazed with the anger complacency and deceit create/Ice sheet break, I couldn't weave weight/All I could say to the times that I couldn't freeze-frame, bleak fate.”

2. Makaya McCraven - In These Times: Producer, drummer, composer, and bandleader Makaya McCraven creates his albums like a mad scientist, laying down hundreds of hours of improvised live sessions and piecing them together to create wholly unique compositions. His music thrives on the moments of brief inspiration that come from a group of brilliant musicians playing together, creating an indelible atmosphere by stretching out and looping sections to form a new groove. Inspired by the legendary output CTI Records in the early ‘70s (home to George Benson, Hubert Laws, Bob James, and many others), McCraven curates a sound that combines the smoother side of fusion with complex, odd-meter rhythms. His percussion work is usually unflashy*, providing a bedrock for his collaborators to express themselves to the fullest. “So Ubuji” finds McCraven laying down a boom-bap style drum pattern as vibraphonist Joel Ross and harpist Brandee Younger elevate the song to the stratosphere, while the tangled polyrhythms of “High Fives” benefits from the virtuosic guitar playing of Jeff Parker. The album climaxes with penultimate track “The Knew Untitled,” a devastating composition that begins with swirling piano-led chaos before guitarist Matt Gold lays down one of the best guitar solos of this young decade. The most transportive and mesmerizing album released in 2022.

*with a notable exception coming on the thrilling “This Place That Place"

1. They Hate Change - Finally, New: They Hate Change (Vonne and Dre, both of whom rap and produce) operate with supreme confidence, creating a singular sonic blend informed, but not defined, by their omnivorous musical influences. Vonne and Dre are both great emcees–Vonne has a style that occupies the unlikely convergence between Big Boi, Ish Butler of Digable Planets/Shabazz Palaces, and Sonny Cheeba of Camp Lo, while Dre's drawling rhymes evoke both E-40 and Pimp C. Though they're clearly in love with hip-hop, the two Tampa natives are equally obsessed with dance music of all stripes, and Finally, New explores the unexpected connections between UK breakbeats and Florida’s club tradition, incorporating notes of Miami bass and Tampa jook alongside UK garage and DnB. The result is an album built for both head-nodding and ass-shaking. It's in constant motion even when it slows down, the two rappers brashly projecting an attitude that makes their flexing hit as hard as their evisceration of societal norms. A key track is “Some Days I Hate My Voice,” a defiant missive from Vonne that explores the nonbinary emcee’s inherent contradictions: “Some days I hate my voice, some days I feel like I'm the Metratron/Some days I'm basic, some days I'm dolled up like pageant debutantе.” I waffled for a long time about what to put at number one. I listened to hundreds of albums this year, and adored many of them, but for the top spot on this year’s list, I decided to just go with the album that sounded the freshest. Bursting with invention and bracing in its fearless experimentation, Finally, New is like nothing I’ve ever heard.

The rest of the list (playlist HERE): 11. 454 - Fast Trax 3 12. Bad Bunny - Un Verano Sin Ti 13. Asake - Mr. Money With The Vibe 14. Duval Timothy - Meeting With A Judas Tree 15. Animal Collective - Time Skiffs 16. DaBoii - Can’t Tame Us 17. The Soft Pink Truth - Is It Going To Get Any Deeper Than This? 18. Obongjayar - Some Nights I Dream Of Doors 19. Sessa - Estrela Acesa 20. Kendrick Lamar - Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers 21. Babyface Ray - FACE/MOB 22. Ron Trent - What Do The Stars Say To You 23. Hagan - Textures 24. WizKid - More Love, Less Ego 25. Smino - Luv 4 Rent 26. SZA - SOS 27. Duke Deuce - CRUNKSTAR 28. Alex G - God Save The Animals 29. Cate Le Bon - Pompeii 30. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom - Reset 31. Arctic Monkeys - The Car 32. PLOSIVS - PLOSIVS 33. Real Lies - Lad Ash 34. Rema - Rave & Roses 35. Drakeo The Ruler - Keep The Truth Alive 36. Beth Orton - Weather Alive 37. Tony Shhnow - Reflexions/Plug Motivation 38. Rosalía - MOTOMAMI 39. Beyonce - RENAISSANCE 40. Shabason & Krgovich - At Scaramouche 41. $ilkMoney - I Don’t Give a F*ck About This Rap Sh*t… 42. Quelle Chris - DEATHFAME 43. Dazegxd - vKISS 44. Phelimuncasi - Ama Gogela 45. Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn - Pigments 46. Björk - Fossora 47. Roedelius & Tim Story - 4 Hands 48. Valee - VACABULAREE 49. NBA YoungBoy - 3800 Degrees 50. Toro Y Moi - MAHAL 51. Ethel Cain - Preacher’s Daughter 52. Brent Faiyaz - WASTELAND 53. Boldy James - Fair Exchange No Robbery (w/ Nicholas Craven)/ Mr. Ten08 (w/ Futurewave) 54. quinn - quinn  55. Rachika Nayar - Heaven Come Crashing 56. Junior Boys - Waiting Game 57. Friendship - Love The Stranger 58. Saba - Few Good Things 59. Silvana Estrada - Marchita 60. Rauw Alejandro - SATURNO 61. Ralfy The Plug - Skateboard P (Deluxe)/Pastor Ralfy 2 (Deluxe) 62. Sudan Archives - Natural Black Prom Queen 63. Kikagaku Moyo - Kumoyo Island 64. Young Slo-Be - Southeast 65. Death’s Dynamic Shroud - Darklife 66. Mr. Fingers - Around The Sun Pt. 1 67. RealYungPhil - Dr. Philvinci 68. CEO Trayle - HH5 69. Lil Poppa - HEAVY IS THE HEAD 70. Los - Kareem From New Orleans, Vol. 2 71. Fred Again - Actual Life 3 72. Gunna - DS4EVER 73. The Comet Is Coming - Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam 74. Ka - Language Arts/Woeful Studies 75. The Beths - Experts In A Dying Field

NOTE: This albums list could’ve gone on for at least another 75, and rest assured it would’ve included your favorite album from 2022! But I’ll make a special shout out to albums that just missed the cut: Luna Li, Nu Genea, Tears For Fears, Bartees Strange, Shawny Binladen, Little Simz, Oso Oso, Hikaru Utada, MAVI, BONES, Central Cee, BlueBucksClan, and Jay Worthy, Larry June & LNDN Drugs. Songs from those albums are included in my Spotify playlist.

It's that time of year again, when everyone else has shared their year-end list and I come in and correct everyone's bullshit! I kid, I kid, I don't claim to know or appreciate music better than anyone else, but I'm proud of the list I put together.

This year, I found it hard to narrow my list down to just 100, and even harder to definitely rank them. 2022 was a deep, deep year, full of great songs, but not too many songs that towered above the rest. This is the streaming conundrum–there's a billion songs out there and so many of them are good.

More than ever, I put an emphasis on discovery, moving from sound to sound in a relentless search for songs that would hold my attention. The following are the songs that made me laugh, cry, or just made my jaw drop.

Check HERE for the Spotify playlist and don't forget to scroll all the way down for my full Top 100 list.

Happy listening all, hope you find something you love as much as I do!

THE SONGS

25. Rema - “Calm Down”: “Calm Down” hits like a warm bath, its gently loping guitar and militaristic snare combining to make a soundscape perfectly-suited for YouTube 10-hour mixes. Rema does what he does best, melting into the mix with chant-like melodies and a new flow for every verse. By the time producers Andrevibez and London layer in swelling organs and sumptuous strings, “Calm Down” mesmerizes the listener to the point where they won’t even mind if the DJ is playing the wrong version and Selena Gomez shows up.

24. Yahritza & Su Esencia - “Soy El Unico”: Over the past few years, I’ve grown very fond of corridos and regional Mexican music–the singers are charismatic and those acoustic guitarists can shred. I don’t speak fluent Spanish, though, so I know that whenever I listen to these story-driven ballads, there’s a lot I’m not getting. But there is no misunderstanding Yahritza Martinez in “Soy El Único,” her achingly raw tone radiating the kind of all-encompassing heartbreak that you can only feel when you’re 15 (or 13, which is apparently how old she was when she wrote the song). Backed by her brothers on guitar and bass, she delivers one of the best vocal performances of the year, dousing you in every ounce of her anger and despair.

23. Asian Doll - “Get Jumped” ft. Bandmanrill: I’m gonna be real and say that I did not expect Dallas native Asian Doll to be the first southern rapper to hop on the club rap wave, but it’s a mode that suits her nicely–she’s always been able to rap with the dexterity required for the uptempo style. On “Get Jumped,” Asian goes blow-for-blow with the “godfather” of club rap, Newark’s Bandmanrill, over Bankroll Got It’s sped-up and souped-up sample of David Ruffin’s “I Miss You.” For his part, the Bandman delivers one of his best verses of the year, mixing his uber-confident stick talk with a pathos that reflects the heartbreak of the sample. Asian more than holds her own, returning his volleys with head-spinning speed and exacting precision.

22. Kendrick Lamar - “Rich Spirit”: He’s an ambassador for Compton and the longtime face of L.A.’s most prominent rap label, but Kendrick Lamar never really concerned himself with the prevailing sounds of his home city’s rap scene. Though we’ll never hear 2014-era Kendrick rip apart a DJ Mustard beat, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers highlight “Rich Spirit” feels like Kendrick’s attempt to make an anthem for the L.A. underground–more specifically, his own version of “Impatient Freestyle,” the modern classic by Drakeo The Ruler. Producers Sounwave, Frano, and DJ Dahi (I’m comfortable crediting him for the ghostly vocal samples that affirmatively answer Kendrick’s pronouncements) craft an immersive soundscape that feels appropriately spiritual*, while retaining that West Coast bounce, allowing space for Kendrick to preach about holistic living (regular fasting, abstention from social media) and credibly compare himself to deities major and minor. *and not dissimilar to the "Impatient" beat Mike WiLL Made It originally made for Jeremih

21. Luh Tyler - “Back Flippin”: This is the most recent song on the list, released on December 14th. I originally had another song by Luh Tyler, the Tallahassee teenager and future megastar, in this slot: ”I Gotta Slide,” a 98-second burst of effortless shit talk and sly wordplay. While “I Gotta Slide” is a sketch, the Xair-produced “Back Flippin” expands upon everything that Tyler does well. It walks the fine line between stupid and clever with aplomb, Tyler’s croaking delivery and signature upward-inflecting flow selling every punchline (and nearly every line is a punchline). Recalling in equal measure the lackadaisical stoner wisdom of Devin The Dude, the conversational sing-song of Kodak Black, and the indefatigable brashness of a young Nef The Pharaoh, Luh Tyler is already a distinct and extremely promising voice in the rap game. As great as it is, “Back Flippin’” feels a lot less like a career peak than the start of the climb.

20. Joony - “DRIFTING IN TOKYO”: One day, a cultural scholar smarter than me will have to investigate the impact made by the third Fast & Furious film. The movie certainly made an impression on 20-year-old Maryland rapper Joony. To his credit, the “Drifting In Tokyo” instrumental–an easygoing UK garage throwback with supremely chill Rhodes licks and crackling DnB drums, crafted by producer Davy’s archive–evokes the neon-lit nights and seemingly frictionless rides through the Japanese metropolis that Justin Lin captured so memorably in that movie. The cinematic backdrop leaves plenty of space for Joony’s mellow melodies, his plaintive deadpan dripping with paranoia and resignation: “I can't do this shit no more/But I don't wanna die alone.”

19. Babyface Ray - “Me, Wife & Kids”: Babyface Ray rhymes with a world-weary wisdom; the soft-spoken, authoritative croak of a man who’s seen everything. A euphoric soul-sampler (from Detroit’s Pooh Beatz), “Me Wife & Kids” gives a wistful lift to Ray’s hustle-hard witticisms, the Detroit native determined to escape the liminal space between his hardscrabble past and bright future. Ray’s third verse is one of the coldest of the year, methodically and economically laying out the life or death stakes of the rap game and the trap game (“Twenty-five years, brodie still in the game/I told him put the bag down, he say that's how he get paid/He tryna find his way out, you know that shit like a maze”) and exuding the confidence necessary to succeed: “Nah, I ain't trap, I'm just movin' off survival/Tryna figure out how to sell the church Bibles.”

18. Lay Bankz - “In My Bag”: I didn’t realize it was possible to make a slow jam at 150 bpm, but Philly native Lay Bankz sure showed me. The song starts like so many R&B ballads, with sensitive acoustic guitar arpeggios, establishing a tender and confident milieu. Quickly, the song erupts, with an insistent Philly club-style beat powering forward at warp speed, accelerating like a heartbeat fluttering in the presence of a new crush. Lay Bankz doesn’t push herself to keep up with the tempo, but stays calm, layering harmonies as her languid vocal floats above the fray. “In My Bag” is a banger, yes, but more significantly, Lay’s strong sense of structure and facility with sugar-coated melodies expands our conceptions about what East Coast club music can or should sound like, paving a path for the style to make further inroads to the mainstream.

17. Iayze - “556 (Green Tip)”: “556 (Green Tip)” is perhaps the most whimsical song ever written about a deadly weapon. Producer KeyWaza serves up an entrancingly dinky instrumental for the Fort Worth 18-year-old (name pronounced “Jace”) to sink his teeth into. Iayze holds court, slithering between the pootering synths with a stop-starting flow. None of this should work, but it does–it’s a trick that Iayze seems to know that he’s playing: “I just shot a foul ball, it's good because I made the rules.”

16. Black Sherif - “Kwaku The Traveller”: Ghana’s Black Sherif is part rapper, part griot, breaking out in Accra's fertile drill scene with his one-of-a-kind microphone presence. Blessed with a minimal, yet ominous beat (from producer Joker nharnah), the confessional “Kwaku The Traveller” is the best showcase of his unhinged charisma to date*. The first verse thrives on Sherif’s unconventional relationship with rhythm, his motor-mouthed patter paying no attention to beats or bar lines. In the second verse, he hammers home his theme, switching between English and Twi as he compares the always-on-the-move lifestyle of an artist to that of a nomadic hitchhiker on a journey to nowhere. *The “Kwaku The Traveller” experience is incomplete without watching the video

15. Carly Rae Jepsen - “The Loneliest Time” ft. Rufus Wainwright: Carly Rae’s bubblegum era never quite spoke to me; too much sugar sometimes tastes like medicine. “The Loneliest Time” got me, though, cutting CRJ’s saccharine tendencies with a dollop of Rufus Wainwright’s natural melancholy and delivering an anthem that stands with the best of ABBA. Simultaneously campy and tasteful (this is another song where the experience is incomplete without the video), “The Loneliest Time” sounds like a showtune from a musical that doesn’t exist, augmenting the theatrical vibe with the steady 4/4 beat and cinematic strings of the disco era and the pounding pianos of Motown. Both singers stretch their dramatic muscles, hamming up the delivery of key lines (“I’m coming BACK for you, baby!”) without undermining the song’s emotional core. It’s hard not to get swept up in the feeling, especially as the song winds down: the two singers finish harmonizing and the strings play them off into the moonlit night.

14. Friendship - “Hank”*: “Hank” is a song about resisting the void, about absorbing the knowledge of the impermanence of life and unrelentingly soldiering on. Over friendly fingerpicking and a propulsive kick-snare, lead singer Dan Wriggins hammers down with his appealingly flat baritone, painting life as a rusty old machine that you might need to oil or sand, but hey, as long as it’s running today, it might run forever. Fans of David Berman, Lambchop, or Bill Callahan might find something to love here.

*The music video for "Hank" was directed by Joe Pera, so if you dig his whole deal, I'd highly recommend "Hank" and its home album Love The Stranger.

13. Hitkidd & GloRilla - “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)”: Celebratory, confrontational, carefree. GloRilla hits like a bulldozer, Hitkidd’s beat gassing her up with a plonking piano melody. Every line is memorable. What more can I say? B-A-N-G-E-R.

12. Shabason & Krgovich - “I’m Dancing”: Canadian multi-instrumentalist Joseph Shabason first gained recognition for his work on Destroyer’s Kaputt, which used the sonic language of yacht rock to explore the listlessness of modern life. On At Scaramouche, his new album with regular collaborator Nicholas Krgovich, he works with a similar template–sumptuous electric keys, shuffling percussion, chirruping woodwinds–to explore life’s simple pleasures. The mellifluous “I’m Dancing” is a supremely laid back rocker, a slow build that unfolds from a slight giggle to a full belly laugh over the course of five-and-a-half minutes. By the end of the song, as the horns answer the synths and the backbeat grows ever more prominent, Krgovich’s voice drifts into the slipstream, floating away on a pillow of sweet contentment. Call it schooner rock.

11. Asake - “Peace Be Unto You (PBUY)”: Asake makes joyful, crowd-moving music, taking elements of Naija pop and South African amapiano to create a style that’s as inspirational as it is danceable. “Peace Be Unto You (PBUY)” is a perfect summary of his whole deal, starting with a long shaker-and-snare intro that builds and builds until it transforms into one of his trademark choruses: a full-bloom blast of gang vocals, enthusiastic whistles, and pogo-ing 808s. Perfecting a mode that everyone in Africa is trying to catch in a bottle, “PBUY” is an enthusiastic celebration of the communal expression of joy through music, the gang vocals hitting like a full-force gospel choir while the sinuous violin adds a hint of melancholy.

10. Bad Bunny - “Andrea” ft. Buscabulla: Bad Bunny’s opus Un Verano Sin Ti is a rare beast–a streaming era colossus of an album where practically every song is a highlight. There were times that I turned to the beat-shifting “Titi Mi Preguntó” or the scorching “El Apagón” or “Ojitos Lindos,” the sadboy beach anthem, but the song that that impressed me most was “Andrea.” Nestled towards the end of the 23-track runtime, “Andrea” is a masterpiece of downbeat dembow, the insistent riddim transforming amidst the echoing synths and the angelic vocal from Buscabulla’s Raquel Berrios. Over the course of nearly six minutes, El Conejo and Ms. Berrios combine to tell the story of a woman defiantly asserting her independence, judgmental onlookers be damned.

9. Veeze - “let it fly”: Veeze rhymes like he’s in the process of waking from a particularly unrestful night’s sleep, delivering boasts with a guttural monotone in sentences that seem to emerge from a place of half-dreamed logic before trailing off like ellipses. On “Let It Fly,” Veeze proves that his somnambulant style works even better when you speed up the tempo, as he goes in over an aqueous, bass-heavy, Flint-style backing track from Michigan’s own Tye Beats. The Detroit native makes the most of his two minute runtime, perfecting the art of nonchalant flexing (“I hate the strip club, I'm too rich, I don't belong in there”) and piercing his enemies with barbs that dig deeper the more you think about them (“Trappin' ain't for you, boy, you need to get a job”).

8. Nia Archives - “18 & Over”: Nia Archives synthesizes decades’ worth of dance music from across the globe into a kinetic bouillabaisse–listen to her music for more than a minute and you’ll find fully-formed chunks of jungle, samba, R&B, even dubstep. A highlight from her Forbidden Feelingz EP, “18 & Over” is an addictive sonic collage, melding together seemingly disparate elements into a stew that exceeds the sum of its parts. She layers a reggae bassline atop a fast and furious DnB breakbeat, creating a mind-blowing groove that blossoms into a thrilling dubstep throwback before returning to its roots. Graceful, toe-tapping virtuosity.

7. Arctic Monkeys - “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball”: Alex Turner’s transformation from Paul Weller to Jimmy Webb was a sudden and controversial change, one that angered some longtime fans and many of those who hopped on in 2013 with AM (probably the most successful capital R Rock album of the 2010s). It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to make the same kind of music forever, and I love the new Arctic Monkeys, who’ve become an outfit willing and able to fit any stretch of Turner’s songwriting imagination. “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” is exquisite, an impeccably-arranged picture of a deteriorating love and the last steps taken to save it. Dropping his louche lounge lizard character that dominated the 2019 album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino on “Mirrorball” and the rest of the recent album The Car, Turner is almost painfully sincere, his voice straining to reach the notes necessary to get his point across. Luckily, the strings are there to help him along, harkening back to a golden era of pop grandeur, when Webb and Glen Campbell made symphonies out of songs.

6. Big Thief - “Spud Infinity”: Life, the universe, and the potato. A cosmic hoedown exploring the eternal questions of our existence, filtered through the lens of the ugliest of our miraculous crops, “Spud Infinity” feels like it’s beamed in from a dimension more peaceful and harmonious than ours. Frontwoman Adrienne Lenker’s sharp pen and playful demeanor elevates the song from stoner silliness to a poignant and good-natured gawking at the absurdity of our everyday lives: “Kiss your body up and down, other than your elbows/'Cause as for your elbows, they're on their own/Wandering like a rolling stone/Rubbing up against the edges of experience." The late John Prine would be proud.

5. Sha EK - “Who You Touch” ft. Mel Glizzy: Bronx drill bruiser Sha EK has a visceral, full-bodied roar that feels like the rap equivalent of that one Spongebob meme. He does not make background music. He’s the rap game Derrick Henry, with the ability to combine that overwhelming power with a finesse that allows him to tip-toe atop lightning fast club beats. He’s at his peak on “Who You Touch,” a high-energy sample-drill masterpiece, jumping out of the speakers and commanding the track like a sergeant. There are multiple versions of “Who You Touch” floating around, including one with Bandmanrill, but the version that made it to streaming pales in comparison to the original*, with its manipulated vox and fluttering guitar painting Sha and Mel as avenging angels who don’t even need to drop their harps before messing you up.

*I sadly haven't been able to find a high-quality reupload anywhere :/

4. The Beths - “Silence Is Golden”: I knew that The Beths had serious chops, and songwriting talent to match, but hot damn did I never expect them to produce something as punishing and exhilarating as “Silence Is Golden.” It combines the spritely melodies of their indie pop forefathers with a backing track furious enough to impress the heaviest of post-hardcore freakazoids (Refused, in particular, would be proud). As always with The Beths, this sound and fury signifies something–they are masters at crafting songs that perfectly suit the subject matter. The squalling noise of the instrumental (“a siren screaming” and “a jet plane engine”) mirrors the narrator’s futile search for a moment’s peace, and though she finds it at the end, I tend to turn on “Silence Is Golden” when I want to embrace the ruckus. The shape of pop to come.

3. Koffee - “Pull Up”: Koffee x Jae5 is an indefatigable combination, his tasteful organ swells and airy vocal samples a perfect match for her ebullient melodies. “Pull Up” was an instant classic–nothing too fancy, just the year’s best chorus augmented with a tasteful bit of sax. It’s an instant mood booster, a party anthem that makes anyone who sings it feel like they’re 100 feet tall.

2. Duke Deuce - “JUST SAY THAT” ft. GloRilla: No artist brought me more joy in 2022 than Duke Deuce, who supplemented two albums worth of head-slamming Memphis music with his hysterical “Gangsta Walk Wednesdays.” “JUST SAY THAT” was his crowning achievement, a gleefully ridiculous and obnoxiously bombastic banger. Metro Boomin and Allen Ritter build a speaker-annihilating monster out of Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” and both rappers take turns going as dumb as they can. GloRilla leads off with one of the best guest verses of the year, furiously steamrolling chumps through gritted teeth. Duke holds serve, raising the energy level with his signature ad libs. “WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUCK” indeed.

1. Ka - “Ascension”: Brownsville rhymer Ka earns deserved praise for his evocative pen and gravelly gravitas, but he deserves equal praise as a producer. “Ascension” is a work of art: strings thrum like sand falling through an hourglass, distorted voices interject like a choir of the damned, and spiky guitar licks emerge out of the aether. The meditative repetition of the instrumental recalls the best of Philip Glass–call him Ka-yaannisqatsi. The 50-year-rapper does justice to his mesmerizing instrumental, digging deep into his past, analyzing the core memories molded him as a man. His astounding second verse methodically lays out Ka’s struggles to escape generational trauma, a titanic task made more difficult by the mounting tragedies suffered during his upbringing. Ka’s emergence from hell to become one of the voices of his generation is a miracle, and his words are well worth considering, his moral compass pointing true north as he offers sage advice for anyone trying to follow in his footsteps: “If you a deep person, keep searching, amass facts/I believe they call him father, cause you supposed to get past that/If never won, run every one like it's the last lap/Handing ends to family and friends, never expecting that cash back.”

Hope you enjoyed the blurbs, here's the playlist and the rest of the list.

Nobody wants to linger on the memory of 2021, a year that started hopeful and ended up miserable (Long Live Dolph, Long Live Drakeo). It’s become a cliche for year-end lists to comment on the overall shittiness of the previous year–our narrative-loving brains organizing our innate sense of malaise into neat 365-day fragments–but it’s clear to me that this is just the way things are now. Maybe some years will be better than the previous, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that we’ve entered a downward spiral that will take dedicated, purposeful action to reverse.

Dark stuff, I know, but instead of wallowing, I’ve been cherishing the fleeting moments of joy even more. Perhaps that’s just me rationalizing the fact that I achieved some vital personal milestones last year, in the face of the death and destruction endemic in a pandemic age, but even in a declining world, our happiness is meaningful. Music is meaningful. And if these silly little lists bring us joy, then dammit, they’re meaningful too.

Below, check out the music that meant the most to me. Like last year, my list goes up to 75, and I think it does a good job of reflecting my listening habits during the year. I hope you enjoy my thoughts about my ten favorite albums of the year and check the bottom for the full list, plus, a Spotify playlist featuring selections from each album.

Let's get it!

10. Rauw Alejandro - VICE VERSA: Blessed with an angelic tenor and an eagerness to experiment, Rauw Alejandro is possibly the hottest property in Latin music right now. His wide-ranging second album VICE VERSA indicates that we might soon have to remove the “Latin” qualifier from the previous sentence. For every reggaeton pop smash on the record like “Sexo Virtual” or “2/Catorce,” there’s an effort that pushes hard against the box that many Latin stars find themselves in. Highlight “Desenfocao’” borrows bass-heavy soundscapes that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Beach House or Phantogram record, and “¿Cuando Fué?” provides the most thrilling moment of the album, when the vocals drop out to make way for a drum n’ bass breakdown. Rauw is a versatile and expressive enough vocalist to fit in any style, and superproducer Tainy’s deft touch makes sure that the album maintains a consistent vibe despite the stylistic detours. Engrossing from start (nostalgic dancefloor filler “Todo De Ti”) to finish (invigorating baile funk banger “Brazilera”), VICE VERSA is my favorite auteurist pop statement of the year, in any language.

9. Isaiah Rashad - The House Is Burning: Hip-hop moves extremely fast these days–it seems like an eternity when an artist goes a full year without releasing music, and when they return, it often feels like they’re playing catch-up. Isaiah Rashad spent an eventful five years after the release of The Sun’s Tirade battling addiction, grief, and writer’s block, but the scintillating, mournful, and meditative The House Is Burning was as immediate as any rap album that dropped in 2021. Steeped in the Southern rap tradition, and infused with TDE’s bassy house sound, The House Is Burning radiates warmth and wisdom, striking a compelling middle ground between Scarface’s bluesy murder ballads, Three 6’s haunted grime, and OutKast’s hazy riders’ anthems. The album’s opening run from “Darkseid” (named after an apocalyptic DC supervillain who likes to steal souls) to “Headshots (4r Da Locals)” is a murderer’s row of soulful slaps, creating a sonic universe that seamlessly absorbs Smino’s nimble melodics, Lil Uzi Vert’s space age speed raps, and Duke Deuce’s boisterous neo-crunk bars into a coherent milieu. For all its musical merit, what elevates The House Is Burning is the turbulent emotional undercurrent that simmers throughout–Zay needed to get his house in order before emerging into a world on fire, but he’s not quite out of the woods yet: “This ain't as hard as it gets/But I'm still on drugs,” intones Rashad on the album’s closing track “HB2U.”

8. Cleo Sol - Mother: Inspired by the birth of her daughter, UK chanteuse Cleo Sol’s latest is a blissful monument to a mother’s love. She pours her soul into each ballad, singing delicately but powerfully as she assures her newborn that she’ll never be alone in “Know That You Are Loved,” reminds herself of her new lifelong responsibilities in “23,” and pleads with her partner for unconditional support in the gorgeous opener “Don’t Let Me Fall.” Produced in full by Inflo–along with Cleo, he's a member of the adventurous alt-R&B collective SAULT–the album adopts a jazz-influenced sonic template that echoes the cosmic soul of the early ‘70s, combining the lushness of Thom Bell’s production for The Stylistics with the raw nerve virtuosity of Minnie Riperton’s classics Perfect Angel and Come To My Garden. Put this album on good speakers, and take care not to float away.

7. Genesis Owusu - Smiling With No Teeth: Genesis Owusu’s Smiling With No Teeth is a vocal tour-de-force, but not in the way you might expect. He doesn’t have a perfect tone, or a wide range. What he has in spades is a fierce delivery–he performs every song with a p-popping, spittle-flecking intensity that adds venom to each evocative  lyric. Whether he’s singing over spiky guitars or spitting over industrial percussion, Owusu is animated by a pugilistic spirit, forcefully reprimanding those who think that capitalism holds the key for Black liberation on “The Other Black Dog” and shitting on “neo-Nazi spew” on the gleefully violent “Whip Cracker.” The album establishes the Australian artist as an uncompromising voice with a point to make and a bottomless musical arsenal to help him get it across.

6. Men I Trust - Untourable Album: Faced with the prospect of no live shows for the foreseeable future, Montreal’s Men I Trust decided to let their minds wander and indulge the ideas they'd hesitated to try in front of an audience. The result was the Untourable Album, an enveloping lounge pop odyssey ideal for at-home listening. Untourable Album is a mellifluous mish mash of the last 30 years or so of mellow music–some Moby-esque lite electronica here (“Serenade Of Water”), some chillwave there (“Before Dawn”)–glossed over with a fashionable French-Canadian sheen. Freed from crowd-pleasing constraints, the band experiments with languid song structures and washed-out texture–when you listen to the album, it feels like it’s emanating from the bottom of a peaceful lagoon. Highlights? The winding, sighing “Tree Among Shrubs”; the gently yacht-rockin “Oh Dove,” and bubbling, bass-heavy “Always Lone.”

5. Mr Twin Sister - Al Mundo Azul: Mr Twin Sister is the finest band from Long Island since…Taking Back Sunday? Blue Öyster Cult? Well, they’re not emo institutions or classic rock Godzillas, but the band’s transcendent mishmash of club music styles–ranging from house to ballroom to Hi-NRG–grows more compelling with each release. While their 2018 album Salt was the epitome of disaffected cool, Al Mundo Azul embraces camp, making magic with chintzy sounds and deliberately dramatic lyrics about silent movie stars, opera heroines, and desolate cliffside rocks. For the first time, frontwoman Andrea Estrella sings some lyrics in Spanish, adding to the lysergic, Balearic atmosphere. All the bells and whistles are fun, but the real attraction is the singular groove and sonic alchemy that Mr. Twin Sister have achieved as an ensemble. The five-person group seamlessly incorporates dub textures into “The Pine Tree,” weaves gentle acoustic guitar throughout the high-octane “Carmen,” and turns “Ballarino” into a symphony of synthetic percussion.

4. Mach-Hommy - Pray For Haiti: Ever since the country won independence from France following a slave revolt in the late 18th century, Haiti seems to have led a cursed existence. In recent years, the country’s been plagued by hurricanes, devastating earthquakes, and political assassinations. Dig deep, though, and you’ll find that the country’s problems are the product of much more than misfortune: in 1825, France forced the young country to pay hundreds of millions of Francs in reparations, saddling Haiti with a debt that would take centuries to pay off and consigning its people to poverty. The Haitian diaspora has played an outsized role in hip-hop history, from Wyclef to Kodak, but it’s Mach-Hommy who most evocatively channels the country’s turbulent history, rich culture, and revolutionary spirit on his album Pray For Haiti. The best album to ever be released under the Griselda label, Pray For Haiti is guttural, grimy, and shockingly smart. Mach is fearless behind the mic, frequently uttering lines that make you wonder, “how does he…can he say that??” Curated by Westside Gunn, who’s a far better A&R than emcee (his squawking verses and introductions threaten to derail the album before it starts), the beats alternately clunk and squeak, immersing the Newark native’s words in a sludge that befits the pitch black world he creates with his rhymes. The ever-busy Mach-Hommy dropped a couple other albums in 2021 that are worth mentioning: the melodic and haunting Balens Cho and the lo-fi DUCK CZN: Chinese Algebra.

3. Flock Of Dimes - Head Of Roses: Jenn Wasner has been making soul-baring and shockingly beautiful indie rock for over a decade now, mainly alongside with Andy Stack as a member of Wye Oak. The continuation of an astonishing artistic run that includes 2018’s Wye Oak album The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs and production for artists like Madeline Kenney, Wasner reached new heights as a solo artist with her production and composition on Head Of Roses, her second album under the Flock Of Dimes moniker. Wasner is a master of mixing synthetic and organic sounds, weaving synthesizer doodles around chugging guitars and syncopated drums. Her most impressive skill, however, is vocal production–she transforms her own voice into a multi-layered choir, a flourish that adds immediacy to the rockers and ballads alike. Opener “2 Heads” is a tapestry of ecstatic exhortations, and highlight “One More Hour” combines earthly singing with heavenly harmonies. Wasner has managed to channel the frisson of the most emotional Wye Oak stunners into nearly every track, including blown-out stomper “Price Of Blue,” and “Two,” with its graceful 7/8 gallop. My favorite moment is the closer, “Head Of Roses,” in which Wasner strips away everything but her voice and piano, as she laments being unable to save the world from stubbornness and greed.

2. Arooj Aftab - Vulture Prince: Vulture Prince is transfixing, an instantly immersive phantasmagoria that combines neo-Sufi music with jazz and modern classical. As a composer, Aftab is an expert craftswoman, sketching out haunting melodies that communicate passion and grief in equal measure. Each of the album’s six songs creates its own realm, each with its own distinct ensemble of musicians, genre inspirations, and stylistic touches. Strong as she is as a composer, Aftab is an even stronger singer, her smoky alto cutting straight to the bone and effortlessly communicating her feelings, no matter what language she sings in. The Pakistan-born artist earned some very official seals of approval–GRAMMY nominations, Barack Obama’s playlists–but don’t be discouraged: this album is truly fantastic. I refuse to put this on in my car, out of a somewhat reasonable fear that I’ll get too mesmerized and cause a crash.

1. Dean Blunt - BLACK METAL 2: Indulge me in a little “self-scouting” of my taste for a moment. My favorite album of 2019 was The Same But By Different Means, a sprawling collection of ideas by Yves Jarvis, an album that radically switches from sound to sound at the drop of the hat. My 2020 fav was I Think I’m Good, Kassa Overall’s gorgeous jazz gem about processing grief, funneling the talents of NYC’s finest musicians into a single chaotic vision. My favorite 2021 album is similarly unpredictable, but though the previous years’ top picks feel like they’re bursting at the seams, Dean Blunt’s BLACK METAL 2 is succinct and almost eerily calm–an admirable response to the uncertainty that haunts our lives in a precarious time.

Dean Blunt is a restless creative, a shapeshifter who sounds like a totally different artist from album to album, sometimes even from song to song. His willingness to constantly change his style, his extreme personal privacy, and his tendency to obfuscate meaning with deliberately obtuse lyrics have intrigued me in the past, but have frequently left me cold. On BLACK METAL 2, a sequel to his 2014 album BLACK METAL, Blunt finally opens up and decides to let us in, and yeah, I'm all in. The first BLACK METAL juxtaposed lush arrangements with bursts of distortion, but BM2 is much quieter, placing the focus firmly on Blunt’s affectless baritone and his harmonies with Joanne Robertson, whose presence graces six of the album’s tracks like a lighthouse beaming through seafoam haze. Spanning just 10 songs and 23 minutes, less than half the length of its predecessor, the album is perfectly suited for repeat listens, which is to its benefit—the album is filled with hooks, but they’re oblique, seeming to dart out of earshot if you try too hard to focus on them. Moments that stick with me include the string dirge that rings throughout the opener “VIGIL,” the call and response horns of “WOOSAH,” and the skeletal guitar that rings throughout “SKETAMINE.” BLACK METAL 2 culminates with “the rot,” a Robinson duet that finds Blunt in a moment of zen, as he calmly resigns to the possibility that we might never reach a brighter future: “You might as well relax/’Cause the fear is going down, down, down.”

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3k7260p2ajong76MRlwCiR?si=ef104ac269ad4f24

The best of the rest:

2021 was a strange year for music–it was a year of dashed hopes, full of unmet expectations and unimaginable loss. There were some great tunes, though. There always are.

My listening was a bit all over the place this year, but as a result, my list is probably as geographically and stylistically diverse as any I’ve made in the past. Check below to read about my favorite songs from the calendar year, with a Spotify playlist at the bottom. Hopefully you’ll find something you like!

Without further ado, my faves:

25. DJ Black Low - “Jaiva Low” ft. Hapas Music, DJ KS & Patna: Amapiano, a style that dominates its native South Africa and is gaining steam on the rest of the continent, is first and foremost music meant for the bleary post-midnight hours of a crowded club. But if amapiano has a secondary function, it’s to freak out your friends and neighbors. “Jaiva Low,” by 20-year-old producer DJ Black Low, succeeds wildly on both counts. The insistent snare and wobbly bass keep you moving your feet, but the vocal–which rests halfway between didactic dancefloor direction and a summoning ritual–might have you running for your life.

24. Esperanza Spalding- “Formwela 10”: “Formwela 10” comes from Spalding’s Songwrights Apocethary Lab, a music therapy project and now full-length album that “seeks to develop a structure for the collaborative development of new compositions designed to offer enhanced salutary benefit to listeners.” I don’t know about all that, and many of the “Formwelas” on the album leave me a bit cold, but I definitely pick up some of those salutary benefits from “Formwela 10.” Divided into two distinct halves, “Formwela 10” starts as a minimal, yet theatrical vamp, Spalding singing tentatively and curiously as she plucks her harp like an upright bass and describes her aimlessness in life and love. The second half is a vocal tour-de-force, as she’s touched by divine intervention in the form of a dramatic grand piano that echoes her immaculate descending melody. A reminder, in Spalding’s words, to “make space and time for your elders,” “Formwela 10” is the perfect prescription to gracefully wind down from an overstimulating day.

23. Chubby & The Gang - “I Hate The Radio”: They’re known for their lightning-quick bursts of pub punk, but English group Chubby & The Gang is the rare hardcore group whose ballads are as strong as their bangers. Joining a growing list of heartfelt highlights that includes last year’s “Trouble (You Were Always On My Mind)” and “Grenfell Forever,” the closing track on their 2021 album The Mutt’s Nuts is a clever inversion of rock music’s most well-worn tropes–Chubby Charles knows that the conglomerated radio of today doesn’t quite compare to the power of the AM Jonathan Richman so joyfully sang about in 1972. Instead, the Gang bemoans the format’s calcification, only playing “the songs we used to know,” songs that evoke happier times in the life of the narrator and the world at large.

22. TisaKorean - “How i walk in the club”: TisaKorean is one of the most restlessly creative artists in the game today, constantly brainstorming new ways to get your body moving. His songs often feel like pop hits beamed in from another dimension, none more so than “How i walk in the club,” a mutating, low-key number brimming with hooks, tempo changes, and Tisa’s silly flows. In a fairer world, this song would’ve been at least as big as that Makonnen song about molly.

21. Wiardon - “Stay Down”: Austin, TX producer/rapper Wiardon is younger than Tom Brady’s first Super Bowl win, but he has the confidence and suavity of a man twice his age (to be very clear, twice his age = 38). On “Stay Down,” he initially stumbles over the opening words of his verse, before collecting himself and calmly intoning preternaturally wise bars about staying true to your roots. Wiardon helps his own case by layering pizzicato strings over one of the year’s finest basslines, creating an instrumental that begs to be blasted out of boxframe muscle cars.

20. Axel Rulay - “Si Es Trucho Es Trucho”/”Si Es Trucho Es Trucho” (Remix) ft. El Alfa & Farruko: This was a big year for dembow, and Rulay’s expansive breakout track showed just how much a determined artist can do with the genre’s signature riddim. “Si Es Trucho Es Trucho'' does away with any sort of song structure, eliminating verses and choruses in favor of clipped chants, children’s choirs, and organic percussion to supplement the relentless beat. The remix takes the track in a more traditional direction, adding verses from undisputed dembow don El Alfa and imperial reggaetonero Farruko, sacrificing some of the unpredictability for ratcheted-up energy.

19. Olivia Rodrigo - “deja vu”: Olivia Rodrigo hit the music world like a comet this year, armed with a knack for writing and singing about heartache with the kind of poise, skill, and relatability that only comes around once a decade or so (and as Adele and Taylor Swift prove again and again, this is practically a license to print money). She found a perfect partner in producer Dan Nigro, who complements her with tasteful arrangement touches, never repeating the same trick twice on her debut album SOUR. “deja vu,” to me, is the perfect blend of song and production, with militant percussion and buzzing guitars that evoke Nigro’s work with erstwhile indie star Sky Ferreira.

The song is less theatrical and outwardly emotional than many of the album’s other highlights, but Rodrigo’s delicate, almost sickly-sweet falsetto makes her words sting that much more. What I love about “deja vu” and Rodrigo’s songwriting in general: despite the worldly affect and venomous barbs, the song still manages to capture the uniquely-teenaged kind of naïveté that makes one think that they were the first person to discover Billy Joel (not really something to brag about, but I digress).

18. Rauw Alejandro - “Desenfocao’”: It’s time to stop messing around and state the obvious: Tainy is one of the best producers working in any genre right now. He’s a master of atmosphere, creating wistful compositions that inspire the world’s most macho reggaetoneros to express some vulnerability for a change. On “Desenfocao’,” he fills space with cavernous bass, open hi-hats, and underwater, out-of-time synths, creating an anthem that owes as much to Beach House as it does Bad Bunny (it feels like a spiritual sequel to “Callaíta,” another Tainy-produced jam). As great as he is, Tainy is only half the equation here–Rauw fulfills his side of the bargain admirably, toe-tagging the programmed percussion with mathematical precision and floating over the swelling production with his achingly pure tenor as he tells a story of unfathomable heartbreak.

17. Bawo - “Starts With A Text”: “I’m hard-pressed for a reason to come out tonight,” intones West London emcee Bawo on the hook for “Starts With A Text,” a half-asleep pronouncement that echoed through my head during a year where leaving the house was a proposition that fell somewhere between unappealing and unsafe. Accompanied by liquid keys from producer Daniel Ness, Bawo’s delivery is somehow both lackadaisical and technical, as he sets about navigating the world of digital dating, and exploring how intentions get obscured when communicated through blue (or, heaven forbid, green) bubbles.

16. New Pagans - “Natural Beauty”: How come there aren’t more songs about frenemies? Perhaps the liminal nature of that relationship doesn’t provide the same kind of emotional clarity that more straightforward relationships do, and are thus not as translatable to pop song form? If that’s true, then nobody told Lyndsey McConnell, the frontwoman of Northern Irish indie rockers New Pagans. “Natural Beauty” walks a fine line between envy and pity, between worshipful affection and blazing contempt. It’s these contradictions that make the song such a fascinating character study. It empathizes with the subject’s need to live up to the expectations of those who idealize her, but wishes that she weren’t such a dick all the time.

15. Loraine James - “Running Like That” ft. Eden Samara: Loraine James specializes in finding the beauty within harsh, glitchy, distorted digital landscapes. She manipulates her voice and the voices of her collaborators to create a dense tapestry of sound, taking a jagged and unexpected path towards transcendence. “Running Like That” is frenetic and propulsive, but also probably the most traditionally beautiful composition James has ever put to tape, largely thanks to the performance of guest vocalist Eden Samara. James weaves Samara’s angelic paeans and conversational banter into a dialogue about trying desperately to escape the urges of your worst self.

14. Young Dolph & Key Glock - “Aspen”: Listen to Bandplay’s soulful blasts of organ; to Dolph’s ad-libs, especially when he helpfully clarifies that Aspen is in Colorado; to Glock’s confident, career-spanning verse. Look at their wide smiles in the song’s incredible music video. It’s cruel that such a joyful and triumphant piece of art will remain forever bittersweet. Long Live Dolph.

13. Yaw Tog - “SORE”: It boggles my mind how drill music, a street style pioneered by Chicago teenagers, has made such a large and varied global impact. It’s both an inspiring bit of cultural connection and a depressing realization that such a bleak style can be so resonant in so many different locales. The Ghanaian flavor of drill is one that I still need to get more familiar with, but it’s hard to deny a banger like “SORE,” with its apocalyptic, yet danceable beat and invigorating, intimidating hook. I slightly prefer the original, but the UK-ified remix (released in Feb 2021) does a solid job of refining the song for mass consumption, confirming that Kumasi, Ghana's Yaw Tog has enough charisma to be the strongest presence on a song with Stormzy on it.

12. Isaiah Rashad - “Lay Wit Ya” ft. Duke Deuce: “Lay Wit Ya” is as grimy as the mud caked on old rain boots. It slithers along at ground level, powered by Rashad’s understated charisma, before Duke Deuce arrives halfway through and busts the whole thing wide open. Duke’s entrance is probably my favorite single moment from a hip-hop song this year, a jolt of cantankerous comedic energy that doubles as an irresistible urge to do your best gangsta walk.

11. Anz - “You Could Be” ft. George Riley: “You Could Be” combines an irresistible pentatonic synth melody (I was racking my brain to figure out what it reminded me of and it turns out, it’s a syncopated version of the stereotypical “Oriental riff”), yammering bass, and sci-fi percussion into the year’s most delectable dancefloor confection. Tapping into the production's playful vibe, George Riley occupies a flirtatious, almost taunting mien, scolding the object of her affection for not leaping at the opportunity of a lifetime.

10. Cassandra Jenkins - “Hard Drive”: Mesmerizing and thought-provoking, “Hard Drive” is what would happen if Kaputt-era Destroyer collaborated with Carl Sagan. The song is structured as a series of conversations, Jenkins matter-of-factly weaving the dialogues into a tapestry about the digitalization of the human body and mind–our brains are mere hard drives, with limited memory, prone to overheating. Guided by the ringing guitars and wailing saxophone, Jenkins attempts to reunite our overstimulated minds with our spiritual selves, and for five-and-a-half glorious minutes, she nearly succeeds.

9. Bankulli & Not3s - “Foreign”: An immensely joyful, cross-generation collab between an Afro-Rap pioneer and a smooth-singing Brit, “Foreign” is a glorious celebration of all things imported. The song is gleefully nonsensical: Not3s smoothly delivers his hook in one of the most-pronounced London accents ever put to tape (his only competition, and with a totally different kind of London brogue, is that guy from “Parklife”), while Bankulli complements with a rugged Yoruba verse. The victorious synth horn fanfare in this song makes me feel like I’m 100 feet tall.

8. Irreversible Entanglements - “Open The Gates”: It starts with Tcheser Holmes’ clattering percussion, a manic and invigorating jolt that awakens a higher consciousness. It continues with Luke Stewart’s bass, laying down a primal, impulsively danceable beat to add a bit of sashay to the song’s stomp. Conducting the affair is Camae Aweya, the poet and performing artist known as Moor Mother, authoritative as she utters incantations powerful enough to collapse the walls of Jericho. Answering her call is the horn section, Keir Neuringer on sax and Aquiles Navarro on trumpet, who oscillate between recognizable melodies (do I hear “Camptown Races”?) and free expression.

That’s “Open The Gates.” Just listen, trust me it’s better than my silly description.

7. Armand Hammer - “Falling Out the Sky” ft. Earl Sweatshirt: The world lost producer Lee “Scratch” Perry and bassist Robbie Shakespeare in 2021, two dub masters who were directly responsible for a shocking amount of the best music ever made. Folks try every day to approximate the vibe created in the Black Ark, Perry’s studio, but few are able to capture the hallucinatory, haunted magic of its heyday. The Alchemist comes damn close with his beat for “Falling Out the Sky,” a reverie-inducing bit of ear candy that I could happily listen to for hours on a loop.

As an added bonus, we get three of the most thoughtful and philosophical rap verses of the year: Earl reflects on the loss of his father and reminds us that all life originated as matter from dying stars, Billy Woods harkens back to a summer he spent in a blissful haze of weed smoke before being rudely awakened by a state trooper, and Elucid makes sure we all recognize how the Isley Brothers paved the way for The Beatles.

6. Pa Salieu - “Style & Fashion” ft. Obongjayar: Pa Salieu has an uncanny ability to fuse African, UK, and American styles into an alchemy that is 100% his own. “Style & Fashion” isn’t really a mix or a fusion of anything, though, just Pa’s charismatic and darkly shimmering take on amapiano. An engaging master of ceremonies, Pa struts atop the syncopated snares like he’s the flyest person on the planet, while guest artist Obongjayar’s rasp arises from the ashes like an ancient voice heralding a very fashionable apocalypse. As Pa says on the hook, “welcome to the party.”

5. Mr Twin Sister - ”Expressions”: “Expressions” is a post-disco carnival, a glorious mess of bizarre interlocking parts that come together to create a well-oiled machine. You hear the disparate elements come together on the song’s intro, creating a groove that stops and starts but keeps pushing forward. My favorite touch in the song’s immaculate arrangement is the underlying current of acoustic guitar, which comes to the forefront during Andrea Estrella’s sighing bridge, adding a touch of ‘90s adult contemporary to mellow out the Chic Organization energy of the rest of the track. It seems chaotic and in lesser hands, it probably would be, but Mr Twin Sister specializes in taking what could be chintzy and making it sublime.

4. Burna Boy - ”Kilometre”: The ultimate heat check–can you make a banger about the metric system? Most can’t, but Burna Boy can, rolling the titular word on his tongue and releasing it like a missile targeted at the pleasure center of your brain. Produced by Chopstix, a regular collaborator of Burna’s who always seems to nudge him in a dancehall direction, “Kilometre” emphasizes the upbeat, punctuating Burna’s chatter with reverbed guitar strums and emphasizing his pugilistic boasts with perfectly-timed live drum fills. The dialogue between dancehall and Afrobeats has always fascinated me, and songs like “Kilometre” that exist halfway between the two are near-guaranteed bangers. Hopefully we’ll see more of this side of Burna in 2022.

3. PinkPantheress - “just for me”: I’m a natural curmudgeon, always skeptical of things that have 100% approval rating. It can’t be that good if it appeals to everybody, can it? PinkPantheress’s music is one of those things that is just suspiciously good, unlocking the secret sauce that unites ravers, indie kids, and TikTok teens. The earliest PinkPantheress tracks had lots of DIY charm, with their obvious samples and tender vocals, but she leveled up when she connected with Mura Masa for “just for me.”

Rather than using samples of songs by the likes of Crystal Waters and Adam F. as a nostalgic cheat code, Mura Masa creates a perfect homage to chill room UK garage, with backwards strings, record scratches, and an indelible guitar arpeggio embellishing the traditional 2-step percussion. The arrangement is complex, but not busy, and it leaves plenty of space for PP to lay down a sighing, oblique, and ornate melody that messes with meter and never resolves where you expect it to. The vocal is so soft-spoken that you almost miss how delightfully deranged the lyrics are, lines like “I found the street of the house in which you stay” and “I followed you today, I was in my car” (accompanied by the playful tooting of her car’s horn) eliminating the divide between devotion and dangerous obsession.

2. Remble - “Touchable”: Remble became a meme of sorts because of his crisp elocution. Lyricists of any genre rarely use such writerly syntax, and the combination of his precise enunciation and his songs’ gruesome subject matter provides the tension that animates his music. His style could come off as gimmicky if he weren’t so darn good at stringing together one-liners into the kind of song you want to memorize and recite. On “Touchable,” in particular, Remble rhymes like the very model of a modern major general, calmly attacking 10Fifty’s minimalist, bell-tolling horror movie instrumental and dropping more memorable lines than you can count: “I know a lot of demons, I can summon any one of 'em/Bodies holding bodies, it was as if they were cuddling”; “Put 30 in my chop', and then I turned him to a huxtable/Came a long way from Pre-K and eating Lunchables”; “Peter piper picked a pack of bullets, now they're touching you.”

1. Ayra Starr - “Bloody Samaritan”: There’s a certain type of confidence that only teenagers have, the absolute surety that there couldn’t possibly be anyone smarter or funnier or cooler than you and your friends. “Bloody Samaritan” takes that feeling and bottles it. Ayra Starr cannot fail, she can only be failed; her immaculate vibe unassailable, unable to be touched by the killjoys in her midst. When she’s not taking dead aim at bores and lames, she’s aggressively, almost confrontationally flirtatious, accosting the object of her intentions with a series of come-ons that beg to be IG captions: “I see you watchin' my stories/I see you gaugin' my lifestyle/I see you watchin' my movements/This bad bitch bad every day.” Listening to her tiptoe among mournful violins and slinky saxophone, you believe her every word–maybe the 19 & Dangerous artist is the coolest person on the planet??

Thanks for reading! HERE is the Spotify playlist of the full 100 songs in order.

And here's the rest of the list:

Every year produces excellent music and 2020 was no exception. The exceptional thing about this year, though, is the loss of livelihood so many musicians suffered as a result of the pandemic. To better celebrate all I’ve listened to and loved this year, I’ve expanded my albums list from 50 to 75 albums and included a highlight track from each in the Spotify playlist below. If you like what you hear, why not throw the artist a few dollars on Bandcamp?

Check the Spotify playlist HERE.

Without further ado, my favorite albums of 2020. Happy New Year, and happy listening!

10. Playboi Carti - Whole Lotta Red: Carti’s long-awaited opus has only been out for a week, which is probably not a long enough time to give an album as sprawling and surprising as this one a full critical evaluation. But I do know when I’m hearing something that’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard: this album rearranges hip-hop at the molecular level. 

Whole Lotta Red is overstuffed with invention, the glitchy, expansive production giving Carti ample opportunity to glom onto the contours of the beat and experiment with his voice. That voice is the album’s main attraction: it squeaks, it squeals, it roars, it spits, it shudders, and organizes itself into irresistibly ignorant mantras (my current favorite is “Lamborghini parked outside, it’s purple like lean”). 

Across its 24 tracks (which feels like too many, sure, but only the 5-minute long Kid Cudi-infected droner “Metamorphosis” overstays its welcome), Carti plays with listener expectations, annihilating rap songwriting conventions (why do you need verse-chorus structure if every line is a hook) as he defiantly proclaims his desire to be unlike anybody else. Though it bears some resemblance in sound and subject matter to Future’s Monster (and much of the production owes a debt to the work of Lil Uzi Vert’s favored Working Of Dying collective), Whole Lotta Red firmly establishes Carti as a totemic figure connecting mainstream and underground sounds.

9. BbyMutha - Muthaland: BbyMutha is a natural born spitter, armed with a drawly stutter-stepping flow that routinely annihilates unconventional instrumentals. She glows with supreme confidence and comfort in her own skin, especially when she’s dripping with disdain with those who’d dare refuse her the respect she deserves. A 25-track opus that earns every minute of its runtime, Muthaland is an engrossing immersion into Mutha’s world, balancing a fascination with the occult (“Sorry I don’t fuck with n****s who don’t fuck with Satan”) with grounding interjections from close friends and her four children. Boasting rockstar fantasies like “Heavy Metal,” bad girl anthems like “Nice Guy,” and dancefloor-ready jams like “Cocaine Catwalk,” Muthaland is a tour-de-force by one of rap’s singular voices, and if she’s really finished with music as she’s claimed (rappers never really retire, but Mutha has indicated she wants to focus full time on her Apothecary), the game will greatly miss her incisive punchlines and crudely empowering perspective.

8. Westerman - Your Hero Is Not Dead: In 2020, Mid-’80s sophistipop grew into one of my favorite comfort foods. Westerman’s Your Hero Is Not Dead struck me directly in the sophistipop sweet spot, evoking the attention-to-detail and synth-heavy craftsmanship of that era and pairing it with harmonic complexity and a piercing emotionalism that recalls his idol Neil Young. On songs like “Blue Comanche” and “The Line,” Westerman constructs tales as twisty as his melodies, economically exploring how people relate to each other at the beginning and end of romantic relationships. Westerman complements his tasteful palette of synth sounds with intricate and lyrical guitar playing, most notably on the sighing, gorgeous instrumental “Float Over,” which softly segues into the title track to end the album on a gently-rising high note.

7. WizKid - Made In Lagos: The focal point of the sub-Saharan Afrobeats renaissance, Lagos is having one of the most exciting musical moments of any city since Kingston in the early ‘70s. WizKid is one of the scene’s biggest stars, with an ability to combine the sonic tapestry of his hometown with Caribbean-influenced beats and vocal styles. Made In Lagos is a masterwork of sound design, bringing creamy bass, chicken-scratch speckles of guitar, tasteful interjections of saxophone and brass, and an intoxicating mix of acoustic and electronic percussion, all offered in service to an immaculate vibe that matches the album cover’s shiny, monochromatic color scheme. Made with lockdown in mind, the album eschews uptempo dancefloor workouts in favor of stress-relief and romance. WizKid plays the perfect host, tamping down his melodic flights of fancy and embracing a song-serving smoothness. He’s a warm and inviting presence throughout, laying out the red carpet for a cross-continental cast of collaborators like H.E.R., Skepta, Burna Boy, and Damian Marley. The result is a truly global pop masterpiece, capable of brightening even the dourest day of a miserable year.

6. Ka - Descendants of Cain: Firefighter by day and rapper/producer by night, Ka is a master of allusion. He organizes his thoughts into themed collections of metaphor, illustrating the bleak realities of street life with gnomic symbolism. On Descendants Of Cain, Ka’s strongest work to date, the enigmatic rapper expresses himself through a litany of biblical references, drawing parallels between ancient parables (he goes far deeper than the Cain/’caine double entendre that rappers have been using for decades) and the stark code of morality with which he lives his life. The 48-year-old hermit produced the project himself, creating an immersive sonic realm, crafting expansive, noir-ish backing tracks populated by late-night saxophones, sparkling pianos, and the occasional shot of sweeping strings. Once again, Ka’s music comes almost entirely without drums (certainly without “beats” in the traditional hip-hop sense–every once in a while, he adds an open hi-hat or a subdued shaker), the artist preferring to let his music swirl around his half-whispered words of wisdom. The album ends on a tearful, sentimental note with “I Love (Mimi, Moms, Kev),” in which the artist ditches the biblical lyrical conceit and expresses his love for his wife, his mom, and his best friend atop light percussion and a warm soul sample.

5. SAULT - Untitled (Rise): Rise is the second part of a diptych that SAULT recorded in response to the movement that exploded in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Black Is, the first part, is a great album (you’ll find it in the lower reaches of my 2020 list), but the mysterious UK collective fulfilled their immense potential with Rise, a propulsive, powerful, and danceable album that doubles as a thought-provoking examination of the nature of freedom and liberation. The album tackles weighty topics–police violence, fake-woke “allies,” protest, cultural appropriation–but handles them with an inspiring effervescence and a propulsion meant to usher right-thinking people into the streets. The music itself is an intoxicating marvel, combining elements from every trendy musical movement from the early ‘80s (post-disco, post-punk, house, hip-hop, whatever the hell ESG was) into a percussive and surprisingly cohesive cocktail. The album immediately makes its greatness known with its first four songs, one of the strongest opening runs of any album in recent memory: the swaggering, funky, keep-your-head-up anthem “Strong,” which features a drum solo from SAULT architect Inflo, the soaring, club-ready vamp “Fearless,” concept-establishing, string-heavy interlude “Rise,” and especially “I Just Want to Dance,” the best song ESG never wrote. 

4. Fiona Apple - Fetch The Bolt Cutters: Fetch The Bolt Cutters arrived with the kind of universal acclaim that can make some people suspicious. The Pitchfork review got a lot of attention, not just for its perfect score but for its bold statement that “no music has ever sounded quite like it.” 

That statement might’ve been slightly hyperbolic. Fetch The Bolt Cutters has the kind of propulsive left-hand piano figures, chest-thumping percussion, and impassioned vocal performances that we haven’t heard since...the last Fiona Apple album. But the album deserves its experimental reputation. These songs mess around with song structure and melody in ways that resemble avant-garde singers like Meredith Monk, use overlapping vocals that occasionally evoke the works of post-modern composers like Luciano Berio, and echoing modernist composers like Edgard Varese in the way she wrings pathos out of rhythmic elements.

Though Fetch might be a slight step down from The Idler Wheel, it’s an invigorating listen, packed with the soul-baring confessionals that only Fiona is capable of executing. Combining literary wordplay with plainspoken directness, Fiona forces the listener to confront her trauma and contemplate her diagnoses of patriarchal ills. The songs are uniformly excellent–especially opener “I Want You To Love Me,” the most “traditional” song on the record, and “Shameika,” a burrowing childhood rumination with a happy ending–but Fetch The Bolt Cutters stands out to me as a collection of amazing moments: when the jig-like “For Her” fades into an unforgettably painful cadence (“Good mornin’, good mornin’/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), Fiona’s ground-shaking vocal intensity at the end of “Newspaper,” her dogs howling over the outro of “Fetch The Bolt Cutters,” the winking repetition of the title phrase on “Ladies.” Her albums display more than enough ambition to forgive the long gestation periods, but hopefully we won’t have to wait another 8 years for Fiona to bare her soul once again.

3. Drakeo The Ruler - Thank You For Using GTL: Embroiled in a Kafkaesque legal saga that shines a light on the worst aspects of our horrendous justice system, Drakeo The Ruler spent more than three years wrongly incarcerated for a crime he not only did not commit, but for which he was acquitted (for more info on Drakeo’s ordeal, read Jeff Weiss). He’s now mercifully a free man, mostly due to the work of his lawyer, but at least partially because of publicity generated by Thank You For Using GTL. Recorded over the phone from prison during the height of the pandemic, it’s a miracle that an album created under such sub-optimal conditions sounds as excellent as it does, but credit producer JoogSzn–who not only supplied the creeping, head-nodding backing tracks but recorded Drakeo’s phoned-in vocals–and engineer MixedByNavin for the project’s astonishing fidelity. Drakeo and Joog spent hours on the phone to record the album, in the process paying thousands of dollars to GTL, the predatory telecom company of choice for the L.A. corrections system, whose mechanical interjections serve as a constant reminder of the injustice that made the album necessary. Of course, a good story is a good story, but that alone doesn’t get an album on 2020’s most prestigious Best Albums list (mine). It’s a classic rap album, perhaps the best ever released by an incarcerated rapper, and a thumb directly in the nose of the D.A. and the LAPD. The album is a lyrical marvel, packed with winding wordplay and outlandish flexes, as Mr. Mosley takes aim at 6ix9ine, cackles at sorry-ass Instagram haters, and sneers at American-made cars (“To be honest, a Hellcat isn’t a foreign”). Each song has a carefully considered concept, the rapper’s punchlines building upon one another to make an airtight case for his status as L.A.’s top dog. He contrasts his own whip-crashing lifestyle with flashy wannabes on “GTA VI” and “Backflip or Sumn,” mourns a favorite department store on “RIP Barneys,” and proves he still doesn’t rap beef on “Maestro’s Tension.” The album’s masterstroke comes with “Fictional,” the final track, in which Drakeo exposes the prosecution’s use of his lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings as the farce it is: “It might sound real, but it’s fictional/I love that my imagination gets to you.” Drakeo’s story was a rare bright spot in 2020, and a rare one with a happy ending. Just last week, the rapper released Because Y’All Asked, a studio-recorded version of Thank You For Using GTL, giving the album’s songs the clarity they deserve. But I think I’ll mostly return to the original, which will live on as an excellent album and a vital document of post-George Floyd America.

2. Pa Salieu - Send Them to Coventry: Hailing from the middle of nowhere–or, more accurately city in the English Midlands only known in the states for its middling Premier League team–Gambian-British artist Pa Salieu served up the most distinctive, visceral, and daring rap debut of the year. His style fuses elements of grime, drill, afro-trap, dancehall, and the darker edges of U.S. hip-hop into a percussive slurry, injected with the urgency of his struggle to survive. The magic of the album comes from the way Pa’s fluid flows interact with the shimmering and foreboding production (Felix Joseph and Aod lead the cast of the project’s sound architects), which is perfectly suited for cold city nights. He slips effortlessly into the pocket, toe-tagging the beats with a combination of aggression and trance-like meditation and uttering casually powerful pronouncements (“I'd make a killa riddim offa any riddim/The grind can never stop 'til I'm wrapped in linen”) that make you believe he’s Britain’s next great rapper. Pa keeps the vibe consistent throughout, but the moments that stand out are the moments when he locks into an unbreakable groove over no-frills production, like on singles “Block Boy,” “Betty,” and “B***K.” The artist’s wry sense of humor and brash confidence keeps the album from feeling bleak, but Send Them To Coventry wisely ends on “Energy,” a warm and bright ode to keeping your creative spark safe from the prying forces of fame and fortune.

1. Kassa Overall - I Think I’m Good: “I think I’m good”–a phrase that’s ran through my head throughout this shitstorm of a year. Sure, I postponed a wedding, cancelled trips, and saw my friends and family much less often than I would like, but I count myself among the lucky ones. Still breathing, still sane. Though it was recorded and released before the pandemic started, Kassa Overall’s I Think I’m Good became a lodestar of sorts for me. It’s a brilliantly introspective and deeply personal album about existing in enclosed spaces–whether a jail cell, an NYC subway car, or the inescapable prison of your own body.

Kassa Overall made his name as a jazz drummer, touring with icons like Geri Allen, but his solo music incorporates elements of hip-hop, classical, and trap to create a wholly original milieu. The album features contributions from over 30 accomplished voices, ranging from luminary Vijay Iyer, to Kassa’s saxophonist brother Carlos Overall, to virtuosic pianist Sullivan Fortner, to venerated activist Angela Davis. But all the disparate elements come together in service of Kassa’s deeply personal and engrossing vision.

Taking partial inspiration from Kassa’s struggle with manic depression, the music fluctuates between meditative calm and unbearable tension, mimicking the patter of an unquiet mind. Album opener “Visible Walls,” is a mesmerizing prayer for salvation soundtracked by fluttering harps, piercing woodwinds, and heartbeat percussion. “Find Me” buries a plea for help within a cacophony of sampled voices and rattling piano notes. Fortner’s piano guides us through the hauntingly devastating “Halfway House” and the Chopin-indebted “Darkness In Mind,” each highlighting a different stage of grief (despair and acceptance, respectively). The arc of I Think I’m Good concludes with the hopeful “Got Me A Plan” and “Was She Happy (For Geri Allen),” a Vijay Iyer-assisted tribute to his late friend and mentor. 

It’s ironic that an album that so deeply explores the feeling of isolation vibrates with such a collaborative spirit. I Think I’m Good feels like an answered prayer–a community coming together to check on a beloved friend who’s gone through a tough time: “You good, man?” “I think so.”

Here’s the rest of my list.

With nowhere to go and nothing to do in 2020, I had plenty of time to listen to as much music as I could stand. Luckily for me and for everyone else, 2020 supplied an embarrassment of musical riches; the endless creativity of our artists providing necessary emotional support during the Worst Year Ever™.

I’ve compiled my favorite 100 songs of 2020. Again, I limited my selections to only one song per artist, but as you’ll see, I couldn’t quite stick to it this year. Narrowing the list down to 100 was a painful process, with many excellent songs left on the cutting room floor. 

Check below for Spotify playlists

Top 100 Songs of 2020: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ySKk19paBFgO698vw7HTs?si=-al-SyEsTqWzqKfmEraNFw Best Songs of 2020 (Refined):  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ET0aA5TPj5JDsUtosaCVv?si=MyDxjcXKQpy3SNs7dV0wIQ Best Songs of 2020 (Catch-All):  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0XxtEo0PrNSyZDWBCjJtuR?si=pBZWRoNGSGWBCaqxJrHoyw

Without further ado, my favorite songs of 2020.:

25. Yg Teck - “What You Know”: Yg Teck has one of the more prominent Baltimore accents in rap music, elongating “ooh” sounds and shortening “er” sounds with reckless abandon. “What You Know” is buried towards the end of his excellent mixtape Eyes Won’t Close 2, but it stands out as one of Teck’s strongest songs. The buoyant piano-led beat offers Teck an opportunity to reflect on his struggle with heart-breaking directness: “So what if they hate me, sometimes I hate myself.”

24. Brian Brown - “Runnin” ft. Reaux Marquez:  Filtering the conventions of southern rap through his easy-going drawl and omnivorous musical appetite, Brian Brown is the brightest light in Nashville’s burgeoning hip-hop scene. Built around producer Black Metaphor’s circuitous jazz piano, “Runnin” is a soulful and poetic meditation on breaking out of the staid existence that can creep up on you if you stay still for long enough. Brown serves up the song’s irresistible hook and provides a grounding presence on his second verse, evoking the styles of two Tennessee rap titans: Chattanooga’s Isaiah Rashad and Cashville’s own Starlito.

23. 42 Dugg - “One Of One” ft. Babyface Ray: Detroit producer Helluva’s beats provide the tissue that connects the Motor City with the West Coast, creating anthems that mix D-Town propulsion with soundscapes perfect for a top-down drive down PCH. The Helluva-produced “One Of One” is an electric duet between two of the D’s most distinct voices: low-talking, whistle-happy guest verse god 42 Dugg and nonchalantly fly Babyface Ray. They trade bars throughout the track, weaving between squelches of bass to talk about the ways women have done them wrong.

22. PG Ra & jetsonmade - “Keeping Time”: The phrase “young OG” was invented for guys like PG Ra, who is somehow only 20-years-old. On “Keeping Time,” the South Carolina rapper spits sage-like wisdom about street life over Jetsonmade’s signature trampoline 808s, decrying nihilism and emphasizing the importance of holding strong convictions in a deliberate, raspy drawl: “Oh, you don't give a fuck 'bout nothing, then you damn wrong/Cause every soldier stand for something if he stand strong.”

21. Empty Country - “Marian”: After spending a decade as the main songwriter for Cymbals Eat Guitars, Joseph D'Agostino is an expert at crafting widescreen indie anthems. CEG is no more, but D’Agostino is still doing his thing, opening the self-titled album of his new entity Empty Country with “Marian,” a chiming and heartfelt power ballad with sunny vocal harmonies and a fist-pumping riff. It’s hard to make out the lyrics on the first few spins, but a closer listen reveals some striking imagery (“In a sea of Virginia pines/A burnt bus”), as the narrator imagines the life that lies ahead for his newborn daughter.

20. Raveena - “Headaches”: Raveena’s music is a soothing balm, capable of transforming any negative emotion into peaceful reverie. “Headaches” starts as a sensual, woozy, reverbed-out slow jam–typical Raveena territory, perfect for emphasizing the enlightened sensuality that she exudes in her vocals. The song mutates in its second half into an invigorating bit of dream pop, picking up a ringing guitar riff and a prominent backbeat as Raveena struggles to stay close to the one she loves (“There's no sunset, without you”).

19. Los & Nutty - “I’m Jus Fuckin Around” ft. WB Cash: In which three Detroit emcees receive an instrumental funky enough for ‘90s DJ Quik and proceed to not only not ride the beat but to fight so hard against it you’d think they’re training to get in the ring with Mayweather. I love Michigan rap.

18. Sufjan Stevens - “My Rajneesh”: I’ve never seen Wild Wild Country, or read about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his cult, so I don’t know too much about the subject matter of “My Rajneesh.” I do know, however, that it’s a story that involves crises of faith and the state of Oregon, which means it fits perfectly into Sufjan’s milieu. “My Rajneesh” does an excellent job of relaying the ecstasy of a devout believer, layering celebratory chants, South Asian traditional percussion, and glitchy electronics into a 10-minute epic. As the song progresses, the sonic tapestry grows distorted, mimicking the emptiness that lies beneath Rajneesh’s surface and the darkness and confusion faced by his followers when the illusion fades.

17. Koffee - “Lockdown”: Leave it to rising dancehall superstar Koffee to find ebullient joy in a situation as bleak as quarantine. Weaving around piercing guitar licks and euphoric vocal samples, Koffee schemes to turn her lockdown romance (”quarantine ting”) into a long-term deal, fantasizing about travel with her love even as she’s content to just spend time in her apartment. Everything is dandy as long as they're in the same room.

16. Rio Da Yung OG & Louie Ray - “Movie”: Flint’s answer to Detroit’s “Bloxk Party,” one of the best rap songs of the past decade. Rio and Louie trade verses throughout the song, competing with one another to see who can be the most disrespectful.

Rio’s best line: “Ma don't drink that pop in there, I got purple in it/I know it look like Alka-Seltzer, it's a perky in it”

Louie’s best line: “Let me cut my arms off before I ball, make it fair”

15. Ratboys - “My Hands Grow”: “My Hands Grow” shines like an early-morning sunbeam, hitting that circa-2001 Saddle Creek* sweet spot with aplomb. But “My Hands Grow” is more than just a throwback–it’s an oasis, populated by sweeping acoustic guitars, electric leads with just the right amount of distortion, and especially Julia Steiner’s affectionate vocal, which blooms into gorgeous self-harmonies during the bridge.

*Obligated to add that this song came out before Azure Ray signed to Saddle Creek, but the point stands.

14. J Hus - “Triumph”: J Hus and Jae5 have the kind of telepathic artistic connection and song-elevating chemistry only present in the best rapper-producer pairs. A great example of how their alchemy blurs the lines between genres, “Triumph” is the J Hus/Jae5 version of a boom-bap rap track. Hus rides Jae5’s woodblock-and-horn-accented beat with unassailable confidence, gradually elevating his intensity level as he sprays his unflappable threats. Like most of Hus’s best songs, “Triumph” is home to an irresistible hook, which I can’t help but recite whenever I hear the words “violence,” “silence,” or “alliance” (more often than you think!).

13. Sada Baby - “Aktivated”: Every post-disco classic from the early ‘80s could use a little bit of Sada Baby’s wild-eyed intensity and dextrous flow. On “Aktivated,” Sada runs roughshod atop Kool & The Gang’s ‘81 classic “Get Down On It,” turning it into an irresistible and danceable anthem about going dumb off a Percocet. Sada is a master of controlled chaos, modulating his voice from a simmer to a full-throated yell within the space of a single bar. It really makes lines like “Coochie made me cry like Herb in the turtleneck” pop.

12. Yves Tumor - “Kerosene!”: Prince is one of the most-imitated artists on the planet, but while most artists can only grasp at his heels, Yves Tumor’s “Kerosene!” reaches a level of burning passion and sexual literacy that would make The Purple One proud. A duet with Diana Gordon, “Kerosene!” is a desperate plea for connection, each duet partner thinking that a passionate dalliance might cure the emptiness inside. The song vamps for five minutes, filled with guitar pyrotechnics and moaning vocals, its extended runtime and gradual comedown consigning the partners to a futile search for a self-sustaining love that won’t burn itself out when the passion fades.

11. Special Interest - “Street Pulse Beat”: “Street Pulse Beat” sounds like “Seven Nation Army,” as performed by post-punk legends Killing Joke. It’s a strutting, wild, propulsive anthem–part come-on, part self-actualization, all-powerful. Dominated by an insistent industrial beat and the fiery vocals of frontperson Alli Logout, whose performance more than lives up to the song’s grandiose lyrics (““I go by many names such as Mistress, Goddess, Allah, Jah, and Jesus Christ”), “Street Pulse Beat” was the song released this year that made me miss live music the most. 

10. Megan Thee Stallion - “Savage” (Remix) ft. Beyonce: The first-ever collaboration between these two H-Town royals was the most quotable song of the year, firing off hot lines and memorable moments with an effortless majesty. Megan does her thing, bringing classy, bougie, and ratchet punchlines about the men who grovel at her feet, but it’s who Beyoncé elevates the track to transcendence. She prances around the outskirts of Megan’s verses, applying the full force of her lower register to her ad-libs (“THEM JEANS”), and during her verses, the Queen proves once again that you can count the number of rappers better than her on your fingers.

9. DJ Tunez - “Cool Me Down” ft. Wizkid: WizKid is almost alarmingly prolific, releasing enough amazing songs per year that he would be a worthy subject of his own “best-of” list. My favorite WizKid song of 2020 didn’t come from his excellent album Made In Lagos–instead it was this team-up with Brooklyn-based DJ Tunez. A favored collaborator of WizKid (Tunez is partially responsible for career highlights like 2019’s “Cover Me” and 2020’s “PAMI”), Tunez’s organic and textured approach to Afrobeats is an excellent fit for his voice, mixing swelling organs, 808 blocks, and the occasional stab of saxophone into a percolating concoction. The “Starboy” rises to the occasion, hypnotically repeating phrases in English and Yoruba, making octave-sized leaps in his vocal register, and stretching syllables like taffy as he sings the praises of his lady love.

8. Sorry - “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”: Part swaggering indie anthem and part skronking no wave, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” struts with the woozy confidence of someone who’s had just the right amount to drink. It’s the ideal throwback to late L.E.S. (or Shoreditch) nights, sung with irresistible gang vocals on the chorus and a detached sneer on the verse that jibes with the sinister undertones of the deliberately off-key backing track.

7. Destroyer - “Cue Synthesizer”: As Dan Bejar ages, he becomes less like a singer and more like a shaman, his incantatory near-spoken word verses grounding his band’s instrumental heroics. On “Cue Synthesizer,” Bejar plays the role of conjurer, summoning synthesizers and electric guitars in celebration of music’s ability to breathe life into modern mundanity.

6. Chloe x Halle - “Do It”: Pillow-soft R&B that walks the fine line between retro and futuristic, powered by the Bailey Sisters’ playfully twisty melodies and sumptuous production from a somewhat unexpected source. That’s right, piano man Scott Storch took a break from smoking blunts with Berner to deliver his smoothest beat since he teamed with Chloe x Halle mentor Beyoncé for “Me Myself & I” in 2003.

5. Fireboy DML - “ELI”: Nigeria singer Fireboy DML is an unabashed fan of ‘90s adult contemporary, worshipping idols (‘90s Elton John, Celine Dion) that even some devout poptimists wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. A modern-day retelling of the Biblical fable of Samson and Delilah, “ELI” seems to take inspiration from Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants,” its rocksteady beat, wobbling bassline, snake-charming flute, and “lonely girl, lonely world” lyrics recalling the 1994 Swedish pop smash. It’s a testament to Fireboy’s charisma and melodic mastery that “ELI” is as invigorating as “All That She Wants” is annoying. He switches from playful flirtation on the verse, to hopeless devotion on the chorus, to lascivious swagger on the bridge, gently ratcheting up the intensity in his vocals until the song’s climactic guitar solo* grants glorious release. *The build-up on “ELI” is so great that it makes it easy to ignore that the guitar solo itself is a mess. It sounds like the producers couldn’t get Carlos Santana, so they settled for Andre 3000 instead. 

4. The Beths - “Dying To Believe”: If you’ve ever audibly cringed while thinking about something you’ve said or done in the past, The Beths have the song for you. Carried by its driving backbeat, “Dying To Believe” chronicles singer Liz Stokes’s rumination on a crumbling friendship, her fear of confrontation preventing her from removing her toxic friend from her life. Though the lyric is pained and uncertain, there’s no such lack of confidence in the music. An adrenaline rush of muscular, sugary power pop, “Dying To Believe” is an immaculate construction, each fuzzy guitar riff arriving with mathematical precision and each “whoa-oh” chorus hitting like a ton of bricks. Jump Rope Gazers might not have been as consistent as the Auckland, NZ band’s self-titled debut, but “Dying To Believe” is as good as anything on that album and helps solidify The Beths’ deserved reputation as some of the best songwriters and tightest performers on either side of the International Date Line. 

3. The 1975 - “What Should I Say”/“If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”: I know, I know. I was supposed to only pick one song per artist, but sue me, this is my list and I just could not decide between these two. The 1975 have always balanced their affinity for ‘80s-style pop anthems with an interest in experimental electronic music. In 2020, they released the two very best songs of their career, each seemingly fitting into one of those two boxes. On its face, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)” is the band’s transparent attempt at recording their own “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”–it’s in D Major, it has a chugging backbeat, an echoing two-chord riff in the verse, and an ascending E Minor progression in the pre-chorus. Where the Tears For Fears classic takes a birds-eye look at the yuppie generation, Matty Healy uses his song’s swelling bombast and gleefully cheesy sax solo to explore the awkward intimacy of cyber sex. The burbling Eno-style synth that opens up “If You’re Too Shy” evokes a dial-up connection, simulating the thrill of discovery felt by those whose only connection to the outside world comes through their screens.

“What Should I Say,” meanwhile, combines Boards Of Canada-esque bloops with bassline that strongly resembles Mr. Fingers’ oft-sampled “Mystery Of Love”, over which Healy sings in a heavily-manipulated voice that sounds like the lovechild of Travis Scott and Sam Smith. Fittingly for a song about loss for words, the best moments of  “What Should I Say” spring from vocal manipulations, imparting more emotional resonance than mere words could ever hope to provide. The final minute of “What Should I Say” is almost tear-jerkingly beautiful, as a single computerized voice cuts through cacophony, determined to let the world know how it feels, language be damned.

2. King Von - “Took Her To The O”: His career was far too short, but King Von had plenty of chances to demonstrate his god-given storytelling ability before he passed away in November. Accompanied by regular collaborator Chopsquad DJ’s chaotic, circular pianos, Von recounts an eventful night in his home neighborhood of O’Block. Von’s gripping narrative is packed with writerly detail (“Nine missed calls, three of them from ‘Mom,’ other six say ‘Duck’”), peeking into his justifiably paranoid state-of-mind (“My Glock on my lap, I'm just thinkin' smart”) and ending with a smirk on a bit of gallows humor that recalls prime Ghostface. Long Live Von.

1.  Bob Dylan - “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself to You”: It’s impossible to escape that 2020 was a year of mass devastation, on a scale not seen in American life since the second World War. In the midst of the cascading chaos of this year, I married my best friend. So it’s fitting that the song that resonated most with me this year was “Throat Baby (Go Baby)” by BRS Kash.

*Ahem* Excuse me. It was a love song, and not just any love song: the finest love song of Bob Dylan’s six-decade, Nobel Prize-winning career. 

Bob Dylan spent much of the 2010s trying his hand at the Great American Songbook, applying his craggy croon to standards made famous by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. It felt like a weird turn for such an iconoclastic figure, one known for his massive (and valuable) library of originals. “I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You” proves that Bob’s covers and Christmas albums weren’t larks or cash grabs, but an old dog’s attempt to learn new tricks by digging into the past.

“IMUMMTGMTY” shares a lot of DNA with “The Way You Look Tonight” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” bringing florid metaphors and touching pledges of devotion, but it also inherently understands that love is a decision–a weighty decision that imparts great responsibility–as much as it’s a feeling. What really makes “IMUMM” sing is the tastefully folksy arrangement, which ties into the old weird America explored by Dylan’s compadres in The Band, filled with bright Telecaster leads and easily-hummed choruses. And the lyrics are excellent even by Bob’s elevated standards. It turns me into a puddle every time I listen. I’ll let Bob take it from here:

Well, my heart's like a river, a river that sings Just takes me a while to realize things I've seen the sunrise, I've seen the dawn I'll lay down beside you when everyone's gone

Here’s the rest of the list. Check back later this week for my albums list!

26. Katie Gately - “Waltz” 27. Bonny Light Horseman - “Bonny Light Horseman” 28. Bullion - “Hula” 29. Omah Lay - “Lo Lo” 30. Greg Dulli - “Sempre” 31. Fiona Apple - “Shameika” 32. Anjimilie - “Your Tree” 33. Key Glock - “Look At They Face” 34. Lido Pimienta - “Te Queria” 35. Morray - “Quicksand” 36. Obongjayar - “10K” 37. Xenia Rubinos - “Who Shot Ya?” 38. Kiana Lede - “Protection” 39. Flo Milli - “Weak” 40. G.T. - “What You Gon Do” 41. Chris Crack - “Hoes At Trader Joe’s” 42. Lil Baby - “The Bigger Picture” 43. The Orielles - “Memoirs of Miso” 44. Shoreline Mafia - “Change Ya Life” 45. Masego - “Mystery Lady” ft. Don Toliver 46. Junglepussy - “Out My Window” ft. Ian Isiah 47. Siete Gang Yabbie - “Gift Of Gab” 48. Rosalía - “Juro Que” 49. Black Noi$e - “Mutha Magick” ft. BbyMutha 50. BFB Da Packman - “Free Joe Exotic” ft. Sada Baby 51. Andras - “Poppy” 52. Lianne La Havas - “Weird Fishes” 53. Crack Cloud - “Tunnel Vision” 54. Lil Uzi Vert - “No Auto” ft. Lil Durk 55. Fred again… - “Kyle (I Found You)” 56. Burna Boy - “Wonderful” 57. Lonnie Holliday - “Crystal Doorknob” 58. Mozzy - “Bulletproofly” 59. Tiwa Savage - “Koroba” 60. Frances Quinlan - “Your Reply” 61. Ariana Grande - “my hair” 62. Bad Bunny - “Safaera” ft. Jowell & Randy & Ñengo Flow 63. Yhung T.O. & DaBoii - “Forever Ballin” 64. Katie Pruitt - “Out Of The Blue” 65. Sleepy Hallow - “Molly” ft. Sheff G 66. Niniola - “Addicted” 67. Prado - “STEPHEN” 68. Drakeo The Ruler - “GTA VI” 69. Boldy James - “Monte Cristo” 70. Caribou - “Like I Loved You” 71. Andy Shauf - “Living Room” 72. Hailu Mergia - “Yene Mircha” 73. Kabza de Small & DJ Maphorisa - “eMcimbini” ft Aymos, Samthing Soweto, Mas Musiq 74. Gunna - “Dollaz On My Head” ft. Young Thug 75. Roddy Ricch - “The Box” 76. The Lemon Twigs - “Hell On Wheels” 77. Sun-El Musician - “Emoyeni” ft. Simmy & Khuzani 78. Madeline Kenney - “Sucker” 79. Natanael Cano - “Que Benedicion” 80. ShooterGang Kony - “Jungle” 81. Don Toliver - “After Party” 82. Chicano Batman - “Color my life” 83. Pa Salieu - “Betty” 84. Chubby & The Gang - “Trouble (You Were Always On My Mind)” 85. Dua Lipa - “Love Again” 86. Rucci - “Understand” ft. Blxst 87. Skilla Baby - “Carmelo Bryant” ft. Sada Baby 88. Bartees Strange - “Boomer” 89. Jessie Ware - “Read My Lips” 90. The Hernandez Bros. & LUSTBASS - “At The End Of Time” 91. Brokeasf - “How” ft. 42 Dugg 92. Mulatto - “No Hook” 93. Eddie Chacon - “Outside” 94. Veeze - “Law N Order” 95. Polo G - “33” 96. Bktherula - “Summer” 97. Jessy Lanza - “Anyone Around” 98. Perfume Genius - “On The Floor” 99. ComptonAssTg - “I’m Thuggin’” 100. Mario Judah - “Die Very Rough”

Today, March 20th, Bandcamp has decided to waive the 20% cut it usually takes on all purchases–this means the proceeds of whatever you buy on Bandcamp will go 100% to the artist. Though it may not seem like much, each purchase goes directly to the artist, and since artists can't perform, physical and digital purchases are their main source of income.

Below, I've listed a few of the albums I plan on purchasing to support artists that I want to keep making music. If you have a favorite indie artist, and you have some cash to spare, consider throwing them a bone, too.

Yves Jarvis - The Same But By Different Means: My favorite album of 2019. Bought it digitally last year, but I’m gonna splurge on the vinyl this year. Check the link to read my thoughts on this incredible record.

Chubby & The Gang - Speed Kills: Snotty, big-hearted English punk, with a shambolic bar band energy. They sound like The Pogues one minute, Motorhead the next.

Andras - Joyful: I love deep and tactile ambient electronic, and Australian DJ Andras delivered a brilliant collection earlier this year, rearranging the signature sounds of 80s house music into a peaceful and pastoral, but still danceable configuration.

Ratboys - Printer’s Devil: Emo-adjacent indie with tuneful songwriting and lyrical pathos--and they can shred when they want to. If you like Hop Along, you’ll like this.

Bufiman - Albumsi: Immersive house music with a cheeky sense of humor and an infinite array of incredible drum sounds. 

glass beach - the first glass beach album: My 10th favorite album of 2019. Impossible to describe this record, just put on the first track and go for the ride. Check my thoughts on it here.

Great Grandpa - Four Of Arrows: Anthemic Saddle Creek-style indie with a penchant for gang vocals and 90s MOR-style guitars. They should be on tour right now, so buy an album instead of a ticket.

Porridge Radio - Every Bad: Frontwoman Dana Margolin is a fucking monster, and this album sits in the unlikely triangulation of Sonic Youth, PJ Harvey, and ‘60s Scott Walker.

Check out these albums and please give these artists money so they can keep making music. If you have a favorite artist, consider giving them a hand as well.

As we bid adieu to a decade and a year that many of us would like to forget, let’s take the time to run through some albums that deserve to stay in our rotations at least until the onset of the imminent apocalypse. It’s a cliche, and we say it every year, but as bad as 2019 might have been in the real world, it was an excellent year for music. I listened to at least 300 albums this year and found at least 150 that I liked! Here’s the stuff that made me think, made me happy, and made me drop my jaw last year.

Some themes I found in my listening--I really like rap music from L.A. and Detroit; A few artists who I admired more than loved in the past came out with albums that I completely adored; the nebulous genre often called “afrobeats” or “afropop” has the highest hit percentage of any international scene since dub/reggae in the 1970s (the African Heat playlist on Spotify might be my actual album of the year); a lot of my favorite albums this year came from people who are clearly the product of music schools; my top four contains two excellent bedroom pop albums, and two excellent treatises on race relations in the USA.

I made a Spotify playlist with highlights from my albums list: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6S9kSm5xG3U1vPxhVyBpQc?si=0PHLV0-XQOyNY3XAVRzzAA

And in case you missed it, here’s my list of the year’s best songs: https://voodoochili.tumblr.com/post/189890284724/my-favorite-songs-of-2019

THE BEST:

10. glass beach - the first glass beach album - the first glass beach album combines chiptune synths, frayed emo vocals, jazz piano, and suite-like song structure into an exhilaratingly chaotic mishmash. Mix it with a strong dose of theater-kid earnestness and the result is the most ambitious debut album of the year and possibly of the decade, providing a peek into an alternate dimension where Los Campesinos! wrote the La La Land soundtrack. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t if glass beach didn’t buttress their boundless invention with well-crafted songs, like “classic j dies and goes to hell part 1,” the suitably bonkers intro, the prog-pop opus “bedroom community,” and “cold weather,” which shifts from ska-punk to math rock and back in 2 minutes and 20 seconds.

9. Jenny Lewis - On The Line - Long one of indie’s pre-eminent songsmiths, Jenny Lewis’s On The Line is her most personal album yet, digging deep into her childhood trauma and emerging out the other side with pearls of cheeky wisdom. Jenny’s lived more lives than most, enduring an entire career as an in-demand child star before ever even picking up a guitar; when she reached her teenage years, she learned most of her earnings fed directly into her mother’s heroin habit. Some songs like “Wasted Youth” and “Little White Dove” confront it directly (“Wasted Youth” takes the form of a conversaqtion between Lewis and her sister about their late mother), while other songs like “On The Line” and “Rabbit Hole” are testaments to the strength Lewis gained after fending for herself for so long. Appropriately for an album so focused on the past, Lewis enlists the help of rock legends like Ringo Starr, Don Was, and Benmont Tench, whose organ lends a lush poignancy throughout the album, and transforms opener “Heads Gonna Roll” from a pretty ballad to a genuine tearjerker.

8. Burna Boy - African Giant - West African music continued its quest for global hegemony in 2019, flooding the airwaves with passionate, uptempo party music. Though it was a massive year for artists like Mr Eazi, Zlatan, and do-everything superstar Wizkid, the year belonged to Burna Boy of Nigeria, his sonorous deep voice lending authority to each extravagant boast. Following up last year’s promising Outside, African Giant unleashes Burna’s full potential, drawing a through-line between Africa’s past and present--his use of multilingual lyrics, outspoken politics, and supernatural sense of rhythm updates the famous formula of Afrobeat founding father Fela Kuti for the new era. Aided by frequent collaborator and unheralded genius Kel-P, whose lush and genre-bending beats perfectly complement Burna’s melodic strengths, African Giant was 2019’s most reliable mood booster, presenting standout singles like the irresistible “Anybody,” the ambitious and easygoing “Dangote,” and the romantic club anthem “Secret,” before taking time to explain the history of colonialism in Nigeria on “Another Story.”

7. The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery/The Afterlife - With a long list of collaborators and an even longer list of influences, London-born saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings’ musical ambitions can’t be confined to a single form or style. While his work with Sons of Kemet emphasizes percussion-heavy Caribbean influences and radical spoken word poetry, Hutchings aims squarely for the stratosphere with his The Comet Is Coming project, which continued its progressive jazz odyssey with two worthy albums in 2019. Elevated by the interplay between Hutchings (calling himself King Shabaka), synth wizard Danalogue, and drummer Betamax, Trust In The Lifeforce of Deep Mystery is a mesmerizing cycle of songs. Boasting titles like “The Universe Wakes Up” and “Super Zodiac,” each song searches for (and finds) a trance-like groove, transporting listeners to the far-flung locales of the song titles before reaching an emotional conclusion. A more contemplative, but still ceaselessly propulsive follow-up, The Afterlife is music for the “stargate” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, providing a more optimistic counterpoint to Trust while refining the trio’s unique group dynamic. Together, the two works make an immensely satisfying head trip, offering a thrilling soundtrack for the end of the universe and whatever comes next.

6. Moodymann - Sinner - “I don’t even know what you need, but I’ll provide,” grunts Moodymann on Sinner’s simmering opener “I’ll Provide,” “Cause I got something for all your dirty nasty needs.” Possibly the most singular and beloved figure in a Detroit electronic scene overflowing with singular and beloved figures, Moodymann is known for sublimely tasteful DJ sets and sprawling solo works that fuse house music with elements of R&B, gospel, blues, and funk. By his standards, Sinner is slight, spanning only 7 tracks and 44 minutes, but it benefits from a tight focus, showcasing Moodymann’s effortless creativity. Throughout the project, the artist born Kenny Dixon approaches familiar elements from odd angles: jazzy changes and burbling Fender Rhodes invade an intoxicating two-chord vamp on “Downtown”; fellow Detroiter Amp Fiddler adds soulful auto-tune to the blissful “Got Me Coming Back Right Now.” He even manages to find a fresh way to incorporate Camille Yarbrough’s “Take Yo’ Praise,” most famously sampled by Fatboy Slim, into one of the album’s hardest-charging tracks.

5. Polo G - Die A Legend - Way back in 2011, long before he became rap’s first Pulitzer Prize winner, Kendrick Lamar took a moment to explain his ethos on the outro to his breakthrough Section.80 tape: “I'm not on the outside looking in/I'm not on the inside looking out/I'm in the dead fucking center, looking around.” It was a bold statement, but one that Kendrick’s managed to live up to, and finally we’ve found another artist with the ability to achieve all-seeing perspective on record: Chicago 20-year-old Polo G.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been blown away by a new rapper like I was by Polo G in 2019. He possesses a rare combination of melodic mastery and writerly observation, painting a vivid (if bleak) picture of his life on the South Side. His debut project Die A Legend is packed with unflinching observations about the reality of his situation, he touches on his former pill addiction on “Battle Cry” and he reminisces about talking to his younger sister through a prison phone on “Through Da Storm.” As dark as the subject matter can get, Polo never crumbles under the pressures of poverty or fame, staying afloat with crisp melodies that mix the emotional honesty of Lil Durk with the radio-ready slickness of Wiz Khalifa. He’s already mastered the art of the rap ballad, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

4. Helado Negro - This Is How You Smile - This Is How You Smile overflows with warmth, inspiring a feeling I don’t often get from music. Listening to it feels like a long-awaited return to a physical place of comfort--a childhood bedroom, perhaps, or a reading nook in a favorite library. Our tour guide is Roberto Carlos Lange, an expert sound designer whose plainspoken, pleasantly nasal voice might be the friendliest sound in music today. The album is comforting, yet unpredictable, with songs that range from synth folk to bedroom pop to ambient field recordings, and feature lyrics that vacillate between English and Spanish. Highlights include the bouncy “Seen My Aura,” calling to mind a collaboration between The Brothers Johnson and Ariel Pink, the sweeping and mesmerizing “Running,” combining trap drums and Budd/Eno piano, and my favorite, the devastating acoustic ballad “Todo lo que me falta.”

3. Jamila Woods - LEGACY, LEGACY! - Jamila Woods has a gift for expressing complex intellectual and musical ideas in deceptively simple ways. Her melodies are like nursery rhymes, her lyrics are cutting and conversational, and with LEGACY, LEGACY! she delivers a fiery blend of artistry and activism that rivals peak Gil Scott-Heron. These songs are bold and truthful, tackling heavy subject matter with a delicate touch, commenting on cultural appropriation on “MUDDY” (“They can study my fingers/They can mirror my pose/They can talk your good ear off/On what they think they know”), sexual assault in “SONIA” (“I remember saying no to things that happened anyway/ things that happened/I remember feeling low the mirror took my face away”), and the value of protest on “OCTAVIA” (“It used to be the worst crime to write a line/Our great great greats risked their lives, learned letters fireside/Like a seat on a bus, like heel in a march/Like we holdin' a torch, it's our inheritance”). With songs named after her artistic heroes (a convention that has become a bit trendy, as Rapsody and Sons of Kemet have pulled similar tricks for their recent projects), LEGACY! LEGACY! Is Woods’ audacious attempt to establish herself as an heir to that formidable tradition--one that succeeds without reservation.

2. Raphael Saadiq - Jimmy Lee - A force of nature with one of the most underrated back catalogs in the game (he made hits with Toni, Tony, Tone in the 80s, was a major force behind Neosoul in the 90s and 00s, and produced Solange’s A Seat At The Table in 2015), Raphael Saadiq’s latest is his most powerful effort yet, inspired by the tragic tale of his older brother Jimmy Lee, a heroin addict who died of HIV.  Jimmy Lee tries to find the universal through the personal, taking a deep look into how drug addiction can tear a family apart. Throughout the project, Saadiq approaches his brother’s illness with radical empathy, singing from his perspective on the dangerously alluring “Something Keeps Calling,” and the zonked out “I’m Feeling Love.” He uses his personal tragedy as a springboard to talk about larger issues on the twinkling, self-explanatory “This World Is Drunk,” and the seething spiritual “Rikers Island.” The album veers from style to style, connected with a sound effect that mimics a channel changing on an analog TV, encompassing Prince-like grooves, languid quiet storm, simmering funk in the late Sly Stone mold, and taking detours into hip-hop and traditional gospel. Connecting it all is Saadiq’s raw passion, echoing the pain of everyone who’s lost someone to substance abuse, and singing as if his tenor is the only weapon powerful enough to end the epidemic.

1. Yves Jarvis - The Same But By Different Means - There’s a song on The Same But By Different Means called “Constant Change,” in which Jean-Sebastian Audet layers his voice into a cacophonous symphony and repeats the title phrase for 30 seconds til he reaches an abrupt crescendo. In his first project under the name Yves Jarvis (the 22-year Montreal native used to record under the name Un Blonde), “Constant Change” is his animating philosophy, guiding each second of the most surprising masterpiece of the year. A thrilling and unpredictable effort, The Same But By Different Means overflows with sonic and melodic ideas, shifting and beguiling with unexpected shifts and sounds. The album gets its power from this fluidity--sounds burst into the mix and fade away without notice; songs mutate from one genre to another (traces of freak-folk, tropicalía, funk, and a lot more) within the span of 2 or 3 minutes. It’s a hazy, dream-like collage, at times evoking the likes of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Nicolas Jaar; the least expected sound-a-like occurs on “That Don’t Make It So,” which could easily be mistaken for an outtake from D’Angelo’s Voodoo. No hour of music in 2019 was more calming, yet more invigorating than this one--an eclectic and restless monument to Audet’s creativity and an addicting, absorbing soundscape. I listened to hundreds of albums this year, but none of them hit me quite like this one.

THE REST:

11. Cate Le Bon - Reward  12. Big Thief - U.F.O.F./Two Hands  13. Vampire Weekend - Father Of The Bride 14. Jay Som - Anak Ko 15. Raveena - Lucid 16. American Football - American Football 17. Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains  18. Kelsey Lu - Blood 19. Pivot Gang - You Can’t Sit With Us 20. Gunna - Drip Or Drown 2 21. Great Grandpa - Four Of Arrows 22. G.S. Schray - First Appearance 23. Bandgang Lonnie Bands - KOD 24. Marika Hackman - Any Human Friend 25. Mavi - Let The Sun In 26. Spellling - Mazy Fly 27. SAULT - 5 / 7 28. Juan Wauters - La Onda De Juan Pablo 29. 75 Dollar Bill - I Was Real 30. Maxo Kream - Brandon Banks 31. Brittany Howard - Jaime 32. J Balvin & Bad Bunny - Oasis 33. Rio Da Yung OG - 2 Faced 34. Desperate Journalist - In Search Of The Miraculous  35. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors 36. 03 Greedo - Netflix & Deal/Still Summer In The Projects 37. Doja Cat - Hot Pink 38. Lambchop - This (Is What I Wanted To Tell You) 39. Sada Baby - Bartier Bounty 40. Rucci - Tako’s Son 41. Floating Points - Crush 42. Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls 43. Young Thug - So Much Fun 44. Samthing Soweto - Isphithiphithi 45. Kim Gordon - No Home Record 46. Sandro Perri - Soft Landing 47. Anthony Naples - Fog FM 48. Quelle Chris - Guns 49. Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won’t Hold 50. Tyler, The Creator - IGOR

Honorable Mentions:

Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Hiding Places Caroline Shaw & The Attaca Quartet - Orange Leo Svirsky - River Without Banks Martha - Love Keeps Kicking Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe Drego & Beno - Sorry For The Get Off The Japanese House - Good At Falling Tree & Vic Spencer - Nothing IS Something Spielbergs - This Is Not The End Fireboy DML - Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps Dee Watkins - Problem Child Daniel Norgren - Wooh Dang

2019 was a fantastic year for music, but then again every year is. We as listeners have been blessed with abundance, and tasked with the delightful work of sifting through freshwater to find gold. This year, the most reliably golden genres were West African pop and West Coast Rap. Go figure.

The following represents my favorite 100 songs of the year. My only rules: 1) one song per lead artist (a lucky few earned multiple placements through the “featured artist” loophole).

Below are the write-ups (everyone’s favorite part) and stay tuned for my albums list, coming next week. Don’t forget to scroll all the way down for a Spotify playlist of the full list!

25. Desperate Journalist - “Satellite” - A sweeping, emotional rock song by a veteran rock band that can uncork one of these in their sleep. What makes this one special? The dynamic changes in the pre-chorus, the soaring guitar solo, and the passionate performance from lead singer Jo Bevan.

24. Jacques Greene - “Stars” - A brilliant bit of ambient techno that evokes the seminal electronic classic “Little Fluffy Clouds,” by The Orb. Instead of desert clouds, the anonymous female narrator describes a pastoral dream about the night skies of her youth. A transporting piece of music that should’ve been twice as long--five minutes is a cruelly short lifespan for this kind of bliss.

23. Rosalía - “Con Altura” ft. J Balvin - After the brilliant and singular El Mal Querer demonstrated Rosalía’s singular talent, “Con Altura” announced her intentions for worldwide domination. Created with frequent Rosalía collaborator El Guincho and chameleonic superstar J Balvin, “Con Altura” contains two of the year’s most insidious hooks--the soft-spoken call-and-response chorus, and Rosalía’s snake-charming bridge, the strongest indication yet that global stardom won’t stop the Catalonian chanteuse from pushing music forward.

22. Faye Webster - “Room Temperature” – 2019’s answer to “Swingin’ Party,” the Replacements’ great anthem for introverts, the introductory track on Webster’s Atlanta Millionaire’s Club album drifts along with Hawaiian-flavored pedal steel and a palpable sense of regret, as the 21-year-old singer longs to escape her perfectly comfortable surroundings. 21. Yhung T.O. - “Lately” ft. Lil Sheik - Easy, breezy, beautiful Bay Area rap, carried by T.O.’s dulcet tones and Sheik’s unrepentant dirtbaggery. The beat by Armani Depaul is one of my favorite retro-facing rap beats in a while, complete with smooth digital strings and security-pad synths. 20. The New Pornographers - “You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver” - Every five years or so, A.C. Newman writes a melody so strong that it requires Neko Case’s ultra-powerful alto to properly do it justice. This year, that song is “You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver,” which strives for, and nearly approaches, the heights of previous Pornos stunners like “The Laws Have Changed” and “Champions of Red Wine.” 

19. Floating Points - “LesAlpx” - Surrounded by outré synth experiments and beatless soundscapes on Crush, the first Floating Points album since 2015, “LesAlpx” is Sam Shepherd’s gift to club-goers everywhere. It’s a lean and mean house track, foregrounding propulsive percussion and rubbery bass, but it’s also deeply cerebral, creating a sense of foreboding urgency with detuned synths and ambient sine waves. 18. Daphni - “Sizzling” ft. Paradise - Built around a sample of Paradise’s seminal single “Sizzlin’ Hot,” Dan Snaith’s “Sizzling” extends the best moments of the classic post-disco smash to create five minutes of pure euphoria. The song starts in media res, with the groove in full form, and peaks at the end, when Snaith finally allows Paradise’s June Ventzos to finish her thought atop jubilant trumpets. 17. J Hus - “Must Be” - The latest genre-blending collaboration between J Hus and genius producer JAE5 proves that no man is safe from Hus’s dazzling logic, as he stacks syllogism after syllogism over an irresistible, afropop-flavored groove: “If it walk like an opp/Talk like an opp/Smell like an opp/Then it must be.” 16. Vampire Weekend - “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” - Ever indulging his literary ambitions, Ezra Koenig uses the final track on Father Of The Bride to examine his Jewish identity, and to reckon with a world that hasn’t made sense since World War I. The prettiest melody on an album dripping with pretty melodies, “Jerusalem, New York, Berlin” packs enough symbolism into three minutes to inspire a seminar at Koenig’s Ivy League alma mater. Supported by yearning, spritely piano, Koenig ends the song with a poignant plea for peace, within reason: “So let them win the battle/But don't let them restart/That genocidal feeling/That beats in every heart.” 15. Great Grandpa - “Bloom” - The highlight from Great Grandpa’s outstanding Four Of Arrows album, “Bloom” is two songs in one. Part one brings punchy acoustic guitar that recalls ‘90s adult alternative (think Matchbox 20) and prime-era Saddle Creek (think Rilo Kiley) in equal measure. The second par tcompletes the song’s emotional arc, slowing down for a hypnotic wordless chorus, backed by weeping violins,. The key line here: “Please say I’m young enough to change.” 14. Spellling - “Real Fun” – Gleefully dramatic and overflowing with evil-sounding synths, “Real Fun” synthesizes Neneh Cherry, Bauhaus, and Cabaret into something that sounds like a villain’s theme in an animated musical that hasn’t been written yet.   13. Earthgang - “Proud Of U” ft. Young Thug – There’s no straight man to ground this ATL trio, as all three emcees lean into their vocal eccentricities while expressing their thanks to the women in their lives atop a mutating, guitar-driven beat. 12. Stella Donnelly - “Tricks” – In which the young heroine attempts to rid herself of a particularly toxic ex, who isn’t just misogynist, but a potential white supremacist sympathizer (her subject’s “Southern Cross Tattoo” is like an Aussie version of the MAGA hat). Heavy stuff, but Donnelly delivers everything with a grin, as if she’s wondering in real time why the hell she ever bothered with this jamoke. 11. Jenny Lewis - “On The Line” - The title track and emotional climax of Jenny Lewis’ latest album, “On The Line” boasts one of the finest vocal performances in her long career, sweetly assassinating her cheating ex-lover with a lilting melody and wry smile.

10. Lucinda Chua - “Whatever It Takes” – Lucinda Chua makes languid art pop in the tradition of fka twigs, but I prefer her understated longing to twigs herself. Her main instrument is the cello, but this track foregoes that sound almost entirely, opting instead for resonant Wurlitzer keys and multi-layered vocal harmonies, and shunting traditional song structure aside in favor of one enigmatic verse, repeating at odd intervals throughout: “Wait/The demons I carry are fake/I will fight our fire, too late.” 9. ShooterGang Kony - “Charlie” – The year’s most cold-blooded mob banger starts with the line “fuck the police and your mama if you ask me” and only escalates from there. Rhyming without affect over hiccuping bass, Kony mercilessly ethers cops, R&B singers, and women named Ashley before threatening to shoot you with a gun that sounds like Fozzy Bear. 8. KEY! - “Miami Too Much” – My favorite Atlanta rap song of the year gets its power from its hilariously specific central conceit, with KEY’s impassioned vocal selling the bit: “If you seen that ass, you'd make a song too.” How often must someone visit Dade County before it becomes an irreconcilable difference in an otherwise healthy relationship? 7. Raphael Saadiq - “Something Keeps Calling” ft. Rob Bacon - Named after his older brother, Raphael Saddiq’s towering Jimmy Lee album examines the personal cost of the crack epidemic, and the outsized role addiction plays in the lives of the destitute. “Something Keeps Calling” is the album’s crushing centerpiece, painting substances as at once a seductive lover and a heavy burden, one that overrides all common sense and decency: “My friends say I can never pull it together/Well they might be right, at least tonight/My kids say I'll never come home again/And I know they're right, at least tonight.” The song climaxes with Rob Bacon’s wailing guitar solo, which tries in vain to reach out to those beyond hope. 6. Bad Bunny & J Balvin - “La Canción” - Nestled in the middle of Balvin and Bunny’s summer smash OASIS, “La Canción” takes a break from the party to dwell on the inherent emptiness of their hedonistic lifestyle, as a mournful trumpet echoes the Reggaetoneros’ longing for meaningful connection amidst their chaotic lives. 5. Polo G - “Pop Out” ft. Lil TJay – Only Polo G would interrupt his own robbery to examine the sociological causes of his behavior: “We come from poverty, man, we ain't have a thing.” But on the rest of “Pop Out,” Polo leans into the dark side of his persona, before 2019’s most unlikely guest verse assassin Lil TJay brings the pathos: “If I showed you all my charges, you won't look at me the same.” In contrast to how effortless the two rappers sound atop the dramatic piano loop, listening to Lil Baby and Gunna wheeze through the remix hammers home the high degree of difficulty of such nimble melodics. It’s a testament to how fast rap music moves these days that Polo and TJay can make last year’s It Duo sound like geezers. 4. Octo Octa - “I Need You” – It starts as an intoxicatingly minimal expression of dancefloor lust, but halfway through, “I Need You” morphs into a sincere and moving tribute to everybody who helped Octo Octa become the woman she is today. It’s a moving moment tucked within an epic club track that works equally well as build-up or comedown.

3. Purple Mountains - “All My Happiness Is Gone” - It’s hard to find the words for this one, a matter-of-fact documentation of a man slowly losing his will to live--which became heartbreakingly clear when David Berman committed suicide in August. But because it’s Berman, “All My Happiness Is Gone” is packed with genius-level wordplay and devastating observations, and enough gallows humor to truly emphasize the gravity of his situation: “Friends are warmer than gold when you're old/And keeping them is harder than you might suppose//Lately, I tend to make strangers wherever I go/Some of them were once people I was happy to know.” I’ll keep going: “Ten thousand afternoons ago/All my happiness just overflowed/That was life at first and goal to go.” And one more: “Where nothing's wrong and no one's asking/But the fear's so strong it leaves you gasping/No way to last out here like this for long.”

2. Big Thief - “Not” - A torrid, slow-burning rocker, “Not” showcases lead singer-songwriter Adrienne Lenker’s skill with oblique imagery and wild-eyed intensity. Lenker rattles off a long list of poetic observations, trying to get to the heart of something (everything?) without ever finding a satisfactory answer, as the music morphs from a controlled simmer to a cacophonous freakout. “Not” climaxes with a riotous guitar solo from Lenker herself, one that reaches towards the cosmos and echoes her frayed vocal. As always with Big Thief, though, the song soars in the smallest moments, like when guitarist Buck Meek enters with plainspoken backing vocals, and at the beginning of the second verse when the guitars drop out and Lenker’s voice stands alone.

1. Burna Boy - “Anybody” - Sometimes the best song of the year is the one that makes you feel the best, and no song this year made me feel better than “Anybody.” “Anybody” is both inviting and aloof, urgent and relaxing. Riding an irresistible groove defined by syncopated keys, driving percussion, and an eager-to-please saxophone, Burna Boy slides between Pidgin English and Yoruba chasing a feeling that resonates beyond the capabilities of language. It’s a song about demanding and receiving respect, dripping with the contagious confidence of an African Giant. And for three minutes, you’ll feel like a giant too.

THE REST: 26. DaBaby - “Intro” 27. Perfume Genius - “Eye On The Wall” 28. Yves Jarvis - “To Say That Is Easy” 29. Doja Cat - “Cyber Sex” 30. Mannequin Pussy - “Drunk II” 31. Better Oblivion Community Center - “Dylan Thomas” 32. Shoreline Mafia - “Wings” 33. Kehlani - “Footsteps” ft. Musiq Soulchild 34. Obangjayar - “Frens” 35. Ariana Grande - “NASA” 36. Mustard ft. Roddy Ricch - “Ballin” 37. Baby Keem - “ORANGE SODA” 38. Jessie Ware - “Adore You” 39. 03 Greedo x Kenny Beats - “Disco Shit” ft. Freddie Gibbs 40. Martha - “Love Keeps Kicking” 41. Lucki - “More Than Ever” 42. Park Hye-Jin - “Call Me” 43. DaVido - “Disturbance” ft. Peruzzi 44. The Japanese House - “Worms” 45. Spencer Radcliffe - “Here Comes The Snow” 46. Dawn Richard - “Dreams And Converse” 47. ALLBLACK & Offset Jim - “Fees” ft. Capolow 48. David Kilgour - “Smoke You Right Out Of Here” 49. Sandro Perri - “Wrong About The Rain” 50. Nilüfer Yanya - “In Your Head” 51. Julia Jacklin - “Don’t Know How To Keep Loving You” 52. Miraa May - “Angles” ft. JME 53. (Sandy) Alex G - “Gretel” 54. Kelsey Lu - “Due West” 55. glass beach - “classic j dies and goes to hell, pt. 1” 56. Peggy Gou - “Starry Night” 57. Cate Le Bon - “Home To You” 58. Busy Signal - “Balloon” 59. NLE Choppa - “Shotta Flow” 60. Dee Watkins - “Hell Raiser” 61. Ari Lennox - “I Been” 62. The National - “Not In Kansas” 63. Shordie Shordie - “Both Sides” ft. Shoreline Mafia 64. Alex Lahey - “Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself” 65. Angel Olsen - “New Love Cassette” 66. Young Dolph - “Tric Or Treat” 67. Koffee - “Throne” 68. Freddie Gibbs & Madlib - “Half Manne, Half Cocaine” 69. Noname - “Song 32” 70. Anthony Naples - “A.I.R.” 71. Samthing Soweto - “Omama Bomthandazo (feat Makhafula Vilakazi)” 72. KAYTRANADA - “10%” ft. Kali Uchis 73. Moodymann - “Got Me Coming Back Right Now” 74. Drakeo The Ruler - “Let’s Go” ft. 03 Greedo 75. Teejayx6 - “Dark Web” 76. Cass McCombs - “I Followed The River South to What” 77. Gunna - “Idk Why” 78. Sharon Van Etten - “You Shadow” 79. Tresor - “Sondela” ft. Msaki 80. E-40 - “Chase The Money” ft. Quavo, Roddy Ricch, ScHoolboy Q & A$AP Ferg 81. Spielbergs - “Running All The Way Home” 82. 24kGoldn - “Valentino” 83. Quelle Chris - “Box of Wheaties” 84. Emily King - “Go Back” 85. AzChike - “Yadda Mean” ft. Keak Da Sneak 86. Club Night - “Path” 87. Zeelooperz - “Easter Sunday” ft. Earl Sweatshirt 88. Kim Gordon - “Murdered Out” 89. YS - “Bompton” (Remix) ft. 1TakeJay & OhGeesy 90. Future - “Never Stop” 91. Lowly - “baglaens” 92. SAULT - “Masterpiece” 93. Earl Sweatshirt - “TISK TISK/COOKIES” 94. Fireboy DML - “Energy” 95. Rio Da Young OG & Lil E - “Buy The Block” 96. Sacred Paws - “Write This Down” 97. Wilco - “Everyone Hides” 98. Black Belt Eagle Scout - “Real Lovin” 99. Sleepy Hallow - “Breakin Bad (Okay)” ft. Sheff G 100. Aimee Leigh & Baby Billy - “Misbehavin’ (1989)”

I know that the first thing you’ll probably think is “wow, 50 is a lot of albums, he must just be listing every album he heard this year.” You would be wrong. The magic of Spotify Premium allowed me to listen to dozens upon dozens of new albums this year. I tried to listen to a new album every day. And I found a hell of a lot of great ones. Here are my top ten, with a full list of fifty after the jump.

10. Natalie Prass – The Future & The Past – Three years ago, Natalie Prass shared her self-titled debut album, a sweeping and dramatic collection of orchestral pop. It was not my thing. So I was completely blindsided when I heard “Short Court Style,” the lead single from The Future & The Past, a complete left-turn into taut and sultry R&B. The album finds Prass and producer Matthew E. White mining deep grooves and jazzy chord progressions, trading in the wide-open spaces of her debut for a tightly-wound quiet storm. Most intriguing is “Hot For the Mountain,” a modal, low-key call-to-arms, defined by Prass’s minimal piano and swirling Middle Eastern strings.

9. Amen Dunes – Freedom – Conjuring a room-enveloping sound out of surprisingly few parts, Amen Dunes’ latest is meant for the open road. Its tracks are spacious and propulsive, slowly building into rumbling colossi, seemingly constructed out of spare parts. Throughout Freedom, Damon McMahon’s voice is a guiding light, yearning and world-weary, as he organizes his thoughts into hypnotic mantras that cut straight to the core of a wanderer’s soul. “Things were simpler baby, you hear everyone say,” sings McMahon on album highlight “Believe,” “But that don’t make it true.”

8. Sandro Perri – In Another Life – Splitting the difference between twinkling, static ambient and sun-drenched post-rock, In Another Life is pure meditation—a salve for the stress caused by, well, everything. Taking 45 minutes to complete just four songs, In Another Life ambles along, hardly changing, easing you into Sandro Perri’s blissful world of yawning guitar and glistening, metallic bells. The album’s back half makes room for three interpretations of a song called “Everybody’s Paris,” one by Perri, one by Andre Ethier (not the Andre Ethier from the Dodgers), and one by Destroyer’s Dan Bejar, who accent Perri’s soundscapes with softly-sung, yet moving, nonsense.

7. Meshell Ndegeocello – Ventriloquism – Trying her hand at covering some of the most indelible R&B hits of the ‘80s and ‘90s, Ventriloquism establishes perennially underrated neosoul songstress Meshell Ndegeocello as one of the premier interpreters of our time. Her versions of established classics like “Waterfalls” and “Smooth Operator” exist in dialogue with the originals, helping us find new things to love in songs we know by heart. Sometimes she emphasizes certain lyrics that have dimmed in impact due to overexposure—it’s easy to forget that the verse lyrics to “Waterfalls” are so damn heavy. Other times, she brings to the forefront hidden elements that always existed in the music—accentuating the superb backbeat on Lisa Lisa’s classic “I Wonder If I Take You Home,” morphing George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” into a snarling, guitar led romper, and finding the spectral jazz within the New Jack Swing of Al B. Sure’s “Nite and Day.” And she turns a Jam & Lewis classic, “Tender Love” by the Force MDs, into a straight-up country song. But perhaps her most affecting cover is her most faithful: a transposition of Prince’s “Sometimes It Snows in April,” the late genius’s saddest song, from piano to guitar, forever transforming the song into a stunning, heart-wrenching tribute to the Purple One himself.

6. The Breeders – All Nerve – Inventive and ferocious as ever at the age of 57, Kim Deal combines bracing distortion and soaring melody in her songs, songs that follow jagged paths that spit in the face of traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. Reuniting the classic lineup from 1993’s classic Last Splash, The Breeders’ latest effort doesn’t dwell on the past, but paves an intoxicating and adventurous way forward. Forsaking the shiny alt-rock that dominated Last Splash, All Nerve instead seems guided by the spirit of Pod, the group’s mysterious debut, offering muscular highlights like the menacing opener “Nervous Mary,” the gleeful “Wait In The Car,” and the stunning blown-out ballad “Dawn: Making an Effort.” At the center of it all is Kim Deal’s voice, a world-weary rasp that’s lost none of the fervor of her “Gigantic” heyday.

5. Arctic Monkeys – Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino – A pantheon entry into the storied history of difficult follow-ups, joining the likes of Tusk and In Utero, the Arctic Monkeys’ latest is a louche and lounge-y evisceration of late capitalism. Alex Turner and company could have kept the gravy train rolling by delivering a proper sequel to AM, arguably the most popular rock album of the 2010s, but instead the 32-year old lead singer and songwriter drastically changed his approach. Inspired by late-era Pulp, French film soundtracks and Harry Nilsson’s most zonked-out moments, the songs on TBHAC are packed with quotable lines that hold a funhouse mirror to our warped political moment. Oh, and it’s loosely based around the concept of Monkeys as the house band at a tacky hotel/casino on the moon, colonized and gentrified by the world’s elite while on the run from global warming. Sure it’s dystopian, but the bar is full and the Tacqueria...it got great reviews.

4. Future – Beastmode 2 – Of the four projects that comprise Future’s 2014-15 run of unimpeachable greatness, Beast Mode was my favorite—a vibrant and soulful offering and an effective counterpart to the unfeeling nihilism expressed in tapes like DS2 and 56 Nights. In 2018, Future and producer Zaytoven delivered a sequel that surpassed the original. Ever the showman, Zaytoven leveled up his keyboard skills on Beastmode 2, layering cascades of acoustic piano with warm organ and glossy Rhodes. Future just sounds different over Zay’s production—the organic textures emphasize the bluesy world-weariness of Future’s voice, imbuing even the most extravagant boasts with a hint of sadness. It’s a combination that can make questions like “What I'm supposed to do when these racks blue?” feel vital to the human condition. When Future truly grows introspective, on the tape’s strongest songs “Hate The Real Me” and “When I Think About It,” Beastmode 2 reaches a level of emotional profundity that few rappers—or artists of any genre--can match: “A sober mind wasn't good for me/ Cause I love you way more than this music.”

3. Mr Twin Sister – SALT – Mr Twin Sister’s music bridges the divide between our current world and the world that might exist if everyone could just fucking relax a bit. The sleek and sexy sonic world of SALT seems beamed in from that utopia, drowning in otherworldly dance grooves, slinky basslines, and smooth sax. It’s the midway point between Sade and Stereolab, with some credible nods to early ‘00s diva house mixed in. Dominating the atmosphere with her elastic vibrato, Andrea Estrella rages against the societal laws and pressures that prevent people from living their fullest lives, confronting predatory men and body image police on “Tops and Bottoms” (pronounced tops and boooo-ahh-tums) and decrying prudes who don’t share her “Taste In Movies” (movies, a word which here means “adult films”). On album highlight “Jaipur,” Estrella returns to reality, praying for the strength to love and be loved amidst sweeping strings and percolating bass.

2. Hop Along – Bark Your Head Off, Dog – Frances Quinlan’s voice is almost a cheat code, able to switch from sweet to serrated often within a single lyric, communicating directly with whichever center of the brain induces goosebumps. A worthy follow-up to their brilliant 2015 record Painted Shut, Bark Your Head Off Dog is a record you feel in your bones. The Philadelphia band’s third album is their most baroque and sonically expansive, welcoming electric piano and weeping violins for maximum emotional impact. Though Quinlan’s dense and literary songs can evade meaning on casual listens, her lyricism hits a new peak here as well, coalescing around simple, moving phrases that take a turn for the sublime when she sings them: “Don’t worry we will both find out, just not together,” “So strange to be shaped by such strange men,” “I don’t know why I’m so mean each time I come to visit,” “That little lower road.” The result is a small-scale epic, exploring and exposing the sense of helplessness that lies deep within us all.

1. Saba - CARE FOR ME - CARE FOR ME is an album-length meditation on loss—how it affects the mind, how it affects the soul, and how life goes on. In 2017, Saba lost his cousin Walter, an artist who performed under the names John Walt and dinnerwithjohn. Walter was Saba’s best friend. He died after a stranger on a CTA train took an interest in his coat. The stranger followed Walter off the train, started a fight, and stabbed him to death. Many rappers would turn this moment into an origin story, moving past the pain, using it as fuel to turn to a promising future. But not Saba. Saba just misses his friend, a man who understood him in a way nobody else could, and CARE FOR ME is a monument to Jon. Walt and a thorough examination of Saba’s grief.

If I make CARE FOR ME sound like a difficult or punishing listen, I don’t mean to. It’s gorgeous, jazz-informed hip-hop with soul and wit. It’s warm and lived-in, like a Christmas sweater, and joyful like a wake. Saba uses the ten tracks to explore his full state of mind, tackling social media, depression, and the perils of fame. The memory of Walter pervades the project, most fully realized in the climactic “PROM / KING,” a two-part saga illustrating the evolution of Tahj and Walter’s relationship from childhood rivalry to inseparability. Gripping over its 7:32 runtime, the track gains an unbearable intensity as it hurdles towards its inevitable conclusion. But the album doesn’t end there—it ends with “Heaven All Around Me,” a lush coda highlighted by an angelic, playful choir. Walter will live on in Saba’s memory, and thanks to CARE FOR ME, he’ll live in ours too.

The Rest:

11. Kali Uchis – Isolation

12. The Beths – Future Me Hates Me

13. Wye Oak – The Louder I Call, The Faster It Runs

14. Leon Vynehall – Nothing Is Still

15. Jean Grae & Quelle Chris – Everything’s Fine

16. Superchunk – What A Time To Be Alive

17. Sun-el Musician – Africa to the World

18. Noname – Room 25

19. Richard Swift – The Hex

20. Foxing – Nearer My God

21. Hermit & The Recluse – Orpheus vs. The Sirens

22. Maxo Kream – Punken

23. Petal – Magic Gone

24. Madeline Kenney – Perfect Shapes

25. Beach House – 7

26. Ezra Furman – Transangelic Exodus

27. Hailu Mergia – Lala Belu

28. Nils Frahm – All Melody

29. Mitski – Be The cowboy

30. Robyn – Honey

31. The 1975 – A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

32. Low – Double Negative

33. Georgia Anne Muldrow – Overload

34. Kendrick Lamar & Friends – Black Panther The Album

35. Payroll Giovanni & Cardo – Big Bossin Vol. 2

36. Blood Orange – Negro Swan

37. Wild Pink – Yolk In The Fur

38. MGMT – Little Dark Ages

39. Chris Crack – Being Woke Ain’t Fun/Just Gimme a Minute

40. Vince Staples – FM!

41. Sheck Wes – Mudboy

42. Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever – Hope Downs

43. Pusha T – Daytona

44. Khruangbin – Con Todo El Mundo

45. Camp Cope – How to Socialise & Alienate People

46. U.S. Girls – In A Poem Unlimited

47. SiR – November

48. Cut Worms – Hollow Ground

49. Takeoff – The Last Rocket