Top 10 Favorite Albums of 2024
Some people are song people. Some people are album people. Nine times out of ten, I would consider myself in the latter camp.
I’m a screenwriter. I’m obsessed with narrative and the sense of starting somewhere, going somewhere else, and ending somewhere different, especially when there’s a sense that the end of an album was informed by what came before it. Albums provide that feeling on a grander scale than a song, so the album format has always done a better job of scratching a particular itch. However, 2024 for me was very much a song year.
Those of you who were paying attention to hip hop in 2024 probably know where I’m going with that.
But even if the elephant in the room (which I’ll talk about later) wasn’t there, I was just more of a song guy in 2024. Songs I loved dearly from albums I thought were just okay, great songs from great albums I chose to focus on separate from the body with which they were released, radio hits from albums I didn’t get around to. Just… songs. I don’t have an adequate reason to give you as to why this was the case other than that’s how the cookie crumbled this year. Also, you know… that elephant.
I mention all this because I was feeling indifferent about the prospect of making an album list this year. Then, of course, the obvious thought hit me that music is great pretty much no matter what, and putting this list together turned out to be a bit of the good kind of nightmare where there were too many amazing options to choose from and narrowing it down was hell. It was so hellish, in fact, that I cheated in the number one slot.
It’s because of that cheating and a number of other factors that this is the strangest list I’ve made. I don’t think there’s anything terribly shocking, nor are there any hot takes. I just think of the lists that have come before and after and this one feels a little more scatterbrained and all over the place.
I don’t know. Let’s get listing.
Runner-Up: Tyler, The Creator, Chromakopia
I lied earlier. There is a hot take here, which is that Chromakopia didn’t make the list proper.
If you’re someone who subscribes to the idea that the time you spent listening to an album equals where it should be on an arbitrary ranked list, then Chromakopia should be on it. In fact, it should be on it pretty highly, even in the top five. I came back to this album constantly, whether I was turning to “Sticky” or “Thought I Was Dead” to aid in my walks and my chores, or when night fell and I wanted to explore my feelings a little so I’d put on “Take Your Mask Off” or “Like Him”.
In this period of Tyler’s output where he’s left the shock antics behind a long time ago and has put out quality album after quality album since, I would at the very least rank this one over Call Me If You Get Lost. Chromakopia has some of Tyler’s most interesting production work, it combines the experimental edge of Igor with the classic rap stylings of Flower Boy and Call Me If You Get Lost, and it features what might be his most emotionally piercing songs yet. if you’ve listened to Tyler for as long as I have, you’ll know that he’s put out many a “fuck you” song about his absentee father, and if you’ve heard those songs, “Like Him” hit you as hard as it hit me.
It’s an incredible album, and the reason it’s not on this list is because of my bullshit.
Putting an album on a list means that I’m choosing to burden myself with writing about it, and if I have to choose between talking about an artist I’ve talked about before for the number ten slot and one that I haven’t, I’m going to go for the latter. Tyler’s been on my lists before, and the artists at number ten have not. I wanted to write about something new.
I have to admit though that this excuse is running rather thin with Tyler because I put Flower Boy on my list once, and I used the “I’ve talked about him before” excuse to justify putting both Igor and Call Me If You Get Lost in this runner-up slot. Also, three other artists I’ve written about before are on this list, and list making logic is nonsense I take too seriously.
I am stupid. Tyler is not. How can he be? He made Chromakopia as well as a body of work that’s more and more respectable with every release. So here, let’s rephrase this so we can rationalize my dumb decisions. Tyler doesn’t need me to put him on my list. After all, he’s in the big three.
Favorite Songs: “Hey Jane” “Sticky” “Take Your Mask Off”
10. Vampire Weekend, Only God Was Above Us
I should hate Vampire Weekend with every bone in my body. We all should, really.
My taste in music, and probably most of my worldview in general, was cemented by late ‘90s and early 2000s Soulquarian rap and R&B. Black Star and Common and Erykah Badu, plus all the other rappers and singers who made music influenced by this specific movement. A movement that was very very clear on where the boundaries were when it comes to white fans of black music. There was a time when a lot of white dudes were wearing chains, speaking with blaccents, and doing everything they could to emulate hip hop culture in the worst ways possible. I was never one of those people. I just listened to and loved the music and I wore the merch. Thank you, Murs!
Towards the end of my tenure in high school, this indie band emerged onto the scene called Vampire Weekend. I read somewhere that they met at Columbia University and much of their sound was influenced by music from South Africa and the Congo. Pitchfork and their readers loved them. That first album came out in 2008, and by that point, I had already internalized Public Enemy and Dead Prez. It was a hard pass for me. I realize the optics of a white kid listening to black music and then judging another white band seem silly. But they put out a song called “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” for fuck’s sake.
I went to college and the wrong people liked them, so I continued to give them the unjustified cold shoulder. I finally gave their debut album a chance during my first year living in LA, and I was annoyed to discover that I loved it. Contra just felt like more Vampire Weekend, but I was equally annoyed that I liked that too, and I was still annoyed when I listened to Modern Vampires of the City, the title of which is taken from a Junior Reed song (that didn’t help), and not only thought it was the best of the three, but that my “like” of the band had turned into a “love.”
I can fight about the ethics of where the band’s sound originated from, but I can only say so much to criticize the results. And even with this in mind, the band has mastered taking the principles of those African styles of music marrying them with an aesthetic that’s more of their own background and creation. It doesn’t feel like a slight variation of African music anymore so much as a building block of something different the way that all music is descended from these styles in one way or another.
Over the years, Ezra’s singing has become more expressive and capable. Chris Baio and Christopher Tomson have clearly developed a more nuanced ear. Father of the Bride didn’t do it for me. But that’s okay as it’s only technically a Vampire Weekend album. There’s also the not insignificant detail that all of their maturity has culminated in Only God Was Above Us, an album that’s easily their richest, most mature, and overall best work.
There’s the band they were when the members were college aged, and there’s the band that made this album. That second version of themselves writes more interesting songs and backs them up with denser aesthetic roots and more rewarding execution. I’ll be honest, I wrote them off after Father of the Bride. I won’t be doing that again.
Favorite Songs: “Classical” “Connect” “Gen-X Cops”
9. Brittany Howard, What Now
A fun little thing I like to keep track of is when I listen to my first true top ten album. The first new album that makes me think, “Okay, that’s good enough to hypothetically be on the list.” Sometimes they make it at the end of the year and sometimes they don’t, and I wish I could tell you which ones they were in years past. (The only one I can remember is Lil Yachty’s Let’s Start Here.) But the exercise is less about what the album is and more about how long it took for it to emerge.
What Now was my first list contender, and that came out at the end of the first full week of February.
I was surprised for two reasons. One, that album usually doesn’t emerge until early spring, so this was pretty early. And two, because it was from Brittany Howard.
Like most people, I discovered her with Sound and Color, the second Alabama Shakes album. I didn’t like it enough to ever compel me to listen to the first album Boys & Girls, which I’ve still never done. But it’s still a fantastic album in just about any way you can measure the greatness of music. An example of something that even if you don’t “like” it, you will respect it on an almost objective level.
I wanted to like Jaime more than I did. It’s an album that people who know way more about audio engineering and mixing than I do seem to love to death, and I would never in a million years say it was “bad”. But it just wasn’t for me.
I went into What Now expecting the shrug streak to continue. You could tell by its placement on this list that this album ended that slump. Indeed, I was completely enraptured by it from start to finish. I love everything about this album, and I’m pretty sure the only reason it isn’t further down the list is because of how early in the year it came out.
In fact, enough time had passed since my last listen that I started to wonder if my feelings had waned. But then I bought tickets to see her perform at The Greek last October.
It was an immaculate show, and it made me feel like an idiot for ever even thinking about the possibility of doubting What Now. I had one foot off the Brittany Howard train before. Consider me fully inside in the front row now.
Favorite Songs: “Red Flags” “Prove It To You” “Patience”
7. Nia Archives, Silence is Loud
One of the prevailing narratives about music in 2024 was how good it was for pop. A large part of this had to do with the other big three in music this year that wasn’t the “motherfuck the big three” big three of hip hop. Specifically, 2024 was the year of Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (which actually came out in 2023, but tell history that), Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet (very good, but not quite list worthy for me), and Chali XCX’s Brat (more on that later). There were also a lot of other heavy hitters in mainstream pop. Billie Eilish put out her criminally underrated Hit Me Hard and Soft, Kali Uchis released ORQUÍDEAS, which I think is one of her better albums, Beyoncé had Cowboy Carter, her country pop album that came damn close to making this list. We could probably name some more.
If one wanted to argue against the pop supremacy of 2024, it was that we also had a lot of forgettable or outright bad releases. Dua Lipa followed-up her monster album Future Nostalgia with Radical Optimism, a solid album that still fell a little flat for a lot of people, including me. Ariana Grande put out Eternal Sunshine, an album that felt completely forgotten within a week of its release. Taylor Swift dominated the charts with The Tortured Poet’s Department and the follow-up “anthology”, but it’s hard to see that one as a highlight, Swifities notwithstanding, given that a lot of that Billboard domination was gained through manipulative chart practices and the not insignificant detail that it’s her worst album. We could also probably name some more. (Cough Cough Camila Cabello. Or at least that’s what y’all are telling me, I haven’t listened to it.)
All that said, I’m aligned with the pop-tomists. I think 2024 was as good for pop as people say it was, but not because of the major releases. (Except for Brat. More on that later.) Rather, it was the slew of albums from artists who aren’t in the mainstream. The people just slightly off to the side and the ones with the bigger internet followings among pop fans and music nerds. The artists who are one hit away from being household names.
Since we’re listing threes (see what I did there by mentioning big threes), here are three incredible albums that didn’t make this list. We got Imaginal Disk by Magdalena Bay, an album I’ll probably look back and kick myself for not including (“Image” is literally playing as I write this). We got SMILE! :D by Porter Robinson, which is nerdy banger after nerdy banger. We got Girl With No Face by Allie X, a strange little album that more people should know about. Hell, here’s three more. We got the return of Alice Longyu Gao with Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry, we got For Your Consideration by Empress Of, and we got STARFACE by Lava La Rue. I could name more. We were drowning in this shit.
Two of the albums in this class made this list. The first is Silence is Loud by Nia Archives.
I didn’t know I needed jungle music and drum and bass in 2024. I also didn’t know that there was a universe in which you could take those sounds and mix them with late 90s/early 2000s Britpop and it would actually work. Nia probably isn’t the most technically proficient singer in the world, but what she lacks in formality she more than makes up for in presence and execution of vision. One could imagine a universe where another artist could’ve made Short n’ Sweet. (Or at least I can.) Yet Silence is Loud is rooted in something so specific that it feels like not only is Nia Archives the only person who made this, but you also get a much more vivid sense of who she is and what music she loves.
This album was, for at least a quarter of the year, my daily walk music. I get tired of music quickly so I’m not someone who returns to the same album over and over again. Yet when you hit play on this album and the titular “Silence Is Loud” kicks in, not only do I want to walk but I want to get everything done all at once, fix myself, achieve my goals, and conquer my enemies. I imagine this is what cocaine feels like.
There’s a part of me that wonders what Nia can do without the jungle drums. Most of me, however, doesn’t care. She can put this album or some variation of it out every year and I’ll be more than satisfied.
Favorite Songs: “Silence Is Loud” “Crowded Roomz” “Forbidden Feelingz”
7. Ka, The Thief Next to Jesus
Losing Ka in 2024 crushed me.
Ka was clearly not for everyone. Even Ka was probably aware of that. Sit an Opium fan down with a Ka record and force him to listen and it would probably confuse him to the point of madness why anyone would want to listen to such a monotone soft-spoken rapper who spits over beats with minimal or no drums. But if you get on his wavelength, there was simply nobody else like him.
The last time I put Ka on a list was with Honor Killed the Samurai in 2016. Even though it’s been nine years (fuck) since that list, my respect and appreciation for his music has only risen. His writing struck the perfect balance between being and evocative and beautiful while also being uncompromisingly deep and inquisitive. Someone could probably spend their entire master’s thesis analyzing just one of his albums and then spend an entire career writing books on all the others. His production covered a similar range. He could make your head nod just as easily as he could trap you in a soundscape that feels claustrophobic and overwhelming. He was, simply put, brilliant.
I brought this up in the 2016 list, but on August 21, 2016, the New York Post put out an article by Susan Edelman that outed Ka as a captain in the FDNY. The article framed Ka as a firefighter by day and a rapper by night who wrote songs “peppered with the N-word, drugs, violence and anti-cop lyrics.” (I won’t link to the article. I already feel bad giving them the traffic to find that quote.) Watching the hip hop community rally around Ka and shit on the Post and Edelman was genuinely touching. The Post thought they were going after a stereotypical “gangster rapper”, as I doubt anyone at the Post can tell two black people apart, let alone consider the idea that hip hop has a wide spectrum. They were really going after a scholar.
The Thief Next To Jesus is one of the most thorough examinations of Christianity and its links to the black community that hip hop has ever produced. It’s an album about not just the ways religion gets weaponized and used as a tool of oppression, but losing your faith after seeing years of uncompromising horror and cruelty while also acknowledging the way the church can bring people together. This examination isn’t just in the lyrics, but the production as well. On the last track, “True Holy Water”, the spiritual hums of a church singer are contrasted with the blood curdling screams of a woman. Not a particularly subtle message, but still powerful. Put those together and you have an album worthy of anyone’s list regardless of whether or not Ka was still with us.
One could choose to view it as cruel irony that Ka’s final album questioned the narrative of what comes after death. But I choose to see an artist who was ever mindful of the world he lived in. Someone who saw the truth in all the madness and responded with breathtaking art. RIP Ka. You will be dearly missed.
Favorite Songs: “Tested Testimony” “Collection Plate” “Such Devotion”
6. Arooj Aftab, Night Reign
I have nothing particularly deep or interesting to say here. I just found this album overwhelmingly beautiful to the point where I don’t really know how to talk about it.
Favorite Songs: “Na Gul” “Saaqi” “Raat Ki Rani”
5. Remi Wolf, Big Ideas
The second of the barely-to-the-side of the mainstream pop albums!
Remi Wolf is actually a fairly popular artist depending on who you ask. She may not be a household name, but she’s pretty popular with the younger generation of millennials and Gen Z. All of this is to say nothing of the fact one could look at her streaming numbers and walk away thinking she’s a pretty big deal. On top of that, there’s the general principle that popularity does not equal quality, particularly in an age when the “choice” of music is more an illusion created by algorithms created by streaming services and market research.
Still, it’s nice to see people succeed and get what they deserve. Remi Wolf deserves more. And by “deserves more” I mean that I genuinely think that she should not only be a household name, but I think she should be at a level of fame where she has Sabrina Carpenter’s spot on the big three of 2024 pop music. (I don’t know why I’m going after Sabrina so much. Again, Short n’ Sweet is really fucking good.) She should be superstar arena tours famous.
Tell me you can’t imagine “Cinderella” on the radio. (I’m sure it’s played somewhere, but I mean in every market.) Tell me you can’t imagine many a social media post of a group of friends singing the chorus to “Kangaroo”. Tell me you can’t imagine “Toro” playing at a wedding. Tell me any of these things and I’ll call you a liar.
Remi Wolf, as she’s proven on everything she’s released so far, has what it takes. She knows how to write killer hooks. She can write lyrics that’ll make you laugh and dance just as quickly as they can make you cry. Her funky retro aesthetic never stops being fun. She has an incredible voice and can belt as well as any diva. She’s an amazing live performer. What else do you need?
Also, re: the amazing live performer part, I saw her at The Greek two days before I saw Brittany Howard, and I can personally attest to her ability to put on an amazing show.
Look, Remi Wolf is the shit, and I don’t think it’s a question if the mainstream will get on the same page as the people who know better. It’s when. And even if they don’t, I see no reason to doubt that Remi will put out incredible music as long as she’s working. Can’t wait to see what she does next.
Favorite Songs: “Toro” “Kangaroo” “Frog Rock”
4. JPEGMAFIA, I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU
The ongoing joke I’ve made for a few years now is saying some sort of variation of “If JPEGMAFIA releases an album, it’ll be on this list” and then I move on. Or if I didn’t make this joke then I meant to, for I’m too lazy and self-loathing to go back and look through my own shit. So let’s get the formality out of the way: If JPEGMAFIA releases an album, it’ll be on this list. Unless he crosses a red line, behavior wise, which for me he nearly did by working with Kanye.
This time, however, I feel the need to give out a few more compliments. Specifically, it’s time to start putting Peggy in the greatest working producers conversation.
With every album, Peggy seems to make a great leap forward in his bag of production tricks. He somehow gets wilder, yet oddly more accessible, and the sound never stays the same. I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU, I would argue, is his best work as a producer yet. The beats will start somewhere, but they never end in the same place. It’s felt like it’s been a while since there’s been someone who goes this far away from loops, and it makes every song feel like an epic journey.
More importantly, however, is that this is his most emotionally vulnerable release thus far.
Between working with Kanye, various beefs, and various moments of bizarre and self-destructive behavior, it sure seemed like Peggy was flaming out. This album gets into some of the reasons this might be the case. Not taking care of himself. Not taking any breaks. Drinking too much. Being unable to provide emotional support because you’re too deep in the depression hole. I was wondering if we’d ever get this side of Peggy. Now I no longer think there’s anything he can’t give us.
And there’s bangers.
Favorite Songs: “SIN MIEDO” “Exmilitary” “i recovered from this”
3. Joey Valence & Brae, NO HANDS
Once I figured out what my final ten for this list were, arranging everything was pretty simple except for one part. Do I put NO HANDS or I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU higher?
As far as which one’s a more meaningful body of work, hands down, it’s Peggy. It’s not really a fair comparison to make because I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU is an album with the weight of the world on its shoulders and NO HANDS rather aggressively doesn’t. However, it’s that very quality that ultimately made me want to list it higher, despite knowing that I’ll look back on this in a few years and call myself a fucking moron. That said, NO HANDS made me want to ask myself and the hip hop community an important question. You know that hip hop is allowed to be fun right? Because it sure sounds like Joey Valence & Brae were the only people who sounded like they enjoyed making hip hop music in 2024.
Sure, there’s Kendrick and the worldwide grave dance that was “Not Like Us”. But “Not Like Us” only exists because there’s a target he wanted to destroy, and when someone like Drake is occupying your thoughts how much fun can you really be having, particularly when he’s on your mind because you’re a father of girls and you think he’s had too many inappropriate interactions with minors. GNX also exists, but it still lives in that feud’s shadow. Of course, there were bangers, but few of them felt effortless. And of course, I’m speaking in generalities and there’s an example or two you can point out that undermines my point. (Mainly Denzel Curry’s King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2.) Still, I just had this feeling that nobody was smiling in hip hop unless it was at somebody’s expense.
Enter Joey Valence & Brae, who’ve made the most joyous and unapologetically dorky rap album in recent years. No pedophilia accusations here. Just raps about cartoons, drinking Shirley Temples, and Cholula sauce. There’s even a line about Silly Bandz!
I can see the army of hardcore hip hop heads turning down their Yankee hats at me. But this is an album that feels like it came from the era of hip hop before the money, and it’s not just because of the old school influences they proudly wear on their sleeves. There was a time before I was born when you could see Run-DMC and if you wanted to be cool and look like them, there was a higher chance that you could save up the money to do so. You just needed a tracksuit and some Adidas. Now rappers rap about experiences that not only will you never be able to afford, but the rappers themselves can’t afford either unless you’re in the upper echelon of the upper echelon.
The allusion of wealth in hip hop, or really the wealth gap between those who’ve made it and those who haven’t, has most of the genre living in a fantasy world. In order to fit Joey Valence & Brae’s definition of cool, all you need is an internet connection and a little bit of pop culture knowledge.
This isn’t to say that they don’t rap about money. But the difference is what they want to do with it and what it says about them. Travis Scott lives an existence I can’t comprehend buying things I’ll never be able to buy. All Joey and Brae seem to want to buy are video games and skateboard shoes. X big rapper might have all the money, but I want to hang out with Joey and Brae because they’re tangible people.
Old school hip hop married with millennium aesthetics to make songs about tangible shades of cool that make you want to do the running man. And they actually sound like they’re enjoying what they’re doing because it’s what they think is cool. Sometimes it’s that simple.
Favorite Songs: “NO HANDS” “THE BADDEST” “WHAT U NEED”
2. Charli XCX, Brat
I don’t have anything to say about Brat that hasn’t already been said a million trillion times. I’ll spare you.
But yeah, I love this album as much as everyone else does, and it’s so nice to see the rest of the world catch up to Charli XCX. Some of us have already been on the train since Pop 2 and Charli. Some of us were on it even earlier, and not just because of “Boom Clap”, but because we heard “Fancy” and didn’t conclude that Iggy Azalea should be a thing, but rather that the woman on the hook crushed it.
But hey, this isn’t about gatekeeping. We were already on the train, but welcome aboard. Glad you’re finally here.
Favorite Songs: “Sympathy Is a Knife” “Von Dutch” “So I”
1. Kendrick Lamar, The Imaginary Album I Made Up In My Head of Everything Kendrick Lamar Did in 2024 from “Like That” to GNX and Possibly Beyond
I know, I’m cheating. But think about music in 2024. It was Brat Summer and the Kendrick vs Drake beef. Really, it was more the latter. Or at least it was for me because I’ve been a Drake hater since day one, and the whole beef was a months long Christmas for me.
My first exposure to Drake was “Off That” on Blueprint 3. I was vaguely aware that there was this new guy named Drake, but this was just the hook on a mostly forgettable song off of, frankly, a mostly forgettable album. I didn’t pay it any mind. Then there was the one-two punch of “BedRock” and “Best I Ever Had”.
“BedRock” is fucking trash. It certainly didn’t help that it was the last song that was big on the radio before I figured out how to play my iPod in the car, and thus I heard it several trillion times on my commutes back and forth from school. And then when I was home I watched the video several trillion times because for some reason I was watching a lot of MTV 2 and 106 & Park. But even if I hadn’t, the beat’s trash, the lyrics are trash, the flows are trash, the whole hashtag rap thing that was way too big at the time was trash. Everything about it was trash. Drake’s verse isn’t the worst on the song, but that isn’t saying much, especially when he starts his verse with “I love your sushi roll”. And as for “Best I Ever Had”, it’s fine, albeit boring. The video, on the other hand, was only a slight step down from Porky’s as far as pure male gaze shit is concerned. Take these two things and Drake was a hard pass for me.
Also, you know… I didn’t think he was particularly good at rapping or singing.
Then came college, and I have to admit that this was a period where I disliked Drake for the wrong reasons. I wasn’t particularly open-minded in that essentially, as far as new rappers were concerned, if you weren’t a grimy New York rapper, in TDE, part of the Minnesota scene, some hyper underground rapper I found on the internet, or Kanye West, I probably wasn’t fucking with you. It also didn’t help that the Big Ghost Softest Rappers in the Game lists started gaining a lot more traction in my college years, and I fell for that mentality hook, line, and sinker. Plenty of the artists I liked had a soft and emo edge to them, but most made up for it in either grandiosity or sharp political acumen. I didn’t have the time or the healthy art brain for Drake.
Then I left college, and “Hotline Bling” came out. I’ve written about my distaste for that song before, but there was also something else going on.
I have a theory. A lot of people, correctly, credit Kanye for killing the need for performative masculinity in hip hop. However, just because you didn’t need to wear baggy jerseys and talk about shooting people anymore doesn’t mean toxic masculinity in hip hop ended. It just took a different form. Some of the jocks and bros from your high school learned the right lessons from early pre-Nazi Kanye and the wave of music he inspired. However, others now had a new angle and new language to use to manipulate women. Shitting on your ex is long-held tradition in music, but the specificity of the judgment and double standards in “Hotline Bling” made it feel like a song that could only be made in 2015 by this man, Drake. A song that uses the language of emotionality to judge his ex for moving on with her life and having sex with people who aren’t him.
That’s when the real reason I didn’t like Drake kicked in. (Other than the fact that I didn’t care for his music.) Drake is the dude who insists he’s a “nice guy”. Drake presents himself as sensitive and in touch, but beneath that extraordinarily thin veneer lies your standard issue vapidity and toxic bullshit. He is, simply put, not who he says he is.
Now cue the greatest hits.
Mocking Kid Cudi for being suicidal. The appropriation and the accents. Publicly lashing out against so many women of color, from Megan Thee Stallion to Esperanza Spalding to Serena Williams to Rihanna and many others. His increasingly tight courtship of the manosphere and gambling streamers. Blackface. Hiding a child. Working with Morgan “N word” Wallen. I’m writing this on January 19, 2025, so add him suing UMG and naming prominent black hip hop media figures in the suit. And, of course, the many icky interactions he’s had with underage women. There’s probably some I’m forgetting.
It also doesn’t help that he represents every crass thing one could say about mainstream music, from chasing trends to courting a toxic white audience to gaming algorithms to, again, appropriation and blah blah blah another long list.
I had to explain the beef to multiple people at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners who heard about the beef on the news or wherever but didn’t understand it. The metaphor I wound up using was “Drake is to hip hop what Chipotle is to Mexican food.” A cheap safe watered-down version of the real thing you can open up in the suburbs without scaring the whites and making them worry about their property values.
Kendrick, on the other hand, represents just about everything I care about, and watching him put a stake through Drake’s heart made me so happy that I almost cried.
It wasn’t just a victory in terms of rap beef. It was a victory for genuineness, moral rectitude, art, and as Todd in the Shadows succinctly put it, giving a shit. If only the rest of my country thought the same way as hip hop fans.
To put a cap on all of this, Kendrick ends the story with GNX. There are some heavy moments on it, but comparatively speaking, he sounds light as a feather and unburdened. Watching all this happen made me feel the same way. Specifically, the reaction to it. The way we all rallied together. It proved to me that there are people who still care, and it made me feel something I rarely feel: Hope.
Favorite Songs: “Euphoria” “Not Like Us” “heart pt. 6”
Honorable Mentions
1010benja, Ten Total
Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future
Alice Longyu Gao, Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry
Allie X, Girl With No Face
Beth Gibbons, Lives Outgrown
Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
Billie Eilish, HIT ME HARD AND SOFT
Blu & Exile, Love (The) Ominous World
Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee
Conway the Machine, Slant Face Killah
cumgirl8, The 8th Cumming
death’s dynamic shroud.wmv & galen tipton, You Like Music
Dillom, Por cesárea
Ekko Astral, pink balloons
Fontaine D.C., Romance
Geordie Greep, The New Sound
Hiatus Kaiyote, Love Heart Cheat Code
Hus Kingpin & 9th Wonder, THE SUPERGOAT
Iglooghost, Tidal Memory Exo
Jessica Pratt, Here in the Pitch
Julia Holter, Something in the Room She Moves
Kali Uchis, ORQUÍDEAS
Kamasi Washington, Fearless Movement
Killer Mike, SONGS FOR SAINTS & SINNERS
Kim Gordon, The Collective
Kneecap, Fine Art
The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy
Laura Marling, Patterns in Repeat
Lava La Rue, STARFACE
Lupe Fiasco, Samurai
Lust$ickPuppy, CAROUSEL FROM HELL
Mach-Hommy, #RICHAXXHAITIAN
Magdalena Bay, Imaginal Disk
Maxo Kream, Personification
Megan Thee Stallion, MEGAN
Moor Mother, The Great Bailout
Mount Eerie, Night Palace
NTS, funk.BR - São Paulo
NxWorries, Why Lawd?
Quadeca, SCRAPYARD
serpentwithfeet, GRIP
Sonhos Tomam Conta, Corpos De Água
Tapir!, The Pilgrim, Their God and the King of My Decrepit Mountain
Vince Staples, Dark Times
yaya bey, Ten Fold
Yeat, 2039
