“Scaffolding year” is the phrase that followed me as I put this together. 2025 has been about re-architecting my life professionally, creatively, emotionally, and spiritually. While I was learning to live more openly, intentionally, and courageously, the music I returned to again and again acted as support beams. Hip-hop drove my sense of agency. Soul music helped me sort through the interior renovations, while Jazz guided me through the always-chaotic, often-awful state of the world to more stable ground. And the score and soundtrack from Sinners framed the whole thing in cinematic relief.

Last year, I was an open wound: Love Heart Cheat Codes for West Coast Heads Having a Shitty Year.

This year, I’m on the mend:
Black-Cosmopolitan Groove Therapy for Sinners Rebuilding Their Life in Public. 

Hip-Hop: The Foundation

About 38% of everything I played this year was hip-hop. No other genre came close. I started 2025 still living inside the great albums of 2024 (GNX, Chromakopia, GLORIOUS, Alligator Bites Never Heal), and they never really left rotation.

Summer ‘25 brought Clipse’s Let God Sort Em Out, and the gravity of that album shifted everything. Griselda and their extended family—Benny the Butcher, Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, Stove God Cooks, Boldy James, Jay Worthy—kept feeding the momentum.

I embraced rappers who make albums, not trend-chasing content. I connected with artists who commit to atmosphere and let the world-building unfurl over a full-length. The Alchemist was often the patron saint of that kind of sonic architecture this year.

Hip-hop was the skeleton of my year. Headnodders and that ol’ boom bap motivated me through workouts, got me hyped on game days, and steadied my resolve in the mornings. Rap music provided the soundtrack for moments of levity and grit.  For years, I worried that I had aged out of the genre. Turns out, it has been maturing as well, and I just needed to be patient. The old heads and old souls were always going to be right on time. 

• Shades of Madlib
• Ruby Ibarra and the power of Joyful Noise
• Sometimes I Be Extrovert

Recommended Reading: The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast

R&B/Soul: The Regulator

If hip-hop kept me moving, R&B kept me whole.

One in five listens belonged to voices that know how to soothe, testify, and gently pull a truth out of hiding. Established faves like Beyoncé, SZA, Hiatus Kaiyote, Cleo Sol, and Erykah Badu were joined in regular rotation by Lalah Hathaway, Alex Isley, and Yaya Bey.

I took some archival detours, too: Teena Marie (inspired by a One Song episode), Amerie (rewarding on every revisit), and the epic works of D’Angelo after his untimely passing.

Generally, though, this soundscape was introspective. I leaned into R&B music that was intimate and sometimes devotional (despite my well-documented apathy towards organized religion). These were the sounds that kept the structure intact. When I needed to soften or steady myself, this was home base.

• Listening with Purpose from a City in Crisis

Watch: Alex Isley’s Tiny Desk Concert and Erykah Badu’s NYT performance.

Jazz: The Structural Counterweight

For most of my life, Jazz was familiar but distant. It’s my father’s language, not mine. Of course, now that he’s passed, I’ve found my way to an active relationship with the music he so loved and loved to make. 

We’ll save the psychoanalysis of that for another time.

Writing about the art form for DC Jazz Fest helped me build fluency, and by October, the genre had quietly climbed into my #2 slot, surpassing R&B/Soul.

Brandee Younger was the first revelation: my favorite discovery of this year across all genres. Terri Lyne Carrington’s thematic releases inspired me with their cognitive depth, emotional nuance, and the conversations they have with both the issues of the day and the releases of the past.

While I appreciate the greats, if I’m going to listen to the standards, I’d prefer the women to take the lead. What I enjoyed most in 2025 was modern soul-jazz, often delivered by artists forged here in Los Angeles or across the pond. 

Jazz is where I turned when I wanted to make sense of a chaotic world. It’s the music that challenges me. It’s what I listen to when I want to get comfortable with complexity. It is not an escape. I don’t listen to float away. Instead, these songs and artists encourage me to get beyond the algorithmic doomscroll. Jazz was my antidote to brain-rot culture.

• What does Jazz mean to you?
• Jazz is a Four-Letter Word

Pop as Palate Cleanser

March sent me tumbling into a K-pop side quest thanks to LISA, The White Lotus, and her solo album press tour. June brought the 20th anniversary of The Emancipation of Mimi, which once again owned my entire life, as if it were still 2005. And in November, ROSALÍA’s LUX became the latest entry in my “artists whose entire catalog must be consumed front-to-back” collection.

These were the releases that got me to color outside the lines and explore beyond my tendencies.

Sinners

My album of the year is from Clipse, but the cultural moment of the year is Sinners.

Ludwig Göransson may have edged out Nicholas Britell for my personal composer crown. The soundtrack introduced Miles Caton and revived artists I’d drifted from, like Alice Smith and Brittany Howard.

Sinners got me to explore Blues, Folk, and other music in the American Roots tradition seriously for the first time in my life, from Geeshie Wiley to Lead Belly to Woody Guthrie, and many underappreciated artists on the margins.

Shout-out to the fictional Delta Slim and the very real Buddy Guy.

• Sinners Won, Even if Some Folks Won’t Admit it
• Sinners Sings the Blues 

So, yeah, a scaffolding year. In 2025, the music kept pace with my growing honesty, porosity, and resilience. Press play and the blueprint unfurls. The vision is right there, if you listen closely.