I don’t remember if it was Anna or Melle who remarked on our booming voices and boisterous laughter last night, but the statement was true. We sat around an oval-shaped table eating lumpia and pancit and garlic rice and Menudo and donuts at Robinson Space in the middle of the Historic Filipinotown neighborhood of Los Angeles. The room was decorated for Christmas and revolution, and we were having a grand old time.
These old friends hadn’t been together in this configuration since before the early days of the pandemic. It had been two years without our usual round of March birthday brunches and drinks. Two years without quick get-togethers or whatever we used to do when a plan could come together without worrying about our mortal safety and that of those we love just by breathing the same air with people we like for a while.
And yet there we were, drinking white claws and seltzer water and making small talk with new acquaintances.
It was a family dinner. It was a celebration. It was recognition of the work one of us had been doing during these desperate times. While most of us had been in our own homes protecting our butts, Melle had been in the streets of our city making sure our neighbors didn’t go hungry. Her organization, Polo’s Pantry, was in its infancy when the needs of those she intended to serve increased exponentially. At the same time, many of the government services they may have depended on became unavailable.
Melle and the community coalitions she is a part of sprung into action to meet those needs. They did so from nearly the moment stay-at-home orders began at the time when we didn’t fully understand the risks, the safety protocols, or how long we’d be living this way.
“I say ‘I love you’ through food,” she said as she spoke to the attendees last night. Food is a love language. It had brought all of us together on a Saturday night to laugh, cry, learn, and share.
“If you’re livin’ for the moment, don’t stop, and celebrate the feelin’.”
— Janet Jackson
This morning’s yoga practice was a meditation. Adriene asked us to honor the endings. In 2018, my version of “honor” has been to say, “thank you.” To cut through the persistent drumbeat of hard and sad and depressing news and find gratitude. Most Sundays this year, I sat in this chair by this window, the sun shining through, music in my ears, and acknowledged all the many things that are wonderful in my life.
And so, on this last Sunday of the year, let us continue the practice.
Thank you, 2018. Thank you for the new people that entered my life and how they enriched it. Thank you for new traditions and commitments. Thank you for the opportunities: especially those chances to be kind, to be honest, to stand up for what I believe in, to be excellent, and to learn.
Thank you, 2018, for my friends and family and the incredible lives they live and invite me to participate in on occasion. Thank you to my spouse, my partner, who challenges me to be a better and more present person while pushing me to think of our future in more concrete ways than just my faith that we gonna be alright.
Thank you, 2018, for time. While I and many others sometimes complained that this year felt like a decade, it provided me more time for books and workouts and cooking and fellowship. I’ve found time for getting better at Spanish and adding new skills to my professional repertoire. There was time for a few great shows, lots of basketball, and a little travel. There was time for movies and the occasional binge watch. There was time for podcasts. There was time for journaling. There was time to make more biscuits.
Thank you, 2018. The times are no less precarious, but I’m no less hopeful. There are too many things and people in my life who are legit changing my world and the world in small and significant ways that I have no other option but to be grateful, joyful, and to have a little realistic optimism about what is yet to come.
“Miss me with that bullshit. You ain’t really wild, you a tourist. I be blackin’ out with the purest.”
— Kendrick Lamar
Unapologetically black. That’s how I liked my music this year. Not just black, per se, (though that was where my head was tbh) but unapologetically whatever it was trying to be. That could be unapologetically pop. Unapologetically fun. Unapologetically woke. Whatever. Just make me feel like it’s real, that I’m real, that who I am and what I am is not only okay but brilliant.
King’s Dead did that for me from its very first notes. Kendrick Lamar, Jay Rock, James Blake, and Future with my favorite of all the songs on the epic Black Panther Album (Music from and Inspired by the Movie) is ultimately a villain’s anthem but one that reeks of authenticity. It sounds like California. Black California from the bay to the South of LA. When Jay Rock says, “My name gon’ hold up. My team gon’ hold up,” I feel that shit.
My last.fm charts will say that All the Starz from the same album is my top track, but it’s treating King’s Dead from the Black Panther album and Jay Rock’s Redemption as two separate tracks. Combined, it’s close to 100 spins.
The 2018 Mixtape
My methodology this year for figuring out my faves was to look at each month separately rather than focus on my listens in aggregate though those numbers were a secondary factor. My mixtape reflects my favorite song of each month from January through November as well as my favorite discovery.
I like this approach better because it acknowledges the rhythms of time more than the inertia of routine and the impact of the Spotify algorithms on my listening behavior. So instead of seeing a playlist dominated by a few albums and artists, you’ll hear some tracks that I forgot I loved right next to the records that I played the hell out of for a few weeks at a time. There’s a little symmetry here as well with a song featuring Sza—artist of my favorite track of 2017—and ends with a song by Janet Jackson who I have admired since I was knee-high and who just got nominated for the Rock & Roll hall of fame. She’s still got it.
The Albums
I haven’t looked at many of the end-of-year lists yet, so I don’t know what the consensus is around the top releases though I’m guessing some of my faves like Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer and Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy are on them. I know they are both GRAMMY nominated for Album of the Year. They weren’t my very top albums this year despite trying hard to convince myself otherwise.
Black Panther—both the compilation mentioned above and the Ludwig Göransson score—set the tone for everything I would listen to for the rest of the year. It primed me for Jay Rock’s full length, an artist I wasn’t checking for before King’s Dead and his instant anthem WIN which was the theme for the LA Sparks season well before it was played at nearly every sporting event the rest of the year. The score re-ignited my interest in film compositions which led to an April filled with the soundtracks to Arrival and Annihilation and Westworld and many a Black Mirror episode. Combined, Kendrick Lamar’s curated playlist for the best black popcorn movie ever released and that score was the best thing going all year. Full stop.
Beyond that, I enjoyed grown folks hip hop from Beyoncé and her husband and Phonte. I liked expansive sounds from The Midnight Hour and Abstract Orchestra, clever reworks from Kelela, and a pretty perfect pop album from Ariana Grande who is, perhaps, an even more interesting artist than she is a celebrity. She, too, is figuring out how to be unapologetically herself with each release.
I rather enjoyed music this year. As I spent time re-listening to albums and songs in preparation for this post, I realized how much music I heard that I thought was genuinely good and interesting. In the midst of all the cotton candy confection on terrestrial radio and vine—a place that increasingly became where I discovered new to me sounds and artists and songs, some of which I actually liked—there were a lot of artists releasing confident and risk-taking songs and albums.
It almost seems anachronistic for artists to attempt to put out complete and connected albums with strong thematic ties or storytelling flourishes today. We live in the age of the eternally shuffled on streaming services like Spotify and Pandora and Rdio (my personal fave). The music video (even if it’s just lyrics or a static image) and soundcloud dominate the young ear. So why put together an album whose songs work better together? Especially with the standard being about 10 songs and 45 minutes these days? I don’t know but I’m glad folks did.
Some notes: D’Angelo did me dirty like Beyoncé did last December and put out an album that’s impossible to deny but that I haven’t had the time to sit with like I have with other albums. In fact, Black Messiah’s inclusion bumped Mary J. Blige’s The London Sessions—another late in the year entry—out of my top ten but you should really cop that one too. You’ll also have to forgive the nepotism but my sister’s album is good y’all.
Little Dragon, Prince, and Freddie Gibbs with Madlib on the production produced the albums I kept coming back to this year, though. Every time I hear just one song from their releases I want to hear the whole collection. Art Official Cage is a revelation. I haven’t enjoyed the purple one this much since the Batman soundtrack.
Like Pusha T’s album last year, Piñata was the get hyped soundtrack for 2014. I bumped that in the car on road trips, in the morning on the ride to work, on the way home to take the edge off (or get it up). I was Thuggin’.
Ultimately, though, there’s a certain sound and sensibility that gets to me (gets me) more than everything else. Little Dragon is one of those bands and Nabuma Rubberband is one of those albums. Love it.
Two important musical notes for me at the end of 2014 came out 22 and 25 years ago but seemed especially relevant for the complex ways I was/am feeling about the world. The hope and clarity of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 and the anger and obstinance of Ice Cube’s The Predator were what my soul needed as America in the Fall of this year felt more like Los Angeles in the Spring of ’92. Rage and sadness and uprising and the knowledge and power to the people.
We are a part of a rhythm nation and 20 years after Rodney King we’re still asking “when will they shoot?” and so we’re going to make it rough.
