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December 15, 2018 / 0 Comments

2018 in Music

“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.

My Fave Albums of 2018

  1. Black Panther Album & Black Panther Soundtrack

  2. Redemption – Jay Rock

  3. Dirty Computer – Janelle Monae

  4. Everything is Love – The Carters

  5. Invasion of Privacy – Cardi B

  6. No News is Good News – Phonte

  7. The Midnight Hour – The Midnight Hour

  8. Sweetener – Ariana Grande

  9. TAKE ME A_PART, THE REMIXES – Kelela

  10. Dilla – Abstract Orchestra

Other Notes

Shout-out to Drake for great singles and better videos. Jordan Rakei, Nightmares on Wax, and Little Dragon for great live shows. Rapsody, Gifted Gab, Noname and Princess Nokia for providing excellent counter-programming to the overwhelming masculinity and aggression still dominating popular hip-hop. And Aretha Franklin and Mac Miller for having existed.

Thank u, next.

The Raw Data


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September 23, 2018 / 0 Comments

A Rollercoaster Jam Called Love

“I really miss my boo-boo hoping [s]he don’t stay away.”

— Rapsody

By Wednesday of last week, I had taken to telling people outright that I was cranky. I was frustrated with usual work stuff. I was annoyed with having to move desks and floors. I was uncharacteristically curt with folks for whom I usually have more patience. My emotions were at the surface, an occurrence so rare that others were commenting on it. By Friday, though, my story had changed. I was cranky and annoyed and frustrated but the cause was, I was lonely.

This week I’m grateful for longing. Tiffany spent the week visiting a friend in Vancouver, leaving me on my own at home. It’s not common for me to be home alone. In the last few years, I’ve been the one prone to solo travel multiple times a year for work. Work travel is so busy; I don’t get that sense of being alone. All my time is filled with meetings and movement and managing time zones. Over the last seven days, though, I sat in this house listening to its creaky floors and cupboards, forgetting to eat dinner at a reasonable hour, working too much, off my routine, and missing my wife.

My schedule never filled with appointments and events with other people. The few I made were canceled or postponed. So, I was left to spend my time thinking about how much I appreciate her presence in my life. How much I enjoy caring for her and being cared for in return. One morning, I nearly made coffee despite knowing she wasn’t here to drink it because the feeling of not doing it felt so… wrong. I joked with her about enjoying not having every television tuned to MSNBC whenever I chose to turn one on while she was away but I would’ve gladly traded Maddow for our nightly discussions of dinner plans that were sorely missing from my every day.

We’ve been together over a decade now. Diana Evans, in an interview with NPR about her novel, Ordinary People, talks about what we face when we are coupled-up for the long haul:

I think the real challenge of marriage or a long-term relationship is trying to appreciate the wonderful things about it. That sense of human understanding and sort of compassion and home — a sense of home that is always there and is always accessible to you.

I’m thankful for getting the chance to appreciate the beautiful things about my partner, the home we’ve made, and the life we share. When we came back together last night, our faces lit up, again on this rollercoaster jam called love.