as 2024 comes to close, i’m celebrating, laughing and causing chaos with my friends, and finally seeing hope on the horizon. i kicked my biggest addictions and within a whirlwind past few weeks finally settled where i’m gonna be moving to next which was perhaps my biggest anxiety. i feel better than i ever have in my life. the year wasn’t always like this, though; music has always been my rock, something i rely on in times of good or bad, but through no year (perhaps besides the first year we went into lockdown) has it been so important to me. these albums from 2024 below are, for the most part, very popular. they dominated the cultural conversation, and while I could certainly be using this platform to talk about more esoteric, underappreciated works, i feel like honoring them. they were my soundtrack to this rollercoaster of a year, but more importantly, they motivated me to chase my dreams and embrace my creative side more than perhaps any other works of art this year. for those curious about some of my other favorites of the year, i highly recommend checking out my rateyourmusic page.
“the collective” by kim gordon
before 2024, i had never listened to a sonic youth album. i was always aware of them, but only really heard their music in passing, and i basically had no idea of their influence, the breadth of their career. and then, one day, i heard “BYE BYE.”
probably THE song i wish i had made. a complete mind-melter, an immediately compelling mix of the old and new, and also one of the funniest and coolest songs ever written. i remember being stunned thinking “what the FAWK is this 70 year old rock icon doing on a playboi carti* beat???” as producer justin raisen tells it, he’d actually developed it for carti himself. but hearing those pummeling 808s, the screeching noisy guitars, that portentous car alarm sound, he realized he had to send it to his day-to-day collaborator at the time, one kim gordon ma’am, who completely made it her own. not just emphasizing the abrasive production with her guitarist special touch - that noisy deterioration of the outro makes me fucking feral every time - but applying her avant-garde poetry style to a really fun concept (clearly inspired by legendary artist kid brain’s things in my jeep, iykyk): she essentially just lists off of things she would leave behind when escaping her life. her deadpan delivery contrasts with the busy beat to make perhaps one of the most truly new and PUNK things we’ve heard this year. as a big fan of hip-hop, and especially the artists truly thinking toward the future, i was shocked to see such a complete melding of my interests, and really heartwarming that the grunge influence made explicit by many artists like yeat or ken carson recently has wrapped back around. i immediately dove into sonic youth because of it - i’m reading gordon’s incredible memoir right now - and currently they’re probably my favorite band.
if there’s one thing about kim gordon, though, she can’t be put into a box. her full sophomore solo album refuses to be confined to one genre, one tone. no wave, modern hip-hop (including some insane fucking sounds; like she does phonk and witch house??? what?????), psychedelia, industrial rock thrown into a blender and kicked down the side of the hill. it’s exhilarating and unpredictable and in her writing she is so evocative of the ways internet and reality have intertwined - especially since that period of intense isolation we all went through together. it inspired me to really look at my life as i’ve grown up, and figure out how i can make use of this new really strange synthesis of ideas and emotions to express myself and support the people i care about.
“brat” by charli xcx
what more can one say about this one that hasn’t already been said? it’s a little hard for me to articulate my feelings on this one but i’ll try... i still remember charli (her music as a whole but especially her self-titled album, still probably my favorite overall work of hers) being the soundtrack to some of the most euphoric and isolated moments of my college experience in equal measure. she’s always looked back to look forward with her sound, and her writing captures her messy, unadulterated mindset in a way that harkens back to pop stars of the past but updated for a culture, much like kim gordon’s album, where the immediate connectivity of the internet influences how quickly and rapidly we process our emotions. i find it remarkable how, after her few early successes, for most of her career (i’m not a fan of crash) she refused to be predictable; a lot of that is thanks to her creative partnerships with the groundbreaking PC Music including a.g. cook and the late, great SOPHIE (for whom charli sang one of the most moving ballads of the year, “So I,” and then on its remix decided to flip the bird to critiques of exploiting SOPHIE’s tragedy by sharing a laundry list of perfect memories with her best friend).
brat is certainly a return to form after crash, as chameleonic and direct and personal as her best work. but there’s a reason why it’s achieved so much mainstream resonance: its so explosive and yet so controlled. not a moment feels out of place. from start to finish it feels perfectly paced, with every song in isolation feeling like a complete masterpiece. and there’s something about it that feels more *alive* than she’s sounded before and not in a disparaging way (again, this isn’t even quite my favorite of hers) but in a way that feels like she’s finally gone outside and is ready to shout these songs from the rooftops. it’s an arena album if i’ve ever heard one - no wonder her shows are doing so well! in spite of the brat oversaturation (which has certainly led to some annoying moments from her and across the world) there’s something very gratifying about seeing her finally embrace her status as a pop star, crafting some of the catchiest songs you’ll hear on a radio this decade while never letting go of her diverse taste for experimentation. i also appreciate the remix album, while not quite as refined, for how it expands on the original songs in very emotionally revelatory ways.
brat is entirely about what kind of pop star charli is. messy but focused, regretful but unapologetic, and deeply terrified of the future but refusing to take it lying down. she seems to really be worried that as her star rises she’ll alienate the people she cares about the most; it’s clear that’s the place she wrote her SOPHIE tribute from. but as a fellow intensely emotional woman, who can often be overbearing, confrontational but also eager to please, i found a lot of resonance in how she wrests together everything she’s feeling, honoring it all without letting it ruin her. life really should be a party 365 days of the year, and brat has been a model to me for how, as i embrace being a woman for the first time in my life, i should never let anything or anyone get in the way of that.
“cold visions” by bladee
pretty handily the album i’ve listened to the most this year. how crazy that on one of the worst days at my former job i stumble home like tony soprano at the end of season 5, drop myself down on my chair, and turn on my computer to see perhaps my favorite artist, someone whose music i binged ravenously all the time during lockdown, just gave me 30 tracks to save my life. cold visions is primarily produced by the groundbreaking Working on Dying collective (serving as a somewhat-sequel to the original bladee tape named after them) and specifically founding member F1LTHY, but also bringing back every tightknit collaborator across the drain gang saga. leandoer especially seems to tag-team quite a bit of this album (makes sense considering they dropped a collaborative project earlier this year), but thaiboy, ecco, yung sherman, whitearmor, lusi, woesum, skrillex, even sickboyrari all come through for their brother. cold visions feels like a victory lap for this esoteric collective which managed to build up and interlink an entire worldwide fanbase through bold, psychedelic production and cryptic lyrics that only the nerdiest people on earth would bother diving into. lean probably has the most fame and influence, and almost no album this century means as much to me as ecco’s e, but i think bladee is kind of the key member of drain gang, primarily due to his generally prolific output. music has always been like a diary for him, and yet i’d argue that he’s never quite been as honest as he is on cold visions. much like charli (makes sense that he’d appear on her remix album) he’s overwhelmed by all the fame he’s suddenly accrued. once again the pandemic had something to do with that, as his legions of fans are finally unleashed upon the world and his influence manifests in the charts. he’s approached somewhat of a mid-life crisis, and continues to fall prey to the same cycles of addiction and self-doubt. his co-opting of the rage sound is unique for how truly bitter and interior it feels. there’s a sense of confidence to how he asserts his allegiance to the real ones around him, but it also sounds like he’s clinging to them because he can’t bear to trust anyone else again. he lashes out at his enemies and his copycats, but then wonders whether his legacy really means anything. the harsh, 808s-heavy production on many of the songs - aided by underground sound collage legend james ferraro as defacto mixtape DJ - throws you into a frayed mindset in a way that was so immediately compelling to me while in the midst of one of the worst depressions of my life. but one of cold visions’ biggest strengths is how it doesn’t just stick to this sound. bladee revisits basically every type of song he’s made in the past, from the blissful electropop of “FLATLINE” to the ecco-assisted piano balladry of the outro. he also looks at musical trends around him like with “RED CROSS”, clearly a tip of the hat to the modern detroit sound. he’s an observant artist, and willing to sacrifice brevity to show the breadth of his knowledge. some have called the project bloated but with how well it flows i pretty much never notice the length.
but what conclusion does bladee come to after this trip through his brain? well, things seem pretty bleak i suppose; he talks about retirement, and i hope that isn’t the case but it’s clear the celebrity lifestyle isn’t good for an introvert like him. but bladee understands that you kind of have to sacrifice some comforts like money in order to satisfy yourself in those especially lost moments, and the ultimate liberation that the album provides is that: you must reorient your priorities and find out what means the most to you. i hope he finds peace in his mind some day because it gives me hope that i will too. but if i ever need to let out all my frustrations, i know which album i’ll be coming back to first.
“gnx” by kendrick lamar
(disclaimer: this is the longest blurb by far, apologies, but i’ve had a lot of time to think about this album. i have a lot to say lol)
one interesting project i’ve embarked on in 2024, mostly unintentionally, is revisiting artists i thought i’d outgrown for whatever reason. what i’ve found is more often than not they still do a lot for me. it’s pretty gratifying to have seen a lot more movies and heard a lot more music since i was a kid, but find the seeds for my openness to new sounds and ideas were planted in more popular works of art.
kendrick lamar is perhaps the biggest example of someone i completely 180’d on again this year. he was one of the first gateways into becoming a hip-hop fan for me. i find GKMC to this day an immensely moving personal document, and TPAB, as well as its companion album untitled unmastered., meant a lot for me back in the day; i mostly see it as discount aquemini now, but it still has some of kendrick’s strongest songs and that specific melding of jazz and funk and soul and rap that it nailed very clearly set the tone for a lot of musical trends to follow. after that, though… things changed. for years now i’ve found him to be someone who is no more than the sum of his influences, can sometimes care too much about a narrative than he does the meaning behind what he’s conveying, and whose tendencies to pander to the prevailing musical trends and political opinions of the time ruin the weight of what he’s talking about. when i think of the complex and truly cinematic and forward-thinking music so many independent conscious artists are putting out today - shoutout backwoodz studios!!! - as well as the other interesting avenues the sound of hip-hop continues to evolve into on places like bandcamp and soundcloud, it’s been a little hard for me to see the way he gets valorized as the only real hip-hop artist left or the greatest rapper of all time and not roll my eyes a bit.
damn. and mr. morale are both interesting but heavily flawed projects that exemplify the things i don’t admire in kendrick. the latter is especially disappointing because in theory it’s exactly the direction i wanted him to go in. an intensely personal therapy session where he lays bare all his neuroses and traumas and some of the biggest mistakes he’s made in his career, it’s painfully honest and i appreciate that coming from someone so ubiquitous. “father time” with sampha and “mother i sober” with beth gibbons are two songs which mean a lot to me and show a level of introspection and maturity i really appreciate from kendrick. i also love songs like “rich spirit” which hint at the artistic direction he’d start taking in gnx, or “N95” which exemplifies the joyous influence working with his younger cousin baby keem had on him.
unfortunately, as kendrick once asserted on “the blacker the berry,” he is one of the biggest hypocrites. i took issue with how kendrick decided to once again attempt to tackle hot button issues that he has no idea how to tackle. “we cry together” and “auntie diaries” are not just two of his worst songs, but two of the worst songs i’ve heard this century. the former is in theory a type of performance art i should be attracted to, literally grafting a couple’s intense argument onto an alchemist beat, but the delivery is so deeply obnoxious and the writing so facile (the harvey weinstein line getting gassed up like it was incisive turned me into the joker) that i come away wondering what insights about toxic relationships i’m supposed to have gained other than, wow, relationships are toxic? you’re telling me this for the first time… and i could go on for days about the latter song, one of the most ill-advised addresses of the “trans issue“ possible, one which defeats its own purpose with every other line; i would much rather cis artists don’t say jack shit and show their support elsewhere (kendrick’s feature on yeah right did more for trans people than anything he could say with words), but frankly, if the song was about fruits and veggies i’d still despise it. terrible beat, terrible flows, just deeply annoying through and through.
the other reason why kendrick’s hypocrisy bothered me was his assertion of support for some of the worst people in the music business. i got where he was coming from, taking stock of his own flaws and wanting to extend goodwill to his peers who want to genuinely better themselves. but when he’s namechecking harvey and then featuring sex pests on the same album… it’s a little hard to take seriously. there’s another big album this century that attempted a very similar thing - donda, an album i loved a lot but has certainly not aged well for hundreds of reasons since lol - that i won’t get too deep into otherwise, but somehow the more brazenly evil aspects about it almost make it more understandable. kendrick wants to have his cake as a sociopolitically conscious but flawed artist and eat it too.
fast-forward to 2024. the year where kendrick really asserted himself as the defacto king. an olive branch extended from drake and j. cole, two of the most creatively and morally bankrupt mainstream artists right now, led to kendrick crashing out in the most spectacular fashion, starting the beef heard round the world and completely eviscerating the canadian pop star from top to bottom. i think most people who were really tapped in would agree kendrick won. but what did the public spectacle of it eventually mean? both sides were co-opting the trauma of others for their goal of domination, and i think for a while i resisted kendrick’s sense of moral superiority. again, when people like kodak black or the game can dance around to “not like us” and not realize what it says about them, what’s the point?
what i had to realize was, it’s not just about drake. or kendrick. or kodak. or anyone else in specific. the rot which kendrick identifies within the music industry is part of a larger systematic illness, as seen with the exposure of serial traffickers and rapists like epstein and diddy, and all the dominos which are falling because of them. kendrick called drake a pedophile because he’s the one who directly attacked him and his family, but he’s not the only pedophile. his popularity is a consequence of the way people have enabled this behavior for years, and its affected the artform as a whole as he and everyone else regurgitates the same song ideas over and over for chart domination, enabling people like this to commit further grotesqueries. out of sight, out of mind. the public can’t be blamed for this though; for how popular the beef is, it’s wild how many people in your daily life will just not know or ignore what kendrick said and go on listening to “passionfruit” or whatever. and that’s fine! what is lecturing the public on what music they like or don’t like going to do? the industry needs to be changed from within, but with a public awareness of that change. kendrick understands that popular music can come from a genuine, thought-provoking place. the audience isn’t dumb.
from track 1 of gnx, the fierce, take-no-prisoners attitude which kendrick wants to direct at the industry is felt in full force. “fuck everybody, that’s on my body” and “fuck a double entendre, i want y’all to feel this shit” are the mission statements of this surprise album which fell out of the sky as the finisher to kendrick’s big year but also the prelude to his super bowl-assisted world domination tour with sza next year. everything you need to know about gnx and kendrick and where he’s at can be found here. he’s done playing politics; instead he’s showing us a new way forward for popular music. on the cover, he stands with his lifelong dream car, the buick grand national. it’s all he ever wanted, and with this album he shows us why he’s earned it.
there’s one thing which all four musicians i’ve talked about here have in common: they are all, in essence, anthropologists. they all take the summation of the cultures and types of art they are focused on and spit something new out of it. i talked about kendrick being too beholden to his influences earlier, but i think with gnx he’s finally arrived at a pretty perfect self-awareness of that fact. there are multiple songs here that very directly quote his idols: from the heavy 2pac sample on “reincarnated” to the very clearly “one mic”-influenced “man at the garden.” but these songs work like never before because of their aims both textually and metatextually (i’ll get to those later). when he compares himself to filmmakers like tarantino and spike lee, he shows himself as a sincere nerd who wants to speak through those who came before him. as he states many times, he is a reincarnated artistic soul, here to give the modern world exactly what it needs.
kendrick isn’t entirely happy with his faves, though. namedropping lil wayne and snoop dogg and talking about how nas was the only one who congratulated his super bowl victory on “wacced out murals” says a lot about how he wants to separate himself from just being their artistic offspring. he’s retreated from the public limelight over time because of how the industry basically started to box him out again. his brand of authenticity isn’t gonna cut it for the michael rubin and rick rubin types, as evil ideology starts to expose itself in the supposedly liberal celebrity world. so what else is there to do but let the art speak for itself!
the first immediately striking thing about gnx is, like brat, it is perfectly put together. people made a big brouhaha of jack antonoff’s involvement, but his work with sounwave on every single song feels essential to how this sounds. there’s not a moment which feels out of place in spite of how many different types of songs which kendrick tries his hand at. a bizarre beat like the title track’s existing alongside something as sweet and catchy as “heart pt. 6” can only be due to geniuses who understand pacing and structure. unlike past albums, gnx never feels too uncontrollable. the mixing emphasizes the smallest details in the lush production, and the flow of the tracklist makes it so there’s nothing i would skip.
he really does try a lot though, and he succeeds. gnx may not have an immediately apparent concept like his work has in the past, but it feels like the whole point is kendrick providing his best case for why he’s the greatest of all time. he can do it all: r&b cuts, old-school boom bap, and perhaps most importantly, the modern west coast sound, specifically hyphy and nervous music. even back on mr. morale he tributed the legend drakeo the ruler, an artist who had a wholly unique take on the trends around him, and was also an anthropologist in his own right, gone too soon before he could truly put his stamp on the world, and that continues here. i obviously cannot comment on what is truly “authentic” to black art and culture, but what i can say is there’s something very heartwarming in how he seems to have returned to his roots in LA and really tried to bring out the past and present sounds of where he grew up. a song like “squabble up” pretty perfectly combines a classic laidback g-funk timbre with more modern hyphy production to very interesting results. of course it also continues his barrage on aubrey graham with hilariously brutal lines like “don’t hit him, he got kids with him, my apologies,” but more importantly it begins the first of the songs on gnx which plainly show the world where the future of the artform lies.
kendrick is gracious enough to spotlight up and coming artists from california like dody6, azchike, peysoh, youngthreat and more, as well as influential but undersung names like mustard (who from now on will never be undersung again lol). there are potentially valid critiques to be made about co-opting the sound in a commercial context, but i personally feel he puts his money where his mouth is in platforming them. now the world knows who did it. perhaps my favorite guest part is hitta j3, one of his childhood friends (who also appeared on the TPAB album cover) so he can talk in-depth about his personal struggles. kendrick understands he has to start uplifting those who don’t have the privilege he now does, rather than speaking for them.
kendrick hasn’t let go of the narrative tracks, but even those feel so much more potent than ever before. “reincarnated” is a song which, again, is very derivative of 2pac, not just because of the beat but kendrick’s voice clearly leaning into shakur’s gruff register as well. this is a concept that easily could have gone wrong, but it is one of the more key songs of the album as a whole. for the nerds out there, you could easily go deeper and deeper with the layers of his narrative, the perspectives he takes on, the way he charts the cycles of addiction which plague the artists he feels reborn from, it’s all there to unpack. but what was it he said in track 1? “i want y’all to feel this shit.” i’m in awe of how much his writing has improved compared to many of his past songs in this style. he’s so evocative with his words in a way reminiscent of all the great underground lyricists i love so dearly. with just a few lines he paints a complete picture of the conditions which led to the eventual demise of john lee hooker and billie holiday, and therefore 2pac. when kendrick himself steps to the mic in the final verse’s debate with god, you feel a whole history of music speaking through him, as he pleads with god to explain to him his purpose, with the answer being, you have to figure that out for yourself. and he does.
“man at the garden” is another song which moves me endlessly. a direct affirmation of what kendrick has and what he wants to achieve still, perhaps the key to his argument of being the best. “i deserve it all,” he repeatedly chants, a mantra which seems selfish but which he proves is anything but. he lives to serve the culture, and with everything he lists out on that song, you’re convinced that he really does deserve it all.
but the song which probably kills me the most is “heart pt. 6.” very pointedly ignoring drake’s unofficial entry in kendrick’s long-running song series, including discussing his loyalty to longtime best friend dave free (and in turn ending drake’s bullshit allegations of scandal), this is kendrick’s nostalgia trip, a return to the days of GKMC and before, taking stock of everything he and the rest of Top Dawg Entertainment did in order to get to where they are now. I tear up every time hearing the tales of these people in his camp and the sacrifices they made so kendrick could become the biggest of them. “Q said, ‘Dot, you won’t be slept on, you the _ to bet on.’” these disenfranchised young creatives all struggling together to make something of their dreams; the prominent SWV (and in turn neptunes, once again kendrick honoring his influences) sample acts as a warm hug for these stories to resonate. by the end where kendrick discusses his split from black hippy and TDE, and his need to become an exec of sorts, but in order to uplift more young artists, to create something truly new and groundbreaking, you fully buy into his new quest.
i look around at my friends, the people i grew up with, the people who have been through the fire with me and managed to come out of the other end hand-in-hand, and i can’t help but think of this song. everything i do, i want to be for the team. there’s a seemingly contradictory selfishness and selflessness that go hand-in-hand here, in understanding that in achieving your goals, in figuring out ways to make it in a corrupt system without losing your moral compass, you are achieving a victory for everyone around you. gnx is probably the most motivational album i heard this year; while cold visions got the ball rolling, bladee couldn’t help me make sense of what’s next like kendrick did. it’s time to evolve.
and there’s already been complication after complication, let down after let down, in this new journey of mine. but for the first time in my life i’ve learned perseverance. i’m never giving up again. in 2025 i am going to keep making decisions to better the quality of my life, show the world my ideas, and in turn help out those around me. those who want to stick with me in that journey, you are always welcome by my side. if you don’t, fuck off. quite frankly, i don’t have the time for you. as kendrick put it, "bitch i'd cut my granny off if she don't see it how i see it!"
i’m confident that by putting the right things into the world, even though i may make the wrong calls sometimes, good things will happen to me in kind. this is the energy i will move forward with. “fuck being rational, give em what they ask for!!!”
*(as an aside, if that lying fuck jordan carter chooses to finally drop in the next few days i won’t be updating this list)