Albums, 2024

putting this list together gets tougher every year as streaming decimates the concept of traditional albums unless the artist demands it but the depth of quality records still surprises me when I compile ten long-players of twelvish songs that go well together. by principle of sustained study (what great albums accomplish) this list tends to be more personal and less engaging than the songs list but I am unsure how to fix that. all this to say I don’t think the album is dead but I wish Spotify was

10. Manning Fireworks
I enjoy listening to this album

9. BLOND BOY NEWS 2
8. Unrecognisable
after college I entered a world of snapbacks and tattoos high-top supras stussy shirts and pants a stack of pink dolphin tees “loud pockets” always on MTV Jams I drove a scion xb listening to yeahyeahyeah as-ton mar-tin mu-sic; a world where hippos in tanks and hype williams were the future of music

7. VAYTRIX
everybody got that one weird rapper they been following forever

6. SEXC SUMMER
5. PLAY CASH COBAIN/SEX DRIVE
real “girls have fancy boys have classic man” hours

4. Ehhthang Ehhthang
a great collection of rap songs without the bloat of her album, lined with straight classics; “yeah glo!” was song of the year, namechecked by my niece and my boss

3. Hold Tight/Beryl
finally h-town has a seat at the club table. he does more than this but the elevator, pull-out-your-headphones pitch—a stupidly simple equation only big ace was brilliant enough to do—take your favorite houston/southern rap samples and make them bang like newark and baltimore, “southern club” made me proud

2. My Method Actor
there’s a place where “heartbreaking” and “warm” and “tender” and “masterpiece” have gone to die but they’re rescued by this record’s grace. what’s invigorating about this album and yanya in general is she’s never cheating you out of something, everything is intentional without feeling fussed-over. a sign of a singular masterpiece as this one is her ability to turn the stone over and over and keep finding new things underneath, even if you start to think the songs blur together in the middle (my favorite stretch of the album). artists as recently as this year have mined the “actor” metaphor for easily put together pathos but she gets at it: typed out it looks trite but when I peel back the truth it’s something about who we pretend to be in order to love and to receive the love we decide we deserve and committing (or not) to the bit. I’m also stoked she made a full-length with the lovelorn late-spring magic-hour feel of her 2020 EP feeling lucky? which had my favorite yanya song ever “same damn luck” until “ready for sun”

1. Hovvdy
This album changed me and not just because the cover photo got me to buy mid-rise jeans for the first time since middle school—it entrenched my goals regarding what I want to do with my life and crystalized beliefs I have held since the start of adulthood.

My first spin I wasn’t sure what I was listening to: it sounded like a mixture of Uncle Kracker, Goo Goo Dolls, John Mayer, the Postal Service, Grizzly Bear. An instinct of mine I’ve learned to trust is if I have a hard reaction to something to examine it—like, what’s really going on behind the rapping(?) on the second verse of “Forever”—so I honored that and was rewarded.

Vulnerability means being ok with embarrassing yourself. This has allowed for some truly bad art, and heinous people to write permission slips for their transgressions. Hovvdy aren’t doing this—he’s half-rapping unashamedly because he means it—but there’s a gut-level “this is wack” danger to these songs I don’t have a counterargument for.

Except: it isn’t? Maybe you too have done “Follow Me” at karaoke and had a room full of people of disparate ages and races clap their hands and sing along to that song’s final two minutes? To echo something that gets said every time people share a clip of an I Love the Decades show: we used to have to appreciate a song from Kid Rock’s DJ between culture-shifting art produced by the Neptunes / DMX / Mariah (pick your sacred cow of early ‘00s poptimism). I see the same democratic approach in Hovvdy’s songwriting. “Gravity” is the only song I remember from prom. Their swords are sharp, too: both principal songwriters/members of the band, Charlie Martin and Will Taylor, are signed to publishers with writing credits on pop albums.

It’s a double-album in name, not in game, and its 53 minutes could fit on a single disc. I interpret its sprawl as the same stretch of the limbs one occupies in a rocking chair, on the front porch—let’s let these songs breathe. The double-album fake-out is an urge to take it easy and an acknowledgment of the limited time we have, but there’s no rush, we have what we need. It approaches the post-quarterlife pre-midlife crisis black lodge red room from a more hopeful, Texan (they’re from Austin) approach than my previous metric for that, the Wrens’ Meadowlands, an album I had no business listening to in high school and so scarred me I haven’t returned to it since. I would guess Hovvdy love The Meadowlands as much as Give Up and that’s a vibe.

If you’re not paying attention, it can sound mawkish, but the record comes with a warning on opening track “Bubba” which opens right at “change your plans” after receiving life-altering news:

I’ll cut it out/I’ll get a goddamn grip/Hold onto it for awhile

Hovvdy is their attempt to get a grip, to ground themselves for 19 songs, even as its characters cry folding their deceased grandfather’s clothes, apologize for ghosting their friends, ache over a neighbor who “never gets a hi or a hello.” It’s brimming with all forms of love, from commitment on “Forever” to Dntel-indebted infatuation anxiety on “Every Exchange,” to friendship and family (“Jean,” an adventure on I-10) to elder care (“Make Ya Proud” and “grandpa can you take a bigger bite”). There will always be 30+-year-olds who search for adult realness as they attempt to abandon youthful ferocity so there will always be a place for Hovvdy.

Grounding the record on the first song is important, otherwise it could be dismissed as maudlin. As Katt Williams once asked: “how are you angry at breakfast?” When do you become a person? There’s a point when you can expect life to take from you instead of continually give to you. Hovvdy explores when the aperture gets smaller, making time for appreciation and grief.

Hovvdy made clear for me that, as long as it is ecologically/environmentally feasible (before the gulf coast’s collapse) I want to return to Texas eventually because it is “home” and always will be. After soliciting advice from a handful of people I respect I shelved grad school plans for at least another year but I plan to go or at least explore avenues. This passion is a privilege, and we are torn between earning money in a city while “all my friends are on my phone” and needing to live our truest life. I don’t feel this is a choice. Stability is not guaranteed with this administration. This reckoning is how all 30+ people feel when they have more life ahead of them than behind them but the window to map that out is shrinking in real-time.

There’s irony on “Big Blue,” the record’s skeleton key, each verse a vignette of drab suburban angst—on the hook, the narrator vows to “do a pivot, be a game-changer” but it’s unclear what he intends. In the meantime he’ll carelessly ignore an uncle who “loves [me] like a son” (the anguish we inflict in avoiding intimacy), he’ll casually “take a trip to Texas/get together with my friends,” he’ll note the daily routine of the “old lady neighbor with her dog walking by.” It’s prosaic but feels as high-pressure as SlimeGetEm.

The cliché that everyday is mystical is a lie I have untethered myself from yet I cling to the legend the Texas sunset is transcendent, does contain multitudes. No authority less than Philly-born Alex G wrote an entire song about southern skies. The irony of “Big Blue” is we never learn what the narrator vows to do, how he’ll improve, what it means for him to pivot, what the escape from malaise is, we just know he wants to be a game-changer and he really means it, and I am just stupid enough to take it at face value.

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50 Songs I Liked in 2024

GloRilla “TGIF” / Kendrick Lamar “squabble up” / Mello Buckzz “Move” / STAR BANDZ “Yea Yea” / Bossman Dlow “Get in With Me” / BigXthaPlug “Mmhmm” / Latto “Sunday Service” / JT “JT Coming” / Ice Spice ft. Central Cee “Did it First” / 41 “Chill Guy”

wolfacejoeyy “finsta” / Bktherula & Cash Cobain “SHAKIN IT” / R2R Moe “MADE4ME” / HiTech “SPANK!” / LaRussell ft. P-Lo & D-Lo & Malachi & Raymon Marco “Yankin!” / YT ft. Lancey Foux “Black & Tan” / Niko B “Why’s this dealer?” / seiji oda “a gentle gigg…” / Vince Staples “Etouffee” / Megan Thee Stallion “Bigger in Texas”

SlimeGetEm “HellRaiser” / Rio Da Yung OG “RIO FREE” / Nino Paid & Lil Gray “Money Problems” / Jaeychino & JodyBoof “Guitar Hero” / Skrilla “Vampire” / Chuckyy “100 Days 100 Nights” / BabyChiefDoIt “Wonderful Time” / Anycia ft. Luh Tyler “CALL” / LL Cool J “Basquiat Energy” / Chief Keef “Believe”

skaiwater “real feel” / LAZER DIM 700 “Asian Rock” / Pablo Skywalkin “Why You Ain’t Call” / xaviersobased “KeepItGoin” / J.U.S. “DON’T DO DRUGS!” / RRoxket “Ganger” / Hook “i think i go to hell” / Tony Shhnow “Tryna See” / Fat Tony & Fatboi Sharif “Medicine Man” / Ka “True Holy Water”

Summer Walker “Heart of a Woman” / Tyla “Breathe Me” / Tems “Love Me JeJe” / Laila! “Not My Problem” / Lucky Daye “HERicane” / Jordan Ward & JOONY “One Too Many Times” / Leon Thomas “MUTT” / SiR “Six Whole Days” / Junglepussy “Black Opal” / JMSN & Sada Baby “Soft Spot”

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