Like most working music journalists, as well as those who rarely write about the form anymore but whose reputations linger in the field, I’m invited to participate in a handful of year-end projects somewhere between Halloween and Thanksgiving. This usually sparks a mad scramble to figure out what I actually listened to, and whether I can identify enough things that stood out from the dozens if not hundreds of albums I heard to create a reasonably authoritative top 10 list.
The year 2023 has proven especially difficult. I spent much of the past 12 months trapped in a process of evoking the past for numerous #HipHop50 projects. The result is that I didn’t listen to as much current rap music as I would have liked, and I couldn’t keep up with the sundry critic faves that populate the Zeitgeist.
Nevertheless, this is my final newsletter for the calendar year 2023 — the next one arrives January 1. I’ve run out of time.
Rolling Stone’s The 100 Best Albums of 2023
The first outlet that requested lists was Rolling Stone. I submitted my ballot on October 20(!).
(2022: SZA - SOS)
Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
Liv.e, Girl in the Half-Pearl
billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps
Mandy, Indiana, I’ve Seen a Way
Ice Spice, Like..?
Kelela, Raven
Yaeji, With a Hammer
Maxo, Even God Has a Sense of Humor
Yo La Tengo, This Stupid World
B. Cool-Aid, Leather Blvd.
I was subsequently asked to contribute a few blurbs to The 100 Best Albums of 2023. It was published on November 30.
Rolling Stone’s The 100 Best Songs of 2023
I submitted my singles ballot on the same day as the albums.
SZA, “Snooze”
PinkPantheress feat. Ice Spice, “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. II”
MIKE, Wiki & The Alchemist, “Mayors a Cop”
Kool Keith, “Kindergarten Adults”
Mitski, “My Love Mine All Mine”
Summer Walker, “Hardlife”
Slowdive, “alife”
That Mexican OT feat. Paul Wall & DRODi, “Johnny Dang”
Sexxy Red & Tay Keith, “Pound Town”
Peggy Gou, “(It Goes Like) Nana”
I also contributed blurbs to The 100 Best Songs of 2023. It was published on December 1.
The Wire’s 2023 Rewind
The second poll I participated in was The Wire’s annual Rewind. The magazine asked for an albums list and an archives (reissues) list, but I only sent the former on November 13.
Mitski, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (Dead Oceans)
Liv.e, Girl in the Half-Pearl (Real Life Music)
billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps (Backwoodz Studioz)
Mandy, Indiana, I’ve Seen a Way (Fire Talk)
Noname, Sundial (Noname Inc / AWAL)
Cleo Sol, Gold (Forever Living Originals)
MIKE, Burning Desire (10k)
Danny Brown, Quaranta (Warp)
Kelela, Raven (Warp)
Ice Spice, Like..? (10K Projects/Capitol Records)
This year, Wire editor Derek Walmsley asked me to write the Critics’ Reflections essay for Hip-Hop & R&B. And by the way, farewell and safe travels to Walmsley, who is stepping down from his position at the magazine.
Note that the writer Kiana Fitzgerald’s name is misspelled as “Kia Fitzgerald.”
Finally, I contributed a short essay to the magazine’s Rewind Reflections, where contributors and staffers reminisce on a moment that stood out, whether that be cultural, political, or personal. As I did in an earlier installment of this newsletter, I used the occasion to pay tribute to Harry Belafonte and Odds Against Tomorrow.
Uproxx Music Critics Poll 2023
In November, Uproxx sent out a call for its annual critics’ poll, an endeavor inspired by Village Voice’s much-missed Pazz & Jop poll. I submitted my ballot on November 29. The Uproxx Music Critics Poll Albums and Songs were published on December 15.
BTW, the song “Peach Fuzz” is from Mandy, Indiana’s I’ve Seen a Way.
Humthrush’s Notable Hip-Hop Albums of 2023 (?)
I usually publish my personal list of notable hip-hop albums when there are only a few days left in the calendar year. If you’re a frequent visitor to my website, you can expect to see a post in the next several days.
A warning: There are only 19 albums on this list. For reasons I’ll explain later on my site, I’m doing less than last year’s 50 entries. This is just a draft, and the final version may look slightly different.
AJ Suede & Young God, Parthian Shots
Armand Hammer, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
B. Cool-Aid, Leather Blvd.
billy woods & Kenny Segal, Maps
Black Milk, Everybody Good?
Danny Brown, Quaranta
Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist, Voir Dire
El Michels Affair & Black Thought, Glorious Game
Fatboi Sharif & Steel Tipped Dove, Decay
Ice Spice, Like..?
JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown, Scaring the Hoes
Kaytraminé, Kaytraminé
Larry June & the Alchemist, The Great Escape
Maxo, Even God Has a Sense of Humor
MIKE, Burning Desire
Noname, Sundial
Open Mike Eagle, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering
Skech185 x Jeff Markey, He Left Nothing for the Swim Back
Veeze, Ganger
As I mentioned earlier, I often felt like I couldn’t keep up with new rap in 2023 because I was stuck in the #HipHop50 past. But I couldn’t help notice a striking gap between what critics, tastemakers, and executives want rap music to be; and what rap actually is.
In 2023, the most celebrated pop music in the industry was fluid in gender and sexual orientation, progressive in ideas and themes, yet incongruously committed to a capitalist ethos in terms of execution, if only to survive in an economy increasingly dominated by venture capital. Rap, by contrast, is defiant in its male toxicity, relentlessly focused on short-term financial gains through super-serving diehard fans, often conservative in political outlook, and only tolerant of queer fluidity among women and nonbinary performers who nevertheless must weather its heteronormative rites of passage.
This dynamic has generated a few responses. Some critics — which sometimes include myself — largely ignore the rap mainstream in favor of an underground that outwardly seems more tolerant yet can also be equally regressive. Others just want to talk about the women who thrived, one of the year’s most heartrending outcomes yet not without its aesthetic problems. (See my Wire essay above.) Still others choose to favor form over function, arguing that it’s less important to focus on how, say, Detroit rapper Veeze is talking about the same ol’ bitches and money than to study the creative ways in which he renders these all-too-familiar topics and the cultural subtexts in his lyrics.
I read too many comments in publications and social media about how rap was doing fine, thank you very much, dismissing naysayers as old heads who need to dig deeper. Yet when the Grammy Awards announced its 2024 Album of the Year nominees, these same critics protested that no rap candidates were included. One can’t have it both ways, even after acknowledging how class, race, and politics affect the mainstream public’s perspective. The more that hardcore rap becomes a specialist’s medium, whether through mediocre sales or declining cultural impact, the less appeal it will have to poptimists, whether rightly or not.
As someone who remembers attending the now-defunct Dixieland Jazz Festival in Sacramento in the 1990s, I know that music cultures never truly die. They wither and fade, sometimes surging back into prominence, yet rarely with the force that accompanied their first flowering. Throughout, they continue to inform the future, just as you can trace a through line between Little Richard and Lil Uzi Vert.
The conversations around aging, legacy, and “losing recipes” that #HipHop50 engendered may have been fraught and painful. But even for those of us who aren’t musicians, it’s worth imagining how rap can continue to blossom as it inevitably recedes from popular view.