My Favorite Music of 2024 So Far (Recommend Me More!!)

An incomplete list of awesome music made this year.

Inevitably, these lists are always missing a lot. I’m not the internet’s busiest music nerd, and considering how much stuff that guy never even finds time to review or check out, I don’t know that being him would even help me to make the perfect list of all the great music from a certain year. There’s simply too much of it, and it takes too much effort to stay on top of it to do much more than simply enjoy whatever comes under your purview and pass it along. If you know some incredible music (that isn’t Charli XcX, idk why I haven’t fallen for her yet) that I missed from this list this year (and you can tell I might like it based on my taste—please do check out some of the stuff I recommend before dropping your own favorites), then leave it in the comments!

More than 100 songs that I love from this year are compiled in this playlist. A couple of them are from artists that made some other stuff I didn’t really love, but whose couple of truly great singles blew my lid off (IMAN by Maria Becerra, Girls by The Dare). Some of them are from artists that are currently still building to an album release, or have just dropped some random singles here and there (SIN MIEDO by JPEGMafia, AND I’M GONE by famtanyl). A lot of them are from overall fantastic albums, all of which hit for me on different levels. I’ll go in-depth.

Samurai by Lupe Fiasco - I knew this album was good on first-listen, but had to be better the more I could parse what’s really being said. Fantastic analysis from Justin Hunte and Professor Skye revealed to me the novel and brilliantly-realized concept of the album: imagining Amy Winehouse reborn into the rap persona she was hinting towards embodying before her early death. The hook on the title track references her phone message to a producer about being full of “these really neat, very beautifully alliterated little battle raps;” and it lived in my head the second I heard it (tho I had to read the lyrics to actually get them right). All over this album are stupendously dense lyrics at the forefront, with the pretty stripped-back, new-jabes old-school lo-fi beats.

I like the first half most. No. 1 Headband is the absolute bar-you-down, learn-this-I-dare-you rap of the year so far (and it’s got a ton of competition from Conway the Machine’s new album; while the Tech N9ne and Eminem albums sound almost bare by comparison). Mumble Rap is really interesting narratively (a homeless man imbues Amy with rap powers and vanishes; then she goes and wins a rap battle), and Cake is almost as memorably ear-wormy as Samurai. Slower songs on this album still hit in the context of the project as a whole, but it’s a little easier to stop paying attention to those—especially in the second half, where several slower songs sort of start to bleed into one-another, before Till Eternity confirms itself an eternally-repeatable meaning-jam. I can easily see listening to this whole album dozens or hundreds of times, but most especially the tracks I named.

Dauntless Manifesto by CupcakKe - Beyond living up to its name, this album slapped my dick right off my body and shot it up my ass so fast I puked it back onto the empty space. I’d never heard of CupcakKe ‘till “Grilling Ni**as II” came thru my YouTube recommendation; she immediately made everything else I’d ever heard sound fuck-weak by comparison. All over this album are the nastiest, raunchiest, most intense lyrics—delivered with constant, full-throated intent like no one else has ever matched. Rappers without her clear diction and constant multi-tracking will never sound as threatening as CupcakKe describing (in the clearest detail) how she’s going to fuck you on her period and queef on your dick.

I think you can take this album in a lot of ways and orders, as it really is more a collection of random songs with similar energy than anything conceptual. A lot of these songs are really funny, but not something I really want to listen to actively because they’re not honestly relatable to me. Cruella being the second track I heard by luck of the algorithm made it obvious that CupcakKe can back up all of that Em-meets-Kim nastiness with sincere knowledge, perspective and technical rapping ability, and execute all of the rules perfectly before she goes back to totally breaking and stomping all over them. Double Homicide is a personal favorite for bars like, “head, shoulders, knees and toes—I bet that bitch won’t leave with those.” A few songs get more emotional about relationships, and Dementia (about your man not calling) hit with me, especially for its addicting hook. DUI was my favorite of the outright comedy songs, and one of a few places it almost feels like a Lonely Island album, or This Is Gangsta Rap (look that up, you’ll remember what it is).

Bando Stone and the New World Soundtrack by Childish Gambino - I hope the movie will be good, it looks fun and I love Glover, and Lithonia might be my favorite song of the year—at least the best for karaoke and the song I most-immediately knew I’d still be listening to in five or ten years probably. My first impression was that Gambino had made some kind of Green Day-meet-My Chemical Romance song (it was billed as his “rock debut” somehow), or maybe even something like The Killers when they’re doing their usual Bruce Springsteen impression; but then I re-read an old Film Crit Hulk article about “The Non-Crisis of Infinite Donald Glovers,” in which he mentions Gambino aping Bowie on Awaken, My Love, and that’s when it all clicked: in every way, shape, and form, Childish Gambino is ‘doing a Bowie;’ and nailing it IMHO.

I listened to this whole album twice, and it’s all good; although I doubt I’ll hear it all again. Like with Atavista, Glover has approached pop music from practically a whole different avenue of genre with every track; and this one is less-experimental, more immediate and captures each of the genres it approaches with such confidence, it’s hard to even imagine how the same dude wrote all 19 or however many goddamn songs there are on this thing; and yet the content and the heart of it is so consistent that it still feels clearly like the same album. Much of it is quite contextual (I can imagine the context I would most want to hear the songs, even if I’m not expecting to really find myself in them almost ever). One of the best things about this album is introducing me to Amaare, whose voice is awesome and helped make Talk My Shit my second-favorite on the album. Yoshinoya is fun too, and actively pissed off my parents when I was listening to it incidentally nearby. No Excuses is a proggy journey.

sleep paralysis by bbymutha - My only complaint about this album is it’s kinda samey, with loosely-structured, minimally-written songs, a ton of “yuh” adlibs, and flows that don’t switch much. Luckily, those flows are unique and addicting, those minimal songs are made of the weirdest sound combinations this side of Peggy’s work, and bbymutha’s thick Chattanooga, Tennessee accent is addicting. It’s trippy, druggy, energetic, stage party rap that makes me want to be at the show. gun kontrol is the standout and starter, proclaiming “I do whatever I want” over gunshot sounds and heavy bass in-between youtube clips about maintaining an AR-15.

lines is the song I heard first thru Spotify’s recommendation algorithm, and its off-kilter, delirious energy drew me in, as well as its “if you about it better be about it” sub-hook. For me, the album stands mostly on its rawness and energy, with tony hawk, ghostface, nice/nasty, final girl, and go! all hitting hard in a flurry of funny bars and wild beats. More than anything tho, what sets bbymutha apart is being a literal mother of five, rapping about her loyalty to her man (instead of blowing thru guys like they’re nothing) and the stability of her relationship and family, even while goofing around in Sailor Moon pajamas and threatening other bitches with violence.

Where The Butterflies Go In The Rain by Raveena - I’ve heard this album only once thru, but without qualification it is my favorite of the year so far, and the most emotional I’ve gotten over a piece of art in quite a while (which is saying something, considering 3AM by Rapsody with Erykah Badu is also on this list). Unyieldingly pleasant, nice, calming, peaceful, and emotionally direct in a way that speaks to me too personally. “We Should Move Somewhere Beautiful” got me hard-crying, and the fact it leads straight into Kid did NOT help with that. Really tho, it’s more like I cracked after tearing up near the end of Lucky and Rise; each of which transported me mentally to my favorite places in the middle of the desert where I fantasized about getting to listen to this in the open air.

In the middle of this disarming emotional journey into yacht-R&B, there’s a few pop songs that are still incredibly emotional (Baby Mama almost more than I can handle), Junebug is the dreamy acid-pop song that introduced me to Raveena in the first place by way of the JPEGMafia feature (he’s great here, in one of his most-sincere performances maybe ever), Lose My Focus and 16 Candles hit me least on the album but still felt like eternal pop songs I’d never be upset to hear. Water at the end really gives Manchester Orchestra, The River at the end of Mean Everything To Nothing, and the whole album compared to that one hits me in kind of a similarly big way, but it’s way more intense here because the music pulls my guard so low, and the lyrics aren’t even veiled with a shred of irony. Nearly flawless album, unbelievable musical achievement, and easily my candidate for AOTYSF.

God Complex by Billy the Fridge - When I was a guest on the Drunken Peasants Podcast in 2018, I didn’t really know anything about Billy besides that he was a fan of Endless Jess and his Peestyle rap that they’d played a lot on the show; I found out later after meeting my husband Bird and his bff Riley that Billy is also a rapper himself, with hilarious classics like Dumb and Bill. When he dropped a new album, I expected some funny bars, but Billy delivered way more than expected, with loads and loads of quotables (“turn a mid-life crisis to a mid-life chrysalis”), a huge variety of concept tracks (Kill Tony is my favorite, hair-standing high-wire comedy-horror act, New Jesus is about worshipping Mr. Beast, Wear the Crown is about eating the rich in the most literal way, etc.), and even places where it gets more sincerely emotional.

Fat Boy Winter came out a little early, but its time will come—Time Bomb has a beat that’s begging for me to feature on it, so I hope Billy calls me up for the remix. Evolution has one of the year’s most memorable hooks (and instrumental hooks too, from that trumpet), and the opening bars of the opening track are addictive in their own right, too. Overall, an independent hip-hop album that stands above most of the mainstream in quality and creativity.

VANTABLACK by Lalah Hathaway - I won’t front like I relate to most of this album that starts with the declaration “this is the story of a black girl” and then follows thru on a black pride anthem (it would feel weird for me to “agree” with the self-accepting stereotypes described in the song—I’m sure they’re Lalah’s honest experiences); but I love Lalah’s voice, the themes she speaks on, her mentality and attitude (another dedicated mother and wife), and especially her self-empowerment anthems. #BITMFW is an all-timer, truly one of the most convincing declarations of being the greatest in the world. You Don’t Know is also self-celebration, but this time on the topic of how much effort she puts into making her relationship work because of just how deeply she cares for her partner (Phonte plays a similar role in this song to the one Peggy played on Junebug).

The Energy is a smooth, repeatable jam with almost Cee Lo Green vibe; I find I appreciate Lalah most for her ability to subdue her big voice into so many subtle usages. Songs like The Machine or TUNNELS almost push the vocals into the background as part of the instrumentation, and there are lovely songs without any lyrics at all amid all the sweet and emotional poems. There’s a lot to like about this album, from the title track to Lower with Gerald Albright, but it’s also a long album with lots of different moods, that I think will hit different depending where you’re at.

KING OF THE MISCHIEVOUS SOUTH by Denzel Curry - I’ve gotten torn on Denzel Curry in recent years; I appreciate his massive talent and conceptual approach to music, but I think we connected most in a period when both of us were struggling with self-identity and trying to empower ourselves toward betterness. “Killed my insecurities because they tried to make me soft,” had been the line that got me looking into his lyrics back on ZELTRON 6 BILLION with Lil’ Ugly Mane; but killing our insecurities took the two of us in very different directions. In a most-direct sense, it seems Denzel has embraced his manhood and masculinity more than ever, as if to say that he’s gotten over the emotional turmoil he was struggling with up thru his last album (when having his first meaningful relationship was becoming therapy) and is ready to boss up and go beast mode in perpetuity now. I still can’t get over him saying “I am not an emo rapper,” tho, when Clout Cobain was one of his biggest singles. Sure, he’s not Oliver Francis and he’s certainly not Lil Peep, but there’s no reason to act like he isn’t adjacent or hasn’t run in similar circles extensively.

Personal differences of ideology aside, though, even if I don’t relate to the identity Denzel is trying to embody on this album, I think in places he sells me that it’s still a really cool guy to be. I always like Denzel the most when he writes around a concept, and I can hardly blame him for pulling back on that aspect if he thinks he needs to for reaching the broader audience (he mentions having to “dumb it down” at one point on this album), but I’m not that broader audience, so it’s a little sad for me. Denzel kinda gets smoked on his own tracks a lot by the features here, with HOODLUMZ being my favorite on the album entirely because of PlayThatBoiZay and A$AP Rocky, and HOT ONE a second-favorite because TiaCorine rescues us from kind of a weak hook. I love all the Memphis-core sound, the Project Pat feature (beat on SKED is fucking insane), and Denzel has some great bars here and there, but there’s a bunch of skippables too, and the Lunatic interlude might be my favorite part of the whole album (in my ‘cypher on this’ playlist now).

Slant Face Killah by Conway the Machine - I hope you like rhymes, because Conway has all of them. I’ll never have to feel guilty about abandoning my birth name when someone else with a similar name has found every possible way to use it in rap. In a way, Conway is like the platonic ideal of a gangsta rapper—about the life, basically just trying to make a lot of money and fuck a lot of women on the basis of sounding really good on a beat, and his approach is to make the most technical craft sound breezy, thugnacious and threatening. He’s a deeper-voiced Ghostface Killah rapping a little faster, or maybe he’s a combination of a bunch of Wu-Tangs into one. If there’s one thing I know about rappers from Buffalo, it’s that they love the Wu-Tang clan. I always like a few songs from any given Wu-Tang member’s new releases (Ghostface Killah has at least one in the playlist above), but they’re all so deep in their career that they have to really make something new or collaborate to have a reason to do anything at all. Conway doesn’t have this concern—he’s young and hungry and going full-throttle practically nonstop across this album. Some songs didn’t do anything for me, the rest are on the list, but it’s not so much a bunch of distinctly great songs, so much as an endless sequence of great-sounding rap (these songs often get up to 6 minutes without any hooks) like a stream-of-pimp-consciousness. Conway also has a great new song with Spanish-speaking rapper Elio Toffana, who also has a new album that, even tho I couldn’t understand five words of it, landed a few entries in the playlist.

Please Don’t Cry by Rapsody - I agree with Professor Skye that she might as well go by her name, Marlanna Evans—especially when she calls herself by name so often on the album. This is intensely personal and specific in a lot of places and will hit differently when you’re in the same mood that she’s in; but some tracks are overwhelmingly emotional. 3AM is a show-stopper, and the track about coming to terms with a loved one’s dementia is heart-breaking. Back in my Bag is a fun hype-up for the workout playlist, and Rapsody is pretty good at sounding cool and varied over the album; I only think she comes up a little soft when speaking on bigger issues, usually more-so name-dropping and quoting people that’ve had something to say, rather than saying something original herself about bigger issues. She’s at her best talking about herself and her experiences in such an unguarded way that you feel like you’re right there with her emotionally, even when you can’t necessarily relate. It’s a bit long and a bit too much of a mixed bag, but there’s definitely gold in there.

LOOSE ENDS:

Magdalena Bay has a new album dropping next month that I’ve pre-saved in pure hype. This is my favorite pop group right now, especially for last year’s EP with Top Dog and Tonguetwister on it. Their even-better new song Image sounds more like something MGMT might do than any of that group’s imitators ever came close to; and Death and Romance is an emotional pop epic.

femtanyl has three new tracks this year, and it’s hard to know if they’re building to a bigger release, or just intended as stand-alone. So far, fem has only collected 6 songs into an EP once, and mostly dropped singles, but practically every song they release hits hard as fuck at whatever it’s doing. I hope I can get a feature one day.

Remi Wolf has a new album, I haven’t heard it all the way thru yet, but I loved Pitiful, and the rest up to that point was only reading as just-okay to me. Her song Liquor Store I got put onto last year lives in my head rent-free and I can see Pitiful getting there; if there’s another all-timer on here I’ll find out later.

Vince Staples new album is very good, but it’s swimming in this kinda-low moodspace that I don’t occupy much. Little Homies is my favorite for sure, with an all-time hook (“life hard, but I go harder”). Black&Blue is great too, most of this is too much of a mood for me tho. Similarly with the other cryp-rap album of the year, Blue Lips from Schoolboy Q, which again has some cool songs but I haven’t spun it much just out of not really relating to its mood. While it’s not cryp-rap or even hip-hop, I can say similarly about the new Chelsea Wolfe, which is a kind of lowkey unnerved goth vibe that I can appreciate, but only really enjoyed for the first song.

Fantastic Negrito has a new song with Sting, which is great but also fun for me because they are, respectively, my husband and my dad’s favorite musicians.

Barns Courtney finally dropped his new album; with ten tracks in 30 minutes, and three of the songs already being nearly two years old, it almost feels like a formality of a release. I’ve loved Supernatural for a long while now, Golden was great, didn’t care for the third single. There’s 2 good new songs I added to the playlist, but I’m not including the songs that I wore out long before the album dropped.

That op for Mashle Season 2 goes unreasonably hard. I’m sure I’ve missed some other good anime songs this year, but this one was totally unmissable.

I don’t have anything to say about the other singles in the list, they’re good and fun songs I don’t have much to say about. Thanks for reading! Now go listen!!