Your Old Droog is the kind of rapper who can release a song with Denzel Curry and Method Man verses and a Celebrity Death Match-inspired music video in 2024 and still be someone you might not know exists; a weird mix of access to the ability to realize a creative vision and also criminal near-anonymity in the mainstream. I was made aware of him via his 2017 collaboration with Heems "Bangladesh", a song I'll probably dedicate at least one full post to at some point, and I did listen to the album it was on (Packs) a decent amount, but I somehow checked out for... 6 albums in 7 years after that?

Movie, from last year, has Pretty Toney-era decadence vibes. "I Think I Love Her" is a slick parasocial love song complete with a music video that feels like the perfect companion to Charli XCX's "Boys" visual. "Mantra" addresses his upbringing as a Russian immigrant. "The Interview" is maybe the funniest skit I've heard on a hip-hop album since Prince Paul's peak? "What Else" recalls Clipse's "Mr. Me Too" with its confidence.

There's also an incredible punch-in tactic at play on a handful of tracks on this album where Droog acts as his own... hype man, sort of? Because one of the things that he does is self-consciously shout "what?" or "who?" whenever he makes a reference that I guess he thinks is too obscure? It's so funny and weird and charming and is honestly the best argument for why you should listen to this album, so I'll stop there.

The whole Ice Spice thing has maybe not panned out so far the way it looked like she might when she co-starred with Nicki in the "Barbie World" interpolation in 2023 but nothing can take away the moment of watching this video when it came out and being like "oh shit Worldstar is actually breaking a genuine new star in 2022?"

Kendrick saying “brother” at the end of every line in the middle part of his verse never fails to crack me up

Cliffdiver's second full-length album really delivered for me. It's not surprising in hindsight that their debut album Exercise Your Demons wouldn't live up to the high expectations set by their 2020 song Gas City; it's by all means a good album but for me it lacked the sort of top-tier memorability that I'm looking for when listening to this sort of on-the-nose pop-punk "DIY" music. Birdwatching, as a counterpoint, sold me from the very start with opener "thirty, flirty, and thriving!!!" Co-lead vocalists Joey Duffy and Briana Wright are both extremely charming, the band's work continues to be my favorite use of the saxophone in recent memory, the whole album kinda breezes by and dares you to go back to the start and listen all over again like many of my favorite albums this year, and I would like one hundred more years of Cliffdiver songs to put me in a good mood and make me feel thirty years old again.

bards will be like "so baby listen carefully / while I sing my combat song"

This second album by the Australian slacker-rock duo is a perfect example of why I love Run For Cover Records. It's unfortunately brief, weighing in at just 19 minutes across 7 tracks, but I had it in the rotation pretty regularly in 2024. The lofi music videos put out over the course of the year match the vibe pretty well. More of this please!

new Lorde album (but good this time)

there's a sort of weird slowed-breakbeat-ness to the drums on this track, right?

just thinking about how if we got new music from both sadurn and cartalk this year that'd pretty much be all I need

the "You Could Make a Case For" series is for albums that did not spring to mind for me immediately, but when reviewing the stuff I did actually listen to this year, I noticed them as things that I definitely did find myself pressing play on during the course of the year.

I first learned about Durante via the 2019 Fabric DJ mix by electronic artist Bonobo, an album I listened to constantly both by myself and when putting on music for other people. His track "Maia" swoops in beautifully and while he didn't have many tracks released at that point, I was excited eventually to discover his 2021 song "Thread Tension", a driving, hypnotic track. There were some releases here and there but it was this year's Enter and the accompanying February and May DJ mixes that I could tell there was something special he was doing, creating a sound I'm really glad to have had available to me this year.