We made it! The new year is around the corner. Happy holidays to all my loyal readers, I’m sorry I have been so absent from the blog. It’s been a weird year. In some ways much better than the past few for me, but in some ways way worse. But there’s been some great stuff this year and I want to share it! Let’s celebrate something!

I love a list. I love a best of. I love a recap. I hate that accursed genocidal Spotify is the driver of the surge in cool little shareable recaps. I’m also mad at Substack for taking the desolate landscape of social media in 2025 and diving right in to enshittification. This is no longer a writing platform, if it ever was one. As with any personal best of list, this is partially a work of ego, but I hope that someone finds something new from this short writeup of some of my favorite stuff this year.

Songs:

Let’s start with my favorite songs of the year (not ranked). There’s a significant helping of yearning here, but an even larger helping of looking at the future. I guess I needed a lot of that this year:

DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS was revelatory in my narrow little world this spring, a remarkably broad and breathtaking album. If I was less capricious about my lists there would probably be four songs from it in my top 10. Choosing between NUEVAYoL, PERFuMITO NUEVO, EL CLúB, LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii, or DtMF was nearly impossible. I could probably list the whole album here, but the warmth and yearning in PERFuMITO NUEVO is what I return to the most. I also fucking love a 6 minute song.

Let God Sort Em Out was another revelation in my year. I’ve been into Clipse since before their reunion was confirmed, ever since Zohran Mamdani’s video director posted that Hell Hath No Fury was one of the best produced albums they’d ever heard in 2023. The Neptunes remain my favorite producers ever (I finally dove into more Kelis and N*E*R*D this year), but LGSEO still somehow kills without Chad Hugo. Every time I miss him, and his absence is conspicuous, Pharrell’s beats slam through my critical ear. I’m basically doing a write-up on the album here, but that’s because I was in a similar spot to DTMF on this song, as I could select nearly any song on LGSEO as my favorite. F.I.C.O. triumphs by virtue of Stove God Cooks’ delectable hook and Malice’s transcendent verse. The numerology!!!!!!!!!!!

I saw Kehlani on her After Hours Tour in September 2024, and I’m furious that Folded didn’t exist yet. Smooth, sultry, achingly hot R&B delivered by one of the handful of principled artists bordering the mainstream. Folded may be the crowning achievement of her stunning discography.

I saw Lupe live in a tiny venue in October 2024, during a dark time in my life where his show was one of a few scant bright lights. SOS is a tight, dense, and delicious song from the greatest rapper ever. It’s a mission statement that is tarnished by Lupe’s embrace of AI, but it’s a statement that stands tall on its own. An earworm of a beat that’s indebted to rap’s past while looking forward to its bright future joined by Lupe’s inimitable voice. One of his best!

RAYE is doing some of my favorite stuff right now. Not much to say about this one, it’s smooth and well-engineered in the way that all Mark Ronson’s best stuff is. They’re a perfect collaboration, bringing out a sound that sidesteps vapid nostalgia in favor of a rich sonic dream.

Offset’s 2025 album KIARI sucks ass. Bodies rocks. Offset brings his absolute A-game to an infectious beat. It takes artistry to paint a picture as luscious as this song! JID has been my third favorite rapper this year, and I suspect he’ll stay near the top for a while yet. His verse on this is unreal and the grand cinematic flavor of the production is exactly what I wanted all summer. I could have put a bunch of other JID stuff on here, I’ve loved WRK, Backyard with TiaCorine, and all of God Does Like Ugly.

RAYE’s back! Yearning is back! Men might be back! Love is back! I almost dismissed this song because the first time I heard it was in a YouTube ad, but once I gave it the time it never left my rotation.

Sudan Archives. What a 2025 for her. If you take anything away from this blog it’s that Sudan Archives deserves a trillion flowers for making the best pop-adjacent music this year and honestly of the last few years. She’s special! I’m seeing her live in a month!!

Okay listen. Yeat is stinky and ugly and gross and took the wrong route out of PDX. This music video sucks ass. I recently learned that one of my best friends’ families is like really connected to Yeat because he grew up near them, and it honestly made me less embarrassed to share a hometown with Logic. All that said, this song is great.

All the chatter about the lack of a song of the summer this year… and yet Lowly was there…

Honorable mentions

Albums

I’ve already mentioned DeBí TiRAR MáS FOToS and Let God Sort Em Out, probably my two favorite albums of the year. Perverts by Ethel Cain is also up in that top tier, along with Through the Wall by Rochelle Jordan with its spot-on lush and sweaty late night vibe. I also loved LUX by Rosalía despite its tinges of “elevating” the Latin American sounds she built herself on with European musical sensibilities. Young Fathers’ 28 Years Later score is stunning and the best part of a fantastic film. Sudan Archives’ THE BPM is fantastic, grand, and danceable. Mereba’s The Breeze Grew a Fire has been my go-to contemplative drive home album, taking the spot of Jessica Pratt’s Here In The Pitch from last year. Westside Gunn’s fantastic 12 and HEELS HAVE EYES 2 made me hungry to dive deeper into his discography. JID’s God Does Like Ugly cemented his status as one of the most exciting and consistent artists working. Tunde Adebimpe’s Thee Black Boltz reminded me that my parents might still have good taste. I could go on, but I will use my last sentence to shittalk Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Joey Bada$$, and Offset.

Movies

I have not seen many movies I liked this year. My ranking for the year has 3 movies I loved, 1 I liked, and 7 I either disliked or hated. I think I will catch up on a bunch of them in the next few months, as I know there have been some great ones that I missed, but it’s been a rough year. The disappointments of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning and Superman have been hard to wash from my mouth, as have expected letdowns like Frankenstein and Weapons. Wake Up Dead Man was a pleasant surprise, but the real star this year was Sinners. It’s so fucking cool to love a movie with everyone and see it resonate deeply with so many people. I heard discussions about Sinners in the comic shop! My favorite history professor played a clip to introduce her class! I rewatched it with my best friends and we all loved it! One Battle After Another was almost a similar vibe to Sinners in the triumphalist community around it, though it’s much more limited to cinephiles. I also have a host of issues with how that movie portrays Black women and revolution, but it is a JAWS level work of tense and fun filmmaking. 28 Years Later is my current number one on the year for its unflinching look at mass death and the necessary mourning, juxtaposed against the same noxious brand of nostalgia that is in our governments eating away at reality.

Comics

ABSOLUTE MARTIAN MANHUNTER by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez

If there’s a second thing (after listening to Sudan Archives), that you do after reading this list, it’s go to a bookstore or comic store and pick up a copy of the first 6 issues of Absolute Martian Manhunter collected in paperback or hardcover format. This is THE comic of the year, a shockingly dense exploration of our eroded world where no two people hold the same truth. I thought a lot about this comic after Charlie Kirk croaked.

The ABOMINATION arc of Absolute Batman was also superb, though weighed down by some poor pacing choices. I haven’t finished it but Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum has been strong through three issues. Absolute Wonder Woman remains great, though its art is leagues better than its writing. Kelly Thompson must hate her letterer. The Power Fantasy stays great. Shame about the Ultimate Universe.

Games

BLUE PRINCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blue Prince broke my brain and healed my brain and made me transgender again. If you’ve never played a video game in your life don’t play Blue Prince but maybe you should. The way that everyone talks about Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium is how I feel about Blue Prince! Allegedly Outer Wilds and Disco Elysium are great, and I can’t muster the strength to articulate why they didn’t hold me, but Blue Prince is absolutely the real deal. If you love puzzles, thinking, mysteries, and being alive, Blue Prince is for you. It’s somehow a roguelike that I love! I though that didn’t exist!

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach

Death Stranding 2 is also wonderful, one of the tightest and most satisfying games I’ve ever played. It’s not as harmonious and wonderful as the first game, but its innovations in gameplay and design scratch the ridges of my brain I forgot I had. I wish its gender politics weren’t so abysmal, but it’s not much worse than any given FromSoftware game and everybody loves those. It’s also the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. Retaining a team for decades plus having an actual artistic vision works wonders. You can also shake a baby:

Indies I Loved:

Despelote has some of the most naturalistic writing, voice acting, and audio mixing I’ve ever heard. A perfect game to show someone skeptical about the worth of video games. A perfect rebuttal to The Game Awards consumer-first mindset.

Skate Story has the best soundtrack of 2025. Its vibes are immaculate.

Signing off

Thank you for reading! I would love to hear some of your favorite things of the year, I will hopefully be indulging in them over the next week or so of true rest before I must lock back in. Happy holidays and happy new year <333