Frank Ocean

Frank Ocean is the oldest (chronologically speaking) artist on my list; most of the other stuff on here I got into in 2017 or after. I spent a lot of time listening to Frank in 2016 and not much since then. That’s partially because there haven’t been any new Frank albums since 2016 (although I’m super excited to see him at Coachella next year), partially because my tastes in & depth of appreciation of music have changed a lot in the last 2-3 years, but I think mostly because Frank’s music is very emotionally powerful and I’ve formed deep associations between his music and 2016 that make it harder to listen to now the same way it’s hard to read old diary entries. Frank Ocean’s music is somehow simultaneously raw & emotional and well thought out & conceptually organized. Both Channel Orange and Blond were fantastic albums, but my favorite of the two is Blonde, and in general one of my favorite front-to-back albums is Blond.

I have two very fond Frank Ocean memories: the first in 2016, the first time I listened to music while high (thus tracing a very funny lineage from Frank to kpop). I was taking a shower, listening to Super Rich Kids, and I just heard the piano music, the snare, and the lilting drawl of the chorus into the falsetto of the first verse so differently and vibrantly. The second is also in 2016 at home, drinking the 18天生啤 while listening to Blond front-to-back alone in my room the day it came out. It was one of the first times in my life I’ve done that, and also one of the few (I have very little patience for sitting and listening to music. Very few albums interest me enough to listen to straight without doing anything else for hours).

Kanye West

Unfortunately recent Kanye is not the best Kanye, but I think over the decade Kanye has been one of the best and most influential rappers. I’ve been listening to Kanye for years, since late middle school, but I never had a serious or complete appreciation for Kanye until I moved to LA and started living with Greg. We used to hang out and smoke a lot on the balcony at our first apartment, and I asked him once why he liked Kanye’s music so much. From that question we had 5-6 one hour long sessions about the progression in Kanye’s discography and Kanye’s influence on rap. Kanye is an undeniable giant of rap, and over the years his music has been incredibly innovative and influential.

Some of my most enjoyable listening to Kanye moments: walking to work on a bright sunny day, listening to Kanye croon-rap on Heartless. Listening to Kanye tell the nation that George Bush doesn’t care about black people. Listening to Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross go off extremely hard on Monster / Devil in a new dress on repeat as a nerdy high school kid. Listening to Black Skinhead during my root canal (the rock drums fit teeth drilling sounds very well). Lots of really really great Kanye moments.

Kendrick Lamar

I started listening to Kendrick in my senior year of high school (starting with good kid, m.A.A.d city) and since then I have been blessed with two more phenomenal rap albums: To Pimp a Butterfly in my sophomore year and DAMN. in my senior year. These last few years of Kendrick have been tremendous and undeniably great, and Kendrick is aggressively, thoughtfully cool and smart. Two small side notes: 1) Humble is one of my favorite MVs of all time 2) I was totally bought into the NATION album theory and was so disappointed when another Kendrick album didn’t drop that next Sunday. This was my first foray into conspiracy theories :’(

Migos

I started listening to a lot of Migos late 2017, a bit before their new album came out. Before that I knew who they were, but I pretty much only listened to Bad and Boujee (I remember Frank stirring an imaginary pot yelling “cooking up dope in the crockpot pot” a lot my senior year). Migos is on the list because their music was the first introduction to a major component of what I really enjoy in rap: sounding and being cool. A lot of their music isn’t the most complicated/ complex thing possible, but none of the hate about adlibs or mumble rap matters to me because when they rap the Migos are so smooth and so effortlessly cool and so much fun to listen to. In October when I saw them in full red/ green/ yellow suits dancing and rapping, it really reaffirmed for me why I enjoy their music so much, the same reason why I now like listening to Gunna, Lil Baby, Roddy Ricch, Drake, some Vince Staple, and Bad Bunny.

Bolbbalgan4

Most of the stuff on my list are not only just things I really enjoyed but also things that helped me see music differently, with the sole exception of Bolbbalgan4. I just really really like their music and I listened to a lot of them in 2018 (my most played artist on Spotify lol). I spent a ton of time at home or in an Uber or at work listening to Ahn Ji-Young’s beautifully soft voice, and Some still stands out to me as a perfect song even after probably hundreds of listens.

Drake

I’ve been listening to Drake for many years now, but in the last two years I have a new enjoyment and admiration of Drake. I went to his concert (Drake and the 3 amigos tour) early last year with Greg, and it was one of the most fun concerts I’ve ever been to. His music is so exciting and fun, and appreciating 3 hours of nonstop Drake bangers was absolutely incredible. Drake is a big goober and I will probably find Drake memes funny for another 10 years, but despite all that (or maybe because ?) Drake remains extremely cool in a way that’s somehow very unaggressive. Listening to Drake feels like celebrating a party where you’re just as hyped about him as he is about himself (very different from the way Kendrick is cool, or the Migos are cool, or DaBaby is cool). I also admire how versatile his music is. We are closing out a decade of Drakes dominance of rap, and in that time we’ve seen Drake fit on any song: Drake with BlocBoy JB on Look Alive, Drake with Bad Bunny on MIA, Drake with Migos on Versace, Drake with Rick Ross on Money in the Grave, Drake with Lil Baby and Gunna on Never Recover, etc. the list goes on.

Young Thug

In 2017 on one of our beanbag rap discussions Greg told me that he thought Young Thug was the best rapper ever, and I obviously blew him off thinking he was joking (he was not joking, actually, but I didn’t know / wasn’t enlightened enough at the time). A couple of months later, I definitely saw an argument for it, and a couple of years later now I’ve actually been kind of converted. Young Thug is just so gloriously weird in every way: his music, his voice, the way he dresses, the sounds he makes on his songs, his fashion sense, his attitude, his flows. So many things about him as an artist are absolutely unique. The more rap I listen to the more certain I feel about this opinion, because some of his music you just have literally never heard anywhere else before. I joke a lot about these bars on Best Friend:

Take them boys to school, swagonometry /
Bitch I'm bleedin' bad, like a bumble bee /
Hold up! Hold it, hold it, n—— proceed /
I'ma eat that booty just like groceries

but where else are you gonna hear this kind of stuff?

Twice

Twice is kind of my cheat pick here because I’m going to lump this one in with a lot of other Kpop artists that I really like and mostly talk about Kpop in general. I started listening to Kpop in 2018 when I was still living in my first apartment with Greg. We were smoking a lot back then (and I was eating a lot of cereal), and one day when we were talking about headphones Greg told me to use his Sennheissers to listen to/ watch Blackpink’s Ddu-Du Ddu-Du music video and I was just absolutely blown away. Jennie coming out on a tank totally fucked me up; I still remember it today. There was so much stuff going on: incredible visuals, the colors, aesthetics, concepts, sounds, everything was so engrossing and so high quality. That was how I got into Kpop. In the next few months after I listened to a ton of Kpop and watched a ton of video, and I also I started listening to other artists like RV, Twice, Hyuna, Sunmi, & ITZY. I don’t listen to as much kpop now as I did before (weirdly I listened to a lot of kpop along with a lot of mitski in my late 2018 deep fog) but I still indulge every now and then and I still dig a good kpop MV and get excited about a solid comeback. I picked Twice specifically for the list because they’re my favorite of the kpop groups I listen to. My main enjoyment of kpop comes from how bubbly / energetic / catchy a lot of it is, and so far Twice has the stickiest songs for me. A typical cycle for me goes -> listen to a new twice song -> dislike it -> listen to it 5 more times -> listen to it on repeat for a week.

Quick shoutout to ITZY. I liked Dalla Dalla so much / spent so much time watching youtube on the couch with Greg I think I literally watched every single live performance of that song.

Carly Rae Jepsen

It is very funny and satisfying to me that Carly Rae Jepsen made the list. I have no doubt that middle school Justin would be mortified and shocked, because back then I loved to ironically like Call Me Maybe (like everyone else) when in secret I actually also really genuinely liked it (like everyone else). Like almost everything else on this list, my CRJ love affair started in Greg’s car early this year right before Dedicated came out. On the way to the gym he was playing songs from Emotion, and during my workout in the middle of my 5th loop of When I Needed You I knew Carly was something special (and I was totally right. Emotion and Dedicated are both incredible albums).

A month or two after my initial CRJ addiction, I read a review (or maybe a tweet?) that described her music as “cheerfully horny.” That concept / phrase still sticks with me today because I think that is exactly what I like so much about CRJ’s music. In all of her songs, across the happy, the angsty, and the horny ones, there is an unabashed embracement of all of her feelings and emotions that make her music so complete and so fun to listen to. In August this year, I went to her concert in LA with Greg and it was one of my favorite concerts ever (I have a lot of out of tune clips that I will never share but will always cherish).

In the beginning of this chunk I said that it was satisfying to me that CRJ is on the list. Part of that is because Carly is so good and her music is so fun to listen to, but I think a large of it as well is because I previously wasn’t the kind of person that would be down to enjoy CRJ’s music as wholeheartedly and unabashedly as I do now. In a very positive way, watching CRJ sing Cut to the Feeling while holding up an inflatable sword really felt like closing the loop from my moody Mitski period to my cheerfully horny Carly period.

Mitski

And finally, to no surprise for anyone who knows me, Mitski is my number one artist of the decade. Her music spoke to me in a way and on a level that music hasn’t really before, and helped me understand how powerful and meaningful music could be when you listen to it in the right mood and at the right time. I spent hours and hours this year and last listening to Mitski alone in my room, sitting on my bean bag, lying on my couch or even on the floor. Mitski really shaped my last two years, especially late 2018 to early 2019 when I was sitting around a lot alone in my apartment, vaguely depressed.

I like almost all of her songs, but two parts of two songs are particularly memorable / significant to me, and together they both basically formed my 2019 personal goals. The first is the first verse of I Will (Everything you feel is good / if you would only let you) and the second is the last verse of Townie (I’m not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be / I’m gonna be what my body wants me to be). I spent much of my life before 2019 trying hard to be my ideal self, and very little time listening & caring about how I actually felt or what I really wanted, and it is partially thanks to Mitski that I felt more empowered to Be the Dumbass (Cowboy) I always have been.

My Mitski arc from first listening to Nobody in Greg’s car -> listening to a bunch of Be The Cowboy permanently on loop -> Mitski shaping and informing my 2019 goals -> flying to St. Louis with Greg to go see a Mitski concert has been so incredibly satisfying and nurturing, and I am eternally grateful to Mitski and her music for making me a better, happier person.