I may be the least engaged with rap this year than I ever remember. My excitement for a few scenes like Detroit and L.A. have now cooled down from release being exact to my expectations. What’s keeping me going for the former is a more chaotic shake-up like YN Jay…

Japanese favorites from my wishlist for Bandcamp Friday — Air Balloon: Meltmore EP | electronic / pop And No Time: And No Time EP | indie rock Arne: Chronicle | indie rock As a Sketch Pad: As a Sketch Pad | emo Charlotte Is Mine: Someday in the Breakfast | indie rock / dream pop Donut Real Elephant: Lucky…

Built with songs from Last.fm scrobbles from Sept-Dec. 2007 — I don’t know why I am expecting anyone to be disappointed that I did not know anything about music when I was 14, though I do feel like many of my friends and peers had a lot better perception of music than I did at that age! I am…

50 favorite records from Japan — Instead of experiencing yet another headache from ranking titles— this is my seventh year-end list and fourth one that’s not organized alphabetically — I decided to get creative using this Topsters-generated grid as an inspiration. Each row is organized by a certain sound, style or vibe related to the album…

50 favorites from K-pop with some sort of video — K-pop music is getting harder and harder to rank for me as the years go by. I just hoard so much music so there’s a lot to revisit come time for list season, but there’s also so much variety that it feels pointless holding up a R&B soloist against an…

Here’s 50. — Alphabetical order. Here’s a Spotify playlist of the songs. 1TakeJay (ft. Glockboyz Teejae & OnFully): “7 Days a Week” 2KBABY: “FAXTS” AzChike (ft. FrostyDaSnowmann): “1UP” Bizzy Banks: “Top 5” Bktherula: “Summer” BlueBucksClan DJ & Jeeezy (ft. Cash Kidd): “Aaron Judge” Boldy James & The Alchemist: “Slow Roll” Bris (ft. EBK…

25 favorite rock albums not from Japan — My music-listening and music-searching drastically shifted focus to Japanese music this year because, well, that’s what happens when you run a biweekly newsletter about Japanese music. Priorities naturally changed, and one big casualty was rock music not from Japan. I kinda want to say certain types of records brought diminishing…

Favorite records from house, techno, ambient, etc. — Here’s 50, plus Bandcamp links to almost all of them AceMo: Acid Jungle [Haus of ALTR] Ana Roxanne: Because of a Flower [Kranky] Andrea: Ritorno [Ilian Tapes] Boof: Rebirth of Gerberdaisy [BubbleTease Communications] DJ Trystero: High Speed Wind [The Trilogy Tapes] Dreamcrusher: Another Country [Purple Tape Pedigree] E-Saggila: Anima Bulldozer…

40 of the year’s favorite in Mandopop — Out of all the scenes of music I will list my favorites for, Mandopop is the one I am clueless about. I have no grasp on the narratives of that scene nor do I have any context on these artists. Honestly, I just kept on clicking on music videos on…