Music in 2020 took one of two forms: those about our current moment, and those noticeably disconnected from it. Not that one is inherently better than the other — we deserve both validation and liberation. Some records, like Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters or Run The Jewels’ RTJ4, were…

What is the sound of eking out an existence? Of stitching a life back together again? Of questioning if the old one was even worth saving? If the music of 2017 was about defying the world’s disintegration, 2018 ended with a resolution: Circumstances be damned, we will make the best…

Honestly, why even bother with men this year? — By the end of last year, we were all ready for a break, for a stop to the constant waves of news and destruction. We didn’t get that in 2017; instead, we got the never-ending sea. Putting together my best albums list, I was struck by how dominated my year…

Only Good Things About This Trash Fire Year — We don’t get to choose what music connects with us when. That’s about all the lesson I got out of 2016. Even beyond the election and political turmoil, here and seemingly everywhere else in the world, 2016 was more destructive than I expected. I graduated, left all the friends I…

The Review Where It Happens — 2015 was a heavy year. Wesley Morris, in The New York Times Magazine, called it “The Year We Obsessed Over Identity.” And yet, I can’t get this one line from Chance the Rapper out of my head. “It’s cool with just me. I’m cool being me.” It’s not because our…

Why Mobility is the Key to Empathetic Reporting — Zip code 70805 is known as the “most dangerous neighborhood in Baton Rouge.” The area suffers from high unemployment and poverty and has some of the highest homicide and HIV rates in the United States. Drive down Airline Highway and cross over Florida Boulevard, locals say, and the change is…

Images c/o Wesleyan University This editorial originally appeared in The Wesleyan Argus Investigating breaking news on a university campus is no different than investigating any other tight-knit community — unless you refuse to see college students as a multifaceted community with diversity of belief and behavior. In the days and…

A critical approximation I’m looking now at my Best Of 2013 list. Finding it hard not to reflect on my music tastes even just a year ago: “What the hell was I thinking?” There’s a lot in those 10 spots that I might think twice rewarding so generously a year later, and a…