Recap

'Tis the season of the Spotify wrapped. Or, in my case, the YouTube recap. I initially used YouTube because I like to fall asleep to ASMR videos; I have since paid for premium and switched all my music consumption to the platform. It's not necessarily better, certainly not for the artists, but convenience... Amiright?

This past year, I learned to lean into community support and to "trust the process," so to speak. My music doesn't reflect only that. I'm sure it's in there somewhere, but so is my sense of humor and insatiable desire to shake my ass.

While my top three songs are fun and lively and great to sing along or dance to, they also remind me to reflect on some values I hold quite dear: love, historical memory, and community.

According to YouTube Recap, the song of my year was "My House" by Beyoncé, who also took the top artist spot. Doja Cat, Tobe Nwigwe, Doechii, and Janelle Monáe closely followed her.

The song seems at first a rousing call for respect that would have Aretha Franklin singing praises to the spirit of this colossal bop. It sounds nothing like Aretha's "Respect." However, "My House" offers the same level of anthem. Go ahead, turn it on, and see for yourself.

The opening verse paints an opulent, if not reckless, picture: forty-four karats, pink diamonds, and falling out on "brown liquor," all while bemoaning the "goons" out.

It doesn't take long to shift gears, though.

What starts with the sounds of a driving HBCU marching band brass and its step team's energetic call and response morphs suddenly into a tantric trap beat. Beyoncé begins a meditation on growing up, buying a house, and doing everything in that house that any grown woman is prone to do when possessing any degree of autonomy and space: precisely what she wants.

"Don't give a fuck about my house? Then get the fuck up out my house."

Ah, perchance a metaphor doth emerge. "I grew up in this house. I blew up in this house..."

This chorus becomes a chant, "Get the fuck up out my house," repeated ad nauseam before seamlessly transitioning into a sing-spoken bridge expressing the timeless cliché, "How can you love me when you don't love yourself?" While I generally believe it's a little more nuanced than that, I have to agree with her following sentiments, which lead me to believe she does understand the nuance–perhaps pop music lyrics don't lend themselves to caveats and more articulated explanations.

Can you imagine?

"How can you love me when you don't love yourself? Although, I do understand the role of society and familial rearing in a person's understanding of and perhaps capacity for love. This may point to the significance of social acceptance and proper modeling in the expression of love and to the possibility of learning to love better over time with consistent exposure to 'good' love. So, in time, you can heal and potentially love yourself and me better."

She keeps it much simpler than that:

"Let's heal the world one beautiful action at a time. Renaissance, the revolution. Pick me up even if I fall. Let Love heal us all."

Rebirth, the revolution. I'm imagining a tabula rasa. If we could wake up tomorrow, mind a blank slate, could we conceive of Love this way? As an actionable thing that can be used to self-advocate, defend, rehabilitate, hold accountable, and teach. Not just the amorous chemical influence we construe with Love but the work, effort, decisions, and intentionality that go into it.

Can you imagine?

The second song to grace my Recap list is by Kendrick Lamar. I was pretty pleased with his diss track, "Not Like Us," which was apparent in the plays–more than four hundred, less than four hundred-twenty, sadly.

I don't have much to say about this song; it is glorious. I don't like Drake, but even before I learned what so many others had known before me, I found myself royally icked out by him and his music. Kendrick's brilliance shines again as art that calls out another person engaging in the abuse all too rampant in the music industry. It tickles something inside me, and I can simply say it is glorious. Even if UMG is making a mint off the two of them writing their diss tracks non-stop...

Kendrick is incisive, ruthless, and definitely worth listening to if you haven't already started playing it.

I have one other thing to say. It's not necessarily about the song, the beef, or anything like that. It's about its use in politics. You may have noticed it was used heavily along Kamala's campaign trail. If you were watching the rallies and the commercials featuring Taraji P. Henson, you might have caught her focus on the "Not like us" part of it all.

The commercial is here if you're interested in watching it. Essentially, there is a little pandering back and forth until Kamala ends by saying, "These extremists? They not like us..."

It's uncomfortable and terribly out of context, but it's also not what I wanted to say.

The one other thing is this: She never played the third verse. Of all the uses I witnessed, I never heard that third verse.

It's an interesting breakdown that starts like this: "Once upon a time, all of us was in chains..." It expresses the historical and consistent exploitation, appropriation, and colonization of Black people, culture, and society.

"Fast forward 2024, you got the same agenda."

Whoever ran sound for her Atlanta rally almost missed the memo. During that song transition, you could have heard a pin drop in the civic center. "Once upon a ti–" may have been followed by a record scratch with how abruptly the music cut... and stayed cut.

That's what I wanted to say. And just...

Leave there.

The final tune to grace my top three: "Earth is Ghetto." Aliah Sheffield croons like the best of them in this letter to any other intelligent life forms who may or may not be checking in on their intergalactic neighbors.

I'd have to write all of the lyrics here for you to experience the breadth of imagery and emotionality she expresses in this one. Even then, it lacks without her voice. So, uh, you know, hit that play button!

It's a brassy tune, but this one is about the lyrics and vocals for me.

While I don't necessarily agree with the messaging that we should be attempting to abandon our one planet because we've mucked it up so much that there's no use in anything but escape...

I can empathize with the feeling.

"You should see these people; it's hard to believe how they treat each other. It's hard to conceive."

The ills she identifies in our society merely scratch the surface of what we're starting to uncover, but...

Aliah's runs will guide you through any storm, drift, and graupel. She lands each note with delicate intentionality and crystal precision. Whether "I wanna leave" or not, I'm along for the ride.