Spin Rate: Average Song Rating: 4/5 3.5+ Percentage: 100% SkipFactor: 0% Bangers: 3
Thoughts: This was Che’s third extremely high quality project of 2020 and her album with Apollo Brown was a legit Album of the Year contender. I’d say all that makes her a legit candidate for hip-hop’s MVP award last year. As you can see above, this is a short project, but she still has multiple mega-bangers and gets one of the highest average song ratings of any project I’ve ever reviewed. Che has a knack for getting elite production and features (I love seeing her collab with Sa-Roc here), plus she has a tremendous amount of talent herself. I don’t mind someone releasing this much music if it’s this good. If you been sleeping on Che Noir, it’s well past time to wake up.
Top 20 Albums in February (all ratings are out of 10)
Note: These albums are NOT ranked in order of preference; they are ranked in order of number of songs listened to (scrobbles) over the past month.Previous ranking in brackets. Year of release in parentheses if it’s not 2020 or 2021.I’ll include a rough rating for each album to make my feelings on each project clearer. The more I’ve listened to an album, the more accurate my rating is. Any rating that has a + symbol means that I’ve found my floor, but I could rate it higher. I won’t leave a rating for anything I don’t have a good feel for yet.
Pharoahe Monch & th1rt3en – A Magnificent Day For an Exorcism – 6+
*Devin the Dude – Soulful Distance – 6+
*Lucky Daye – Table For Two
Sa-Roc – The Sharecropper’s Daughter – review coming soon
*Madison Beer – Life Support
Brother Ali – The Undisputed Truth (2007) – 9
*Dorian Whyte – Truth Be Told
Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon III: The Chosen [5] – 6
Breeze Brewin – Hindsight
Che Noir – After 12 – review coming soon
Rapsody – Laila’s Wisdom (2017) – 8+
Mac Ayres – Magic 8ball
Nyck Caution – Anywhere But Here [14]
Toby Ganger – Free Machine – 8+
*VanJess – Homegrown
Your Old Droog – It Wasn’t Even Close
The 20 Artists I’ve Listened To The Most In 2021
Notes: I spread my listening out a lot more this past month and spent very little time focusing on brand new releases since there were very few I was interested in. I created a playlist of artists and albums I feel I’ve overlooked and want to get more familiar with and listened to that. I was actually inspired to do this when I heard MF DOOM had passed away and realized how little of his catalog I had listened to. I also split time between my Brand New, All-Time Favorites, and Best of 2020 playlists.
Movies – I went crazy again in February and watched a movie almost every day. I will probably do something similar in March, but by the start of April, I will be fully vaxxed and cleared for takeoff (back to my day job of playing poker) and my days of watching 25 movies a month will be coming to an end. Still, I have the expectation that I can watch every feature film, documentary, and international film that gets an Oscar nomination before the Oscars air in late April and that’s something I’ve never done before.
I also went crazy and made a best films of the year list for every year from 2020 to 1982, the year I was born. I ranked 25 films for 2000 and later and 10 films for 1999 to 1982. I started fizzling out on my lists in the early 90s as I just haven’t seen most of the important films from those early years when I was a kid. I have all the lists on my blog here. Enjoy!
Spin Rate: 7+ Average Song Rating: 3.5/5 3.5+ Percentage: 69% SkipFactor: 11.5% Bangers: 1
Thoughts: Eminem has kind of become a master at making incomplete songs. At least for me. This album is a clinic in making music that is mostly pretty decent but almost every song has an aspect to it that I don’t like. In “Book of Rhymes” the beat is horrendous. How are you going to have a song that says it features DJ Premier and he’s not even producing it? I was really looking forward to this collaboration and it’s not even a thing. “Favorite Bitch” features Ty Dolla $ign, one of the top hook makers in the hip-hop world right now, and his hook is TERRIBLE. “Guns Blazing” has a Dr. Dre verse and a hook that I just can’t get into. Even the songs that I like a lot tend to feature a beat or flow switch that doesn’t really work for me. The rapping on this album is pretty good, but that’s not much of a surprise – Eminem can still rap his ass off. He can also drop some ultra corny bars, but I’d say that his cleverness and rhyming ability still far outweigh these eyeroll-inducing lines.
I like Side A substantially more than Side B, but if you look at both of my reviews you’ll notice Side B has a higher average song rating. That’s because the highs on Side A are much higher than they are here, but the lows are also much lower (it’s also because this is the first album I started using .25 and .75 when I can’t decide between two ratings). Side B doesn’t have any pure skips, but it also only has one true banger. “Zeus” is a really good song, but I think it’s the only track where Eminem really puts it all together on this album. I’ll take whatever I can get from Eminem (well, not Revival), but I also feel like he’s just going to keep stringing together technically proficient verses while not making all that great of music.
On the Real Tho (feat. Yukmouth & Tha Chill) – 3.5
Stand Up (feat. Mitchy Slick & Tha Chill) – 3.5
Neighborhood Looks (feat. Havoc & Kurupt) – 4.5
Magic (feat. Young Noble & Tha Chill) – 4.5
We Got – 4
Spin Rate: 9 Average Song Rating: 3.85/5 3.5+ Percentage: 100% Pure Skips: 0 Bangers: 11
Thoughts: No album in 2020 took me by surprise more than this gem from Compon’s MC Eiht. When I saw it in the new releases section the weekend it came out, I didn’t even give it a skim. I just don’t expect much from an old school gangsta rap artist in 2020 and it’s not like I’ve ever been much of a fan anyway. But then I saw a thread about it on a hip-hop message board I’ve been posting on since 1999 (LOL) and people I have similar taste as were saying it was nice.
Well, Lessons is insanely good. I actually had to re-think what a 3.5 and a 4 song is to me because so many tracks on this album blur the line between what I think is a good song and what I think is an absolute banger. MC Eiht isn’t an amazing rapper, lyrically or vocally, but the production and song-writing on Lessons are so good that the whole project is elevated to a pretty elite level. I enjoy the beat, hook, and vibe of every track on here. It’s not like MC Eiht is weak on the mic either. He has a very smooth delivery and while his lyrics and rhymes schemes are relatively simple, he is adept at painting a picture of the stories he is telling. It’s a pretty remarkable feat to put out an album with 20 songs and zero skips – and honestly, nothing is even close to a skip – plus I think over half the album is pure fire.
Lessons is one of two albums from 2020 (the other being Che Noir & Apollo Brown’s As God Intended) that feel like immediate hip-hop classics. This album is straight heat from top to bottom. An absolute must listen and one of the best rap albums from last year. Don’t sleep.
Notes: January was a super slow month for new music. I only added a handful of new albums and only two 2021 releases cracked the top 20 albums I listened to the most over the past month. Because of this, I cheated and gave Album of the Month to something that came out over four months ago… and why not? I listened to MC Eiht’s <i>LESSONS</i> more than any other album last month. It’s incredible. I have a review coming for it soon, so I won’t say much else now, but if you’ve been sleeping, it’s time to wake up. I’ll go ahead and include a rough rating for each album to make my feelings on each project clearer. The more I’ve listened to an album, the more accurate my rating is. Any rating that has a + symbol means that I’ve found my floor, but I could rate it higher. I won’t leave a rating for anything I don’t have a good feel for yet.
Top 20 Albums in January (all ratings are out of 10)
Note: These albums are NOT ranked in order of preference; they are ranked in order of number of songs listened to (scrobbles) over the past month.Previous ranking in brackets. Year of release in parentheses if it’s not 2020 or 2021.
*indicates January 2021 release
MC Eiht – LESSONS – 8+
MF DOOM & Madlib – Madvillainy (2004) – 7+
Chris Stapleton – Starting Over – 7+
Joji – Nectar – 7
Kid Cudi – Man on the Moon III: The Chosen [4] – 6
Playboi Carti – Whole Lotta Red [12] – 3
Jessie Ware – What’s Your Pleasure? [8] – 9
Rina Sawayama – SAWAYAMA – 6+
Dua Lipa – Dua Lipa (2017) – 7+
Boldy James & Sterling Toles – Manger on McNichols – 6+
Roc Marciano – Reasonable Drought – 7+
Taylor Swift – evermore [16] – 7+
KRS-One – Between Da Protests – 6+
*Nyck Caution – Anywhere But Here – 6+
Eminem – Murder To Be Murdered By – Side B [2] – 6
Tyrone’s Jacket – Tyrone’s Jacket [3] – 8+
Flee Lord – In The Name Of Prodigy
Lianne La Havas – Lianne La Havas
Isaiah Rashad – Cilvia Demo (2014) – 8+
*KOTA The Friend – Lyrics to GO, Vol. 2 – 6+
The 20 Artists I Listened To The Most In January
Notes: I spread my listening out a lot more this past month and spent very little time focusing on brand new releases since there were very few I was interested in. I created a playlist of artists and albums I feel I’ve overlooked and want to get more familiar with and listened to that. I was actually inspired to do this when I heard MF DOOM had passed away and realized how little of his catalog I had listened to. I also split time between my Brand New, All-Time Favorites, and Best of 2020 playlists.
38 Spesh (feat. Ransom & Klass Murda), “Toll Booth” 38 Spesh, “Road Back” Che Noir (feat. The Musalini), “Cruise Control” Chris Stapleton, “Joy of My Life” Flip Huston (feat. Jim Jones), “Outta My Mind” Flip Huston (feat. Dame D.O.L.L.A.), “Momma I Made It” Flip Huston, “You Know The Vibes” Jessie Ware, “Spotlight” Jessie Ware, “What’s Your Pleasure?” Jessie Ware, “Ooh La La” Jessie Ware, “In Your Eyes” Jessie Ware, “The Kill” Joji, “Your Man” Kid Cudi (feat. Phoebe Bridgers), “Lovin’ Me” Kid Cudi, “The Void” MC Eiht (feat. Young Noble & Tha Chill), “Magic” Nyck Caution, “Dirt On Your Name”
Movies – I went kind of crazy this past month and watched a movie almost every day. I continued to put a dent in my 2020 watchlist and when I wasn’t watching new releases I was catching up on some horror movies I’ve missed over the years or wanted to re-watch. I post these reviews on Letterboxd and Facebook/Twitter as I write them, but I figure I should make a post at the end of each month with links to all the reviews I posted. Somehow, I watched 50 movies over the past two months and none of them were directed by Martin Scorsese, the director I’ve been focusing on over the past year. Ah well. I’ll be looking to correct that in February.
T.V. Shows – I completely revamped my T.V. rating page. I have also sorted all the shows by season and the year their first episode aired.
Cobra Kai – Season 3 (2021) – 3
The Crown – Season 4 (2020) – 4
Harley Quinn – Season 2 (2020) – 3.5
The Mandolorian – Season 2 (2020) – 4.5
Stargirl – Season 1 (2020) – 3
What We Do in the Shadows – Season 2 (2020) – 4
Pen15 – Season 1 (2019) – 4
Music – I didn’t review much music this past month, but I’ve been rating songs in my Brand New playlist all month, so I should have more albums to talk about next month even though (as you will see) January was a slow month for new music.
Spin Rate: 6.5 Average Song Rating: 3.92/5 3.5+ Percentage: 100% Skips: 0 Bangers: 7
Thoughts: Woah. That just happened. This is the first album released in 2020 that gets an average song rating greater than 3.9 and is now the highest rated album I’ve reviewed for last year. Does that mean I think it’s the best album of the year? Geez, maybe. It’s definitely amazing, but it’s also outside my comfort zone of hip-hop music so maaaaaaaaaaaybe I have no idea what I’m talking about here. And I’m not going to lie, someone put this on my radar when it came out and I put “Soul Control” on my Bangers Playlist many months ago, but I never gave the album a dedicated listen until I saw Anthony Fantano, “the internet’s busiest music nerd,” list it as his #1 album of 2020. I can’t say I always agree with Fantano’s taste, but I’m definitely on board with this pick. As great as Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia was for a pop album, I actually like What’s Your Pleasure? a bit more. The songs here have more replayability and a bit more soul. Jessie Ware is a good singer, but it’s the writing and production that really stand out to me. So many tracks on this are absolute pop smashes and I can listen to this album on repeat. If you try this out, I guarantee half the songs will get stuck in your head. I’m hesitant to call this my new album of the year, but it’s definitely my favorite non-rap album of 2020. An absolute must listen.
I started using Letterboxd early last year and one of the cool features on the app is that it tracks all sorts of stats about your movie watching. I’m a stat guy, so I love it and when I asked my Facebook friends to guess the 20 actors and 20 directors I’ve seen the most movies from, a ton of people participated and seemed to enjoy it.
2020 Stats
Films watched: 147 Average per month: 12.2 Average per week: 2.8 Most watched (twice): The Queen’s Gambit (limited series count, I guess) and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Theatrical version and Producer’s Cut) Top 5 genres: Drama, Thriller, Comedy, Horror, Action 2020 movies: 26.5% Older movies: 73.5% First time watches: 67.3% Re-watches: 32.7%
Most Watched Stars
Robert Englund (11 films)
Heather Langenkamp (6)
Harry Northup (6)
Robert Shaye (5)
Danielle Harris (5)
Robert De Niro (4)
Clu Gulager (4)
Wes Craven (4)
John Heard (4)
Margot Robbie (4)
Harvey Keitel (4)
Lisa Wilcox (4)
Victor Argo (4)
Parry Shen (4)
Murray Moston (4)
Kelvin Harrison Jr. (4)
Notes: Any guesses which franchises I revisited last year?
Most Watched Directors
Martin Scorsese (9 films)
Wes Craven (2)
John McTiernan (2)
Liz Garbus (2)
Daniel Farrands (2)
Adam Green (2)
Renny Harlin (2)
Chris Columbus (2)
Bong Joon-ho (2)
Taika Waititi (2)
Paul Verhoeven (2)
Lifetime Most Watched Stars
Samuel L. Jackson (40 films) [previously ranked 1]
Robert De Niro (33) [5]
Brad Pitt (33) [2]
John Goodman (32) [8]
Tom Hanks (31) [5]
Matt Damon (30) [5]
Bruce Willis (30) [4]
Morgan Freeman (29) [3]
Johnny Depp (27) [12]
Woody Harrelson (27) [12]
Jack Black (27) [12]
Jonah Hill (26) [8]
Bill Murray (25) [unranked]
Arnold Schwarzenegger (25) [20]
Ben Affleck (25) [unranked]
Tom Cruise (25) [10]
Robert Downey Jr. (25) [12]
J.K. Simmons (25) [12]
Laurence Fishburne (24) [unranked]
Jon Favreau (24) [unranked]
Dropped out: Scarlett Johansson (11), Brian Cox (12), Willem Dafoe (12), John Ratzenberger (12)
Notes: I posted my original list back in late March 2020 and since then I’ve gone through and realized I’ve seen some movies I hadn’t marked as watched, so most of the movement here is because of that. De Niro is the only actor on my 2020 list that is also on my all-time list and he moved all the way up to the #2. Also, there could be 15 actors tied with 24 movies watched, but we will never know how long that list extends because it only shows 20 names at a time.
Lifetime Most Watched Directors
Steven Spielberg (21 films) [previously ranked 1]
Martin Scorsese (19) [2]
Tim Burton (14) [3]
Ridley Scott (13) [4]
Sam Raimi (12) [5]
Ron Howard (12) [5]
Quentin Tarantino (12) [7]
Ivan Reitman (11) [9]
David Fincher (11) [9]
Christopher Nolan (11) [9]
Joel Coen (11) [7]
Michael Bay (10) [9]
Robert Rodriguez (10) [9]
Steven Soderbergh (10) [14]
Jon Turteltaub (9) [18]
Stephen Herek (9) [Unranked]
Wes Craven (9) [18]
Peter Farrelly (9) [Unranked]
Jay Roach (9) [Unranked]
James Mangold (9) [14]
Robert Zemeckis [14]
Richard Donner [14]
Dropped out: Richard Linklater, Lauren Montgomery, F. Gary Gray, Peter Jackson, Harold Ramis, Brian de Palma, Todd Phillips [all tied at 18th]
Note: No major movement here. Scorsese and Wes Craven were the only filmmakers I purposefully watched multiple films from in 2020.
Spin Rate: 10+ Average Song Rating: 3.75/5 3.5+ Percentage: 100% Skips: 0 Bangers: 4
Thoughts: This may come across bias because Flip is a long-time friend of mine – we have lived together in three different places – but I think he crushed this project. I have to admit I was pretty skeptical when he hit me up last year and told me he was making new music and wanted me to help him with the writing process. I turned him down because I haven’t written rap lyrics for at least a decade now and I didn’t really want to work hard to redevelop that skill set. As far as I know, Flip hasn’t made music in nearly as long. Honestly, I didn’t have high expectations for this because, frankly, I didn’t even think it would actually happen. But then he started sending me snippets and telling me about the huge guests verses he was getting and, well, here we are. I was expecting this dude to be dusty, but he sounds just as sharp and talented as he did when he blew my mind back in 2010 at this show. He just has a knack for penning catchy hooks and writing songs that get stuck in your head and stay there. Plus, Flip shows some versatility here with “You Know The Vibes” and the bonus track “Designer,” showcasing some singing and harmonizing abilities I didn’t even know he had. This is just a really solid all around project. The production is good, the big name guests all deliver solid verses, Flip shows off a variety of talent, and every song is good and half of them are straight up bangers.
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