These are not in any order other than what hit me when I decided to write them down. They moved me, made me think, smile and sometimes cry.
MUSIC
D-Nice’s early Club Quarantine party on Instagram where as close to a communal musical experience as I came in 2020. It’s morphed into many forms and given D-Nice well earned cultural cache. But what I’ll remember is those early evenings in the dark nights of March when death drove by in NYC ambulances and we clutched each other in a digital embrace.
Run the Jewels ‘RTJ4’ was bap boom with content and politics amid the juvenile, complacent rhymes of the trap generation.
The Dinner Party LP and Thundercat’s ‘It Is What It Is’ again illustrated that the musical community of gifted young players out of Los Angeles revere the old and have the chops to make the new.
Moses Sumney’s ‘Grae’ is the latest project of one of the age’s great voices. Coming from the far edge’s alternative to a spot on BET’s ‘Soul Train Awards’ doesn’t mean that Sumney has changed, but that what constitutes R&B mainstream has never been more fluid.
The Weeknd is the most distinctive voice in pop. You hear him and you know its him, despite auto tune and whatever other gimmicks are at his disposal. ‘After Hours’ shows that this Canadian superstar is in control of both his instrument and his dark POV, a combo that gives all his love songs a touch of S&M.
H.E.R’s ‘I Used To Know Her’ was released in 2019, but it was still part of my rotation this sad summer. As a musician, vocalist and songwriter, H.E.R’s versatility and grace continues to impress. I feel like there’s a landmark album in her future.
Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Babyface on one record? “He Don’t Know Nothing ‘Bout It’ is a ‘90s wet dream become real. It’s a song with a god damn bridge! I’ve heard a lot of Jam & Lewis’ first full LP that’s coming in 2021 and guarantee it will be one of the next year’s best.
DJ Cassidy’s ‘Pass the Mic’ brought R&B back and
Jay Electronica’s ‘A Written Testimony’ is also a Jay-Z album, which is fine by me. It was the LP that I listened to the most this spring when three men close to be died within a month. “A.P.I.D.T.A” spoke about death and regret and mourning in ways I understood too well. “I got number on my phone that will never ring again,” Jay Z rhymed . “Yes,” I said.
MOVIES
The Invisible Man was the last movie I saw at a multiplex before the lock down and, despite a couple of quibbles about story beats, it did what any good genre flick has to do — have some surprises and clever film making choices.
I saw Tenet in a theater in Connecticut during the lockdown and recently in an L.A. drive in. I agree with Christopher Nolan — its best on a big screen. Works as a meta meditation on action movies (John David Washington’s character is named The Protagonist after all) and is built around Nolan’s on going obsession with time and memory. Yo I still can’t explain all the plot points, but most of it is a McGuffin anyway for backwards action scenes, black James Bond moves and some of the best tailoring in 2020 cinema.
If you like your action without the conceptual baggage of Tenet, the Extraction was just jammy. Action sequences are dance choreography with grunts and blood. Using the John Wick and The Raid:Redemption template and moving the action to India, Extraction moved from set piece to set piece with high body count and relentless action.
Dope or Death is a documentary that played the Tribeca Film Festival about a clinic in the 1970s Bronx that pioneered using acupuncture to treat heroin addiction, which was both visionary and challenging to the medical establishment. That it was the idea of Mutulu Shakur, Tupac’s stepfather and long imprisoned political radical, adds layers of meaning to an already powerful story.
Radha Blank’s The 40 Year Old Version is a great story, both on screen and behind the camera. Long a fixture on the New York spoken word and theater screen, as well as an accomplished TV writer, Radha poured years of writing and emotion into a two hour journey into a NYC of contrast and conflict, funneled through her humor and passion.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom was already gonna be important as an August Wilson masterpiece being translated for the screen by director George C. Wolf with Viola Davis in the title role. But the death of Chadwick Boseman, who played the crucial role of Levee, made this even more impactful and deeply sad. A special project for so many reasons.
Spike Lee’s hustle and skill were never more evident in the release of Da 5 Bloods and the David Byrne concert film American Utopia. One was a script he flipped with Kevin Willmott into a depiction of the black GI experience in ‘Nam. The other a brilliantly staged theatrical experience by Byrne that Spike brought his visual skills to bear on. To pull off both in the same calendar year would be impossible for most filmmakers. To execute them with his signature style and support award worthy performances is a testament to his craft. One of the highlights of my year was sitting on Spike’s Manhattan stoop one Sunday and chopping it up.
Steve McQueen’s five Small Axe movies are his equivalent of August Wilson’s Century cycle of plays — a way to capture a black British story lost, stolen or ignored. My favorite of the five is the house party/art film ‘Lover’s Rock’ which captures the ecstasy, ego, eroticism and elevation of a house party like no other film I’ve seen. Much more an installation project than a traditional narrative, it centers dance and music as projections of community spirit and frustration, finding in the bass lines and hip movements the unspoken desires of proud people. In a year when touching was dangerous, it was exciting to see these brown bodies unleashed and in motion.
Reading this pushed the tears to the walls of my eyes. I lost my Pops this year too (not from COVID though) and even though you didn't explicitly make this list about grief or grieving, I feel the darkness and uncertainty smeared into the crevices of the paragraphs. I can totally relate to how the enjoyment of art can trigger wild memories of the dearly departed.
Thanks for this. The superior blackness of this list titillates me like most "lists of bests" can't.
Peace, love and respect
Balo7 from Lagos, Nigeria.