Giddyup to the final roundup of 2018!
My approach to this one will be a tad different. Since little new music was released this week, I spent most of the last seven days catching up with my biggest misses from the whole year. While doing so, I’ve also been working on posts dedicated to my favorite albums and songs of 2018 (coming soon!). As such, you’ll notice that my thoughts below are colored by my year-ending reflections; instead of, as per the usual, only responding to each album individually, I found myself contextualizing them with respect to the overall music trends of the previous 365 days
X 100PRE — Bad Bunny
Slaps, in so many different musical registers. Cha-ching!
Blindspotting: The Miles EP
Similar to the movie: appealing style, corny execution.
And now, it’s time to rank 2018’s compilation soundtracks, my just-coined term for the trend I mentioned last week: big movies commissioning new music for adjacent albums; they’re related in theme and tone, but the songs are rarely used in their actual durations (why?!?!).
Let’s do it:
- Black Panther
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Sorry To Bother You: The Soundtrack — The Coup
- Blindspotting: The Collin EP — Daveed Diggs
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Blindspotting: The Miles EP
- The Grinch — Tyler, the Creator
- Creed II: The Album — Mike WiLL Made-It
- SUPERFLY — Future & Co.
- A Very Spidey Christmas
GANGIN II — SOB X RBE
Oh, you thought the Boy Band Craze finally ended with the likes of NYSYNC and the Backstreet Boys (and, sub-10-year-old Steven’s personal favorite: 98 FUCKING DEGREES)? Not so, ye of little faith! The holy trinity of hip hop boy bands (which I arbitrarily define as needing four or more members; sorry, Migos and A$AP Mob) responsible for the recent resurgence: SOB X RBE, Brockhampton, and 88rising. Though none of their respective 2018 albums entered the realm of greatness, I still believe each group is going places…and maybe they’ll arrive in 2019!
