One of my new year’s resolutions was to spend less time on Soundcloud. I’m addicted and it sucks for productivity, but it’s great for constantly stimulating me with new sounds. So much of popular music fits into the same generic mold and I’m such an asshole about it that I can’t enjoy the radio or music at bars anymore. The only things that excite me now are Zion Williamson (please donate to my Gofundme to make him a Knick) and new bbasedtj beat packs.
70% of the best music that dropped this year was not on Apple Music or Spotify. Yes, really. So this mix is an attempt to spotlight some of the music that was overlooked by popular culture and most year-end lists, NONE of which included Black Kray (shame on all of your families). Trying to capture all the subcultures of SoundCloud is an impossible task. New vortexes open up every day and the whole scene evades true definition, as evidenced by people not being able to find a better way to describe it than [name of the platform] rap.
A huge pocket was filled out by a post-Lil Peep explosion of emotional wavering and acoustic melodies this year. There was deep web shit built from disassembled dial-up tones, Johnny Cash influence, and the furthest iterations of autotune the world has heard. And of course, Spaceghostpurrp still looms large. I held the mix to under an hour because of attention spans, digital age, yada yada, so apologies to some staples like Bby Goyard and Convolk who I couldn’t squeeze in. — Harley Geffner
