Although this year wasn’t quite as prolific as 2018, the last 365 days still provided a laundry list of quality projects for music fans to digest.
Earlier this week, we shared our favorite rap projects of the year; followed by our favorite R&B releases. And now, in an effort to show off our personal tastes, Shake, Wongo, and I are sharing our individual lists.
Like the previous years, there’s overlap with some, but plenty of variation.
2019 was… long. Then again, as a member of the DopeHouse every day is. Fortunately, music kept me entertained-slash-my crazy in check for the last 365 days of the decade.
Now that we’ve entered 2020, I’ve decided to look back at my personal favorite drops of 2019. Freddie Gibbs made it back to my countdown (following his and Curren$y’s Fetti in 2018), Snoh Aalegra dropped one of my favorite R&B projects of the last few moons, and the Griselda crew basically soundtracked most of the Year of the Pig for me.
Having Gang Starr on my list is a no-brainer, as they are my favorite group of all time. But, admission time: I actually had the pleasure of working with them on the album itself. That was a life achievement for me, and the album means more to me than every other selection on the list.
There were several projects I unfortunately could not get to because, well, of life (Mac Ayres, Elhae and Roc Marciano are examples), that I plan to do so in the near future. Regardless, check out, and critique (because we know you all love to do so), my list of personal favorites below.
If you want to go from a 1980s video arcade to a dystopian world of 2088 with a pit stop in 2025, you can get there by riding Arcade Knights’ authentic ’80s synths on “Neon Dreamers” and the album it ends, Cyber Hack.
The amount of musical knowledge that AL99 has obtained in his 25 years on Earth is more than most people can hope for in a lifetime.
Tim Benson shows this in the video for his new positive hip-hop track, where he sings that you can “choose to smile.”
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With her rich, vibrant R&B voice, Wadena is the perfect artist to put out an anthem for strong women that fuses R&B with hip-hop and trap.
Bast from Crystal Fighters took some time out to tell us more about their debut LP and what they have planned in the future.
Vivek Pandya is an artist bringing something new to the world of music.
In his new throwback track, “A Lil Bit,” positive rapper Ken, The Admin serves up more than a little bit of good vibes.
Travis Scott transformed rap’s sound and left his mark on sneaker culture. Now, as he enters a new chapter, the question is whether he can dominate everything else too.
Long after Juice Wrld and XXXTentacion died, Kynkra fell in love with music and realized that nobody was making the kind of music that he liked to listen to.
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