I wrote a piece for Billboard called Worth the Wait: The 10 Best Albums That Fans Waited Over a Decade For.

1. Luke Combs - "Beer Never Broke My Heart"
Luke Combs is on a record-setting run right now, as the first artist who's gone to #1 on country radio with each of his first 6 singles (and his second album doesn't even have a release date yet). I'm not even sure exactly how it happened, this big guy with a neckbeard taking off in a way that dozens of bro country heartthrobs didn't. 4 of those songs were ballads, so that's apparently a big component of his success, but I like the two uptempo ones, "When It Rains It Pours" and "Beer Never Broke My Heart," a lot more, they just suit his voice and his personality better and are big, silly, hooky things. I don't know if the idea that football teams cause more heartbreak than alcohol holds up, though. Here's the favorite 2019 singles playlist I update every month. 

2. Ari Lennox - "BMO" 
I'm surprised that I didn't single this song out as a favorite when Ari Lennox released her album a few months ago, it just sounds so fantastic on the radio. The beat really evokes a particular 1997 vibe, not in an overtly retro way, it just sounds like something SWV or somebody could've released back then. 

3. Megan Thee Stallion f/ DaBaby - "Cash Shit" 
I love songs where 2 rappers link up right at the moment both of their careers are exploding and seem to be in perfect sync, and as far as I'm concerned Megan and DaBaby are by far 2019's best breakthrough rappers. I'm a little ambivalent about the just-released non-album single "Hot Girl Summer" possibly pulling away spins from "Cash Shit" just as it's gaining momentum, but I think there's room for both songs to be hits. 

4. Ariana Grande and Social House - "Boyfriend" 
I was a little annoyed at Ariana Grande releasing a post-Thank U, Next single just 6 months after the album's release, I thought she'd at least let that album breathe a little longer than Sweetener. But it turns out that it's from the new EP by Ariana's frequent collaborators Social House, so I guess that's alright. It's kinda cool to see her hit this point where she's at the peak of her popularity and really prolific at the same time so she can hand off pretty good songs to Social House and Normani for their records. 

5. Tove Lo - "Glad He's Gone" 
The last thing Tove Lo released, Blue Lips, was my #1 album of 2017, but I liked it so much more than any of her previous work that I wasn't sure how much to anticipate her next moves. But I really like "Glad He's Gone," although it feels like a pivot away from the sound of Blue Lips and perhaps an attempt to revive her commercial momentum with something more radio-friendly, but it still has her weird profane sense of humor and the video is hilarious. I was surprised they didn't officially credit this song with a "Big Yellow Taxi" interpolation, though. 

6. Hobo Johnson - "Typical Story" 
The live performance of the song "Peach Scone" that went viral last year and made Hobo Johnson semi-famous really made me cringe with all its poetry slam cleverness, and I felt kind of terrified the day recently when I saw that his first major label single was the 'hot shot debut' on the alternative chart. But "Typical Story" is really fast and catchy compared to everything else I've heard by him, and while his prose is still really purple and his delivery is really hammy, I kind of appreciate hearing him try to cram that vocal style into a big hooky radio single. 
7. Lucky Daye - "Roll Some Mo" 
Lucky Daye has one of the worst stage names in recent memory, but his album's good, I'm glad to see this song become kind of a sleeper hit. 

8. Young The Giant - "Heat of the Summer"  
Young The Giant followed up their biggest hit in years with a really summery song with "summer" in the title, I feel like this should have gone over bigger. It's really imagine it being a giant pop hit with slightly shinier broader production. 

9. DJ Khaled f/ Meek Mill, Lil Baby, Jeremih and J Balvin - "You Stay"
Now that practically every '90s Bad Boy single has been sampled and remade, sometimes several times, it feels appropriate that we're now getting into No Way Out deep cuts like "Senorita," the basis of "You Stay." It's weird to think that Meek Mill and Lil Baby are currently two of the top practitioners of love raps on the radio. 

10. Blac Youngsta - "Cut Up" 
Blac Youngsta has generally been my least favorite out of this newer generation of Memphis rap stars, there's something charming about his unapologetically goofy persona but he just doesn't make very good music, "Booty" felt like it failed by the low bar of craftmanship for a rap song about ass. So I'm pleasantly surprised at how much "Cut Up" has grown on me, just a great unique beat and he gets a nice energetic flow going for once. I like the way his ad libs are looped to be part of the beat, Blac Youngsta just flatly saying "whore" in the background every 4 bars is hilarious. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Shawn Mendes f/ Camila Cabello - "Senorita"
The first collaboration between Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, "I Know What You Did Last Summer," was really good and one of the first things I'd enjoyed by either of them. But this song is just eye-rolling, it feels like both this and Ed Sheeran's Cabello collaboration "South of the Border" were both writen by the same Santana featuring Rob Thomas lyric generator. Mendes probably doesn't need to make any songs without Teddy Geiger co-writing. And since it was released less than 2 months after "If I Can't Have You," I feel like it shortened the chart run of a much better Mendes song. 

a) "The Boys"
Now that the superhero genre has kind of swallowed the entertainment industry whole, we've got a whole canon of things that subvert or satirize the conventions of the genre. Having not read the graphic novel it's based on, I wasn't sure if "The Boys" was going to tread familiar territory, but a few episodes in, I'd say it's got its own distinct flip on the genre, dark and cynical but otherwise not derivative of, say, Watchmen. But even having watched a few seasons of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's other adaptation of a Garth Ennis comic, "Preacher," I was a little surprised by the gore -- there's a grisly and detailed explosion or evisceration of a human body in almost every episode. It's good, though, really kind of ends up feeling like a realistic depiction of how humans would superpowers would give into greed and self interest if they existed but would still want to be seen as heroic.

b) "Pennyworth"
One of my favorite recent satires of superhero movies was Teen Titans GO! To The Movies, where Robin gets his hopes up that the next Batman spinoff movie will be about him, only to see trailers for action movies about Alfred and the Batmobile. So I think about a lot when I watch "Pennyworth," a prequel series about Bruce Wayne's future butler that's even more deeply unnecessary than "Gotham." It's a pretty well made and entertaining show, but it would just as good if the characters weren't named Alfred Pennyworth and Thomas Wayne, I don't really get anything out of that context always lurking in the background.

c) "Pearson"
When talk started up a couple years ago of Gina Torres's "Suits" character getting her own spinoff series, it seemed like a pretty good idea to me. But now, with "Pearson" finally debuting alongside the final season of "Suits" limping to the finish line with a fairly different cast than the show started with, it feels like maybe they waited too long to make it happen. Also, New York lawyer Jessica Pearson now works for the mayor of Chicago and the character's personal background seems kind of incidental, like "Pennyworth," they could've just renamed the character and not made it a spinoff of anything and it would've been just as interesting, if not moreso.

d) "A Black Lady Sketch Show"
Robin Thede had some pretty funny moments on "The Nightly Show" and her own shortlived BET show "The Rundown" so I was rooting for her new HBO sketch show. It's a little hit and miss so far, but the first two episodes had a couple sketches where it all clicked so I'll keep watching.

e) "Alternatino With Arturo Castro"
Jaime from "Broad City"'s new sketch show is really, really funny. I'm always a little skeptical of sketch shows that have one or two stars that carry every sketch instead of a whole cast spreading the work around, but he's pretty incredibly versatile in terms of what he plays from sketch to sketch. And just the sheer range of concepts in the first few episodes is pretty impressive.

f) "Four Weddings And A Funeral"
Given Mindy Kaling's whole preoccupation with rom coms on "The Mindy Project," I'm not surprised that the next thing she'd make for Hulu would be a miniseries of the '90s rom com Four Weddings And A Funeral. The first episode even has a bit where people attend a costume party dressed as characters from classic rom coms (including Love Actually, which is kind of confusing since its director Richard Curtis also wrote Four Weddings). The whole thing really just falls flat, though -- not funny and not much romantic chemistry between the characters. I expected something at least passable given Kaling's track record and that a lot of the cast have been funny in other things. I don't watch "Game of Thrones" so I'd never really seen Nathalie Emmanuel in anything before, she's stunning but it's funny that they made her play an American character, her accent needs a litle work.

g) "Another Life"
My heart really went out to Selma Blair when she gave an interview about her MS diagnosis last year, I really missed seeing her in movies and was happy to hear that she'd be in this new Netflix series. She has kind of a small supporting role in "Another Life" but I'm intrigued to see where she fits into this weird story about an alien artifact landing on earth. The show's gotten pretty negative reviews so I'm kind of afraid the execution of the premise won't come together but I'm still curious to see where it goes.

h) "Pandora"
There's something especially sad to me about The CW's summer shows, like being in The CW's regular season schedule is not that high a bar so if you can't clear that, damn. I like the futuristic premise of "Pandora" but the name sucks and I don't feel like they got enough of an effects budget to make it look cool.

i) "One Spring Night"
A South Korean show on Netflix, felt like a very slow moving soap opera to me, probably wouldn't have found it very interesting even if I didn't have to read subtitles.

j) "Infinity Train"
Cartoon Network has been on such a roll lately, my whole family really enjoyed this 8-part miniseries, we all wish there were more episodes. It's a whole weird fantasy story where a girl ends up in an alternate universe populated by talking corgis, and at one point there's a whole setpiece involving Cameo's "Word Up," it's a really entertaining show.

k) "Where's Waldo?"
Just as I was recently complaining about the new Carmen San Diego series that completely abandons the premise of the old show, I'm amused that this show kind of does away with the point of the Where's Waldo? books and has this whole weird narrative where Waldo is a 'wanderer' being mentored by a wizard. I'm kind of surprised they're still trying to wring life out of the franchise, I haven't seen a kid look at a Where's Waldo? book in 20 years. But I did enjoy turning on the show for 5 seconds, pointing to Waldo and saying "There he is! This show sucks."

l) "Corn & Peg"
A few months ago I was on here ranting about how similar "Unikitty" and "Rainbow Butterfly Unicon Kitty" were, and here comes another new cartoon about a unicorn that's friends with a pegasus. Maybe there's just some kind of huge unicorn zeitgeist in the collective unconscious right now.

m) "BH90210"
A lot of people seem to have assumed that this is a revival of "Beverly Hills, 90210" with the original cast playing their characters again, which of course nobody needs. But it's worse than that: a trendy "Curb Your Enthusiasm"-style show where the actors play themselves trudging through their post-"90210" careers and reunite. I feel a very specific kind of embarrassment when actors who are not great at comedy try to be funny and play exaggerated unflattering versions of themselves. At least there was a nice little nod to Luke Perry in the first episode that felt sincere.

n) "Free Meek"
Putting together my Meek Mill deep album cuts playlist the week this show debuted was fun and kind of reminded me of just how much his discography centers on the issues he's only pretty recently gotten credit for bringing into public debate. It seems like they conceived this show and did most of the interviews during that 2017-2018 period when Meek's future was uncertain, so it doesn't have the same urgency now that it probably felt like it did at the time, but I'm still glad they made this and are using a different medium to tell Meek's story and further the conversation about the criminal justice system.

o) "Girls Cruise"
It's kind of hilarious how transparently VH1 just saw the success of Girls' Trip and rushed out a reality show loosely inspired by it, with Lil Kim going on a contrived group vacation with Mya and Chili from TLC. They kind of shoehorn social media celebrity B. Simone in there for comic relief, which is fine because at least she's trying to make the show entertaining while everyone is just kind of being boring and earnest.

p) "Lights Out with David Spade"
After 15 years of filling the post-"Daily Show" timeslot with spinoffs like "The Colbert Report," "The Nightly Show," and "The Opposition," Comedy Central has finally given up and reverted back to the "Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn" formula of half-assed panel discussion with an aging "SNL" guy at 11:30. It kind of amazes me how much David Spade seems to fail upward and show contempt for putting a minimal effort into being on television, just a total waste of once valuable TV real estate.

q) "The UnXplained"
A William Shatner-hosted History Channel show my wife have been watching a bit lately about famous mysteries and urban legends. The episode about the Goatman of Beltsville, Maryland really blew my mind, we live a few minutes away from there but somehow I'd never heard about it.

r) "Blown Away"
I'm amused that one of the side effects of there being so many shows on Netflix is that their reality competitions have gotten more and more niche, like this glass blowing competition show. It's a pretty interesting craft but it's just funny to see it done in a "Top Chef" type format. Also I'm very immature and amused that there's something they all have to call "the glory hole" with a straight face.

s) "Taco Chronicles"
Tacos are a very important topic to me, I appreciate seeing a docuseries give the subject the kind of loving attention it deserves. I gotta not watch it on an empty stomach, though, the al pastor episode really made me hungry.

t) "The Last Czars"
Amazon's "The Romanoffs" wasn't exactly about the Romanov family and was pretty bad, Netflix's docudrama "The Last Czars" is more directly about the Romanovs but is even more dull and mediocre. Tough run for a family that, er, has been through a lot already.

u) "Killer Affair"
One of those true crime shows on Oxygen, some interesting stories but not really my cup of tea.

v) "Murder In The Thirst"
This is BET's attempt at a true crime show in the vein of "Killer Affair," except it feels like it only exists as an excuse for the punny title and the host says "thirst" as often as possible to hammer home the tenuous concept of the title.

w) "Snowfall"
I tend to associate "Snowfall" with another FX drama co-starring Emily Rios, "The Bridge," that was on for two seasons a few years ago. But now "Snowfall" is in its 3rd season and has been renewed for a 4th so I'm like OK, this show has surpassed "The Bridge" and I shouldn't compare them too much. The third season had one of the more memorable death scenes I've seen in a while, wasn't graphic or anything, just really artful camera movement.

x) "Divorce"
I've never seen seasons of a show shrink from year to year like "Divorce," which went from 10 episodes to 8 episodes to 6 episodes for its third and final season. I suppose that's pretty unflattering given that Sarah Jessica Parker was once the queen of HBO. But it feels like a very small human-scale show that I've really come to enjoy, and it probably wouldn't make sense to do much more than 24 episodes about one couple's divorce.

y) "Killjoys"
My wife's perennial favorite SyFy show is wrapping up its run with its 5th season, it's really grown on me over the years. I feel like it's one of the rare sci-fi shows where the characters occasionally seem to acknowledge how bizarre the situations they're in are, they get a lot of comedy out of that. And Kelly McCormack's character Zeph has really become one of my favorite parts of the show this season.

z) "Veronica Mars"
"Veronica Mars" was the first show my wife got me into when we moved in together, so it feels very satisfying and nostalgic to watch the show's new 4th season together. Of all the revivals of long-canceled shows the last few years, this was the first one I actually actively looked forward to, and I'm happy to say that it's the first one other than "Twin Peaks" that wasn't crappy and unnecessary. The sex scenes felt kind of campy and tonally disconnected from the rest of the show and the last big plot twist was a bummer, but otherwise it was totally satisfying and I'd be thrilled if they came back for a 5th season. The whole gang from the original show all got some great moments and J.K. Simmons and Patton Oswalt contributed interesting characters to the story instead of just being gratuitous celebrity additions to the cast.

I updated my Violent Femmes deep album cuts playlist with songs from the later albums for City Pages.

One of my pet projects is keeping track of which major multi-platinum recording artists have withheld their catalog from subscription streaming services and how long it takes them to cave and put their albums on Spotify and Apple. Over the last few years, a lot of dominoes have fallen: AC/DC, then The Beatles, then Def Leppard, then Peter Gabriel, then Bob Seger. And this summer, two bands from different generations that are known for dense albums full of long, technically accomplished songs, King Crimson and Tool. Tool are releasing their 5th album at the end of August, and recently brought their previous albums and platinum-selling early EP to streaming services for the first time (like Chance The Rapper more recently, Tool is probably wise to give everyone a reason to revisit their old music for a few weeks before a new album comes out). All four albums re-entered the top 20 of the Billboard 200, and I'm not even sure who's left anymore that could make as big a splash doing that now.

Tool deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Jimmy
2. The Grudge
3. Lipan Conjuring
4. Intolerance
5. Pushit
6. Opiate / The Gaping Lotus Experience
7. Eon Blue Apocalypse
8. Bottom
9. Eulogy
10. The Patient
11. Wings For Marie (Pt. 1)
12. 10,000 Days (Wings Pt. 2)

Track 6 from the Opiate EP (1992)
Tracks 4 and 8 from Undertow (1993)
Tracks 1, 5 and 9 from Ænima (1996)
Tracks 2, 7 and 10 from Lateralus (2001)
Tracks 3, 11 and 12 from 10,000 Days (2006)

I'll never forget the first time I heard Maynard James Keenan's voice: squealing "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" in Green Jelly's novelty video hit "Three Little Pigs." But soon after that, Keenan's own band's much darker stop motion video for "Sober" also entered MTV rotation, a song that still holds up as an utterly unique and indelible breakthrough hit. As a kid who watched too much MTV in the '90s, I think of Tool as one of a handful of bands who were played regularly on both 120 Minutes and Headbanger's Ball, who straddled that dividing line between alternative rock and metal that would never be so narrow as it was around 1993.

On Tool's first EP and first album, the band was mostly writing verse/chorus songs that ran 5 minutes or so. But starting with Ænima, their songs got longer and more structurally complex, while the band continued to get more popular and build a more diehard audience. And that's something I've always respected about Tool, that they could get as dark and proggy and weird as they want and people were willing to follow them there. Nearly every single they've released since 1996 has been at least 6 minutes long (even the one that was shortened for radio, "Lateralus," was cut down from 9:24 to 5:47). And the 10-minute title track to their upcoming album Fear Inoculum just became the longest song to ever appear on the Hot 100.

I've never been the biggest Tool fan -- I still kind of think the first songs I heard, "Sober" and "Prison Sex," are still my favorites, and I'm partial to the Undertow deep cut "Bottom" that features a guest vocal by Henry Rollins. As a drummer I tend to really enjoy hearing complex rhythms and non-standard time signatures, and occasionally Tool does those really exhilaratingly, but sometimes it feels like an endurance trial to get through the dense weird groove and break through to the big satisfying 4/4 choruses. Tool's mostly dark, somber albums are occasionally offset by some really puerile, silly comedic elements, but I've never particularly shared their sense of humor and tended to avoid that stuff, other than "The Gaping Lotus Experience," the hidden track that appears after a brief silence after the end of Opiate's title track. That said, they grew on me quite a bit more than they had before while I was revisiting the albums on Spotify and making this playlist.

Since I limit these deep cuts playlists to 80 minutes, that means fewer tracks for bands with longer songs. And this playlist ties my Yes deep cuts playlist for the fewest tracks I've ever fit into that space, even moreso because 2 of the 12 tracks here, "Lipan Conjuring" and "Eon Blue Apocalypse," are just a couple of the many 1-minute interstitial tracks that appear on Tool's albums. Most of the tracks I used range from 7 to 11 minutes, and that was even just focusing on fan favorites and live staples without being able to fit some of them, like the 13-minute "Third Eye." There's something about the length of Tool's records that feels like it's seeped into their long hiatuses between records as well. It's believed that the title of 10,000 Days is a reference to Maynard James Keenan's mother and the length of time that she spent paralyzed before she passed away (10,000 days equal about 27 years). When Tool releases Fear Inoculum later this month, it will have been 4,869 days since their last album.

Previous playlists in the Deep Album Cuts series:
Vol. 1: Brandy
Vol. 2: Whitney Houston
Vol. 3: Madonna
Vol. 4: My Chemical Romance
Vol. 5: Brad Paisley
Vol. 6: George Jones
Vol. 7: The Doors
Vol. 8: Jay-Z
Vol. 9: Robin Thicke
Vol. 10: R. Kelly
Vol. 11: Fall Out Boy
Vol. 12: TLC
Vol. 13: Pink
Vol. 14: Queen
Vol. 15: Steely Dan
Vol. 16: Trick Daddy
Vol. 17: Paramore
Vol. 18: Elton John
Vol. 19: Missy Elliott
Vol. 20: Mariah Carey
Vol. 21: The Pretenders
Vol. 22: "Weird Al" Yankovic
Vol. 23: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Vol. 24: Foo Fighters
Vol. 25: Counting Crows
Vol. 26: T.I.
Vol. 27: Jackson Browne
Vol. 28: Usher
Vol. 29: Mary J. Blige
Vol. 30: The Black Crowes
Vol. 31: Ne-Yo
Vol. 32: Blink-182
Vol. 33: One Direction
Vol. 34: Kelly Clarkson
Vol. 35: The B-52's
Vol. 36: Ludacris
Vol. 37: They Might Be Giants
Vol. 38: T-Pain
Vol. 39: Snoop Dogg
Vol. 40: Ciara
Vol. 41: Creedence Clearwater Revival
Vol. 42: Dwight Yoakam
Vol. 43: Demi Lovato
Vol. 44: Prince
Vol. 45: Duran Duran
Vol. 46: Rihanna
Vol. 47: Janet Jackson
Vol. 48: Sara Bareilles
Vol. 49: Motley Crue
Vol. 50: The Who
Vol. 51: Coldplay
Vol. 52: Alicia Keys
Vol. 53: Stone Temple Pilots
Vol. 54: David Bowie
Vol. 55: The Eagles
Vol. 56: The Beatles
Vol. 57: Beyonce
Vol. 58: Beanie Sigel
Vol. 59: A Tribe Called Quest
Vol. 60: Cheap Trick
Vol. 61: Guns N' Roses
Vol. 62: The Posies
Vol. 63: The Time
Vol. 64: Gucci Mane
Vol. 65: Violent Femmes
Vol. 66: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Vol. 67: Maxwell
Vol. 68: Parliament-Funkadelic
Vol. 69: Chevelle
Vol. 70: Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio
Vol. 71: Fantasia
Vol. 72: Heart
Vol. 73: Pitbull
Vol. 74: Nas
Vol. 75: Monica
Vol. 76: The Cars
Vol. 77: 112
Vol. 78: 2Pac
Vol. 79: Nelly
Vol. 80: Meat Loaf
Vol. 81: AC/DC
Vol. 82: Bruce Springsteen
Vol. 83: Pearl Jam
Vol. 84: Green Day
Vol. 85: George Michael and Wham!
Vol. 86: New Edition
Vol. 87: Chuck Berry
Vol. 88: Electric Light Orchestra
Vol. 89: Chic
Vol. 90: Journey
Vol. 91: Yes
Vol. 92: Soundgarden
Vol. 93: The Allman Brothers Band
Vol. 94: Mobb Deep
Vol. 95: Linkin Park
Vol. 96: Shania Twain
Vol. 97: Squeeze
Vol. 98: Taylor Swift
Vol. 99: INXS
Vol. 100: Stevie Wonder
Vol. 101: The Cranberries
Vol. 102: Def Leppard
Vol. 103: Bon Jovi
Vol. 104: Dire Straits
Vol. 105: The Police
Vol. 106: Sloan
Vol. 107: Peter Gabriel
Vol. 108: Led Zeppelin
Vol. 109: Dave Matthews Band
Vol. 110: Nine Inch Nails
Vol. 111: Talking Heads
Vol. 112: Smashing Pumpkins
Vol. 113: System Of A Down
Vol. 114: Aretha Franklin
Vol. 115: Michael Jackson
Vol. 116: Alice In Chains
Vol. 117: Paul Simon
Vol. 118: Lil Wayne
Vol. 119: Nirvana
Vol. 120: Kix
Vol. 121: Phil Collins
Vol. 122: Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Vol. 123: Sonic Youth
Vol. 124: Bob Seger
Vol. 125: Radiohead
Vol. 126: Eric Church
Vol. 127: Neil Young
Vol. 128: Future
Vol. 129: Say Anything
Vol. 130: Maroon 5
Vol. 131: Kiss
Vol. 132: Dinosaur Jr.
Vol. 133: Stevie Nicks
Vol. 134: Talk Talk
Vol. 135: Ariana Grande
Vol. 136: Roxy Music
Vol. 137: The Cure
Vol. 138: 2 Chainz
Vol. 139: Kelis
Vol. 140: Ben Folds Five
Vol. 141: DJ Khaled
Vol. 142: Little Feat
Vol. 143: Brendan Benson
Vol. 144: Chance The Rapper
Vol. 145: Miguel
Vol. 146: The Geto Boys
Vol. 147: Meek Mill

Queen + Adam Lambert are playing in Minnesota this weekend, so I expanded my Queen deep album cuts playlist for City Pages.

a) The Favourite
Usually when my wife sees a movie without me it's something I was alright with missing, but when she saw The Favourite with a friend I was definitely a little jealous, so I'm glad it finally hit cable. I didn't care much for The Lobster, but Yorgos Lanthimos's directorial sensibility with someone else's script worked really well here. The use of natural light and detailed costume drama production values really immersed you in this world where a true story of a historical figure became this vulgar dark comedy, I loved it, great performances from everybody that got an Oscar or Oscar nom and everybody who didn't.

b) Venom
Tom Hardy is regarded as a major talent who made a rare misstep with Venom but honestly I just never cared for the guy and think he has a history of either giving horrible (The Dark Knight Rises) or blandly serviceable performances (weirdly a non-entity in the title role of Mad Max: Fury Road). So my low opinion of Hardy maybe freed me up a little to enjoy the goofy charm of his Redman-inspired performance as Venom. It's not a good movie, and the best part is towards the end when Michelle Williams literally looks at the camera and says "hey, I'm sorry about Venom." But I did enjoy the more playful second half of the movie, other than the double Mountain Dew dose of Eminem and Run The Jewels songs that play over the credits.

c) Robin Hood
I can't believe it's already been almost a decade since the last underperforming Robin Hood movie, and it still feels like they tried to do another one too soon. The idea of Taron Egerton as Robin Hood and Jamie Foxx as Little John looks fun on paper, like it could be a broad over-the-top thing in the style of Kingsman or Django Unchained. But it didn't really feel like they had much of a vision for it as a popcorn movie or as a more serious movie. Bono's daughter Eve Hewson was cute as Maid Marian, but even that made me think I would've rather watched an outright terrible movie where Bono plays Robin Hood.

d) Night School
Tiffany Haddish's first lead role in a movie after her breakout performance in Girls' Trip as a foil to Kevin Hart seems like a good idea, but it's mostly just the usual Kevin Hart show with a few good Haddish scenes. The one thing I found memorable about this movie was the last 15 minutes -- they kind of bring the story to what seems like it will be an inevitable resolution, and then there's a twist and a character has to put in more work for their happy ending, I really liked that.

e) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
I don't really feel that strongly about the original Jurassic Park even though I saw it at a pretty young impressionable age, but I will say that just about every subsequent sequel has been worse than the last and has made the first movie seem better. This one seemed to at least try to amend for Jurassic World in one respect by letting Bryce Dallas Howard get to be a bit of a badass, but otherwise I would say it's of a piece with the consistent decline of the franchise throughout its lifespan.

f) The Spy Who Dumped Me
I enjoy movies like this that find humor in the contrast between action movie tropes and rom com tropes, but it's hard not to compare this unflatteringly with one of my favorite comedies of the last few years, the Melissa McCarthy vehicle Spy. This was fun, though, the generic spy movie stuff with Justin Theroux was well done and Kate McKinnon kind of carried the movie more than the ostensible lead, Mila Kunis.

g) Ferdinand
Another movie where Kate McKinnon is the funny but overqualified sidekick, except in this one she's an animated goat. The Story of Ferdinand was one of my favorite books when I was a little kid, so there was something distinctly depressing a couple years ago when I started seeing commercials for the movie adaptation and the gist was "John Cena is the bull and he farts." But my son likes the movie now and it's moderately charming, as much as it bums me out that the narrative of the book is basically an afterthought in the movie's plot.

For most of this 2010s, Meek Mill has been one of my favorite currently active rappers, but for most of that time he's felt like a relative underdog in the major label world, an east coast street rap throwback who doesn't sound like his contemporaries and lost career momentum to beefs and jail time. So it feels vindicating to approach the end of the decade with Meek in the clear legally, coming off of the biggest album of his career, inking a deal with Roc Nation for his Dreamchasers imprint, and launching the Amazon documentary series "Free Meek" this week.

Meek Mill deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Traumatized
2. Flexing
3. Championships
4. Lil N**** Snupe
5. We Ball featuring Young Thug
6. Middle Of Da Summer featuring Mel Love
7. Lord Knows featuring Tory Lanez
8. Stuck In My Ways
9. A1 Everything featuring Kendrick Lamar
10. Who Your Around featuring Mary J. Blige
11. Jump Out The Face featuring Future
12. I'm Me
13. Fuck That Check Up featuring Lil Uzi Vert
14. Cold Hearted featuring Diddy
15. Tony Story
16. Tony Story, Pt. 2
17. Tony Story 3
18. What's Free featuring Rick Ross and Jay-Z
19. 1942 Flows

Tracks 6, 12 and 15 from Dreamchasers (2011)
Tracks 2 and 9 from Dreamchasers 2 (2012)
Tracks 1, 9 and 16 from Dreams & Nightmares (2012)
Track 4 from Dreamchasers 3 (2013)
Tracks 7, 11 and 14 from Dreams Worth More Than Money (2015)
Track 17 from DC4 (2016)
Track 5, 13 and 19 from Wins & Losses (2017)
Tracks 3, 8 and 18 from Championships (2018)

I decided to mix music from Meek's four studio albums together with his four Dreamchasers mixtapes. The first three tapes in the series were originally only streaming on mixtape sites, but at some point in 2018 they came to Spotify and the other services, and it appears it was done officially by Meek himself, which is pretty great. Those tapes are basically major label-quality albums and did a lot for his career -- Dreamchasers 2 broke records on DatPiff at the time and is still one of the site's most streamed projects ever. It'd be cool to have some tracks from Meek's pre-MMG mixtapes like Mr. Philadelphia and the Flamers series, but that stuff's not on Spotify, maybe someday.

One of Meek Mill's early Dreamchasers signings, Lil Snupe, was killed in 2013. And Meek's tribute to Snupe released 3 months later on Dreamchasers 3 is still I think the most harrowing and passionate song he's ever made, you hear all the frustration and rage of Meek trying to make this talented 18-year-old kid a star and then he gets gunned down. And it made sense to put "We Ball" with Young Thug after that, it kind of picks right up on that train of thought about Snupe. Meek Mill and Young Thug aren't necessarily a duo that people think of often or would want to do a whole project together, but they've got at least like 8 songs together and they're all pretty good, so I wanted to include at least one of those.

One of the most interesting things to me about Meek Mill's catalog is that some of his best and most popular songs are produced by a pair of brothers from Philadelphia who make beats separately. Orlando "Jahlil Beats" Tucker produced Meek Mill's breakthrough hit "I'm A Boss" (as well as singles like "Amen," "Monster," and "Burn" and a lot of Flamers era mixtape tracks). And his younger brother Anthony "The Beat Bully" Tucker produced "Dreams & Nightmares" as well as "House Party." So I wanted to highlight some of the Tucker brothers' work with Meek on here: "Flexing," "Tony Story," and "Tony Story 3" are by Jahlil Beats, and "Middle Of Da Summer" and "I'm Me" are by The Beat Bully.

1. Justin Moore - Late Nights And Longnecks
6 of the 10 songs on the aptly titled Late Nights And Longnecks are about drinking, from "Why We Drink" to "Airport Bar" (and not even counting the single "The Ones That Didn't Make It Back Home," which suggests holding up a beer to salute fallen heroes). And that suits me just fine as somebody who once made a playlist of all of the George Jones songs about booze. Justin Moore's deep Arkansas twang is one of my favorite voices in country music today, the only artist who I included 6 years in a row on my annual country single lists. And his 5th album might be his strongest set of songs to date, the first since his debut where he co-wrote every song. Here's my 2019 albums Spotify playlist that you can find all of these records in.

2. DDm - Beautiful Gowns
I remember when a teenager named Midas started winning rap battles in Baltimore in 2005, his wit and his love of performing just totally outshining the competition. And I've really enjoyed getting to know that kid and watching him grow up, find his musical voice, come out of the closet, bounce from one crew to another and change his stage name to Dappa Dan!!! Midas and then DDm (and now sometimes Unkle Lulu) and make a wide range of music and occasionally go viral for things like his dramatic readings of Omarosa's memoir last year. DDm has said in the run up to Beautiful Gowns that it's his last album, and I never believe any musician when they say that, but it would be a solid finale if it is, it's a really eclectic and imaginative rap album, "Fly On The Wall" and "Closed" are the kind of thought provoking songs only he could have written but there's also a lot of funny, danceable stuff on here.

3. Chance The Rapper - The Big Day
As I accurately predicted when I posted a Chance playlist here a few weeks ago, the slowly turning tide of public opinion in the three years since Coloring Book has crested into a full-on backlash for Chance's new album. And I get it, but I don't. It's not his best record, but it's still pretty strong and of a piece with his back catalog. Even when he was a kid who made school suspensions and tripping on psychedelics the themes of his first 2 mixtapes, he was overwhelmingly wholesome compared to any other young rapper -- this is just the same guy as a married dad a few years. It's a lot to take in -- almost 80 minutes, none of the 7 singles he released over the previous year (though any of them would've been welcome on the album, aside from "Groceries"). But the unhurried sprawl and genuinely odd array of guests (Randy Newman's voice was where I did a double take) remind me of Surf more than any Chance solo project, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it's very relaxed and easygoing. The chorus of the first song starts with "we can't be out here pleasing everybody/ we know who we are" and to my ears this whole record follows through on that philosphy -- Chance is never gonna be the rapper that everybody agrees on but he's really good at being himself and has already taken it farther than I honestly thought was possible. That first verse of "Roo" and "Sun Come Down" stand out as some really interesting writing, and there are entertaining left turns like the sudden screamed "fuck it, fuck it, fuck it" tangent in the middle of the otherwise placid title track.

4. Maxo Kream - Brandon Banks
I didn't hear Maxo Kream's previous projects so it's possible tuning in for his big Roc Nation debut is the wrong move and I'm catching up to the wrong thing. But this is really good, he has a pretty distinct voice and perspective, only the Travis Scott collab that sounds like everyone else's Travis Scott collab edges it into cookie cutter major label rap album territory but throwing that into the first 4 tracks really is a bad idea. But by the end it really builds well to some of the most autobiographical songs, "Brothers" and "Dairy Ashford Bastard." The buzz that Jay-Z helped sequence the album makes me wonder which choices were his.

5. BJ The Chicago Kid - 1123
I didn't realize BJ The Chicago Kid has been around as long as he has, that he's 34 and has been writing and singing backup for major artists dating back to 2001. Maybe the 'kid' part threw me off. He's talented, though, I'm glad he squeaked out another major label album after the last one did little and his singles continue to get ignored by radio, this one has some great production and is probably as good as 2016's In My Mind, maybe better. And the dancey Afrojack collaboration may look funny on paper, but it works really well as an album closer.

6. Yuna - Rouge
Yuna's voice is gorgeous and it's cool to see a Malaysian artist make some inroads to American R&B radio, this record's lead single is her 3rd charting song in the states. Unfortunately, Rouge is like an American R&B album in the respect that I'd like it a lot more without any of the rap features, it would flow a lot better without verses from G-Eazy or Kyle.

7. E-40 - Practice Makes Paper
A couple weeks ago my family went on vacation for a few days, and I took it as a sign of good luck when our rental car was waiting in a parking spot marked 'E40.' Other artists might have larger catalogs counting mixtape, but E-40 is probably the first rapper to have made 28 albums, all sold and distributed on a national level. And Practice Makes Paper is another long one, 86 minutes after last year's The Gift Of Gab was a rare short E-40 album. At this point his formula is so set in stone that you either love it or hate it and no new record is gonna change that, but it's fun to hear new combinations of artists, what it sounds like to have Roddy Ricch or Tee Grizzley or Redman on an E-40 song. And E-40's brazenly unique approach to flow still turns up some interesting new approaches, like the echoing triplet ad libs on "Imma Find Out."

8. Sabrina Carpenter - Singular Act II
20-year-old former minor Disney Channel star Sabrina Carpenter has been hovering around the cusp of graduating from Radio Disney to actual Top 40 stardom for a few years now without quite getting there. I didn't care much for her earlier singles or last year's 8-track mini-album Singular Act I, but the new 9-song sequel is sounding a little stronger, she's got some old pros like Stargate and Warren "Oak" Felder and has found out a good way to use her kinda nasal voice. Even a spare ballad like "Tell Em" comes off really well where I think it would stop some other pop albums in its tracks, so I think she's onto something.

9. Tituss Burgess - Saint Tituss EP
Last weekend, Tituss Burgess performed at the Kennedy Center, and I had the opportunity to run the lyric prompter for the concert. It was a great show and I really enjoyed working with Tituss, he was such a pro and so kind to everybody. But I didn't even realize until the next day that he'd just released a 6-song EP. None of these songs were in his setlist (which included of a lot of Stevie Wonder and gospel and "Love Shack"), so it's interesting to hear another side of him on original material like this, which ranges from the witty political opener "45" to the piano ballad "I'll Be Alright."

10. Nas - The Lost Tapes 2
I think a lot of hyperbole and sketchy received wisdom has kind of grown around Nas and his catalog. Obviously most of the albums since Illmatic have been less than perfect and sometimes poor beat selection and leaving good tracks off the albums have been to blame. But the extent to which those things are true has sometimes been exaggerated to the point that 2002's The Lost Tapes has been built up as one of his best albums (which I never agreed with), and expectations were absurdly high for the sequel, even among people who have nothing good about the albums it consists of outtakes from besides Life Is Good. And that culminated in the somewhat over-the-top reactions to the first single "Jarreau of Rap (Skatt Attack)," which I think is a typical endearingly clumsy Nas misfire -- for my money "Tanasia" is the worst song here, everything I hate about mediocre Nas songs bottled up in one. But most of the stuff on here is pretty good, I really dig "The Art of It" and "Highly Favored," nice palette cleanser after that Nasir crap.

The Worst Album of the Month: Bryce Vine - Carnival
I tend to group Bryce Vine into a vague cohort with Bazzi and Lauv, guys making fratty vaguely R&Bish top 40 pop, and his debut album is a brisk 26 minutes long like a Soundcloud rap album. At one point, he sings nostalgically about "the days of Looney Tunes and watching 'Entourage,'" and I think I would've assumed that watching Vinnie Chase and Johnny Drama was a formative experience for him even if he'd never mentioned it. There's a somewhat clever, savvy, self aware personality somewhere in there, but Bryce Vine would have to start singing and/or writing a lot better to come off as more than a genre-blurring douchebag.