Monthly Report: September 2025 Singles

Tuesday, September 30, 2025

 







1. Megan Moroney - "6 Months Later"
I had a polite disagreement recently with Milwaukee music writer Evan Rytlewski, who thinks that "nobody dunks on godawful country music anymore" and that mainstream country has become a sacred cow among critics in the age of Cowboy Carter. Personally, I don't see it. Morgan Wallen and Jelly Roll are reviled about as much as Nickelback ever was, and most of the country stars who aren't at that level of crossover success are relatively invisible. There's a whole new generation of hot girls singing sad songs on country radio (Ella Langley, Megan Moroney, Lainey Wilson, Kassi Ashton), but they don't have a fraction of the same awareness among critics as Kacey Musgraves. who broke through well over a decade ago. Moroney got to sing her excellent current single for about 90 seconds at the MTV VMAs a few weeks ago, but I saw zero reaction to it on my social media feed that's full of critics and music lovers. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month. 

2. Justin Bieber - "Daisies"
The day Justin Bieber released Swag, I heard "Daisies" on the radio before the album, because I wasn't in a rush to hear a Justin Bieber album named Swag. And was blown away by it, having no idea that Dijon and Mk.gee worked on it and that was why it had kind of a quirky lo-fi sound completely different from anything Bieber had released before. And after the element of surprise wore off, I just kept liking "Daisies" more and more, I crank it up every time it comes on in the car. 

3. Clipse - "So Be It"
I think Let God Sort Em Out is a great album but I find all the talk of Clipse having 'the greatest album rollout ever' kind of silly, especially given what happened with "So Be It." Apparently Clipse and Pharrell made the song, with the Talal Maddah sample, then shot and released a video for arguably the best and most radio-friendly song from the album without clearing the sample, and were fully prepared to release the album with an inferior version of "So Be It" with a different beat until Swizz Beatz intervened at the last minute and helped get the sample cleared. Sounds kind of sloppy to me, but all's well that ends well, I love the song. 

4. Turnstile - "Never Enough" 
At this point Turnstile have had so many career milestones that few or zero other Baltimore bands can lay claim to that I wouldn't be able to list them all, but a #1 alternative radio hit is pretty cool. The radio stations cut the ending short but I like having the album version on my playlist with the long cool-down coda. 

5. 414BigFrank f/ Sunny Lou and Run Along Forever - "There It Is" 
My brother Zac has lived in Milwaukee for a long time, before people really started to care about the rap scene there, and he put me onto this song before I started to hear about it from other regional rap enthusiasts (or the other person I know in Milwaukee, Evan Rytlewski). 414BigFrank's previous song "Eat It Up" inspired Milwaukee's big breakout hit of 2024, J.P.'s "Bad Bitty," and it's fun to spot J.P. in the background in the really fun "There It Is" performance on YouTube. 

6. Coco Jones - "On Sight"
I was irritated that "Taste" came and went without really being embraced by R&B radio because I really love that track, but I'm happy with "On Sight" becoming Coco Jones's current hit. 

7. Haute & Freddy - "Shy Girl"
I enjoyed interviewing Haute & Freddy for Spin recently, they had 5 songs out at the time and now they have 6, and all are good, but I understand why "Shy Girl" is the biggest so far. If they're huge a few months from now, I imagine it will be because of this track, that's a real dynamite pop song. 

8. KenTheMan - "First" 
KenTheMan's been on the margins of the girl rap scene for the last few years, I already wrote about the version of "First" with Monaleo in the Remix Report Card but I like the solo version to, definitely feels like it could be a tipping point song for her career. 

9. Flowerovlove - "I'm Your First"
This more recent song is a pop twist on the same premise as the KenTheMan song ("I'm his/your first bad bitch"), I imagine they're probably both quoting the same social media posts rather than one artist biting the other, but I like both songs and they otherwise sound completely different. 

10. Lainey Wilson - "Somewhere Over Laredo" 
Lainey Wilson recently released a deluxe version of Whirlwind, one of my favorite albums of 2024, and I wish the CD in my car would instantly update with the 5 new songs, they're all worthy additions. I kind of rolled my eyes the first time I listened to "Somewhere Over Laredo" and heard the "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" interpolation in the chorus, but the way they wove it into a lovely new melody really works well, it grew on me. 

The Worst Single of the Month: Hardy f/ Ernest - "Bro Country" 
It kind of feels like Nashville has collectively decided that 'bro country' is an era that has come to an end, which I think is kind of bullshit. Country radio is even more heavily male than it was a decade ago, and even though bro country poster boys Florida Georgia Line broke up, FGL's Tyler Hubbard recently got his third solo #1 single, and the current biggest star, Morgan Wallen, got his first hit with an FGL collaboration. So this song playfully eulogizing bro country, from two people at the forefront of 2020s bro country, just feels like a self-serving narrative to me. 

4:09 PM

My Top 50 Movies of 2018

Monday, September 29, 2025

 






1. Widows (Steve McQueen)
2. Hereditary (Ari Aster)
3. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley)
4. Wild Rose (Tom Harper)
5. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
6. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman)
7. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
8. Sorry To Bother You (Boots Riley)
9. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
10. A Simple Favor (Paul Feig)
11. Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein)
12. Damsel (David Zellner and Nathan Zellner)
13. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
14. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)
15. Annihilation (Alex Garland)
16. Shirkers (Sandi Tan)
17. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
18. Fast Color (Julia Hart)
19. Paddington 2 (Paul King)
20. A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)
21. Crazy Rich Asians (Jon M. Chu)
22. Support The Girls (Andrew Bujalski)
23. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)
24. The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)
25. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)
26. The Landy of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener)
27. Upgrade (Leigh Whannell)
28. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)
29. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen)
30. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)
31. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)
32. Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)
33. Bumblebee (Travis Knight)
34. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
35. Parallel (Isaac Ezban)
36. Ocean’s 8 (Gary Ross)
37. The Post (Steven Spielberg)
38. Aquaman (James Wan)
39. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce)
40. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)
41. Halloween (David Gordon Green)
42. The Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)
43. Blame (Quinn Shephard)
44. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)
45. On The Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder)
46. Bird Box (Susanne Bier)
47. Cam (Daniel Goldhaber)
48. The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo)
49. Happy As Lazarro (Alice Rohrwacher)
50. To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Susan Johnson) 
 
I think 2018 might be my favorite year of the ones I've looked at for this series so far, just a lot of stuff that really left a big impression on me. A great year for Black filmmakers, for superhero movies, and for two genres that are really close to my heart, horror and comedy. And let me just say, I think Wild Rose really should have won some Oscars but didn't because it had the bad fortune to come out the same year as A Star Is Born (which is good, but not nearly as good). 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2019
My Top 50 Movies of 2020
My Top 50 Movies of 2021
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

2:10 PM

Friday, September 26, 2025

 





I wrote features about Bones Owens and the Brian Jonestown Massacre for Spin this week, as well as a Deep Cut Friday column about The Cure's "Push."  

9:28 PM

Reading Diary

Thursday, September 25, 2025

 






a) Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, by Jeff Chang
I had a really great time at the Baltimore Book Festival a couple weekends ago. One of my events was on the same stage immediately after my friend Lawrence Burney discussing his book with Jeff Chang, who also had a new book. Chang wrote one of the great hip hop books, Can't Stop Won't Stop, so I was excited to meet him and really flattered that he bought my book, and I bought his new one and got him to sign it. Water Mirror Echo actually only came out a couple days ago, I got it early. Chang really excels at giving you anything that might be in a straightforward Bruce Lee biography but threading it into a wider cultural narrative about Asians in America, and how the specific details of the life of the most famous Asian American (even now, 50 years after his death) have all these resonances and ripple effects right up through today. A lot of the subject matter, both about Bruce Lee's films and about midcentury China and Hong Kong and some of the nastier incidents of anti-Asian xenophobia in America, are relatively unfamiliar territory for me so it's been really engrossing and eye-opening. For instance, I had never heard of the term 'Sick Man of Asia,' so watching Fists of Fury for the first time hit a lot harder after reading Chang's explanation of how that film in particular and in some ways Lee's entire career were a refutation of that trope. 

b) How to Kill Friends and Eviscerate People, by Tim Paggi
On the second day of the Book Festival, I read from my book at Normal's Books and Records. A lot of the other writers at Normal's were poets, but the author who directly preceded me was Tim Paggi, a playwright who read from this entertaining recent satirical horror novella. On the cover Paggi shares a co-author credit with Jenny Johnston, who is the fictional protagonist and unreliable narrator of the book (or perhaps just the radically forthright narrator of a bizarre story). I enjoyed the way he started with an inherently over-the-top premise -- basically, someone climbing the corporate ladder by killing people and telling you about it in chipper self-help language -- but didn't just sit back and play up that contrast over and over. There's a mischievous whimsy to the writing that keeps it entertaining. And it takes place in Towson in the 1990s, a place and time I can think back to very vividly, which is fun for me. 

c) All Things Crack... Some Endure: A Crack The Sky Biography, by Tyson Koska
Crack The Sky are a band that formed in West Virginia but, by a twist of fate, became enormously popular in the Baltimore area in the '70s and remain comparatively unknown in the rest of the country. 
Tyson Koska, a professor at Towson University (my alma mater), wrote a book about Crack The Sky, and I stumbled upon it while strolling around the Book Festival checking out all the different book stores' displays and snapped up a copy. It's a playfully arranged book, a lot of it is just interviews with the band and associates, but it goes pretty deep into how the band formed, how they wrote and wound up with this unusual career, and how frontman John Palumbo wrote his lyrics -- at one point Palumbo refers to the band's sound as "a cross between King Crimson and Steely Dan and Jethro Tull," which I think gets pretty close to explaining their appeal. Sometimes Koska does something a bit like the Motley Crue book The Dirt where each member of the band remembers a story a little differently and he just presents everyone's recollections side by side, and leaves it up to you to believe what you want. 

d) Max Meow: Cat Crusader, by John Gallagher
Yes, this is the Baltimore Book Festival edition of Reading Diary, all of these are things I bought that weekend. I am constantly on the lookout for books to read to my 10-year-old son every night and just fostering that love of books in him, and Max Meow is a sort of knowingly silly riff on superhero comic books that's right up the alley of some of my son's favorite books. He was into it, and there were a few good jokes that might have went over his head but made me chuckle, I'm probably gonna pick up some more books in this series, there are a few now. 

9:27 PM

Monthly Report: August 2025 Albums

Tuesday, September 23, 2025

 





1. Pool Kids - Easier Said Than Done
I typically listen to at least 30 new releases from a given month before I do these posts, and lately I've been taking a little more time with them, partly because some months there's just so many albums I want to hear before picking the best. And this is a good example of why, Easier Said Than Done was like the 50th August album I listened to and I was instantly grateful that I got to it after checking out so many other releases. I didn't know much about the Florida band Pool Kids other than that their first album was championed by Hayley Williams, but this, their third album, is just impressive as hell. The third and fourth tracks, "Bad Bruise" and "Leona Street," were about the point I really fell in love with Christine Goodwyne's voice and Caden Clinton's drumming. I went back and checked out the earlier stuff and it's a little more intricate and math rock, but there's a real purposeful clarity to the songwriting and production on Easier Said Than Done, it's a huge step forward, "Which Is Worse?" is a really moving song about grief.

2. Hayley Williams - Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party
Speaking of Hayley Williams! She initially released 17 singles with no official sequence or album title, and encouraged other people to make their own playlists of the songs. As someone who loves to make playlists and dream up ideal running orders for albums, I relished the challenge and am really proud of my playlist. So when she finally released the proper album weeks later, my first thought was kind of 'well, my version flows better.' The official version has grown on me, though, she make some choices I really like -- "Ice In My OJ" is one of my favorite songs on the album but it didn't occur to me to make it the opener, that's a ballsy choice. And I struggled with finding a song "Disappearing Man" sounds good following, and "Martazapine" was absolutely the right song. The title track also hits nicely in the second half, I feel like most of the rest of us had it pretty early in the album. When I ranked all the Paramore and Hayley Williams albums for Spin, I put this right below Petals For Armor, but it's close, I think they're both really impressive, engrossing albums. 

3. The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie
Earlier this year I heard the New Zealand band The Beths' 2020 song "I'm Not Getting Excited" and instantly went oh fuck, I like this band, and shortly after that, they began releasing singles from their fourth album that really got me anticipating this record. I love the way Elizabeth Stokes writes lyrics and sings them, a bit of a dry wit but also some earnest sincerity, and the bands' arrangements are so generously detailed and creative within a familiar jangly power pop package, I especially love the guitar tones on "Ark of the Covenant" and "Best Laid Plans." "Mother, Pray Me" is an incredibly heavy yet quiet song to drop right in the middle of the album, and then they gradually bring the energy back up over the next couple tracks, really good sequencing. Between this and the new Balu Brigada and Royel Otis albums, August was a strong month for Antipodean indie rock. 

4. Dijon - Baby
Dijon Duenas was a military brat who moved all over the place growing up and now lives in Los Angeles and does big deal shit like writing and producing all the best songs on the latest Justin Bieber album. But he went to high school in Ellicott City and to college at UMBC, and began his musical career in Baltimore, playing in local spots like The Crown as part of the duo Abhi//Dijon a decade ago. And it's pretty exciting that someone from this scene is making some of the most exciting and original mainstream-adjacent music out right now, I love the fidgety way his songs keep cracking open and revealing different layers, as if there's a lo-fi demo underneath the more polished synth R&B jams that keeps bleeding through. 

5. Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones
Nourished By Time's Marcus Brown is another guy who's lived in both Baltimore and L.A. and other places and does idiosyncratic bedroom pop R&B that sounds completely different from what Dijon does but it is also really cool and justifiably acclaimed. The Passionate Ones is Brown's first full-length since signing to XL Recordings and it isn't entirely recorded in his parents' Baltimore basement like his last album, but it very much has that spontaneous, casual feeling to it. "It's Time" is my favorite track so far. 

6. Superchunk - Songs In The Key of Yikes
My friend Anthony Miccio suggests that any aging band's longevity should be expressed in Rolling Stones terms to describe how far removed they are from their debut album. Superchunk is 35 years in, and thankfully they're doing a lot better than Bridges To Babylon. 2018's What A Time To Be Alive was, for me, the definitive angry punk album of the first Trump administration, and Mac McCaughan's palpable weariness at writing yet another set of protest songs for the second Trump administration is pretty relatable. Songs In the Key of Yikes is the band's first album since one of my favorite living drummers, Jon Wurster, stepped down to focus on his other gigs, and I'm happy to say that the new drummer Laura King is awesome and totally has that classic Superchunk bounce down, even if it's not a perfect match and there are occasionally moments where I miss Wurster's unique sense of forward momentum. 

7. Sabrina Carpenter - Man's Best Friend
For a lot of people, Sabrina Carpenter kind of sprang into existence as a main pop girl last year with the release of "Espresso." But as someone who's listened to her singles since 2017 and to her albums since 2019, I got to enjoy Short n' Sweet as the hard-earned triumph of someone who'd been grinding it out on the lower rungs of pop stardom for ages, gradually becoming a better singer and writer with an individual perspective and sense of humor. I think she's still operating at a really high level -- "Manchild" is easily one of the best things she's ever done -- and I like this throwback Olivia Newton John/ABBA vibe she's heavily mining, but it's definitely not banger after banger like Short n' Sweet. Carpenter brought back most of the collaborators from her last two albums, but there's a notable absence of Julian Bunetta, who had a hand in a lot of the best songs on those records. 

8. Enslow - Crush
Shazam is a pretty reliable app, as that kind of tech goes, rarely is it stumped. Every now and again, though, it'll falsely identify a song, and if I try again seconds later, it will change the result and tell me the correct song. One amusing example happened a few months ago when WTMD played a new song from the Baltimore singer-songwriter Enslow called "I Love You," and when I asked Shazam to ID it, I was told that it was Linda Ronstadt's 1995 cover of Tom Petty's "The Waiting." It felt like an appropriate glitch, given that Enslow has a voice as strong and clear and Ronstadt and covers a song by Petty's pals Fleetwood Mac on Crush. I put Enslow's debut Hello on my list of Baltimore's best albums of 2024, and was really happy to see her return with another great pop record on an indie budget, I think "Feels Like I'm Falling In Love" is my favorite on this one. 

9. Metro Boomin - A Futuristic Summa
Metro Boomin may be the most ubiquitous rap producer of his generation, and he's parlayed his hitmaking acumen into two platinum all-star solo albums, which I found perfectly enjoyable but lacking in any kind of unifying sound or perspective, generic playlist rap for the Spotify era. A Futuristic Summa has a very specific and purposeful sound, though, throwing back to the 2008-2013 period of swag rap, full of beats that sound like "Swag Surfin'" or "Ain't Gon' Let Up," the Atlanta rap that kept the party going while 'blog era' rappers were crafting their brooding serious nu-Jay-Z images. A Futuristic Summa features plenty of superstars who shaped and/or were shaped by this period (Gucci Mane, Future, Young Thug, Lil Baby) but the album really feels like a celebration of the more marginal regional stars who just briefly thrived in those years -- J Money, Yung L.A., Skooly, Roscoe Dash, Travis Porter, guys like that. Young Dro is the MVP of several tracks, and Rocko's "Make It Make Sense" is far and away my favorite thing he's ever done. 

10. Chance The Rapper - Star Line
I saw the Chance backlash coming and correctly predicted that people would hate The Big Day even if it was a perfectly good album, which in my opinion it was. But the damage was one and it took Chance six years to regain his confidence to release an album -- hilariously rebooting his image by simply trading out the fitted cap for a bucket hat but mostly making the same thoughtful, big-hearted, tightly written verses he always has. Like The Big Day, I think Star Line could've been better if he'd saved some of those great non-album singles for this, but that's just how hip hop is these days, go figure. I really appreciate Chance screaming "fuck ICE" on a track, although Beauty Pill still has the best song called "Drapetomania." 

The Worst Album of the Month: Bailey Zimmerman - Different Night Same Rodeo
Mainstream country operates completely differently from the rest of popular music -- major stars often release albums before any of the singles have hit big, and it might take a year or two for radio to really start playing the record. That being said, nothing on Bailey Zimmerman's second album has hit remotely like his double platinum 2023 debut, and it sounds a lot like a sophomore slump from someone who wasn't that good to begin with. Extra demerits for a title reminiscent of one of the best country albums of the last 20 years, Same Trailer Different Park by Kacey Musgraves. 

11:14 AM

Saturday, September 20, 2025

 




I will be doing another event for Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music on Tuesday, September 30, this time at Greedy Reads in Remington. Catalina Byrd will be hosting and Shawn Caesar of Unruly Records will be joining us. 

The Selector Series event is also coming up this Tuesday. Buy the book if you haven't already! I'm going to try to keep this streak of events and reviews and interviews going as long as I can, if you want to be involved in any way, or want help getting the book into a store, don't hesitate to reach out at shipley.al@gmail.com. 

9:42 PM

Friday, September 19, 2025

 





This week on Spin, I wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Bob Dylan's "Tombstone Blues" and also revised my ranking of Paramore/Hayley Williams albums to include Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. 

9:00 PM

TV Diary

Wednesday, September 17, 2025



















a) "Task"
"Mare of Easttown" creator Brad Inglesby's new HBO miniseries once again has a cast full of actors, some of them not Americans, doing their best Pennsylvania accents. I loved "Mare" but so far this one is a lot compelling in terms of story, the strength of the cast, and the direction (Jeremiah Zagar doesn't build the ominous atmosphere as well as Craig Zobel did). The first two episodes had a handful of scenes that grabbed me, though, I'm hoping it's gonna grow on me. 

Olivia Cooke is so gorgeous, I kind of lost enthusiasm for "Slow Horses" when she left after the first season, I guess to make time for that one "Game of Thrones" spinoff I haven't seen. But I guess she does have time to have a second gig, and this Amazon Prime miniseries is an entertaining rashomon about a woman (Cooke) and her boyfriend's mother (Robin Wright, who directed some of the episodes) who hate each other, and you're left constantly guessing about who's the real problem or if it's both of them. The story really escalates quickly in some interesting, unexpected ways, and it's probably the best and most complex performance of Cooke's career. 

Suranne Jones and Julie Delpy play heads of state caught up in kidnapping and blackmail in the Netflix series "Hostage." It kind of goes straight from introducing you to the characters to plunging you into the drama very quickly, 

d) "The Runarounds"
"The Runarounds" is a new show from the creator of the Netflix hit "Outer Banks" and it's another teen drama with a sunny North Carolina summer backdrop. But it's about an aspiring band, and I find it pretty charming -- it gave me a little of a Cameron Crowe vibe even before I got to the Say Anything plot parallels (male lead doesn't plan to go to college but is tirelessly wooing his graduating class's valedictorian). And as a drummer, I appreciate the storyline is basically that they suddenly becoming a good band when they find the right drummer, who's so talented that a music industry power player tries to hire him away for an established band. Occasionally the story gets silly, but the cast is pretty charming and some of the original songs are catchy, I like it. 

Alicia Silverstone has kinda coasted for 30 years since her one undeniably great performance in Clueless. But she's really good in this new series where she plays an American lawyer who goes to Ireland looking for answers about her estranged Irish father. 

Given that Amanda Knox lost years of her life to a false accusation, I can't fault her for chasing a bag and producing a cable series about her innocence, starring a suitably attractive lead actress. The episodes I've watched so far feel almost disconcertingly unconcerned with Knox's murdered roommate Meredith at the center of this whole thing, though, and sometimes the tone kind of feels a little too flippant. 

I was never really that into the U.S. version of "The Office" and liked the British original more, but obviously it remains enormously popular, gave virtually every cast member a career, and is enormously influential on the last 20 years of TV comedy. It feels a little odd for Greg Daniels to make an "Office" spinoff now, especially since "Parks & Recreation" was initially developed as a spinoff before they decided to make it into its own thing. "The Paper" almost makes it worth it for the first episode's hilarious introduction of the one character from the previous series, Oscar, but I still think the show would be better without that explicit connection, it just feels forced. I like the cast, particularly Melvin Gregg (from a mockumentary series I like better than "The Office," "American Vandal"), Chelsea Frei, and a sorely underused Tim Key. 

"The Comic Shop" is an independently produced sitcom that just began releasing episodes on YouTube this month. It's very much a mockumentary-style workplace sitcom in the mold of "The Office," which again, isn't really my favorite kind of show to begin with, and it feels odd to see people adhering to that network-friendly formula outside the network system. It's got some potential, though, I think Shanae Cole stands out as the funniest member of the cash. 

i) "Fisk"
The Australian Netflix series "Fisk" that just returned for its third season is probably the best 'awkward single camera workplace sitcom' going outside of "Abbott Elementary" right now. Julia Zemiro, Aaron Chen, and Marty Sheargold are such a good rogues gallery of baffling and ridiculous co-workers. 

I'm not a huge fan of shows getting abbreviated final seasons just to affordably tie up loose ends and do a quick curtain call. But Greg Daniels's Amazon Prime tech satire "Upload" kind of felt like it was being dragged out too long by the end of the third season, so I'm fine with it returning for a fourth and final season of just four episodes. It felt kind of weird that the show got more and more credulous about its AI love story over the course of the series, even as we see how ludicrous it is for people to have AI boyfriends and girlfriends in real life, so it just kind of lost its comedic bite and became a weird high-concept romance a lot of the time, and they kind of lost their nerve about how mean Allegra Edwards's character was. Andy Allo is really one of the most stunning women on television, though, she's Prince protege hot (because she actually was a Prince protege). 

It's weird that we got The Suicide Squad and the first season of "Peacemaker" all in the space of 6 months but then had to wait three and a half years for the second season. I like it a lot, though, "Peacemaker" might be my favorite thing James Gunn has made do date (have not seen Superman yet). The new season's opening sequence is not nearly as good as the first season's, which is kind of a letdown (it's still a goofy song-and-dance, but with a different song and a different dance). It also feels like they've kinda moved too quickly into making Cena's character into a straightforwardly sympathetic protagonist instead of an over-the-top weirdo, which is an arc that would play better if it was gradual over a few seasons. 

I'm not a big "BoJack Horseman" fan so I was pleasantly surprised that I like this new Netflix animated series from the same creator. It's a little earthbound and autobiographical, with no talking animals, and a great voice cast including Paul Reiser and Max Greenfield. 

Adult Swim's first Spanish-language show is a stop-motion animated series about the battle between two businesswomen on whether guinea pigs should be considered pets or a delicacy, it's pretty original and excellent. 

A pretty good Turkish Netflix show, feels like a more thoughtful version of the 'young woman moves to a big city' type of series that American TV loves making. 

This Spanish-language Netflix show has a weird ridiculous plot about a guy being kidnapped and forced to impersonate a much richer guy, a corrupt casino owner, but they have fun with the premise, the show doesn't take itself very seriously. 

p) "The Sea Beyond"
I tried watching this uhhh Italian teen erotic prison drama recently, not really my thing. 

This Korean show takes a very simple idea that we've probably all thought about and explores it as a drama: what if people in Heaven stay whatever age the died? And what if a man who died in this thirties is eventually reunited with his wife when she dies in her eighties? 

The idea of a TV news anchor heroically going offscript to expose the truth feels so old-fashioned that I always had a hard time taking "The Newsroom" seriously, but this Japanese show does it earnestly enough to kinda work. 

This primetime show kind of takes all the stuff I like about Kelly Clark's daytime talk show, her singing and talking about music with other artists, and makes it into its own show. Some of the guests are people I don't really care about like Teddy Swims or Lizzo, but the Gloria Estefan episode was great and the Jonas Brothers one had its moments. It's a little frustrating sometimes when they speed through just one verse and chorus of a song, though. 

This Apple TV+ series hosted by PSY and Megan Thee Stallion features old American or British pop stars remaking their old hits in a K-Pop style with young Korean groups. It's kind of fun to see everybody embrace this cultural conversation in a light, enthusiastic setting, the Spice Girls episode was particularly cool because they're such a blueprint for K-Pop girl groups. Usually it's all kind of goofy and forgettable, but hey, it's not like you're gonna ruin "Ice Ice Baby" by making a K-Pop version so why not? 

This 2-part HBO Max doc about Black television feels like a great unintentional companion piece for Apple TV+'s recent 2-part doc about Black movie stardom, "Number One on the Call Sheet." The late Malcolm-Jamal Warner participated in some of the uncomfortable conversations about the legacy of "The Cosby Show," and the late Norman Lear also got to participate in the complicated conversation about being the white guy who created some of the most popular Black sitcoms of all time, but there's just a ton of great stories and insights in here. 

Charlie Sheen is, surprisingly, really mellowed and reflective in this Netflix doc about his life. That leaves Heidi Fleiss, who has not mellowed out at all, to really steal the spotlight in all the interview segments filmed in her house, where she owns something like 25 parrots, it made me kind of wish the whole doc was about her. 

Between my recent Cha Wa interview and the Nat Geo docuseries "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time" and now this Netflix docuseries, I've really spent a lot of time thinking about Katrina lately. I think the Nat Geo doc is probably the better of the two as a panoramic portrait of the story, but "Come Hell and High Water" feels a little more visceral and emotional, there's some really intense footage from 2005. 

I feel like one of the most unappealing things about these docs about the downfall of attention-hungry vloggers is that a lot of the talking head interviews are with other attention-hungry vloggers who don't even know them. 

y) "Nexaca" 
This isn't as consistently entertaining as "Welcome to Wrexham," but I kind of like that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have sort of created a growing franchise of shows about soccer with a celebrity hook to make it more accessible as a TV show, this one about the Mexican team co-owned by Eva Longoria

I watched a little of this docuseries but I dunno, I've never taken a huge interest in the Kennedy family and all this RFK Jr. shit going on has kind of repelled me further from romanticizing everything about the dynasty. 

11:20 AM

Monday, September 15, 2025

 


Tamara Palmer interviewed me about Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music for Music Book Club. 

Charles Aaron, Oliver Wang, and Chuck Eddy all generously took the time to read the book and write blurbs about it, I've been meaning to share those here as well. 



7:06 PM

Friday, September 12, 2025

 





This week I interviewed Haute & Freddy and wrote a Deep Cut Friday column about Harry Nilsson for Spin. 

11:21 AM

Thursday, September 11, 2025

 




One of my editors from the Baltimore City Paper days, Lee Gardner, has a podcast called Essential Tremors, and they have a recurring event called the Selector Series, with a guest choosing an album for a hi-fi vinyl listening experience. 

On September 24th, I'll be the guest for a Selector Series at Idle Hour, where we'll be listening to Think (About It), the 1972 debut album by Lyn Collins. The title track is sort of the Rosetta Stone of Baltimore club music, and I devote a chunk of my book to the importance of the "Think (About It)" breakbeat to the genre. But the whole thing is great, produced and primarily written by James Brown. Since the event has a cover charge, I'll have copies of Tough Breaks for a reduced price. 

11:20 AM

Reading Diary

Wednesday, September 10, 2025


 





















a) No Sense in Wishing, by Lawrence Burney
Lawrence and I both started out our writing careers at Baltimore City Paper and did some cool shit together when he was on staff at the Baltimore Banner. There's always been lots of mutual respect there, so I love that his first book and my first book were published just a few weeks apart, we're both appearing at the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend so hopefully I'll see him there. Lawrence really excels at writing about music and Baltimore and Baltimore music from a personal perspective and explaining why he likes what he likes or how it shaped him, and this collection of essays really plays to that strength.  You get these engrossing vignettes about how he became a Three 6 Mafia or Lupe Fiasco fan and what their music means both to him and to the rest of the world, or his personal memories of family crab feasts set against the context of Black history in Maryland and how slavery shaped the state. Nobody's ever written better about Young Moose and the late Lor Scoota and it's interesting to see how he looks back now on how they redefined Baltimore hip-hop in the 2010s and influenced what came after them. 

b) Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, by Simon Reynolds
When I was working on Tough Breaks, I read a lot of books about dance music and house music, partly because I came to Baltimore club via hip-hop rather than dance music and wanted to make sure I had the right grounding and context. And this one is definitely deservedly regarded as one of the great dance music books, I really appreciated Reynolds giving this very detailed account of how the raves and club culture took over in the UK in the late '80s, the way all these different factions and legal and cultural forces shaped where people danced and what they danced to. 

c) Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Since I was reading non-fiction books about music most of the time that I was working on mine, I was kind of ready to jump into fiction again, and when we went on vacation a few months ago I asked my wife, who reads over 50 novels every year, to recommend me a couple things to take. Children of Time is pretty good, although it's the first in a series and I don't know if I have the appetite to read the others, it has some pretty interesting ideas about how humanity could try to colonize the rest of the universe after the destruction of Earth by basically spreading intelligence as a virus to new species, including a race of large spiders. Tchaikovsky does a good job of jumping between the human plotline and the spider plotline and communicating how the cognition of an intelligent nonverbal spider would differ from ours. 

11:19 AM

Saturday, September 06, 2025

 




The 500th issue of The Wire magazine is out, and I am thrilled to say that Derek Walmsley wrote an insightful review of my book Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music for the issue. 

The Baltimore Book Festival also just a few days away!

11:25 AM

Friday, September 05, 2025


 













This week on Spin, I interviewed Theo Croker, ranked Rihanna's albums, wrote about Death Cab For Cutie for Deep Cut Friday, and picked The Geraldine Fibbers' Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home for a look back at great 1995 albums. 

11:24 AM

My Top 50 Movies of 2019

Wednesday, September 03, 2025

 





1. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho)
2. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)
3. Midsommar (Ari Aster)
4. Knives Out (Rian Johnson)
5. Us (Jordan Peele)
6. Crawl (Alexandre Aja)
7. Ready Or Not (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett)
8. Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan)
9. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
10. Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie)
11. Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria)
12. Fighting With My Family (Stephen Merchant)
13. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde)
14. The Farewell (Lulu Wang)
15. Honey Boy (Alma Har’el)
16. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot)
17. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (Celine Sciamma)
18. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
19. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
20. The Assistant (Kitty Green)
21. Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)
22. The Vast Of Night (Andrew Patterson)
23. Blow The Man Down (Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy)
24. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers
25. High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh)
26. The Report (Scott Z. Burns)
27. Lying and Stealing (Matt Aselton)
28. Anna (Luc Besson)
29. Them That Follow (Britt Poulson and Dan Madison Savage)
30. Blackbird (Roger Michell)
31. Little Monsters (Abe Forsythe)
32. The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch)
33. Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer)
34. Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (Martin Scorsese)
35. Shazam! (David F. Sandberg)
36. Detective Pikachu (Rob Letterman)
37. The Kitchen (Andrea Berloff)
38. Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo)
39. Blinded By The Light (Gurinder Chadha)
40. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)
41. Alita: Battle Angle (Robert Rodriguez)
42. Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi)
43. Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer) 
44. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)
45. Joker (Todd Phillips)
46. Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)
47. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
48. Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck)
49. Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (Andre Ovredal)
50. Ma (Tate Taylor)

As I start to go back a few years in this series, it's starting to irritate me to be reminded of good debut or breakthrough films and then realize that Darius Marder and Lulu Wang and Kitty Green and Andrew Patterson haven't directed a feature since 2019. It's also pretty bittersweet to remember that I watched The Last Black Man In San Francisco and immediately said "I hope Jonathan Majors gets a lot of roles off this movie," real monkey's paw situation there. 

Previously: 
My Top 50 Movies of 2020
My Top 50 Movies of 2021
My Top 50 Movies of 2022
My Top 50 Movies of 2023
My Top 50 Movies of 2024

5:17 AM

The 2025 Remix Report Card Vol. 3

Tuesday, September 02, 2025

 






Here's Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 from earlier in the year, and the Spotify playlist of every remix I've covered in 2025: 

"Actin Up With Sexyy Red" by Tommy Richman featuring Sexyy Red
Tommy Richman's first post-Coyote single spent one week in the lower reaches of the Hot 100 after Sexyy Red added a verse to it, which is good considering that none of the songs on the album charted. It wouldn't have occurred to me before they did a track together, but Richman and Big Sexyy are kind of similar in the unvarnished amateurism that hasn't really left their work since they hit the mainstream -- I guess it's charming to an extent, but I personally find them both a little one-dimensional and tiresome. She brings the right energy to this track, though, it's an improvement on the original. I think I'd like Tommy Richman more if his music was all self-produced, it's weird to think that he pays someone for beats that sound like this. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Aura (Remix)" by Bri3 featuring Star Bandz
Bri3 is a 17-year-old girl from Waldorf, Maryland, about an hour from where I live, who released her debut single "Aura" last year. She's got some talent, I'm interested to see where her career goes. So far she's collaborated with several other viral teen rappers like BabyChiefDoIt, BAK Jay, and Star Bandz, a Chicago rapper who I don't think really adds much to the "Aura" remix. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+

"Back to the South (Remix)" by Zillionaire Doe featuring Yo Gotti
"Stuntin' Like My Daddy" is one of my favorite Lil Wayne records, I'm cool with people sampling it. But NLE Choppa had a hit with a nice beat flipping the "Stuntin'" beat and a good Wayne verse just two years ago, while Dallas rapper Zillionaire Doe's breakthrough single just sounds like the original "Stuntin'" beat slightly distorted like someone's playing it on their phone, with terrible rapping, it sucks ass. So I was pleasantly surprised that Yo Gotti, who makes good songs but isn't really the kind of guy who does memorable guest verses often, and seemed like an odd choice to be on a Cash Money remake record, had a solid verse with an entertaining little tangent: "I need to speak to Trump/ I need to let him know that ICE been slowin' up the plug/ I need a favor 'cause I still been tryin' to run it up/ Need you to open up them borders, let my people flood." 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"Banned From NO (Remix)" by Lil Wayne featuring Nicki Minaj
Speaking of Wayne, I didn't hate Tha Carter VI like a lot of people did, but it was certainly a little underwhelming. One of the better tracks was "Banned From NO" with Wayne spazzing on a "Triggaman" flip of the beat from N.O.R.E.'s "Banned From TV." And a few days after the album's release, a remix with Nicki Minaj was added to the album, which sounded like a good idea on paper. But Nicki doesn't really do the animated "female Weezy" flow anymore and she just kinda brings a weird subdued energy to a track this uptempo. Her 24-bar verse has some good moments, but I feel like she blunts its impact by doing a weak AutoTune hook before and after the verse, which appears in addition to Wayne's hook from the original song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C

"Blue Strips (Remix)" by Jessie Murph featuring Sexyy Red 
I have mixed feelings about Jessie Murph's breakthrough hit, and her whole schtick in general, I feel like it's so close to being something compelling or unique but it doesn't quite get there. And putting Sexyy Red on the remix to a white singer's (semi-ironic?) strip club song, I dunno, I thought I'd hate it. But Sexyy Red really cracked me up starting her verse singing "I just bought a fast car so I can run over you" with a bunch of "skrt skrt skrt skrt pyoom" ad libs, I think I actually like this version more than the original. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Bop Bop Bop (Remix)" by Rassy Bugatti featuring Zoe Osama and OTM
Rassy Bugatti is the lake Drakeo The Ruler's cousin who's released a lot of music while incarcerated and I guess is still behind bars. So maybe his delivery on "Bop Bop Bop" is kind of flat and subdued because he was trying to record in a cell without getting caught, but I don't know what OTM's excuse is -- the first two minutes of this remix are so monotonous that I'm not even sure if both members of OTM are on this or just one of them. Zoe Osama comes in last and brings the energy way up and salvages the remix. 
Best Verse: Zoe Osama 
Overall Grade: B-

"Boy Crazy (Remix)" by Kesha featuring Jade
Kesha's latest album is alright but "Boy Crazy" isn't really one of my favorite songs. But I like Jade from Little Mix's recent solo stuff and she really sounds more natural on this track than Kesha. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Crash Out RMX" by Lihtz featuring Meek Mill and Fridayy
"Crash Out ATL RMX" by Lihtz featuring K Camp
Lihtz is a Philly rap singer whose first high profile song was a feature on Meek Mill's 2017 album Wins & Losses (where was credited as Lihtz Kamraz). "Crash Out" is pretty much just vocals over three guitar chords over and over, I can see while Meek and Fridayy wanted to jump on this song because they just had a hit together with no drums, "Proud of Me." But this song has a much lighter vibe (the "Crash Out" single cover art is the late Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes's mugshot, which I think is in poor taste). K Camp's voice feels like a more natural match for this song.  
Best Verse: K Camp
Overall Grade: B

"Ecstasy (Remix)" by Ciara featuring Normani and Teyana Taylor
Ciara and Teyana Taylor released albums on the same day last month, and the latter appeared on the remix to the former's single. I remember the first time I heard "Ecstasy" on the radio and I was like hey, this new Ciara song is pretty good. And then I heard her rhyme "You got on that Dolce & Gabbana" with "I'm tryin' to see what's up with that banana" (and also "hibachi" with "punani") and just rolled my eyes so hard, I can't stand Theron Thomas's lyrics. The remix is an instant improvement just for not including those lines, but I also really like how Normani and Teyana Taylor's voices sound on this song. Normani hits a cool fast flow on this, I hope this is an indication that she's coming out with more R&B-leaning music. The pitched-down "shawty this the remix" refrain is a nice addition, too. 
Best Verse: Normani.  
Overall Grade: B+

"FUN (Soma Remix)" by Cortisa Star featuring Venusgrl! and Soma
Cortisa Star is a 20-year-old trans woman who was born in Baltimore and grew up in Sussex County, Delaware, two places I've lived, so I'm pretty interested in her career. Her breakout song is a self-produced 71-second burst of hyperpop-ish noise called "FUN," and the remix puts Cortisa's vocal over a new beat by Soma with a new verse from Philly rapper Venusgrl! and it's still pretty distorted and weird. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"Get Umm 2" by Keon K.O.K featuring Connie Diiamond
Little known New Jersey rapper Keon K.O.K's most popular track, "Get Umm," sets the Continent Number 6 vocal loop that Kanye sampled on "Power" to a drill beat, it's not bad. I'm not a huge fan of Bronx rapper Connie Diiamond, whose music I only know because I keep stumbling upon it in remixes for this column, but her voice sounds good on this track and she adds a little more energy to it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Gnarly (Ice Spice Remix)" by Katseye featuring Ice Spice
"Gnarly (Lara of Katseye x Lancey Foux x Slush Puppy Remix)" by Katseye featuring Lancey Foux and Slush Puppy
I praised the original "Gnarly" last week and I'm pleased that both of these remixes keep the song's hyper sensory overload vibe going with some new production. The Ice Spice remix switches to kind of a drill beat for her verse, it appears to be produced by the same four people that did the original. And then the other remix with British rapper Lancey Foux has a completely new instrumental by San Diego producer Slush Puppy. 
Best Verse: Ice Spice
Overall Grade: A-

"Goodbye, Sunshine (Eternal Summer)" by Coheed and Cambria featuring Nick Hexum
"Goodbye, Sunshine (The Scientist Dub Version)" by Coheed and Cambria featuring Nick Hexum
Coheed 
The original "Goodbye, Sunshine" on Coheed and Cambria's latest album is a charging rock song in their usual sound, but for the single release they completely re-recorded it as a reggae song with a horn section and some vocals from 311's lead singer. It's a pleasant little genre pastiche, I guess, but they go one step further with a version by Jamaican dub legend the Scientist, I respect and enjoy that track a little more. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B- 

"The Greatest Bend Over (Take It Easy) - Chloe & Moliy Remix" by Full Blown and Yung Bredda featuring Chloe and Moliy
I remember when Chloe Bailey posted a clip of her verse from this remix on Twitter and a lot of people on there, who have generally scrutinized Chloe's career in a really uncharitable way, were nitpicking it and saying she's trying to be like Tyla or jumping on the Afrobeats bandwagon. But Full Blown and Yung Bredda are Soca artists from Trinidad, this is a pretty good version of a pretty good song. 
Best Verse: Chloe
Overall Grade: B

"Hell Woods 2" by Queen Key featuring GloRilla
Chicago rapper Queen Key is I guess best known now for being on "Love & Hip-Hop ATL," I find the original "Hell Woods" kinda boring but this is one of GloRilla's best guest verses I've ever heard, she's still on a hot streak and really elevates a song that may not deserve it. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B+ 

"House Again (Remix)" by Hudson Westbrook featuring Miranda Lambert
"House Again" is one of my favorite country singles of 2025, and when I wrote about it a few weeks ago I mentioned that Hudson Westbrook released a duet version with Miranda Lambert along with a cover of Lambert's "The House That Built Me." Lambert's voice sounds lovely on this, I'm glad the original was the one that became a hit but I wouldn't have minded if this was the version that country radio played. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"JAT (Remix)" by Connie Diiamond featuring Stunna Sandy
Another generic drill track with Connie Diiamond, this time featuring a Brooklyn rapper with the hilarious name Stunna Sandy, who is extremely beautiful and makes unfortunate Ice Spice-type music. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C-

"The Longest Goodbye (Remix)" by Role Model featuring Laufey
Role Model is from Maine, Laufey is from Iceland, they're both young people making vaguely old-timey music and are very popular, and in both cases I don't feel like I totally understand their deal, although I like some of the songs. I'm kind of indifferent to this song but it does feel like the best choice for them to sing as a duet, it's pleasant and cute. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: C+ 

"Miami (Remix)" by Morgan Wallen featuring Lil Wayne and Rick Ross
"Miami" was the 27th most popular song on I'm The Problem at the time that the remix was released in July (out of 37 songs...goddamn Morgan Wallen's albums are too fucking long). And even now, if you included the streams for the remix, it wouldn't be in the top 10 most popular songs on the album, but I imagine Wallen feels like he needed another crossover collaboration to follow up the song with Tate McRae on pop radio. Not a particularly good song and I wish rappers weren't so eager to work with Wallen, especially when Wayne repeats a Wallen lyric and replaces "redneck" with the n-word. But I still kinda enjoy Wayne talking about his history in Miami and almost marrying Trina on this song. I also chuckled at the part in the chorus where Wallen says "I can't keep my gun in my trunk" (unlike in Nashville) but Lil Wayne ad libs "I still keep my gun!"
Best Verse: Lil Wayne
Overall Grade: B-

"MLB (Make Love Baby) [Remix]" by Tim Gent featuring Akeem Ali
I had never heard of Nashville rapper Tim Gent or Jackson, Mississippi rapper Akeem Ali, but I enjoy this easygoing melodic rap song full of silly baseball-themed sex puns. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B

"Other Side of Love (Remix)" by Coco Jones featuring Alicia Keys
Why Not More? is one of the year's best R&B albums, and the deluxe edition released a couple weeks ago adds some pleasant stuff but nothing really essential. The original "Other Side of Love" was the shortest song on the album and didn't stand out at all, so the remix with Alicia Keys extends it from 2 minutes to 3 minutes long and makes it feel a little more like a complete song. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B 

"Party On The East Cide PT. 2" by Zoe Osama featuring Jayson Cash, P1, and Ab-Soul
"Party On The East Cide" is more of a throwback '90s West Coast beat than any of these artists usually rap on, kind of fun to hear Ab-Soul kick a pretty straightforward verse on a track like this. 
Best Verse: Jayson Cash
Overall Grade: B-

"Piano Tiles 2" by Armani West featuring 6arelyhuman and Cortisa Star
"Piano Tiles" is kind of noisy underground girly rap in the same vein as the other Cortisa Star track I wrote about earlier in this post, "FUN," but it's a little more accessible and has blown up on TikTok. As much as I make fun of 6lack's name, I rolled my eyes pretty hard at the existence of an artist named 6arelyhuman. 
Best Verse: Cortisa Star
Overall Grade: B 

"The Rising Son Pt. 2" by R-Mean featuring Conway The Machine and Scott Storch
R-Mean's bio on Genius: "As the first rapper of Armenian descent to achieve his level of international and national acclaim, R-Mean is heading towards the ranks of his fellow Armenian icons System Of A Down and Kim Kardashian." I guess! Scott Storch has some produced some great songs in the 2020s, but "The Rising Son" is one of those really dated tracks that sounds like something he could've made in 2004, with a Biggie sample for a hook. So it's not really an ideal track for a guest like Conway The Machine, but he still outshine's R-Mean's corny self-aggrandizing new verse. 
Best Verse: Conway The Machine
Overall Grade: C+

"Tip (Remix)" by Ayetian featuring Nitzz, Shenseea, and DJ Mac
"Tip (Remix)" by Ayetian featuring Nttzz and Skillibeng
Moliy's "Shake It To The Max" remix with Shenseea and Skillibeng turned out to be an absolutely huge record, which I did not anticipate at all when I reviewed it in this space a few months ago. Unsurprisingly, the same two artists have been drafted for remixes to a recent dancehall hit, in this case by Jamaican artist Ayetian. And I don't mind that Shenseea is becoming ubiquitous, I adore her and still hold out hope that "Puni Police" will become a hit. 
Best Verse: Shenseea
Overall Grade: B

"Type Dangerous (The Brazil Funk Remix)" by Mariah Carey featuring Luisa Sonza
"Type Dangerous (The Remix of the Gods)" by Mariah Carey featuring Redman, Method Man, and Busta Rhymes
"Type Dangerous (Sean Don Remix)" by Mariah Carey featuring Big Sean
I like to give Big Sean a hard time as much as anybody, but credit where it's due, this is one of the best guest verses I've ever heard from him, the part where he incorporates a bunch of Mariah song titles into the lyrics is clever but the verse was really strong even before that. I can't rank him ahead of Redman, but I'll still give him props. And the beat on the Brazil Funk Remix is pretty cool. 
Best Verse: Redman
Overall Grade: B+

"Way Back (Remix)" by Kay Anthony featuring Westside Boogie and RunItUpDay!
Kind of a pleasant but unremarkable relationship rap song, good verse from Boogie. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: B-

"We Outside (Cali Remix)" by Murkemz featuring Coyote, EastSide K-Boy, Dazy Lyn, and Fedie Demarco
"We Outside (Plug City Remix)" by Murkemz featuring Jungle Da Boss, Sluggah2Times, and Chris Coke
I'd never heard or heard of any of the rappers on these remixes, but Murkemz is from Arizona and he did one posse cut version of his single with some obscure California rappers and another with Phoenix rappers, who may very well be the biggest MCs in that scene, I have no idea. A pretty generic song but I think every verse on the Plug City Remix is better than every verse on the Cali Remix, it's no competition. I really hate EastSide K-Boy's verse with those tasteless punchlines about Lizzo and homeless encampments. 
Best Verse: Jungle Da Boss
Overall Grade: C-

"We Pray (Jasleen Royal Version)" by Coldplay featuring Jasleen Royal, Burna Boy, Little Simz, Elyanna, and Tini
"We Pray (Twice Version)" by Coldplay featuring Twice, Burna Boy, Little Simz, Elyanna, and Tini
The second single from Coldplay's latest album was one of those big global utopian gestures they love, a song featuring Nigerian, English, Palestinian, and Argentinian artists, but it was unfortunately kind of a lousy song. They upped the ante with a couple new versions, and I think Indian singer Jasleen Royal sounds by far better on here than any of the other guests. Chris Martin also sings a nice bridge on the version with the K-Pop group Twice that I wish was on every version of the song.   
Best Verse: Jasleen Royal
Overall Grade: C+

"Wrangler (Remix)" by Austin Walker featuring Chingy and JD Walker
Chingy is probably smart to follow in his old hometown rival Nelly's footsteps and join the country/rap collaborations bandwagon, this remix is the only track he's done in the last 15+ years that has over a million streams. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D

"WTHelly (Remix)" by Rob49 featuring G Herbo
Back in April when "WTHelly" was blowing up, Rob49 teased four different remixes for the song: one with G Herbo, one with Latto, one with Big Sean, and one with Justin Bieber and an additional 'surprise' feature. The G Herbo remix came out in June, and now months later none of the others have materialized, which is more or less fine with me, the snippet of the Bieber remix sounded stupid and I can only see maybe the Latto one actually being good. "WTHelly" has a great beat and I kinda wish there was a posse cut with some really talented MCs on it, but Rob49's chaotic energy on the original is pretty fun as it is, and G Herbo is just kind of a shitty rapper at this point but not in a fun way. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: F 

"Yacht Party, Pt. 2" by RTM MB featuring Skilla Baby
It drove me crazy how Skilla Baby had a 10-bar verse with some odd clusters of rhyming lines on Rob49's "Mama," and he does a similar thing with his 15-bar verse here, just a really unserious rapper. 
Best Verse: n/a
Overall Grade: D

5:16 AM