The Lemonheads released their first new album in a long time in 2025 and it was pretty enjoyable, with some old collaborators like Juliana Hatfield making appearances. But while Evan Dando has gone years and years between new records like many aging rockers, Hatfield is one of those lifers who never stopped plugging away, and at this point has over 20 solo albums. Hatfield is easy to overlook or forget about, as much as I loved 1995's Only Everything and the Blake Babies song "Sanctify," but the fact that she keeps popping up with new music has given me repeated opportunities to keep going to her catalog and appreciating her songwriting more and more. And Lightning Might Strike is an excellent album with songs like "My House Is Not My Dream House" and "Harmonizing With Myself" that are wry, self-deprecating dispatches from the life of a middle aged working class musician. I finished my top 50 albums of 2025 list before really listening to any December releases, so this isn't on there, but it definitely could've been. 

I wrote a Complex piece about the greatest duos in rap history that was originally published on 2/2/2022 but wound up making more waves in 2025, with people like Clipse and Fat Joe and Jadakiss reacting favorably to the list, which was really cool to see. Erick Sermon announced this album in 2024 so I'm not gonna jump to the conclusion that my piece inspired it in any way, but I was still excited about the project and he really delivered on the concept. I don't know that I would've thought of him as the perfect person to produce an album like this, but Sermon's sound really does fit with artists from so many different eras and regions that he can pull off Public Enemy, Cypress Hill, Tha Dogg Pound, Salt-N-Pepa and M.O.P. tracks equally well. The only track that feels like they kind of bended the rules on the concept for a forgettable filler song is the one with The Game and Conway The Machine. 

I added this to my Spin ranking of Nas albums, so I've already said a bit about what I think works and doesn't work about Light-Years. I really like it, though, as much as DJ Premier was probably my first favorite hip-hop producer and could still be my all-time #1, his post-'90s track record hasn't been so stellar that I ever placed really high expectations on this project, I'll take the hard tracks like "Writers" and "Welcome to the Underground" happily and not sweat the songs that aren't as good. 

I write more about Baltimore music and spend a lot of time in the city, but I've lived in Prince Georges County, Maryland for over a decade. And it's been cool to see PG County's rap scene become more nationally celebrated in the last few years, particularly as its own thing that isn't just lumped in with 'the DMV' (a term I kind of hate), regional stars like Nino Paid, Jaeychino, ST6 JodyBoof, Yung Manny, Lil Dude, and KP Skywalka. Redveil has had a pretty high national profile for a few years now and is kind of on his own thing -- he performed at Camp Flog Gnaw in 2023, which feels appropriate, he's a PG County rapper the same way Tyler, The Creator is an L.A. rapper, the ties to other artists here are more geographic than musical. I love how lush and melodic tracks like "History" and "Pray 4 Me" are, it really feels like he's growing as a producer. 

In my top 10 albums list for the Baltimore Banner, I included the first album Lor Mark released in 2025, Still Figuring It Out, but he released his fourth album of the year, Mark Dugg, right under the wire a few days before Christmas. Great NASG Chaz and Kooda features, but I hate the ugly piss yellow ChatGPT cover art. 

Baltimore has one of the best scenes in the country for weirdo avant garde hip hop, and I became a big fan of Earl From Yonder's loud, funny Bad Brains-meets-Three 6 Mafia punk rap in 2025, when he released three projects, and The Wellness Check was close to making my Baltimore Banner list. The 15-minute blast of energy Skinwalker is probably the most guitar-heavy of those projects but "Bed Bath and Beyond" has a great drum'n'bass beat, highly recommended to fans of Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals or JPEGMafia. 

Height Keech is one of the greats of Baltimore's DIY weirdo rap scene, dozens of albums and over a thousand shows, although he's lived in Michigan and NYC over the last few years. 2025 was a particularly prolific year for Heightman, lots and lots of collaborations and production work, and I've started to see his work resonate more and more with people outside Baltimore, particularly his project with Doseone and the second album by Wave Generators, Height's group with Nosaj of New Kingdom. And at the end of the year he dropped a remix of the first Wave Generators album by producer Icky Reels that put Height and Nosaj's vocals over some pretty different beats, I think I like the original record the most but I really enjoyed the remixes too. 

I recently compared listening to a playlist full of EPs to dining in a tapas restaurant, so I was amused to see the title of Baltimore rapper B. Eveready's recent EP, which also makes for kind of a good companion piece for his other 2025 release, Crab Season. A very short but strong release, "Who?" and "Good $$$" are some of my favorite songs B. Eveready has made to date. 

After a relatively quiet period, with only one project over the last 4 years, I Was Actually Being Humble felt like a great comeback moment for Shy Glizzy, a chance for him to stake his claim as one of the greats of D.C. rap, much as Wale did with his latest album in November. My favorite tracks are probably "Be On Time" with Nino Paid and No Savage and "On Da Flo." 

The only algorithmic Spotify playlist that I find useful is Release Radar, which shows you new tracks from artists you've listened to in the past. And I don't think I would've even known that The Game released something new in December, because I didn't even really like his music that much even when he was a big platinum star, but a song popped up on my Release Radar 'featuring' Hayley Williams which was really just an uncleared sample of Paramore's "Ain't It Fun." And I was amused that that song got pulled off the album on streaming services after a week or two, thank you, Hayley, that shit sucked. The whole tape sucks, in fact, this guy is beyond washed.