Been taking lots of Nyquil lately

Mix 46: Last mix of the year -- pop hits I missed, previews of next week's best of the blog subheadings, and a few playlists before the year-end posts begin.

Icownic

Well, folks, it’s a wrap, just in time for me to, indeed, take a lot of Nyquil.

The final count is 46 mixes comprising 1,031 songs at about 58 hours. There will be one more mix of recommended songs I missed in the first week of January, but for the next four weeks I’ll be sharing my writing, playlists, stats, and (if I can manage it) maybe even a few album reviews (gasp!).

I can share a few long list playlists now. There are two regional/genre holdover playlists with hundreds of songs I considered including on mixes throughout the year but chose not to, usually for time or abrasiveness reasons — those are my South Africa/amapiano list (time) and my Brazilian funk list (abrasiveness). (If you need to melt your face further, try 3.4 gigabytes of mostly Soundcloud funk from billdifferen.)

South Africa/amapiano (300 songs):

Brazilian funk (464 songs):

And this is my 100-track list of songs I particularly liked from my mixes, or in some cases songs from albums I liked but I chose not to include on a mix.

In December, I’ll share some playlists that break things down by region or genre and cull these 100 tracks into a more manageable best of the year mix. By then I may have a few new contenders depending on what I hear from other folks sharing their own year-end music.

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Previous 2024 mixes

MIX 46: BEEN TAKING LOTS OF NYQUIL LATELY

1. Confidence Man: I Can’t Lose You

I was certain that I’d confused Confidence Man, a crackerjack retro dance outfit, with some dreary British tryhard band I hated. It turned out the band I was thinking of was…Confidence Man from 2022 (except they’re Australian). The song in question that I likely heard at the time, “Angry Girl,” sounds pretty good to me now, but it does not sound anything like their new material, which is dripping with millennial Eurodance cheese. The whole album is solid, and will probably make a serious bid for my top ten.

2. Emei: Rabbithole

A recommendation from People’s Pop mainstay idca’s year-end playlist. We’ve had a congenial narcissism-of-small-differences clash of tastes in regard to the “pop girlies” (I’m the prickly antagonist, natch) that has over time given me some appreciation for how the latest crop of post-Swiftian American stars have been a productive kick in the pants (American usage!) to otherwise moribund British charts. I’m confident the Brits are on the right side of history here and that my distaste is muleheadedly idiosyncratic. (That is to say, it is probably not the children who are wrong.) We have a ton of overlap in our favorites — I am reminded, for instance, that I never found a spot on one of my mixes for AVA MIN (a.k.a. Madison Beer)’s winning A-pop reboot. Alas, still no room for her. Sorry, Madison! Had to go with Emei, a Chinese-American up-and-comer in L.A. alt-pop who sounds a little bit like a Kesha who, oops, took a lot of Nyquil.

3. MJ Nebreda: Icónica’

Venezuelan/Peruvian Miami native would have provided the perfect cap to an upcoming section of my collected writing with the heading Hyperpop in Latin America but that post is already at the word count max and I planned not to use anything from this post in it. So call it a sneak preview.

4. Meryl f. MHD: WDMD

I may do a list of artists of the year by region in my year-end writing, which would give me an excuse to give more time to Meryl than her three selections across 46 mixes, a distinction she shares with Argentine pop star La Joaqui and a few others. (Will need to double-check the spreadsheet.) This one’s a lot of fun — WDMD is “weh di money deh” — where the money at?

5. Ari Falcão, Dieguinho N.V.I.: Tipo Gta

A middle-of-the-bell-curve Ari Falcão track to honor the Brazilian Lindsay Lohan missing link one last time before next year. (Yes, Who Is Brazilian Funk’s Lindsay Lohan is another heading in my next post.) This song seems to have the vocals from an earlier song with Yuri Redicopa that is mostly built on a track I managed to ID as “Tek It” by Cafuné before it drove me crazy. But weirdly, it’s the earlier song that sounds like a remix of this one — no idea where the original Falcão vocal comes from. She has achieved MC Pipokinha levels of prolific output and provenance confusion.

6. Sadboi f. DJ Sazi: Rosa

Interesting find here, a Toronto-based former Fenty model who has landed on a mix of rap, dancehall, and baile funk that sounds more polished and softer than you’d expect, but admirably avoids botching the funk part.

7. Ruger, Tiwa Savage: Toma Toma

More unexpected funk influence, both in its use of (somewhat muted) hard clave against smooth Afrobeats, and in its bold sample of “Clocks” by Coldplay, though funk would try to bounce more noise off of the beauty, a game of throwing nails at a water balloon trying not to make it pop (ha, knew I’d find a good one). Like most Afrobeats, this adds a sheen over everything, in no small part from Ruger’s pliant vocals, but it’s still an interesting and counter-intuitive cross-pollination, and one I’d be interested in finding more of if it’s out there.

8. Wizkid: Kese (Dance)

Meanwhile, you can just go for a straightforward Naija banger if you’re so inclined, with a highlight from the new Wizkid album.

9. 1k3, JBXVII: Eurostar (ça va, ça va)

UK rappers have much sexier guitars than French accents, but it works.

10. Kwengface f. Kerchak: MAP

UK drill artist Kwengface, apparently currently sentenced to 5 years but with shockingly little information about it that I could find, has managed to release a mixtape anyway, sounding particularly good partnered with French rapper Kerchak (featured on the first mix of the year — nice bookend).

11. Clark: Love Lock Floot

Flighty, flute-y dork techno from a Warp Records artist, though this was a one-off for a show by Australian choreographer Melanie Lane for the Sydney Dance Company.

12. Ajna (BE), Mosoo, Samm (BE): If I Have To

A pretty Belgian song inspired by Afrohouse, would say it almost fooled me but they were pretty blatant about their country of origin in their artist credits. Should I go by DAVE(US) (pronounced Davey-us)?

13. Nasty C, Lekaa Beats, Daliwonga f. Zee Nxumalo, Yumbs: Life of the Party

And on the flipside, here are some South African artists inching away from Afrohouse toward hip-hop. I know there’s an interesting drill-oriented rap underground in South Africa (I occasionally get a few glimpses of it) but it seems pretty far removed from my playlists and would probably require the sort of shoe-leather YouTube and Soundcloud work that I’ve always avoided.

14. Maandy: Game Ni 90

Second appearance from Kenyan pop star Maandy this year and third in two years. Still no idea just how major she is in Kenya (seems pretty major), but clearly there’s something giving her a Magic Eye quality in my weekly slop-sorting (woops, another spoiler for next week’s headings).

15. Zee Nxumalo f. DJ Tira, Goldmax, Dee Koala, Zulu Mkhathini, Boity, Ney: Drip Juluka

Along with Confidence Man, Zee Nxumalo is making a late rush for my albums list with a modest hour-long “EP” that includes some of my favorite work of hers from this year. Remember: in amapiano, EPs are LPs, LPs are triple LPs, and anything longer than an LP probably contains more music than anyone could ever realistically listen to in their lifetime. This particular song is the closest to Afrotech she’s gotten, as far as I can tell.

16. Funky Qla f. Sino Msolo: Shayi’Zule

17. Semi Tee, Fanarito f. Malemon: Uphakeme

Two recommendations from Lokpo, both of which showed up in my playlists, but happy to have the nudge. First, an interesting cross between gauzy dream piano, glitchy Afrotech, and a hint of a 3-step groove from Funky Qla. Then an uncharacteristically spare track from Semi Tee, whose recent work hasn’t thus far really grabbed me in what seems to be a comeback year for him. It’s interesting that amapiano has been evolving in two separate directions through the past year, the immersive trance of 3-step on one side and a back-to-basics simplicity and spareness on the other. This is firmly the latter, each layer a skeletal overlay until you eventually see how it all meshes together.

18. Kojo Manuel, E.L.: Asem

Ghanaian rap whose insinuating smile is disconcerting against a sinister backdrop of sirens — party or bank robbery?

19. Conii Gangster: Agnaterepopi

One from Geoff de Burca’s Francophone playlist, a variant of drill from Togo.

20. TAMTAM: Ramble in the Rainbow

21. 7co: 君とデート

A quick pit stop in Japan for feather-light fusion and bedroom J-pop, respectively.

22. СОЮЗ: Калі ты запытаеш

And Ukraine gets the last word with some mildly psychedelic chill beats to FADE OUT to, perhaps in a bit of an anticlimax but oh well, thus ending this year’s entries to the Big Playlist. Thanks for listening!

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That’s it! Until next time, eat well today if that’s your sort of thing.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Emei’s “Rabbithole”