Truly one of my favorite things about the end of the year now is taking a few days to write down some of the best and most replayed albums I heard in 2025. Fuck an Apple Year in Review or Spotify Wrapped, THIS IS THE FUTURE!
A few thoughts / observations around the year in music before I begin:
- Looking back, I believe this might be the least amount of new music I’ve ever listened to in a year. It’s hard to describe why that is. From January – May, when I’m working 50-60 hours a week, I’m certainly putting in the time. However, once spring and then summer rolled around, I really didn’t dive into too much other than a few albums here and there. I’ve had to catch up over the last few weeks to get a good grip on some of the tremendous albums I’ve missed.
- Similar to the above – I attribute my decrease in music to an increase in podcasts consumed, where in additional to my daily sports podcasts, I’ve religiously listened to and dove into the archives of Conan O’Brein’s genius podcast. I’ve also added Nate Silver, Pablo Torre, and Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig into the rotation, and while none of these are daily podcasts, the culmination of all of these has pushed the bandwidth to the max. I would also recommend all of these to expand the palate!
- I would argue (and I’m sure someone could find an article/X post somewhere out there) that there was no Song of the Summer for 2025. I feel as if we had Espresso in 2024, Last Night in 2023, maybe As it Was in 2022? I guess you could argue Luther by Kendrick Lamar featuring SZA could somewhat count, but it was released in late 2024. Manchild was another Carpenter hit, but lacked a lot of the original pop Espresso had last year. Nothing seemed truly universal this year – a song that you heard no matter where you went, that seemed to capture the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. Maybe it was post election fatigue? Maybe it was the possibility that the Trump presidency doesn’t inspire or create the avenues for generational pop hits? Woah – could be a think piece there! Morgan Wallen, congratulations brother! Four more years of running the pop charts with 36 (YES, THAT IS REAL) song albums.
- I would be extremely remiss to not mention a few albums that I discovered in early 2025 that were released in 2024. Now I’m a stickler of rules here, and if one can’t follow their own self-inflicted rules and standards, then come on, what can I truly be counted on for? There were a few awesome singer/songwriters and bands that caught my attention from 2024 albums – I’m gonna include a little bit about them here:
- Cameron Winter – Heavy Metal: OH BABY!! A lot can (and will be, below) be said about Mr. Winter. He is indeed the future of music, and what a fucking batshit crazy album this thing is. The debut solo album from the Geese lead singer. He channels what I believe is like, early 60’s songwriting and tones, but somehow it’s completely futuristic, and I promise, will sound nothing like anything you have ever or will ever hear. On one of the closing tracks $0, a sparkling piano (played by Winter) is the lead instrument for multiple minutes, gently rising and crescendoing, as Winter croaks how his love is making him feel like a $0 man. When the piano breaks, it legitimately sounds like an ancient hymn, shouted to the skies, where Winter breaks out in a sort of manic cry, proclaiming that God is really real, He is really real, he (Winter) wouldn’t lie this time, God is actually real. It’s fucking insane, and maybe, just maybe, breaks into the top five moments of this album as a whole. Legitimately a one of one musician at 23 years old.
- I would be extremely remiss to not mention Father John Misty’s 2024 album Mahashmashana. It’s fucking brilliant in so many ways. FJM finally clicked for me in 2025 (HUGE RECESSION INDICATOR). I think he truly walks the line between actual insane artistry and being a strong candidate for biggest cornball in music. There’s so much to write about this album and FJM in general, but I’m gonna save that. Regardless, it’s perhaps my most played album over 2025 and would easily be in the top 5 of 2024 albums for me looking back.
- Bad Bad Hats – Self Titled: I can’t remember or recall how I came into contact with Bad Bad Hats, I want to say I went on maybe an indie shuffle and discovered one of their songs. I do however, remember the conference room in Chattanooga I was working diligently in, and before the week had ended, I had 3 albums downloaded and ready for the hour and fifteen minute pop shot airplane ride home (delayed twice). Regardless, this may be one of the biggest success stories in how much your life can change (I’m being a bit dramatic) if you consistently are reaching out and listening to new bands and music. I love my playlists as much as anyone, but c’mon, get out there! This Detroit band is a bit of a hybrid between shoe gaze/bedroom pop and new-age indie music. The lead singer is a female with an understated voice, and great songwriting. It’s pretty low-key, and I think out of the ten songs on this album, 7 of them are legit, replayable, add-to-all-playlists good. I immediately ripped the vinyl off Amazon. My favorite off the album, a song title Bored in The Summer, goes –
“…It’s not for me to say
Why I’m not more than just a missed call on your birthday
But when we were dreamers, always sleeping in late
Was your heart ever going my way”
A great past discography as well to dive into, and just like that, a new great band that I was unaware of until February.
Alright let’s dive into the fun part. I want to say a slightly down year in music????? Maybe that’s just me though, I really enjoyed 2024. Perhaps a rap resurgence?
10. Liquid Mike – Hell Is An Airport
Liquid Mike has the Krabby Patty secret formula. Following up their 2024 no-nonsense, patio of bro speak album, aptly titled Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, which came in at a lightning quick 15 songs just under 30 minutes, the Michigan rock band ran it back a’la The Strokes, Room on Fire, releasing Hell Is An Airport with 14 songs at an even briefer 27 minutes. From Slingshot, the hard-ish rockers from the garage centered North released absolute dude titled songs, the opener Drinking and Driving followed by K2, with other songs titled Mouse Trap, Drug Dealer, and even Man Dies. With a distinctively harder and louder guitars thrashing around that indie/alt rock that seems to have risen in our post-COVID world, these songs and titles ensure that probably 95% of the listening fanbase are males. The formula continues, and Hell Is An Airport is a step-up in my opinion, with more distinct songwriting and catchy choruses that the previous, as well as perhaps fewer misses across the board. The best part of this album is if one song isn’t a favorite, all you’re getting is a verse, maybe two, a someone tuned in chorus, and a pretty dope guitar riff. It’s not the best I’ve heard, but it’s certainly an album that I have played over and over throughout the year. It’s got a fuzziness to it, not entirely hard as say AC/DC or Metallica, but certainly much rougher and less clean than most indie rock today. Standouts include similarly titled songs, Crop Circles, Instantly Wasted, Double Dutch, and AT&T. Lead singer and songwriter Mike Maple has certainly dialed it in, and deserves the success he’s getting over the past few hit albums – my favorite line, probably one of my favorite of the year goes:
“Out of touch, out of towner,
Buying fruit just to watch it turn browner“
9. Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist – Alfredo 2
Reprising one of my favorite albums during COVID, Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist (who had, once again, a crazy busy year) reunited for Alfredo part 2. There isn’t too much to say about this one, other than it’s the standard Gibbs rapping masterclass over smooth as hell production; beats from a producer at the top of the game and with a keen ear on what Freddie can do best. Gibbs & The Alchemist run back the greatest hits, opener 1995 replicates the stunning opener on the original 1985, with a show-stopping guitar loop halfway through that transcends through the headphones. Gibbs recruits Anderson Paak. for perhaps one of the finest songs of the year, shifting ever so slightly the title of the track Ensalada into multiple schemes of “It’s a lot of.” While the original Alfredo tied in heavy with Mafioso themes, Gibbs tracks here on a more Asian culture Samurai storyline (my only complaint really is the joint title Alfredo, and cover art was a great play on names and the Italian Mafia theme of Alfredo one, yet a ramen bowl on an album titled Alfredo 2 doesn’t quite hit as hard). I Still Love H.E.R. deliciously flips an early Common rap hit from the late 90’s, and closer A Thousand Mountains let’s Gibbs formulaically recap his own victory lap, from a skinny kid selling drugs in Gary, Indiana, to one of the best rappers out today.
8. Brian Dunne – Clams Casino
Brian Dunne is the product of if Mac Demarco wasn’t intentionally trying to lean so hard into being indie and created a few pop hits, mixed in with a little more rough and rigid voice, a’la Nebraska recording session Springsteen and I believe you end up with Dunne, the 32 year old singer/songwriter from New York who also makes up 1/4 of the rock band Fantastic Cat. This album could have genuinely been one of my favorites of the year, it has a few of the top-tier songs I’ve heard this year, had it not fallen off a bit on the back-end. The opening song where the album gets it’s name is 3 minutes of awesome alt/pop rock you might hear equally at a pregame on a Friday night or in the middle of an American Eagle outlet. That is to say it’s completely innocent, and legitimately one of the catchiest tunes of the year. Ditto for Play the Hits, another similar track of great pop sound generating a great few verses about life passing you by packaged together with a great bass guitar and chorus. Rockland County is more of a wayward ballad that allows Dunne to really show off the voice, and Fake Version of the Real Thing finds him in a low-fi, almost alt-county Dayglow type vibe, another great standout. Out of most of the music on this list, this might be the most harmless, quality, quick and easy listen out there, and for the 4-5 songs great songs alone, it’s easily one of my favorites of the year.
7. JID – God Does Like Ugly
Nothing could stop the hype and excitement I had for JID’s 4th solo album. He released a pre-release EP of four songs that increased the excitement tenfold, and finally the Dreamville rapper dropped his much anticipated project. JID has long been, in my mind, easily one of the most gifted, technical rappers, reminding me often of a spinoff of young Kendrick Lamar and his Dreamville label mentor J Cole. The Dreamville Lieutenant has never fully broken through to the masses with a ubiquitous hit, but remains a bright light in a rap scene and technique that flashed back to early and mid 21st century rappers – not the TikTok, synthed out rappers I feel like I see these days at the top of the charts (Boomer take). God Does Like Ugly begins with a Westside Gunn spoken word / intro, payback for JID’s show-stopping opening verse on Gunn’s 2023 album And Then You Pray For Me, before the beat convulsions and JID takes off into two and a half minutes of genius wordplay. The beats in here are HEAVY, and the following four or five tracks are equally some of the best of the year – Glory has a similar signature beat switch up halfway through, WRK feels like a solid radio hit where JID proves he might be the best lyricist currently out right now, and Community recruits Clipse off their conquering comeback year in music (more to come). Gz legitimately feels like an old mixtape track I used to play before JV basketball games, VCR’s recruits HBO Original Vince Staples for a verse and I could go on and on. The love songs towards the middle are the weaker part of the album, although kudos to JID for trying here – he clearly wants to make that hit single, Kendrick had Swimming Pools and Loyalty, J Cole had Work Out and Power Trip. Great rappers need the slowed-down hit makers to keep it going, and JID is still looking for his. The good news is the more he keeps looking, the more crazy awesome rap albums we may get from the guy.
6. Geese – Getting Killed
Nobody had a better 2025 than Cameron Winter. From ~relative unknown~ (Geese’s 2023 album 3D Country has been replayed countless times on my phone), to the cover of Rolling Stones, with magazine and indie think-pieces, as well as Gonzo-style journalism of hanging with New York’s hottest band since The Strokes all over the internet. I flipped on the Macy’s Day Parade Thanksgiving morning and I’ll be damned if I didn’t immediately hear a Geese song start to play as they cut to commercial.
It was a breakthrough year for Geese, and while it was absolutely deserved, this album didn’t quite resonate with me as hard as their previous project 3D Country did. They recruited known hip-hop producer Kenny Beats to produce this thing, which was a widely strange choice, and the payoff gave them a ten-track, meandering, prog-rock, OK Computer type journey through a new age of rock music. Like Winter’s solo alum, the band seemingly feel on the cutting edge of what the future of rock could look like, especially as one of the first Gen Z bands to really breakthrough, while also sounding like a band that equally could have rivaled Radiohead / Pink Floyd three decades ago. For me, the clear star is Winter, whose voice is so singular it almost gives the exact opposite effect, making the different tones, dialects, and sound levels he sings at feel like a band with multiple lead singers. His lyrics confound the listener even more – opener Trinidad comes to a jump-scare halt when he yells repetitively “THERE’S A BOMB IN MY CAR.” Maybe don’t play that one over the car aux. Cobra is a beautiful jam (perhaps the closest radio-like song on the album) where Winter concludes that his love interest could make cobras dance, but not him. It also has a line I’ve for some reason repeated over an over since the album released, that still makes no sense to me, but makes me laugh consistently, which is when Winter says:
“Baby, you should be ashamed
You should be shames only daughter”
Taxes opens like the Winter solo album where he riffs and screeches that he should burn in hell (this, by the way, was the only single on the album) which is just a bold and in my opinion, a miscalculation on Geese’s part, although I guess you gotta let the audience know what they’re getting in to early on. The best song on here, somehow titled Au Pays du Cocaine, is a love and lusting song like no other – a clear highlight on this journey of an album, where Winter cries to his love that she can still change, and still choose him. It’s a lovely shriek for help, a moment of reaching for comfort, on an album specifically made to be uncomfortable for the listener. There is yet a lifetime ahead for this band of 23 year old’s.
5. Turnstile – Never Enough
Rare does a band really breakout in their eleventh year, when most of the members are slowly approaching 40 years old, but that is exactly what happened with Baltimore’s hardcore rock/punk band Turnstile with their 2021 release Glow On, another COVID favorite album of mine. Glow On was gritty, and sent Turnstile to festival level performers, and their latest Never Enough, is even harder in spots, reviving a bit of late 90’s hardcore and even a mixture of grunge and emo music. What I love most about this album is it really is a rollercoaster, which is a great idea and really makes the head nodding, heart throbbing, want to run into a fucking wall moments even better, when they are sandwiched in between moments of low-fi, electronic interludes. An album full of heavy hitting moments would have asked a lot from the listener, but here it’s a journey that lead singer Brendan Yates navigates well. Intro of the same name perfectly encapsulates this idea, starting with a lovely piano and muted vocals, sounding exactly like you’re heading to a place that reflects the blue sky, faded rainbow that is on the album cover, before ripping apart into a ready made festival / mosh pit hit. Watch the Turnstile Tiny Desk Concert if you don’t believe me. Sunshower flips the idea, beginning with a two minutes hardcore, almost emo punk flick and then reverses into a melodic hymn of synths and low-fi electronics that fits the title of the song. I Care is one of my favorite songs of the year, probably the most radio friendly song on here, but the real standout, and possibility the best song I heard all year, is BIRDS, which I can’t describe better than a two and a half minute song that feels like the purest cocaine available. It might be the best riff since Seven Nation Army I’m not even kidding, it makes you want to run a marathon or lift a fucking bus. Nothing is impossible. It’s only two and half minutes. It’s never enough.
4. Wednesday – Bleeds
If Cameron Winter had the best 2025 of any artist, he would be taking the award from 2024 winner MJ Lenderman, who’s breakout album Manning Fireworks (#2 last year) vaulted him into magazine covers, GQ man of the year nominations, and meeting Shaq during Tonight Show performances. Lenderman rode this wave, going on full tours during 2025 (I got to see him in May this year for the second time), and became the legitimate new kid on the block, face of indie/folk alternative rock. His original band Wednesday released their fourth album, on the heels of their breakout 2022 album Rat Saw God and Lenderman’s rise in fame, where he plays lead guitar and sings backup vocals for the all-Asheville band.
However, it’s not all rosy feelings for Lenderman. His girlfriend of six years, also lead singer of Wednesday, Karly Hartzman, and he called it quits in 2024. As such, this is largely a breakup album. One made even more emotional and resonating with Lenderman playing guitar on tracks quite obviously about him. It gives strong Fleetwood Mac vibes. Hartzman is such a talented writer in her own right, always able to catch the mundane, lifeless happenings in her life in Asheville (and the greater Western North Carolina) and making a point to highlight these as metaphors for life around her. From Rat Saw God, she has so many tremendous observations and lifelike quips, especially from my favorite on the album Quarry, which is full of these:
“The rain-rotted house on the dead end of Baytree, old bitter lady
Sits caddy corner to the aftershock from the quarry
She says “America’s a spoiled child that’s ignorant of grief”
But then she gives out full-sized candy bars on Halloween”
Lenderman rightly gets strong praise for his writing, but it’s clear to me who was an influence on who:
Quarry end’s with another sublime stanza that any rural Western North Carolina kid can look out the backseat window and see anywhere they go:
“The Kletz brothers parents fight in the yard in their underwear
Bobby and Jimmy sit in the baby pool with lice in their hair
They have scoliosis from constant slumps in their misery
Flat parts on their crew cuts from laying their heads on their knees.”
She captures life in rural NC like nobody has, and makes it catchy enough to resonate with music critics in NYC, Chicago, and all across the country. From lead single Wound Up Here (By Holdin On) from the new album, Hartzman again gets in the pocket:
“Scratch off ticket for the education lottery
Found him drowned in the creek, face was puffy
They hung his dirty jersey up in a trophy case
Next to his girlfriend in a picture with a varsity face“
Later Hartzman lands one of the funniest and most surreal verses:
“Started the highway, they ran out of money
So we meet up at the on-ramp, drink 20/20
Weeds grew into the springs of the trampoline
You saw a pitbull puppy pissing off the balcony“
It’s too vidid, and just too insane to not be a real thing captured by Hartzman and her band. This is largely a breakup album though, and some songs are most definitely about her and Lenderman, specifically Elderberry Wine, Phish Pepsi, The Way Love Goes, and Reality TV Argument Bleeds, which is where the album gets it’s title. What I love about Wednesday is even with this great writing and obvious talent, they don’t just stay in the alt/country shoegaze vibe. Instead they often rip it open, like on Wasp, a fuzzed out emo screech of a two minutes song, or Pick Up That Knife, where Hartzman resorts to a primal scream at the end of the song to pick up that knife and she’ll meet you outside. Wednesday deserves a good deal of credit for an album this good, and it’s vastly more consistent throughout the tracklist compared to their last. Lenderman announced early in 2025 that he would no longer tour with the band, content to ride his own rocketship out of Asheville and to Coachella stages. Regardless if it was his last time performing with Wednesday and Hartzman or not moving forward, this era of Wednesday – a band created on abandoned land in Asheville owned by a landlord named Gary, who harbored and fostered a good amount of musicians in Asheville, NC, wrapped it up nicely with the closing track, the second titled for their gentle landlord and band mascot. Gary got his teeth bashed in through a bar accident, and instead of replacing the few, he ripped it all out. It bleeds for a while, but the fakes soon replace the real battered truth.
3. Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE
Yes – we all know the story at this point. Man decamps from the outskirts of Wisconsin (Eu Claire to be exact) to North Carolina with his promising band looking to make it big. When the band scutters through anonymity and mediocrity, they change the lineup. Man is removed. To make things worse, his long-time relationship with his girlfriend ends. Add in a mix of hepatitis and mononucleosis for good measure. And so with perhaps nothing left, at his very lowest, man moves back to a cabin in Wisconsin, away from all human activities for months. Alone – just man, a guitar, and his failed ambitions, both personally and professionally. All to create perhaps the best folk album of the 21st century – completely redefining the genre, and what it means to be an artist for the next decade of musicians to come.
The story of Bon Iver’s debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, was once the origin stories of fables and disbelief. Nothing could be more new-age than foregoing modern technology and society and finding themselves, alone and yet somehow speaking to a greater population of America. Something about falling back to our roots. That story was once the story of Bon Iver. After all the success and accolades, that story has now become Bon Iver. There is no escaping where we start.
Yet Bon Iver is just a moniker – for a man named Justin Vernon, who in the years since his astounding debut album has appeared everywhere, from Kanye West’s masterful mid 2010 albums to Taylor Swift’s, Vince Staples to Francis and the Lights. He has become quite popular for a man who made his start being alone.
I have often thought that it’s quite difficult to describe Justin Vernon’s work as Bon Iver. To understand the music, you really have to forget all of what you think you know. Songs will me-amble, often with no concise hook or verse. Content to find the rhythm in the chaos. Similar to the man himself, his music wasn’t necessarily made to be understood – instead consumed into a wider emotion and feeling that you just couldn’t explain. He could switch from falsetto to baritone in a snap of the fingers – most songs may not even have a legible verse. The music was an enigma, and the music matched it’s creator. These are not songs and thoughts for the party.
So that defined the early work – For Emma and Bon Iver were forward thinking folk-pop music that somehow could have been written 50 years ago. He was more a story than artist, staying in the shadows, hiding his face and voice to match the decrypted music. His favorite album of mine, 22, A Million, was full of symbols, numbers, signs, and backed by voice enhancers, so off-putting and singular, it felt like an album released by a man on Mars, sending passcodes from another language to make sense of today.
However with SABLE, fABLE; Iver opens up. It’s like the first day of Spring after a long, bittered winter. No more hidden agendas and voice manipulation – instead Vernon opens it up, letting his baritone voice beckon through to the listener. The first four (three) songs on Disc 1 are sad, lonely songs that all completely hit you right in the face. This leads into Disc 2, springtime, joyful, happy, almost conquering songs. Some of Iver’s best in my opinion. Everything is Peaceful Love sounds like a kid on the first day of Summer with the world now at his fingertips. I can’t explain just how happy this song make me, to hear a man so vibrant after years of toiling in the shadows. Day One features Dijon after his great year, and has on of the better transitions and choruses you’ll hear all year. Iver revealed in his album rollout he had recently gotten married and had a child. Of course, nobody knew this until he revealed it – he remains the most enigmatic pop star around, giving Frank Ocean a run for the title every year. This album sounds like a man finally finding the happiness he searched for over generational, genre shifting albums. He’s a long way from that cabin in the woods.
2. Tyler Childers – Snipe Hunt
1. Clipse – Let God Sort ‘Em Out
Sixteen long years. Two brothers split paths after making a few of the early 21st century’s greatest rap albums. Taking Pharrell Williams and The Neptunes’ electronic, juicy beats and rapping about cocaine and hustling changed the future of hip hop. One brother became the right hand man to the greatest artist of the next decade, and President of the G.O.O.D. MUSIC label. He put out generational albums produced solely by West & Pharrell, something nobody else could say, and nobody else could ever hope to achieve with their skill level. He became the kingpin with the King’s pen in hip hop, even releasing an album cover of Amy Winehouse’s cocaine riddled bathroom. He picked fights with Drake, eviscerating him when he fell for the bait, uncovering and announcing that the greatest pop star in the world was hiding a child. It was just another Tuesday for Pusha T. His brother, Malice, however, had a conscious changing shift. He repented for all his sins, for pushing cocaine and other drugs in his teens and early twenties. He changed his name to No Malice and gave up rapping completely. He found God. Two brothers diverge, and Clipse were a dream of the past.
Fast forward sixteen years, and I don’t think even the strongest Clipse supporters would have imagined the reunion would be this sweet. Pusha and Malice (yes, he changed it back) recruited now Louis Vuitton Creative Director Pharrell back into the fold, and led by his production and signature four count intro’s, his production over the entire album is insane for a man who has long given up making beats at the top level of hip hop. I mean this is LeBron doing it in year 22 type stuff here, and Pharrell evens sings a few choruses, with some autotune of course, and I believe each one is genuinely a great addition and offset to the hardnosed rapping by the brothers. The intro song, The Birds Don’t Sing, is the finest rap song I’ve heard in years, with Pusha T detailing in the first verse the brother’s late mother and what she meant to them throughout the years, before Malice comes in on the second verse and does the same, documenting their late father and his impact. Malice delivers a show-stopping verse, describing how he found his father passed away, how proud he was of his sons, and his religious ways granting Malice the solace and approval to continue rapping again, to help share his story with everyone else. We have long lived in a world where Pusha T has been considered one of , if not the best, technical rappers, standing toe to toe with a in-prime Kendrick Lamar on Nosetalgia, providing a career defining verse on Kanye West’s Runaway – but here, this proves to be the Malice comeback party. Nobody rapped harder this year than Malice, who sounds like a chained up dog ready to eat after being starved for sixteen years. Here in The Birds Don’t Sing, between great choruses from John Legend, Malice raps about his pops:
“Mine taught discipline, mine taught structure
Mine didn’t mind when he had to pull a double
Mine worked overtime, smiled through the struggle,
‘Cause mine wouldn’t let us feel what he had to suffer.
See mine made sure he had every based covered
So imagine his pain, finding base in his cupboard.”
Chains & Whips taps in a still in-prime Kendrick Lamar for another groundbreaking verse, and P.O.V. is easily one of the most fun rap songs in years, where Tyler The Creator shows up and proclaims that he needs God to play the lead in his biopic. Ace Trumpets begins with a shout that Pusha’s yellow diamonds look like pee pee (lmaoooo) and E.B.I.T.D.A. and F.I.C.O. bring some hard ass Pharrell beats. Another favorite of mine, M.T.B.T.T.F. brings an ungodly, helterskelter Pharell beat and the title and chorus of the track standing for “Mike Tyson Blow To The Face” is a double, maybe triple entendre, fitting of these two prolific cocaine rappers. Every song in here brings something new and different, and rare for a rap album these day, has zero actual misses – an album you can play straight through for almost any functionality. Nas comes in for a throwback legendary verse on Let God Sort ‘Em Out / Chandeliers, but the closing track By The Grace Of God recaps the journey completely, two brother selling drugs in a poverty ridden Virginia Beach somehow becoming the largest rap duo of the century. There is simply no reason for an album after sixteen years dormant to be this good. Over the summer, new American Pope Leo XIV invited Clipse to perform The Birds Don’t Sing at the Vatican, making them the first rap group to ever perform there. Two cocaine dealers singing and rapping to the heavens about their late parents, at the religious capital of the world. The chorus of By The Grace Of God rings true:
“I’ve seen killers and kingpins sing behind the wall
I’ve seen many men die, ’cause no one could make the call
I’ve seen entire empires crumble and fall
Yes I’ve seen it all
They missed this wall
By the Grace of God.”
The Inflection Point 
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