Music Culture Year In Review

2022 Was The Year Of The Double Album

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2022 Double Albums
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

If 2022 has heralded any large-scale trends in the music industry, then the prominence of the double album is a surefire contender. Over the course of this year, we’ve had double albums from indie stalwarts like Beach House, Wilco, and Big Thief, plus the likes of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Kendrick Lamar, Johnny Marr, Jeff Parker, and even two from Red Hot Chili Peppers. You could count Jack White’s two complementary albums this year, too, if you want. These sprawling, ambitious records have become a noteworthy staple, a major fixture of 2022 that’s become especially apparent as year-end coverage reaches a fever pitch. We’re aware this phenomenon exists, but why does it?

Double albums are not something new. They were particularly important in the 1970s, including seminal titles like Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, and the Clash’s London Calling, to name just a few. But, they were spread throughout an entire decade. This year alone has seen a concentrated abundance of them. It’s a fruitless task to highlight only one reason for this surge, but the pandemic has likely played a significant role. Tom Schick, who co-produced Wilco’s twangy Cruel Country, mentions it. “With the pandemic, a lot of artists were able to get in a room together for a long time,” he says during a phone call. “There was just a lot of creative energy that was pent up, and the double album is just a natural result of that, at least in Wilco’s case.” Once frontman Jeff Tweedy and co. hit the studio, the music “naturally flowed out of them,” as Schick puts it.

Peter Standish, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Warner Records (with whom Uproxx shares a parent company, WMG), worked on both of the Red Hot Chili Peppers albums from this year, and he echoed Schick’s rationale. “A lot of the recording occurred during the pandemic,” Standish says. “Maybe people have a lot more time on their hands to write and record.” Still, the SoCal funk rockers had another factor at play. It was their first time writing with guitarist John Frusciante since 2006’s colossal Stadium Arcadium, and the quartet was thrilled about the reunion. “John’s tenacious focus on treating every song as though it was equal to the next helped us to realize more songs than some might know what to do with,” goes one of the band’s quotes from the Return Of The Dream Canteen press release.

Even though touring is still highly infeasible for many artists today, it was completely put on hold during lockdown. This opened up more free time than usual for artists to write new material. It makes sense why so many of these massive albums are appearing just now, considering vinyl supply chain issues affecting the production process. At the time of this writing, Cruel Country is still unavailable on vinyl; it’s slated for a January 20 release date. “It takes forever for when you finish the record for the actual vinyl to come out,” Schick says. “[Cruel Country] came out in the summer. We’re still waiting on the vinyl; I think we might get it this week, which is just crazy.”

Johnny Marr, however, intended to create a double album from the outset. Surprisingly, he had never made one before Fever Dreams Pts. 1-4. Once he realized that, the influential English guitarist charted a course for his foray into more conceptual territory. Making a double LP appealed to him in the sense that it rejected the playlist-based streaming culture we currently inhabit. To Marr, this represents a sense of artistic freedom that’s often scarce.

“Generally, I think people like the idea of taking on something that’s a little less fiercely commercial,” the former Smiths guitarist explains over Zoom. Even in mainstream circles, that notion applies, as he cites prominent, critically acclaimed filmmakers like Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers. “I think Kendrick’s album is a really good example of it. Right out of the gate, it appears to be conceptual and expresses a bigger idea than just how many streams it can hit up.”

A double album can also allow for more expression. While some artists may use brevity as a tool to convey their ideas in a short-form capacity, a long-form project provides ample space to explore a wide variety of styles they may not have otherwise tried. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, for example, shifts from ebullient alt-country (“Red Moon”), to spacious post-rock (“Little Things”), to MPC-driven lo-fi (“Heavy Bend”).

“I can try not to sound immodest, but I think what it suggests is people being inspired,” Marr says. Referencing fellow Odyssean efforts like Once Twice Melody, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, and Cruel Country, “I quite like the company that I’m in with this. I think it’s a really healthy inspiration and a healthy disregard for crass commercialism. Hopefully, that’s true.”

Artists’ reasons aside, however, why have listeners been gravitating toward these notoriously lengthy endeavors? The streaming industrial complex, after all, begets a single- and playlist-focused economy, one that doesn’t prioritize unified experiences like a deliberately sequenced, front-to-back album. Schick points toward a deeper connection with fans.

“For the fans and these artists, it’s exciting to see,” Schick explains. “To be able to sit with it [for a longer time], it’s just a more intimate thing. The double record is ambitious, and it’s exciting. It’s fun for the fans, and it’s fun for music-lovers.”

Length, though, isn’t always the definitive trait of a double album. Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, for example, is shorter than 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Sonic Youth’s influential Daydream Nation, which clocks in at just under 71 minutes, is a paltry appetizer compared to the seven-course meal that is Smashing Pumpkins’ gargantuan Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, whose original vinyl pressing is over 128 minutes long. To put it another way, the qualifications for a double LP are as nebulous as they are malleable. What constitutes an EP vs. an LP, a regular album vs. a double album, has been a long-standing curiosity. Some EPs, like Sufjan Stevens’ hour-long All Delighted People, are much longer than some LPs, such as Pusha T’s 21-minute Daytona.

If 2022 marked such a momentous time for the double album, then can we expect it to fade out of view in 2023? It’s a difficult metric to predict, one that Schick also agrees is inconclusive. “I can speak only from my experience and the people who I’ve been working with, like Jeff Tweedy and Wilco,” he says. “ But I wouldn’t be surprised to see the quadruple album, just from the amount of playing and writing that they’re doing. On my end, I don’t see that slowing down, but maybe it’s a different situation for other bands and other artists.”

As of now, the only major 75-minute-plus record slated for next year is Smashing Pumpkins’ “three-act” statement, ATUM. Maybe this is an ongoing trend we’ll see for the next year or two, or maybe 2022 has simply been an auspicious time for these enormous projects. If it continues, then 2022 has proven that double albums don’t have to be stuffed to the brim with filler. They don’t have to be tedious, monotonous experiences that we listen to all the way through exactly once. As incredible records like Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Mondays At The Enfield Tennis Academy, and Once Twice Melody demonstrate, an album’s length can easily be justified. The primary draw of a double LP, to begin with, is how different songs resonate with different listeners; seldom is there a steadfast consensus on the absolute best track. Part of that harkens back to what Schick mentions as a crucial raison d’etre for music writ large: human connection.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Syd’s Retro-Futurist Machine Dreams Are The Pop Music We Deserve

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Syd
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

The first time I saw Syd Tha Kyd in the flesh, she had to wait patiently to jump into the crowd. It was 2011, the height of Odd Future’s pop culture influence (and infamy) and the kids of Dublin, Ireland had turned up to their show in force to chant “Kill people, burn sh*t, f*ck school” without consequence.

Perched behind the decks in her role as DJ, Syd watched on as members of the Los Angeles collective did about 12 stage dives each — only at the end of the show was she afforded the opportunity to make the awesome leap. Though the only girl in a group of unruly boys, Syd’s tight trim and muscle tops meant she blended into the crew with ease. More importantly, she bent the knee at the same N*E*R*D altar as group archdeacon Tyler The Creator, and her musicality and counsel was crucial to building the rap group into a pop culture phenom — a lot of their early stuff was, in fact, recorded at Syd’s parents’ house.

Yet Odd Future’s success didn’t make her happy. Out on the road, Syd struggled with depression and feelings of disconnect from her family and girlfriend. “I wasn’t in a good place then and so I don’t really reminisce on those moments,” she told NME earlier this year.

A decade later, Syd’s a solo star on a seemingly unbreakable upward flight path. Her most recent album, Broken Hearts Club, is one of the year’s finest and most striking pop records, an electrifying shock of retro-futurist soul and cyber-funk explorations. Nowadays, she doesn’t have to wait for anyone to take her turn.

Sydney Loren Bennett comes from musical stock. Her Jamaica-based uncle Mikey Bennett is one of the songwriters and producers behind Shabba Ranks’ still-great 1991 chart reggae classic “Mr. Loverman.” As a kid, she’d spend family vacations hanging out in the studio and observing her uncle at work. At 16, Syd’s parents let her turn their guesthouse into her own studio. The budding music-maker’s vocation became playing piano and creating beats.

Syd expressed herself by crafting instrumentals for Odd Future, but a more rounded portrayal of her proclivities was coaxed out by her band The Internet. Originally a component piece of Odd Future that Syd later took in her divorce from the group, The Internet flourished from her musical kinship with background OF member Matt Martians. The very Google-incompatible name of the project actually started out as a joke: In 2011, a journalist interviewing Odd Future asked one member, Left Brain, where he was from. “He was like: ‘I hate when people ask me that,’” Syd later remembered. “‘I’m going to start saying I’m from the internet.’”

No joke, The Internet — with Syd on vocals, backed by Martians and Odd Future touring members Patrick Paige, Christopher Smith, and Tay Walker — made serious cosmic funk odysseys and sci-fi soul tunes, with The Neptunes’ influence very palpable: “Dontcha” could be one of Chad and Pharrell’s early Justin Timberlake productions. The band’s first two albums were low-budget efforts laid down in Syd’s home studio, but after a few line-up changes that included the addition of guitarist Steve Lacy, third album Ego Death proved a breakthrough, earning a Grammy nomination and providing a hit in the slinky Kaytranada-produced single “Girl.”

Syd embarked on further explorations on her 2017 solo debut, Fin, crafting a set of foggy, state-of-the-art alt-R&B tunes — The Weeknd and Miguel-type stuff — with flair and focus. She twinned this contemporary sound with confident declarations of her impending supremacy: On the stuttering electro-slap of “Shake Em Off,” Syd accelerates away from “drowning in doubt and frustration” to announce herself a “young star in the making.”

Now, we have Broken Hearts Club, her most pop-minded album yet, the kind of record an artist seeking to reach the highest peaks of musical stardom would make. As with Fin, Syd produces or co-produces a number of tracks, with external beatmakers drafted in too. Besotted with 1980s pomp productions, throwback drum machines and mammoth synth loops complement the catchy choruses. Prince mimicry comes in the form of the obvious “Little Red Corvette” analog “Fast Car,” while “Control” shoots forward a decade to draw strength from Aaliyah’s music with Timbaland, though it is actually produced by none other than Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins. In other words, Broken Hearts Club is the future as envisioned by pop stars of yesteryear; a retro-futuristic art installation that sounds fresh and vital.

Yet it is primarily about the most rudimentary pop subject matter: a breakup. The 13 songs veer from being written before and after the dissolution of a relationship, accidentally scripting the tragedy of lost love. So you get an opener like “CYBAH,” a collaboration with Lucky Daye, the title serving as an acronym for a serious question posed throughout the song: “Could you break a heart?” Syd, no longer a Kyd (she hit the big 3-0 in the middle of the year), quizzes a potential new love interest with the kind of bluntness only possible if you’ve old traumas of the heart to bear.

Syd is no tub-thumping vocalist, instead her cool, broken-hearted voice amalgamates with the icy-heat generated from the funky, futurist machine dreams. But that coo really slithers on turn-the-lights-off slow jams like “No Way.” “Don’t know what you’ll have arranged / We’ll be gone, missing for days,” she sings, evoking the sentiment of loverman Maxwell on his classic “Til the Cops Come Knockin’.” And there’s further retro goodness with the sweetly plucked strings of “Right Track” recalling a strand of ’00s chart R&B — think Kandi Burress’s “Don’t Think I’m Not.”

The album reaches its emotional apex on the home straight. “BMHWDY” (“Break my heart, why don’t ya?”) is a desperate yearning, while the pillow-soft “Goodbye My Love” sounds like acceptance. But if those two songs feel fueled by raw emotion, closer “Missing Out” is the full relationship post-mortem. “As far as I can see, you and me could never be,” sings Syd. “‘Cause we didn’t spend the proper time tryna work it out.” Her final realization on this emotional journey is that it’s her ex-girlfriend who’s lost out in this breakup.

Having bore witness to Syd from her artistic inception, it feels like she is reaching maximum speed in what is bound to be a long race. Take it from Beyoncé, who tapped Syd to produce funky ditty “Plastic Off The Sofa,” the most romantic joint on Bey’s new album Renaissance. When you realize that it’s not a dissimilar song to “Heartfelt Freestyle,” a minor number from Broken Hearts Club, it becomes evident that Beyoncé is just as besotted with Syd’s style as her most dedicated disciples. No wonder nobody can say anything to her anymore. When asked by NME if she still seeks the validation of others, Syd shook off the question. “I don’t think I care anymore,” she said. “I know I’m a genius.”

Broken Hearts Club is now via Syd Solo/Columbia. Get it here.

The Longevity Of Beyoncé’s ‘Renaissance’

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Beyonce
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

138 days have passed — it’s been a little under five months since the release of Beyoncé’s seventh studio album Renaissance. Celebrating Black, queer culture in a dance-filled record, the album has easily found itself on listeners’ #SpotifyWrapped charts, across Ballroom floors, and placed on album of the year lists.

It’s unsurprising that Renaissance has held a relevant position in pop culture considering the endless memes and themed dance parties — regardless of the album’s undelivered music videos. If it wasn’t obvious after the release of her self-titled album in 2013, Beyoncé knows how to captivate an audience for an extensive period of time. As Twitter users joked about members of the BeyHive getting to leave the imaginary waiting room of artists that rarely drop music (alongside fans of SZA, Rihanna, and Frank Ocean), the unbelievable existence surrounding the album’s long-awaited release started to feel real. The longing for the album’s visuals is similar to how we’ll be yearning for the next chapter of the Houston native’s teased three-act project.

Longevity isn’t anything new for Beyoncé. If you’ve been following her superstardom since the days of Destiny’s Child or even 2016’s vulnerable project Lemonade, everything revolving around the artist stays relevant. On “Formation,” she did claim that she’s that b*tch because she frequently causes conversation. In “I’m That Girl,” she reminded her listeners exactly who the f*ck she is with the opening sample by the late Memphis rapper Princess Loko.

She’s also tapping into a wider trend. Like a variety of musical projects from the likes of PinkPantheress, Rochelle Jordan, Drake, Shygirl, Channel Tres/Tinashe, and IDK/Kaytranada, Renaissance is one of many examples of why 2022 was a popular year for dance music by Black artists. Following two years of isolation, grief, and an unforeseeable return to normalcy, Renaissance arrived at a necessary time to return to the dance floor.

As many have mentioned, the album’s effortless flow is perfect for a night out, and that’s evident with the existence of #ClubRenaissance parties at clubs across the globe. While sharing an open letter about the album, Beyoncé anticipated that her fans would find joy in the music and “release a wiggle” while listening to it. Following the June arrival of lead single “Break My Soul,” some pointed out that the album’s ode to queer culture would’ve been heavily appreciated during Pride Month, but its drop toward the end of July promised a rewarding conclusion of the summer.

In the open letter, she also dedicated the album to her late Uncle Johnny, who passed away from HIV. “He was my godmother and the first person to expose me to a lot of the music and culture that serve as inspiration for this album,” she writes. While acknowledging the impact that her Uncle Johnny had in her life — which was also mentioned during her acceptance speech at the 2019 GLAAD Media Awards — the mission to pay homage to Black queer and trans icons was evident throughout the album.

Her extensive roster of Black LGBTQ+ collaborators included New Orleans bounce phenomenon Big Freedia, The Internet’s singer-songwriter and sapphic superstar Syd, multihyphenate Grace Jones, television personality Ts Madison, and DJ/producer Honey Dijon, among others. Prior to Renaissance’s arrival, Beyoncé said, “My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment. A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom.” Her intended choice of words has resonated with me for months: to be Black and queer during the release of Beyoncé’s Renaissance is to feel heard, seen, and unapologetically loved. The album’s recognizable reverence to Black queer artists, drag queens, and listeners was intentional, just as she spoke.

To minimize the longevity of this album to the unknown arrival of its visuals wouldn’t be fair. Following the surprise drop of Beyoncé in 2013, fans have always questioned the secrets that could be up the artist’s sleeve, especially if she’s carrying her notorious laptop.

Besides the visuals and forthcoming two acts, what else is Beyoncé hiding up her sleeve? Well, I personally didn’t account for the limited-edition “Cuff It” themed merchandise that would be gifted by Queen Bey for the lucky few that created a viral video for participating in the trending #CuffItChallenge. After the challenge swept its way beyond TikTok and onto every social media platform, she rewarded her fans’ choreography by reposting 27 of her “Cuff It Picks” onto her account via an Instagram Guide.

Perhaps the relevancy and compelling nature of the 16-track album has more to do with its sound, specifically the work of longtime collaborator The-Dream. After penning remarkable classics like “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It),” “Grown Woman,” and “Formation,” The-Dream was bound to create a sonic masterpiece on Renaissance. If the combination of the album’s funk, disco, house, soul, R&B, and gospel doesn’t explain its addictive flair, maybe the excitement for its live performances will.

Following the historic blessing that is BeyChella, not to mention her infamous dance breaks, the Renaissance tour will be a lively experience creating FOMO for those not in attendance. The approaching tour dates were inadvertently confirmed to occur during next summer after an auction for October’s Wearable Art Gala, leaving fans who are now financially preparing themselves for the tour’s announcement. Whether Ticketmaster is ready or not for the BeyHive after the debacle with Taylor Swift’s devoted Swifties, the satisfaction of attending the Renaissance tour has motivated employed people everywhere.

As fans fill Beyoncé’s comment sections asking about the status of the album’s visuals, don the disco balls (every last one of them) and dance carefree with your loved ones as the hour-long album plays from start to finish. Renaissance has gifted us a moment to release ourselves and escape within songs like “Church Girl” or “Virgo’s Groove.” Go ahead and press play to absorb the bad b*tch energy that oozes out of tracks like “Pure/Honey” and “Heated.” In an attention economy that often finds it hard to focus on anything longer than a week, this is built to last. As Beyoncé stated in the album’s opening track, Renaissance truly is That Girl, and it’s time to wholeheartedly recognize it while reviewing this year’s best albums.

TV Had A Solid Year For Music Discovery In 2022, But Why Can’t Reality TV Do The Same?

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Stranger Things
EMI/Netflix

One can’t swing a dead rat on the sinking ship of making money in the music industry without hearing about how TikTok has become this incredible tool for music discovery. And sure, it’s true — a new generation has learned to vibe with Fleetwood Mac, Gayle, and Kate Bush. Wait, hold up, that last one, while a TikTok banger, was on the Netflix to TikTok pipeline in 2022. While TV shows aren’t using music as prolifically as they once did or introducing us to as much new music (there are a lot of great shows leaning heavily on catalog songs and fewer shows like the recently completed tastemaker Insecure), it’s still a fantastic music discovery tool.

As is the case every year, this year a myriad of shows wowed us with clever placements — although more and more of them are catalog songs. The Dropout made fine use of reintroducing Wolf Parade’s excellent “I’ll Believe In Anything,” an underappreciated track in its own time that caused a bit of furor among aging indie rock fans since it was released in 2005 and soundtracked a moment set in 2002. Author and showrunner Jenny Han turned in a pitch-perfect soundtrack with The Summer I Turned Pretty, packed with familiar hits from artists modern (Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Cardi B, and Kim Petras all made the first episode) and classic (Electric Light Orchestra, Edith Piaf, and the Pussycat Dolls appear throughout the season). Season 2 of Euphoria dug deeper than most and made us all fall in love with Gerry Rafferty’s 1978 not totally forgotten hit “Right Down The Line” and Sinead O’Connor’s 1987 deep cut “Drink Before The War” by embedding them into pivotal lives of the characters. Derry Girls took us back to the late ‘90s with an emotional Fatboy Slim-soundtracked episode. The Bear and Station Eleven provided fantastic music moments for dad rock. Stranger Things gave us justice for Kate Bush.

TV in 2022 dealt a lot of wins to the well-known artists of the current generation and the forgotten hits of the near and not-so-near past — no doubt Rafferty and O’Connor had to scramble to get official versions of those songs up on YouTube to cash in, just as Spotify had to scramble to get them featured on some playlists. And a lot of songs that hit the sweet spot after a TV placement go on to viral success elsewhere — the number of TikToks suddenly throwing Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” on a video about the best places to eat in a random city or relationship advice was through the roof, and more than a little weird. It feels like, for the past several years now, TV has been running to the catalog instead of trying to break new artists. The Sex Lives Of College Girls and She-Hulk may have done the most to feature new artists, with soundtracks heavily focused on the hottest and newest from Gen Z and contemporary women in hip-hop, respectively. Although neither has quite had the cultural capital to create a breakthrough moment for a new artist. If, as The Guardian suggested earlier this year, “syncs (industry terminology for music used in shows) are becoming a bigger part of the music industry than ever,” aren’t we missing a massive opportunity for syncs to break artists?

It would seem that another amazing outlet for syncs for newer, emerging musicians would be reality TV. The genre has garnered quite a lot of buzz in the past year for its soundtracks, especially on the splashy Netflix shows. When Selling Sunset dropped, all we wanted to know was where all this comically bad “girlboss” music came from — and the show leaned all the way into that genre in season 2, which dropped in two parts this year. One of the songwriters told Buzzfeed, “It’s been very funny to watch Twitter, and I feel like so many people have been talking about the music. They don’t understand that we know this is garbage.” And as another artist who creates a lot of reality TV music told Mashable, “This music is so hilarious, so funny to create, but at the same time, yes, it’s so dumb some of the time.”

It’s the same story in the universe of Real Housewives, The Kardashians, the cooking competition genre on the Food Network, and the full constellation of Netflix reality shows. Why is so much of this music trash?

In short, most reality shows are set up to use music libraries rather than license actual music. The Hollywood Reporter gracefully broke down how that process works in an interview with former Laguna Beach and The Hills showrunner Adam DiVello, the current showrunner for Selling Sunset. Twenty-ish years ago, when he was working on the MTV shows, the network had it in their licensing agreements with labels that it was allowed to use any song a video was submitted for in the soundtrack of their shows for a minimal fee. As major label groups renegotiated, and indie labels objected because they were getting a lot more money from The OC and Grey’s Anatomy, it became more than the budget of a reality show could bear to license real music. So, the network began creating a music library. And it set the tone for the whole industry: now using libraries that license what’s known as bed music. And as time has gone on, it’s become more and more common for these unknown library artists to get prime placements and long needle drops (industry speak for when a song plays) in reality shows.

Those extended placements have bands and labels hungry again. Polygon noted that Coldplay got in on the Love Is Blind season 3 action this year, licensing their song “Biutyful” partly because the show does such long needle drops. The Kardashians will license a track from the Billboard Hot 100 from time to time, which has been the blueprint of their reality history from nearly the beginning. But otherwise, we’re getting a bunch of music that’s cheesy on purpose to soundtrack TV that executives like and continue to green light because the production budget is so low.

Musicians lose on all fronts in this scenario. Those library artists who create tracks earn a flat fee for licensing their music, and it can be as low as hundreds of dollars for a use — or even one dollar. If the show airs on cable or network TV, they can collect money from the performing rights organization (PRO) that represents them, with fees in the low thousands, depending on when and on what network it aired and for what duration. But that’s not enough — it’s nowhere near the tens or hundreds of thousands that music licensed through a label or agency would cost. And we have yet to see a career launched from a reality TV show placement. If it’s not creating social cache and delivering anything to the discourse — and we all think it’s kind of dumb — what is the point?

This model is also not doing any favors for working-class musicians. And is it just happening because production companies are being cheap? It’s time to ratchet up the budget, take a chance on some up-and-coming artists, and make some careers.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Hip-Hop In 2022: A Year Of Heartbreak And Harsh Truths

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Hip-Hop 2022 Year In Review
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

The past year may have been marred by devastating tragedies and frustrating personality shifts in hip-hop, but it was also distinguished by some of rap’s most emotive, vulnerable, and honest songwriting ever. So while we may have lost a few heroes – whether to violence or their own infuriating intolerance, the music we got this year was top-notch.

Whether it was underground favorites like Denzel Curry and Saba or top-line hitmakers such as Kendrick Lamar and Megan Thee Stallion, rappers dug deep with releases that resembled therapeutic breakthroughs as much as club bangers or street anthems. We got plenty of those, too, though, especially from trap rap stalwarts like Lil Baby and 21 Savage.

It’s hard to pin down how the trends ebbed and flowed throughout the year, mainly because TikTok continued to be a dominating force in music discovery (such as it is when an algorithm is feeding you artists and songs it thinks you’d be inclined to like already). But the breakout artist of the year, no doubt, is GloRilla.

What makes her rise to stardom so impressive is that it began relatively late in the year. “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” with Hitkidd was released in April but didn’t rise to the Billboard Hot 100 until August. Once it got there, though, everything happened fast for Glo, from signing to her hometown hero’s label to working with the streaming era’s premiere breakout star, Cardi B.

2022, unfortunately, marked yet another year that Cardi punted on releasing a follow-up to her Grammy-winning debut. But, in keeping with the theme of vulnerable honesty, she readily admitted (after plenty of goading from fans on social media, mind you) that she feels understandable anxiety about the potential reception of her sophomore album.

And with similar anxiety seemingly keeping one of the other marquee women in hip-hop, Saweetie, from dropping her debut, there were fewer high-profile releases from women altogether – although, if you scratched the surface, the high tide female rappers reached in prior years hasn’t yet washed back out to sea.

Megan Thee Stallion led the charge with her soul-baring second album, Traumazine, which naturally fit into the span of therapeutic releases this year. But she wasn’t alone; 2022 also saw a number of well-received releases from the likes of Armani Caesar, Latto, Leikeli47, Little Simz, Rico Nasty, and Sampa The Great. So, sure, there was plenty of Cardi/Nicki-related friction, but the rap girlies are doing just fine – kill the narrative that they’re fading away.

Unfortunately, the narrative that might be harder to end is the one in which rap fans have noted what appears to be a marked increase in rap-related homicides. After losing notable names like Nipsey Hussle, Young Dolph, and Drakeo The Ruler in recent years, 2022 saw a slew of deaths rock the hip-hop community, including Lil Keed, who died from kidney failure, PnB Rock, and Takeoff, who were both shot to death, and Coolio, who suffered a heart attack.

Even after losing all those names, though, the more infuriating loss might well be that of Kanye West, who finally went all the way off the deep end. After years of flirting with controversial topics – the red hat, the Donald Trump stanning, the unprompted attacks on everyone from his in-laws to Drake – the man who made The College Dropout decided to go full-on tinfoil hat, sharing his antisemitic conspiracy theories with anyone who’d listen. Unfortunately, it seems that there were a lot of programs more than happy to entertain him, and too many outlets hungry for engagement that indulged the insanity.

To be clear, hip-hop has always had its share of conspiracy theorists and ugly, seemingly ingrained beliefs about certain people. Rap’s far too often violent, misogynistic, and casually dismissive of racial insensitivity. But what Kanye West has done this year is beyond the pale. It sucks that there will be those who’ll think he has a point about being “canceled” or [shudder] even about the content of his disgusting remarks.

But perhaps there was enough good this year to offset his bad. With more and more rappers advocating for the benefits of therapy, perhaps rap listeners will be able to move in more productive directions regarding the above flaws of the genre. After all, with streaming, there’s more opportunity for self-selection – maybe enough fans can finally help tip the scale away from self-destructive themes toward more creative and fulfilling ones.

Even if not, one thing we have learned in 2022 is that there is still so much variety and diversity within this genre, even 50 years out from its inception, that it can still surprise us. It can still excavate new perspectives and epiphanies to both entertain and enlighten its fans. With the highs and lows of 2022 in the rearview, it’s easy to look forward to what 2023 has in store.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.