Ten Albums that Got Me Through 2024 First Quarter

Anger Management by Bloody Civilian

The last three months, which are the first of the year, were tough. I was stressed out all the time, psychologically, emotionally, bodily and, later, in all three ways. I took a lot of losses. And the little wins there were were cold and forgettable. I was down. My spirit was low. The times were rough. And things were slow.

One of the few things that gave me peace is music. A saying claims music is the food for the soul. I lived out this metaphor in the last three months. These then are ten albums I kept feeding my soul during a time almost all hope was gone. Expectedly, most of them are quiet and they sat calmly in my head, sinking, slowly, into the depth of me. These songs calmed me. They kept me sane. They kept my spirit alive. They got me going. And they touched my heart when I most needed a touching.

As always making lists of this kind is frustrating. I love and hate it. Ten is so small a number. Just as hundred is. Any number is in fact so small a number. We're finite creatures of infinite likes. But we sometimes need to present a sample of the things we like such that lists, useless though they are, become useful. How then do we select a sample?

My method is simple. I am spontaneous. I list things top of my head. But I can't name all the things I'm trying to list at the time of listing. A lot, if not most, wouldn't make the list due to my faulty mind. For this reason here are ten other albums that equally kept me cool in that dark season but I couldn't recall at the moment of writing: Work of Art (Asake, 2023), Cincinnati Pumpin!! (Cruel Santino, 2023), Freetown Sound (Blood Orange, 2016), Beheaded (Bedhead, 1996), Acetone (Acetone, 1997), Never Enough (Daniel Caesar, 2023), Ghosteen (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, 2019), SOS (SZA, 2022), Ants From Up There (Black Country, New Road, 2022), Roadman & Folks (Tommy Wá, 2019). 

I hope this straighten things up a bit.

Anger Management (Bloody Civilian, 2023). Bloody Civilian is already angry but is also slow to anger. She is relaxed, calm and casual, all the while consumed by rage. I kept the debut project by Emoseh Khamofu, who self-produced all of the songs, on repeat throughout that dark quarter. This transcends reply value. I like her attitude to her material. In philosophy moral emotivism is a position that considers ethical judgements as expressions of feelings that can neither be true nor false. For moral emotivists statements such as “murder is wrong” simply expresses the speaker’s attitude to murder. On this EP Bloody comes off as a moral emotivist emptied of feelings. She threatens but she sounds benign so that when she sings Anger wey dey boil like heater what you hear is a lullaby. She is vexed and she is serious. And she is angry at everybody almost all of the EP playtime: men, family, government and a lover. Yet she sings like she's trying to put you to sleep. Should anger be this sedative something beyond danger is at play.

Love Deluxe (Sade, 1992) is a quiet storm. A silky, jazzy R&B, Sade, a band named after their lead vocalist, Sade Adu, made an ambient album, mostly off love, that induces an out-of-body experience. As far as I can remember I have always listened to the album whenever I'm overwhelmed. I'm grateful for tracks like “Cherish the Day,” “Ordinary Love” and “Kiss of Life,” which when you listen to them you feel time dissolve into nothingness. Cherish the day/I won't go astray/I won't be afraid/You won't catch me running/You're ruling the way that I move/You take my air/You show me how deep love can be... The allure of Sade's voice is therapy. 

The Breakdown (Ms Boogie, 2024) is something. The intro on “Build Me Up,” which is also the chorus, sung by Ms. Carrie Stacks, is fit for a modern-day megachurch worship session. This and the drill beat make Ms. Boogie feel like a dance floor baddie aspiring to being a church girl. But when the song picks up speed we feel an additional thing: paranoia (I believe in God but I can't go to the church/'Cause the deacon and the pastor wanna see me off the earth). The dance floor baddie aspiring to being a church girl is so suspicious she's written off church. This is a pointer to the album. Brooklyn rapper Ms. Boogie handles drama with delicateness as a pious church lady would. Her tales could be dangerous and her themes complex but she is reflective, prideful and careful, making music that is deepened by honesty and skill. She is a canal saint and I find comfort in her music.

Brown Sugar (D'Angelo, 1995). D'Angelo of the 1990s was a soulful guy with a hip-hop swag as he still is. At 19, when he dropped this album, which is a classic, he pioneered what is called neo-soul. Still, his spaced out subsequent albums (2000Voodoo and 2014 Black Messiah) are considered even better projects by consensus. But Brown Sugar is personal to me. The album sounds like chocolate. When I hear D's honeyed voice I taste something gummy and sweet. Like brown sugar. Never mind his Brown Sugar is a lady he met in Philadelphia.

This is an album I can put on repeat for days without a single skip. I especially hit that state of extraordinary calm on the gospel-sounding tracks: “Alright,” “When We Get By” and “Higher.” (D, a pastor's child, played the piano in the church since he was a kid.) A new adult made music that was so mature he felt like an old folk reborn in a parallel universe. Play me Brown Sugar decades to come and I can be sure that classic will still quieten the noise in my mind. But Brown Sugar is also a bouncy album only that it is lush, soulful and steady, something Super Mario could tap-dance to.

Roots (The Cavemen., 2020). Think of “Anita.” Where is my shoes?/Where is my clothes?/Pay me my salary, I want to marry/Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah... Can you hear a desire so urgent it comes off as funny? By the time you hear the high-pitched Anita eh! You go kill somebody you might not know if to laugh or cry. And this is only one of 16 tracks of this first album.

Credited for rekindling Highlife music, siblings Kingsley and Ben Okorie, a two-piece band, spread simple stories and brief lyrics across a highlife-based musical palette that has a dab of jazz, soul and Afrobeat, a style dubbed highlife-fusion. It's a throwback music that belongs to nowhere but here and now. Their production is fine, clean and lush. But the miracle is their passion, which is both serious and playful. That stuff is their stuff. They fill their material with a passion so bulgy their spare messages acquire the efficacy of a holy scripture. See “Anita,” “Bena,” “Me and I,” “Obiageri,” “Beautiful Rain” and “Homesong.”

A quick one. Colour green, the colour of the cover art, is the colour of nature. Then let's be literalists for a second. Roots are the lowest part of a tree, usually underground, and they occupy a big place in African herbal remedies. This cavy project is like the best of herbs. Except it is sweetened by gorgeous vocals and drums. It heals life stress if for a while. It induces passion, joy and celebration. And all this I'm saying from experience.

Spielt Eigen Kompositionen (Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, 1963). Emahoy grew up with Ethiopian traditional music, took an interest in classical music, learning piano and violin, and later became a nun, when she lived barefoot for years. Her music, which mixes classical music, Orthodox Christian gospel and Ethiopian folk, is mostly a product of these. Her sound is experimental and her music pensive, melancholy and disturbingly calm. Filled with spiritual warmth, grace and the piety of a nun, her clean, sparse piano solos have a casual feel to their formal preciseness. Here is an album that easily and softly puts me to sleep on long, hot afternoons.

Doris (Earl Sweatshirt, 2013) contains my favourite Frank Ocean's rap verse. Forgot you don't like it rough, I mean, he called me a faggot/I was just calling his bluff... See? Then he voices out in the outro: I don't know what we're about/What good is West Coast weather if you're bi-polar?/If I'ma need this sweater, I'd rather be where it's cold/Where it snows, I see how it goes... Frank Ocean sounds like a Franz Kafka overwhelmed by the frustrations of a difficult love. This is enough reason to love the album. But Sweatshirt, a very favourite poet, has a lot to offer. Even on “Sunday,” on which he features Frank and from which the quotes are taken. He's up to the challenge of his overwhelming themes. He's got chills. He's got skill. He's got wisdom. And there is maturity in his bars and reassurance in his voice, which he displays against laidback, long-winded sound textures. Earl raps: It's probably been 12 years since my father left/Left me fatherless/I just used to say I hate him in dishonest jest/ When honestly I miss this nigga like when I was six... 

Slowdive (Slowdive, 2017). Guitar pedals. Breathy vocals. The human voice is a mystery. Stars. Clouds. Skies. Nights. Life is at its finest when slowed. Moody. Psychedelic. Shoegazer. Not all burials are a loss. Voices buried under a thick bed of guitar sounds are a joy. Indie. Rock. Neo-psychedelic. Play me Slowdive when I sleep my last. 

No Thank You (Little Simz, 2022) is personal for Simbi and fans like me. Just the previous year she won the Best New Artist at the Brits. Then, she had been around for 12 years and four albums. She vents all the frustrations of working in a jaundiced music industry on this project. She is angry but her anger is a holy one. Once she becomes Prophet Moses and Toni Morrison all at once: Yeah, I refuse to be on a slave ship/Give me all my masters and lower your wages... But the project is comforting, too. Thanks to Cleo Sol's soft vocals, Inflo’s adept production and Simbi's silky delivery, all of which give the rap music its jazzy and neo-soulish edge. I feel at peace, also, that the best person that can is addressing all these cheats. But hold on a second and consider the fourth track “No Merci." See the double entendre? “Merci" is both “Thank You" (of the album title) and “Mercy." That's Frenglish. At a point Simz goes: Keep us low, then we get high quick. Then a few lines after: You've been tannin' in the sun, so now I'ma throw shade. Sorry, but no mercy.

Thy Kingdom Come (Seyi Vibez, 2023). I took my time before liking Loseyi. At first I could only do two tracks: “Billion Dollar” and “Bullion Van.” But as I warmed up to his music out came “Hat-trick” off Vibez Till Thy Kingdom Come EP (2023). On that track Loseyi sexualizes and body-shames Tems and Ayra. It took a long time before I could look past that. When I did I couldn't ignore his music anymore. Fuji, he's said, is the soul of his music. Then he snatches here and there for a signature mix. He’s taken from Wasiu Alabi Pasuma as he has from Fela Kuti. But he’s also hardworking and he has stylistic range. A quick listen through his discography will show Seyi singing pure fuji, highlife, apala, juju and sakara. Replace “Highlife Interlude” with “Fuji Interlude,” off VTKC, for me and I have my perfect Seyi Vibez project in Thy Kingdom Come EP. As well as Asake and a few others he's credited for popularizing neo-fuji, a fuji-based kind of Afrobeat. He might body-shame or sexualize but as far as music is concerned Loseyi is good. 

For bonus these are five additional albums that were equally helpful: WHAT YOU HEARD IS TRUE (Odunsi (The Engine), 2020), KIWANUKA (Michael Kiwanuka, 2019), 11 (Sault, 2022), Norman Fucking Rockwell! (Lana Del Ray, 2019), And In The Darkness, Hearts Glow (Blood Weyes, 2022), Seven Degrees North (King Sunny Ade, 2000).