Tag: Necessary Evil 2024

12 Kendrick Lamar: GNX

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

I did it with integrity and niggas still try hate on me, just wait and see
More blood be spillin’, it’s just paint to me
Dangerously, nothin’ changed with me, still got pain in me
Flip a coin, want the shameless me or the famous me?
How annoying, does it angers me to know the lames can speak
On the origins of the game I breathe? That’s insane to me
It’s important, I deserve it all because it’s mine
Tell me why you think you deserve the greatest of all time, motherfucker

man at the garden

Yeah, could not be arsed with this album last year. It was released on November 22nd, which was already pushing it very tight for the December 1st deadline for inclusion on Necessary Evil 2024. The circumstances and context really made it feel like it was a bit of a rush release to capitalise on all the publicity surrounding the feud with Drake that we’ll likely be telling our grandchildren about.

yeah, I guess we’ll go back to speaking olde time language in the future. And writing in script. I dunno, man, that meme’s all over the place

I also heard how ‘GNX’ was, rather than an expansive and hugely intellectualised dissection of the black male psyche and how that very identity is being exploited by capitalism to be sold back to those very same people – the type of Kendricking that meant ‘Mr Morale & the Big Steppers‘ was very much on-brand – it was a more back to basic, West Coast infused straight hip-hop album, I decided it probably wasn’t really worth the intense study it would require to see if it would make that year’s list. I’ll probably give it couple of spins after Christmas, I thought.

And I did. And holy shit this album’s incredible.

it take some tough skin just to deal with you

Staturday Night Fever: The Best Music of 2024 In Numbers

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Have I done that pun yet? Mate, I am struggling, honestly…

So here we are again, a round up of the hot stats of the best albums and songs of 2024, which I have bizarrely fallen into the habit of doing doing eleven fucking months after the Necessary Evil list of the best albums and songs of the year is actually published. Why do I always leave it this long? Because, quite simply, after writing 40+ blog posts and a gargantuan song list in little over a month, my brain seriously doesn’t want to even acknowledge the previous year’s music again for at least a thousand years.

I almost didn’t do it this year. But – but! – then I realised that 2025’s list might have some extremely notable points! So maybe I’ll retire this dumb fucking tradition once I get round to that in winter 2026. Until then? Yeah, we gotta do this.

I do like making these purdy pictures though…

Stats in the cradle and a silver spoon

Legit Bosses: The 143 Best Songs of 2024

~ Lex Leeson ~ 5 Comments

Hey, look, I’m getting better at this. Recently, I went on a massive cull of the 2024’s greatest songs to make this list as tight and as concise as possible, so that it would be sure to represent the absolute best of the best and would be as brief and easy to write as possible. And look! There are only one hundred and forty three tracks this year!! That’s a whole seventeen less tracks than last year! This post is going to be a breeze!

spoiler: this song is going top five. It INVENTED GAY POP, show some respect

OK, three weeks laternow, and I’m almost done! This post will be longer than most books you read, but to be fair most of the ‘books’ you read are Dr Who fanfic.

So, yeah, these songs are really good. And they get better as the list goes on. That’s how these lists work.

Here’s the YouTube playlist, which I know is the only thing most of you care about.

How much of an intro do you need, seriously?

A/79/232

#2 Tyler, The Creator: CHROMAKOPIA

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

See, I’m a Westside nigga from the zone (What’s goin’ on, nigga?)
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knockin’ at the door (I’m knockin’ at the door)
I keep them mink-minks on hip ’cause I keloid my fists (Mm)
Nigga, give a fuck ’bout pronouns, I’m that nigga and that bitch

Sticky

Aw, mate, this album is so fucking good. It literally hurts my soul to have it as low as second. And you all know what’s first now, don’t you? Yeah. I tried so hard to be different from the Normies but some things are just undeniable…

First of all, can we just all stand back in wonder at how big a deal Tyler Gregory Okonma is? They might have started out more concerned with working how best to work rape, gore and incest jokes into consistent homophobia, but starting with 2017’s revelatory ‘Scum Fuck Flower Boy‘ they have grown into one of the most dependable and consistent lightly experimental and occasionally avant-garde musicians in the game. Or, as Tyler themselves might put it:

Asia Hussein Ahmed Hamad

#3 070 Shake: Petrichor

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

20th May 1983, a car bomb in the the South African capital of Pretoria went off. The target was the South African Air Force (SAAF), who were renting a building on Church Street West, where the bomb went off. The bomb killed eleven SAAF personnel, plus the two people who planted the bomb (unintentionally) and six civilians. Two hundred and seventeen people were injured in the attack.

The bomb had been planted by uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC), a political group founded by Nelson Mandela in order to force the end of the racist policies of the South African government. The attack was a response to a cross border raid by the South African army into Lesotho in December 1982, which killed 42 ANC members.

Mohammed Eyad Maher Abu-Leila

Merry Christmas

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

Just a quick post to, yes, say merry Christmas to the literal less than a dozen readers sad enough to be checking this dumb blog that nobody reads on Christmas Day.

this is where the magic happens

I’m also letting you freaks know that there won’t be any more posts out on Christmas day, Boxing Day, probably not on the 27th, and the 28th is my birthday so what do you fucking want from me?

Doaa Ali Hassan Al-Ghandour

#5 Prince: Around the World in a Day

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

January 28th 1985 was a shade over seven months since Prince had released one of the greatest selling albums of the year – which would eventually grow to a 25 millioner amongst the best selling albums of all time – ‘Purple Rain‘ – and He had ten nominations at that night’s American Music Awards that He was attending. There was a special buzz around that night’s particular AMAs, part of which revolved around Prince going up against His eternal rival Michael Jackson in several categories. This was a non event though, as Prince won awards for Favorite Pop/Rock Album, Favorite Soul/R&B Album and Favorite Soul/R&B Song for When Doves Cry, while Jackson (moon)walked away with nothing. Anyway, in a series of decisions that history was sure to look kindly on, neither Prince nor Jackson could compete with Lionel Richie, who walked away with six awards including Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist and Favorite Soul/R&B Male Artist. Prince’s performance of Purple Rain that night – which Billboard would later name as the greatest performance in the awards’ history – would ensure those decisions would look immediately ridiculous.

But the 1985 AMAs were most notable for the fact that, right after the ceremony that night, this absolute royalty of popular recording artists would – rather than spend the night covered in so much gak that their face resembled Elizabeth I and being serviced by heavily narcoticised groupies whom IDs was encouraged not to be checked by the entourage, as would usually be the case for successful music artists in the 80’s – they would all be whisked off to the Hollywood AGM studios to record We Are the World, a song written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and produced by Quincy Jones to benefit ‘USA for Africa‘ (America’s version of Band Aid). It would become the fastest selling single in US history and serve as the climactic singalong at that July’s Live Aid Philadelphia concert.

Prince, though, wasn’t really feeling it.

Ahmed Alaa Abd Al-Majeed Issa

#6 Godspeed You! Black Emperor: “NO TITLE AS OF 21 DECEMBER 2024 45,206 DEAD”

~ Lex Leeson ~ 2 Comments

Or ‘”NO​ ​TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28​,​340 DEAD“‘ if you want the original title. I was just trying to update it a bit to help them out.

When GY!BE finally settled on that title in February (“NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?“), the Israeli authorities had been causing massive, deliberate forced displacement of Palestinian civilians in Gaza for around four months. Perhaps, knowing that the record would be released in October, GY!BE assumed that the massacre would have surely been brought to a halt by international operations by that point. Perhaps GY!BE named the album that way to ensure a moment in time, a gross period of humanity, was forever notified in the most matter of fact way possible. At their most cynical, the band might have thought that by the time of the album’s October release – close to to the one year anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel that set off the bloodshed in response – the international community were doing their best to sweep this tiny little genocidal snafu from everybody’s memories and attempting to rebuild Netanyahu’s image as a cuddly friend to imperialism and the West. They might not have dared to think that the slaughter was still continuing.

Jannat Naji Abd Al-Rahman Abu-Hammad