This is going to be my longest and most self-indulgent post ever. I made a list of the best things I wrote, recorded, published, etc. this year. This exercise was primarily for my own benefit. But I decided to send it to you in newsletter form. Maybe it will lead you to learn more about an artist you weren’t aware of but find vaguely interesting.
Regardless, it was helpful for ME to look back at the things I published this year. I felt like I did nothing in 2024, but the process of putting this list together made me realize I actually did a lot. It also helped me notice patterns, like months in which I was more prolific than others, or topics I happened to be interested in at certain times.
I don’t think creative output is the smartest way to judge the relative success of a particular calendar year, but I encourage you to do something similar no matter what it is you’re looking back on in 2024 or looking forward to in 2025. Like, maybe look back at your bank account and reminisce about the Top 10 Fast Food Orders you placed. Or the times you went to the gym. Maybe that’s better. Whatever you want to do MORE of in 2025, ideally, would be good to focus on in your reflection. Or don’t do that and just read through all of the articles I wrote and watch all the videos I made this year. What do I care.
WHAT WAS THE BEST THING YOU DID THIS YEAR? COMMENT BELOW!!!!!!!
I used to think New Year’s Resolutions were corny. Reflecting on the past year, pointless. Now that I’m becoming an old man, I’ve softened my stance. It is beneficial. Here are all the interviews, articles, stories, videos and things I put out this year. By the way, none of the things I wrote in this newsletter are included. But I did write some stuff in here that I hope my new subscribers go back and check out.
Interviews:
I started off 2024 on an interview kick. I don’t think of interviewing as writing, but as I started doing more interviews I began to appreciate the art form.
I’m going into 2025 with a vague idea to start a new podcast where I interview other interviewers about the art of interviewing. We talk about some famous interviews from interview history, maybe mention the Seth Rogan Kim Jong Un movie The Interview, etc. I’m not aware of any sort of teaching or analysis of interview styles, although I’m sure it exists. Like this newsletter, it would be fun and beneficial for me to start this podcast, but I might get annoyed that no one listens to it and end up abandoning it. We’ll see.
Here are some of the interviews I did this year:
Angry Blackmen are a duo from Chicago who put out a strangely incredible album early in 2024: The Legend of ABM. I spoke with both Brian Warren and Quentin Branch on the phone about that album and other things. I hadn’t seen a ton of interviews with them before doing this one, and they said a lot of interesting stuff. It was a good conversation.
I spoke with Fatboi Sharif, a unique and talented rapper from my favorite-musical-state-I’ve-never-been-to (NJ), about his love of horror movies. The interview coincided with the release of Something About Shirley on POW Records, but we didn’t talk about that a ton. Originally I was going to interview Fatboi Sharif about romantic comedies and publish the article near Valentine’s Day, but he told me he’s not as familiar with that genre. So we focused on the romantic elements of horror, and romanticized the genre as a whole. I happen to love romantic comedies, but recently got more into horror, especially psychological thriller type stuff. Hearing Fatboi Sharif’s perspective on horror broadened my appreciation of the genre, and it makes sense how he incorporates some of his horror influences into his music, which is not horrible.
My interview streak continued with a conversation with Seafood Sam, a rapper from Long Beach who put out one of my favorite albums of 2024: Standing on Giant Shoulders. I feel like my questions were relatively generic in this interview, but I still enjoyed talking to Seafood Sam and recommend people check out his album. It’s really musical with a broad mass appeal and I expect big things from him in the future.
Bonus musician interviews: Check out this interview with Bryson the Alien from December 2023. He’s so good and has new music out. I also interviewed spoken word artist ain’t about me in this newsletter in 2023. Maybe I’ll do an interview in here again, someday. Probably not.
Steven Appleton / LA River Skunks
Early in 2024, I saw that Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 was looking to hire people. Instead of soliciting resumes, they asked people to submit a 5:55 Youtube documentary. This inspired me to reach out to Steven Appleton, ecological activist and owner of LA River Kayak Safari, to interview him about the LA River. I made the video kind of in Channel 5’s editing style but also in my own. I’ve long been fascinated by the LA River. I think it’s one of the most absurd and beautiful things in the entire world. Steven Appleton agrees. I’m also proud of the way this video turned out, even though I never heard back from the contest.
After publishing this video, I also published a video on mushroom hunting with my psychopath friend Travis and another mushroom-related video with Jess Starwood. I also interviewed Peter Alagona, author of The Accidental Ecosystem, but never published it even though it was an enlightening talk. I was hoping to release a documentary series about urban wildlife, but I got lazy and stopped making the content pretty quickly. It was still fun and I might come back to it all at some point.
SH Fernando
There’s no documentation of this interview, but I interviewed SKIZ Fernando about his book ‘Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast’ at Exile in Bookville in Chicago in front of a small but engaged crowd most of whom ended up buying both of our books. I was kind of nervous for that event but really enjoyed it. Javier, co-owner of Exile, has been super supportive of me and has built up an awesome literary community around his store. There was an article about him and his partner Kristin in the Chicago Tribune recently. They’re awesome and I’m thankful to them for their continued support and sales of signed copies of my book.
Midwest Emo
Although none of the interviews have been published, I spent a lot of time in 2024 interviewing people who were involved in the 90s music scene that I’m writing about for my next book, Midwest Emo. Especially after writing a book about a guarded, mysterious individual like MF DOOM, it’s been interesting to see how open and accessible the artists I’m writing about for the next book are. I have a huge list of people I still need to interview, but here are the names of people I spoke to in 2024: Matt Lunsford, Bob Nanna, Don Zientara, Steve Holmes, Steve Lamos, Todd Bell, Ian Mackaye, Chris Strong, Tom Mullen, Rose Marshack, Rick Valentin, Sean Neumann, Rachael Dietkus, Kathryn Rodrigues, Neil Sandler, Viktor Krauss. Each and every one of them have blown my mind in one way or another. I truly recommend taking the time to heavily research a topic that interests you, and conduct interviews with primary sources if possible. It’s legitimately lifechanging. I need to stop interviewing people at some point and start writing this book, though. There’s just too many people to interview. We’ll talk about it on my podcast.
BUT I WASN’T JUST INTERVIEWING PEOPLE THIS YEAR, I was also being interviewed. John Milas interviewed me about ‘Madvilliany’ & Midwest Emo for SmilePolitely, an esteemed Champaign-Urbana publication. I had fun talking to him. His book, The Militia House, is a must-read. A lot of our conversation, including a tangent about "what, exactly, constitutes a ‘haunting’” was cut out of the published version, but hopefully we’ll revisit that conversation in another form somewhere.
Short Music Articles
I don’t find much value in posting short music articles talking about new singles and whatnot anymore. I liked doing that when I was younger, and now I think it’s better if that dying niche of the internet is left to younger writers.
That said, here are the short music articles that I wrote outside of the newsletter this year. It’s still a nice practice to do these occasionally, when inspiration strikes.
Key Glock’s “Let’s Go” Remix Offers a Peek Into Young Dolph’s Posthumous Vault
I’m eternally sad about Young Dolph’s death, but he remains one of my favorite artists ever. Key Glock continues to make great music. GloRilla and others are filling the void in Memphis’ sound that Dolph’s absence created. I’m also worried about the future of AI tarnishing the legacy of deceased artists, but I guess there’s no point in worrying too much about that inevitability.
Mr. Beat the Road: How Bossman Dlow is Reviving Trap Traditionalism
Like much of the world, I discovered Bossman Dlow this year and immediately became a huge fan. At some point I tweeted, “If I were a music influencer, I would recommend Bossman Dlow.” Then I realized it was kind of weird that a lot of the mainstream music writing publications that I semi-keep-tabs-on weren’t talking about him. So I wrote this article. Since then, his popularity has only increased. I love his new album Dlow Curry. In this article, I compared him to Drakeo the Ruler on a site that often writes about Drakeo, and this comment cracked me up:
Longer Music Articles
The Immersive Experience of Dead & Company at The Sphere
I wasn’t planning on writing an essay when I went to Las Vegas with my dad and brother to see John Mayer and Company at The Sphere. But the experience was so impactful that I couldn’t help myself. I’d like to keep writing about live music experiences, or bigger broader topics like the endless reanimation of The Dead.
Body of Work: A Ranking of Lupe Fiasco’s Discography
I find the concept of ranking albums completely frivolous and also completely fun. I enjoy occasionally diving deep into an artist I love’s entire discography, and typing out my thoughts about why I think certain albums are better or worse than others. I did the same thing in 2022 with Freddie Gibbs’ then-discography. Lupe Fiasco’s Samurai was such a pleasant surprise that I felt compelled to look back on the rest of his work. He’s such an under-appreciated gem. Or maybe I’m just old and nostalgic about the Midwest.
Grief Pedigree: Ka Was Always Conflicted
I usually don’t like to write obituaries for artists, opting instead to celebrate musicians as much as possible while they’re still alive. The unexpected passing of Ka, however, compelled me to join the others at POW in giving him the send-off tribute he deserves.
Fiction
I continue to think of myself as a “failed fiction writer,” because I really love fiction more than non-fiction, and in an ideal world I’d be writing novels and making millions of dollars of them while also receiving critical acclaim. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. Instead, I’ve enjoyed exploring the line between fiction and non-fiction, and analyzing why I’m intrigued by that concept in a “post-truth” world. Still, my progress with fiction has been slow and steady. My story “Bodies & Spirit” was nominated for Best of 2023 in Across the Margin. Here’s a 2024 podcast featuring me reading the story.
This year, I had a piece of flash fiction published in Panorama, a British literary journal. It’s called “a palm tree untrimmed.” I also made it into an emo song.
I originally wrote it almost as a parody of literary fiction, in an attempt to get it published. It got rejected a few other places. Panorama liked it, which was validating. They also helped me edit it down from ~780 words to ~350. It became much better without the fluff.
Music
This song seems relevant 🤷♂️
Another song I made that I think isn’t too bad. About giardiniera.
Other
This year I also learned that an essay I’d been working on for a long time—entitled “Alex Trebek’s Estate Sale”—was accepted for publication at Barrelhouse, a literary journal I like and respect. I’m excited and nervous to see it in print at some point in 2025, because it’s a super personal essay about my family and fear of death. It also talks about Alex Trebek, Jeopardy!, and rummaging through Alex Trebek’s mansion in order to buy a few of his items that I definitely do not need!
Three Tips For Submitting Your 33 1/3 Proposal
33 1/3 asked me to write an article for their blog about how to write and submit a proposal for their series. A lot of people ask me for submission tips, and this article has the advice I usually give. I can’t really help you that much, to be honest. But hopefully this article is somewhat helpful. The other advice I give, which I didn’t want to include here, is that you should submit your book proposal to other publishers or agents if 33 1/3 rejects it.
Early in 2024, I tried to resurrect my longstanding website idea Undisputed Classics, where you can stream full albums on Youtube and read about them. I got busy and ended up neglecting to continue it though, and might stop paying the hosting fee unless I decide to keep it going for some odd reason.
A couple of the new things I wrote for that site were on The Cool Kids’ Bake Sale and an article about American Football that evolved into the Midwest Emo book.
My friend Dylan and I have written a screenplay for the Psychic Space Trains movie. We need to make it. In the meantime here’s our version of BBL Drizzy and please remember to Buy The Shirt.
Music Town, USA
My friend Lee and I started a podcast called Music Town, USA. We pick a different underrepresented city in the United States each week, and talk about its history, geography, and culture, and how those elements are intertwined with its music. We ask the big important questions like, “Is Orlando a Music Town?” We haven’t put out any of the episodes yet, because we stalled out on recording when we both became busy with other stuff. I love the idea though and the conversations have been helpful for me in thinking about the Midwest for my book Midwest Emo. I’m really hoping that we’ll do this show in 2025.
Sketch
I basically stopped doing sketch comedy but I performed once this year and it went pretty well, even though I thought the sketch Dylan and I wrote was bad. Here’s a video I made recently with Xandiloquence Bizarre the Ab3rd.