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J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

770 followers 210 following 1.9K posts

Library worker, researcher and writer about culture from the first third of the 20th century, depressive.

https://jonathanbogart.net

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J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · Oct 1

I'll be participating in this challenge for the next 50 days, mute or follow the hashtag according to your preference. For now my writeups will live only on Bluesky, accompanied by a screenshot of the title card from the music video (or just a regular screenshot if there isn't a title card). Enjoy!

J Bogart @jonathanbogart.net · Oct 1

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 1

50. Yailin La Mas Viral, “Bing Bong”
(Dominican Republic, Nov 6 2024)
prod. Puyalo Pantera & Yailin La Mas Viral

youtu.be/YpoUzo-CflQ

Music video title card. On a background of an out of focus woman with her hands raised in dark rain are the words:

BING BONG
YAILIN
LA MAS
VIRAL

Parental advisory explicit content

50. Yailin La Mas Viral, “Bing Bong”
(Dominican Republic, Nov 6 2024)
prod. Puyalo Pantera & Yailin La Mas Viral

We begin with a mission statement, or in the Tumblr vernacular, with rent-lowering gunshots, telling those who can’t hang to clear out now. This list is going to be full of songs by, about, and for women of color shaking extravagant amounts of ass, with videos even more monomaniacally focused on the same. Welcome to the post-dancehall world: racialized vulgarity is in, bourgeois auteurism is out. Art is a broad category that has always included sexual titillation, and Puritans, whether of the left or right, are welcome to kick rocks about it. Taxonomically this is a dembow song, although it’s almost post-dembow, a series of giddy sounds in echoey space (is that one break actually just the sound of cheeks clapping?) while Yailin delivers the genre’s usual sexual provocation in a teasing tone. She’s a 23-year-old single mother (her daughter’s coo is one of the sounds in the mix) who has been in in the fast-paced Dominican dembow spotlight since she was eighteen, when I first noticed her among a crowd of young women then entering the field (La Perversa, La Ross Maria, Rosaly Rubio, Arlene MC, Tokischa), but the sproingy, addictive “Bing Bong” has been her biggest pan-American hit yet.

YouTube: 264M views | Spotify: 146M streams | TikTok: 851K vids

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

this is something like the twelfth thanksgiving i've spent by myself, but the first thanksgiving i actually got enough energy together to cook turkey and some side dishes instead of just making do with whatever was easiest

November 27, 2025 at 11:08 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

not only do i understand this i profoundly concur

Holly Boson @fireh9lly.bsky.social · 2d

The worst fandoms are when a Gulp Shitto is the blorbo

November 25, 2025 at 8:50 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 50

1. Gyakie, “Need Me”
(Ghana, Aug 6 2021)
prod. Sosa

youtu.be/qXeuIxhv5YQ

1. Gyakie, “Need Me”
(Ghana, Aug 6 2021)
prod. Sosa

A remarkable number of the young women I follow are the offspring of well-known musicians — Créol at #32, Baby Cortes at #16, Nailah Blackman at #3 — and Gyakie, born Jackline Acheampong, is the daughter of highlife singer Nana Acheampong, who holds the Ghanaian record for album sales due to his 1996 reggae-inflected hit “Nanka Ebeye Den.” There’s a certain kind of blind overconfidence required for pop stardom that having a famous parent can help with, a certainty that you know what you’re doing and can trust your vision. Not to mention, of course, who you know. Gyakie’s entire musical identity is contained almost entirely far back in her mouth, barely expressed except as a throaty purr, but that very limited range of motion is what makes her an effective pop singer: when she reaches for the “so insane” note, her voice cracks with the vulnerability of it, a moment you wouldn’t even notice in a flashier singer or busier arrangement. This isn’t one of her bigger hits — it was carried along in the wake of “Forever” (especially after the Omah Lay remix) — but the stillness at the center of Sosa’s beat, with that four-note wordless warm-jets bed and those waterdrop ploinks of rhythm, is impossibly soothing in a world that increasingly insists on anxiety.

YouTube: 12.8M views | Spotify: 8.6M streams | TikTok: 25.5K vids

November 25, 2025 at 3:00 AM

Reposted by J Bogart

populuxe 🍂

@populuxe.bsky.social

leopard women 👏👏 on giant saurians 👏👏

Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · 3d

Leopard women of Venus will rule the universe.

November 25, 2025 at 2:18 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

Props to Variety for putting the whole list on one page so that doing decade comparison was easy. Unsurprisingly the golden age of culture-writer comedy was 1970-2009 with only a handful of Criterion-approved examples before then.

November 24, 2025 at 3:21 PM

Reposted by J Bogart

Centuries of Sound

@centuriesofsound.bsky.social

Listening to this today, of course. RIP Jimmy Cliff, what a life.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y9Q...

Many rivers to cross - Jimmy Cliff

YouTube video by TheSunAnge

www.youtube.com

November 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 49

2. Azawi, “My Year”
(Uganda, May 7 2021)
prod. Michael “Fingaz" Mugisha

youtu.be/z1hm2XcFK18

Music video title card. A shot of Azawi bathed in orange light in an empty warehouse with a bluish tint and many windows opening onto lighter gray skies behind her. She is wearing a transparent rain slicker and hat and long, loose trousers. She is looking down pensively. Over top of this, in both golden semitransparent block letters and in white hand-lettered script, are the words:

MY YEAR

2. Azawi, “My Year”
(Uganda, May 7 2021)
prod. Michael “Fingaz" Mugisha

Over the course of being slightly involved in this poll I’ve seen a bunch of excited chatter about the indie Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes, but none about the Kampala- based label I follow most closely, Swangz Avenue. (For a not really equivalent analogy, think of pop pickers in 1985 championing Minneapolis heroes like Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, but not noticing or even really being aware of Paisley Park.) Swangz acts like Winnie Nwagi and Vinka got on my radar in the late 2010s, when YouTube’s not-bad recommendation algorithm figured out I would pretty much always give female East African singers a shot, and the label throwing money at splashy music videos didn’t hurt. Singer-songwriter Azawi signed with the label in 2019, releasing her first single in early 2020, but I didn’t get around to noticing her until “My Year” (her third single) hit me like a ton of bricks in the second half of 2021. “It’s my year, it’s my year, this year must be better than last year” became my own private mantra, a solitary, uncommunal edition of what other people (like Nyege Nyege Tapes enjoyers) use the Mountain Goats’ “This Year” for. It became even more urgent in 2022, when the worst personal tragedy of my life took place, and has been ever since.

YouTube: 1.9M views | Spotify: 1.1M streams | TikTok: 15.8K vids

November 24, 2025 at 3:04 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

"where you're from" is a fraught concept for me, someone who moved every four years until well into my twenties, but i guess broadly

Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage leaning back on folding vinyl chaise lounges in the Sonoran desert in a shot from Raising Arizona

November 23, 2025 at 6:49 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 48

3. Nailah Blackman, “Round and Rosie”
(Trinidad & Tobago, Nov 17 2023)
prod. DJ Taffy

youtu.be/ChtIMUEvrF0

Music video title card. A black baground, with digital recreations of film-projector imperfections like dust and hair hair in the frame, as well as a glowing red hotspot in the lower left corner. Over this, in lime green letters are the words:

NAILAH BLACKMAN

and in blue-purple gradient lettering with flower-power shapes:

ROUND & ROSIE

3. Nailah Blackman, “Round and Rosie”
(Trinidad & Tobago, Nov 17 2023)
prod. DJ Taffy

It should be no more possible for me to choose a favorite Nailah Blackman song of the 2020s than it is to choose a favorite organ to keep living with. As with so many of the musicians who populate this list, I’ve been keeping tabs on Nailah from her first single (“Badishh” with Shenseea, 2017) and she’s made my year-end list every year since 2019, even #1 for 2024. Whereas I had this at #2 in 2023; but my #1 no longer hits as hard as it did then (plus I wanted something big, splashy and uptempo for pacing reasons here) so “Rosie” is promoted. Always more eclectic with her rhythms than a strictly roadmarch-centric focus on soca would recommend, Nailah snapped up this killer bouyon riddim from a Guadeloupean DJ and made one of the firest booty-centric island songs of the decade, which is saying something. “When it comes to party I like gyal, don want no man… I ain’t see no faces only waist, only bumpa.” She puts her money where her mouth is in the video, showing off a whining stamina matched only by her toasting. I don’t think any pop musician has been a more consistent or unremitting source of joy for me all decade.

YouTube: 3.6M views | Spotify: 1.1M streams | TikTok: 215 vids

November 23, 2025 at 3:04 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

Lady Jane. Jagger was born to play a sociopathic eighteenth century lothario instead of the sharecropper cosplay Richards (and the rockwrite press) preferred

Sophia_Nyx 🏳️‍⚧️ @sophianyx.bsky.social · 5d

Name your fav song by The Rolling Stones.

November 23, 2025 at 12:31 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 47

4. Rebecca, “Te Levar Pro Cantin”
(Brazil, May 28 2020)
prod. Luan LK

youtu.be/KfHQV9HRYkM

Music video screencap. Rebecca, a black woman with short straight hair wearing a light-colored active lingerie set and a thin necklace, is lying down on a tan sofa outdoors, staring at the camera. Her head is in the lap of a darker black woman, whose face is cut off by the top of the frame, wearing a pink negligee and a diamond choker, and they are holding hands. A leopard-print jacket is draped over the back of the sofa.

4. Rebecca, “Te Levar Pro Cantin”
(Brazil, May 28 2020)
prod. Luan LK

My top Brazilian song, my top song not (primarily) in English, and my top song of 2020: Rebecca Alves’ slinky song of seduction under quarantine will always be The One That Got Me Through It. She’s always been a funk singer first and foremost (see big splashy singles like “Sento com Talento,” “Deslizo e Jogo,” “Ao Som do 150,” “Repara, “or “Barbie”), but there’s only the barest hint of a funk rhythm here: it’s mostly just an airy, woozy fragment of trap&b that was only one of dozens of songs she put out, seemingly to keep busy, over the spring and summer that time forgot. “Quero te levar pra um cantin” (I want to take you to a [the Brazilian pronunciation of the English “quarantine”]), “Eu comando olha pra mim, e só me obedecer” (I command eyes on me, and only obey me). The video, in which she alternates between addressing one of her dancers and addressing the camera, is a small jewel of psychotropic #wlw, turning the limitations of location and personnel into an evocative, sun-dappled but somehow still chilly, and equally fragmentary piece of cinema. What does it say about me that a song about female same-sex desire (not to mention dominance) was one of the high points of a low year? Frankly, I’m trying not to think about it.

YouTube: 1.8M views | Spotify: 513K streams | TikTok: 834 vids

November 22, 2025 at 3:27 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

looked through my collection of 1980s movies for the prompt that's going around and everything that really speaks to me was a childhood favorite (or would have been) so never mind

November 21, 2025 at 3:14 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 46

5. Gailen La Moyeta, “Tienes Que Pagar”
(Dominican Republic, Jul 31 2020)
prod. Gerald La Melodia

youtu.be/CXK_6v-AIpo

Music video title card. A shot from behind of Gailen, in a flowery dress and long blue-black hair, being followed by a shirtless man in a hat and large tattoos in between structures in a tropical resort location. Other men, some shirtless, are cathered around. The shot is blurry, in motion. Over it, in bright neon colors, are the words:

TIENES QUE PAGAR
GAILEN LA MOYETA

5. Gailen La Moyeta, “Tienes Que Pagar”
(Dominican Republic, Jul 31 2020)
prod. Gerald La Melodia

I’ve noted before that the music I listened to in the summer of 2020 has burrowed deeper into me emotionally than much of what I’ve loved since, and this is a prime example of that. Is it the best Dominican dembow song of the past six years? Almost certainly not. (And it was definitely not a hit in any sense.) But it’s my favorite Dominican dembow song of the past six years, for reasons that go far beyond the “Macarena”-referencing beat, the full-throated sex worker’s anthem of the lyrics (the refrain “pa tu toca’ me tiene’ que pagar” means “to touch you have to pay me”), or even the fact that Gailen has been a major rooting interest of mine since her arrival on the Dominican urbano scene in early 2019, whose ferocious talent as a quickfire rapper and freestyler has helped her overcome, to the degree that she has, the colorism endemic within dembow. Which, despite some notable success, mostly in collaborations, she’s never had the career she deserves, and it’s been two years (an eternity in dembow) since her last music video. But the breezy, sassy, forthright sound of this, a pop of color in an otherwise dismal year, remains with me.

YouTube: 1.4M views | Spotify: 37K streams | TikTok: 27 vids

November 21, 2025 at 3:03 AM

Reposted by J Bogart

Postmambo Studies

@postmambo.bsky.social

About time somebody reported on this. Chikungunya, dengue, Zika, oropouche, and more —insect-borne viruses are at a pandemic level in Cuba as Oriente struggles with hurricane damage in the absence of basic services.
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

They just call it ‘the virus’: mosquito-borne illnesses heap misery on Cubans affected by Hurricane Melissa

A lack of clean water and medicines in the aftermath of the storm has led to a sharp rise in viruses such as chikungunya and dengue

www.theguardian.com

November 20, 2025 at 3:43 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 45

6. Titica, “Mexer Bem”
(Angola, Aug 11 2022)
prod. DJ X-Trio

youtu.be/la-AJ2UCbuk

Music video title card. A black background with gold lettering and purple drop shadow. The lettering says:

Titica
MEXER BEM

A FILM BY FREE DATION

6. Titica, “Mexer Bem”
(Angola, Aug 11 2022)
prod. DJ X-Trio

This entire list is, in a way, Titica’s fault. Although I might eventually have ended up in some cultural neighborhood adjacent to this one by some other means, the way it actually happened was that I looked up angola pop music in the summer of 2012 for a shallow music-around-the- world article on TheAtlantic.com and came across “Olha o Boneco” and was smitten by the story as much as by the music of a trans kuduro performer; but I kept listening to her music, and seeing what else she’d done, and digging into the music of her collaborators, and learning more about the broader musical context of Angola, and the rest of Lusophone Africa, and the rest of (most of) Africa, and connecting it to the broader musical context of Latin America and the Caribbean that had been urging its way into my attention, until I decided that I wasn’t going to try to pay attention to any other parts of the world anymore, because other people had them covered, but would make this my lane. “Mexer Bem” was the eleventh year in a row that Titica made my year-end list, a feat achieved by no other artist, and she’s continued to do so. This one isn’t kuduro, but afrohouse, with dancehall accents, like a lot of her latter-day work. But she’s still a goddess on the mic.

YouTube: 123K views | Spotify: 8.5K streams | TikTok: 0 vids

November 20, 2025 at 3:00 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 43

7. Darline Desca, “DDSK”
(Haiti, Apr 23 2021)
prod. Yung Alpha

youtu.be/y6M9N2JDwac

Music video title card. A shot of Darline Desca in thigh-high boots, velvet jacket, and denim cut-offs walking down a sidewalk in Brooklyn in winter, holding her phone and laughing. Over this, with square patterns decorating the letters, is the word:

DDSK

7. Darline Desca, “DDSK”
(Haiti, Apr 23 2021)
prod. Yung Alpha

I don’t believe in great-man theories of history, which means that tempting as it is I don’t believe in great-woman theories of pop either. So I won’t say that if you want to understand contemporary Haitian pop all you really need is to keep up with Darline Desca — there’s always more going on, even in the poorest pop scenes, than one person can fully embody, and the truest impressions are always a gestalt of multiple points of data (just ask Claude Monet), so you would also need to know Blondedy Ferdinand, Bedjine, Vanessa Désiré, Rutshelle Guillaume, Tracy Magic Girls, Fatima Altieri, Shassy, Zile — and that’s before we even start looking at men. But Darline Desca was my entry point into the modern Haitian pop scene, which I’ll always be grateful for. Her first claim to national prominence was a prayerful ballad in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and subsequent humanitarian disaster, a disaster being echoed now as I’m writing this. But this is a song of self-assurance as a fully grown woman, her smoky voice issuing warnings about social media lotharios and rejoicing in her mature sexual power. The beat is by a Nigerian afrobeats wunderkind: it keeps a Haitian kompa groove, but it’s as international as the Brooklyn-shot video.

YouTube: 4.7M views | Spotify: 264K streams | TikTok: 372 vids

November 19, 2025 at 3:52 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

my PWC form is a history of my engagement with global pop: in 2010 i crash out with 🇦🇷 thanks to indie picks, in 2014 i do ok with 🇬🇭until beaten by powerhouse 🇳🇬; in 2018 i amass a stacked 🇧🇷 squad that never takes the field

Peoples Pop Polls: Black Pop History 82-85 @peoples-pop-polls.bsky.social · 9d

With World Cup fever gripping the timeline I wonder if the spring poll should be a return of the… POP WORLD CUP?!?

(ie songs from the 48 competing nations)

November 19, 2025 at 1:05 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

noting what gets engagement on here and thinking about running a bracket of Cultural Artifacts of the 1920s in which books, records, movies, fine art, cartooning, etc. battle it out to determine what is still most relevant 100 years later (bookies' faves: Ulysses, Krazy Kat, Metropolis, BlueRhap)

November 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 43

8. IZA ft. MC Carol, “Fé nas Maluca”
(Brazil, Jul 27 2024)
prod. André Nine, Douglas Moda, Nox

youtu.be/5-VX-urUGu4

Music video title card. Golden letters in a hand-drawn, decorative font on a black background:

FÉ NAS
MALUCA
IZA & MC CAROL UN FILM DE IZA E FELIPE SASSI

8. IZA ft. MC Carol, “Fé nas Maluca”
(Brazil, Jul 27 2024)
prod. André Nine, Douglas Moda, Nox

I tend to default to the statement that IZA is my favorite current pop star, which is misleading: I don’t believe in favorites, as an ideological commitment. (And yet this is a list of favorite songs. We all make compromises.) What I actually mean by the statement is that I admire IZA’s multimedia project of popstardom more just about anyone else’s I keep up with, while not always really loving the individual songs. (“Ginga” is the song where I fell in love with her, in 2018. It’s a 7.) This is a reversal of my usual stance of loving songs while not caring overmuch about the individual performers; but I’ve been following IZA since Warner Brasil posted her first music video in January 2017 (“Te Pegar,” featuring Rebeca Alves as a backup dancer; no spoilers), which was just about the last time that she didn’t work with filmmaker Felipe Sassi to establish a distinctive, original, and striking visual identity for every music video and album cycle. This spot could just as easily have gone to “Gueto” (non-album single, 2021), or “Mole” (from the EP/ short film Três, 2022), but I’m a sucker for a magical realist music video, and favela-funk legend MC Carol getting a guest verse to invoke Xangô and get bleeped twice makes for a masterpiece of swaggering female attitude.

YouTube: 2.7M views | Spotify: 15M streams | TikTok: 17K vids

November 18, 2025 at 3:02 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

finally catching back up to my 2025 music queue after an unplanned month off (will i ever share what i've been working on in the meantime? unlikely), and man, music is just the greatest

November 17, 2025 at 7:54 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

little of the work i do writing about pre-rock music would be possible without the DAHR, the source i consider the most authoritative (if still woefully incomplete for global music, though steadily improving). adding Joe Bussard's record collection to their streamable content is awesome

teakagee.bsky.social @teakagee.bsky.social · 11d

laist.com/news/arts-an...

Thousands of rare American recordings — some 100 years old — go online for all to enjoy

The project, which will include some 50,000 songs from private record collections, is a collaboration between UC Santa Barbara and the Dust-to-Digital Foundation.

laist.com

November 17, 2025 at 4:10 PM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

#TheTwen2ie5 Day 42

9. Sha Sha & Kamo Mphela, “iPiano”
(Zimbabwe + South Africa, Dec 10 2021)
prod. Felo Le Tee

youtu.be/klUGyxoL7QE

Music vdeo title card. A shot of Sha Sha and Kamo Mphela mid-pose for the camera, both wearing complicated hair and plunging necklines. They are in blue light, while the background is in lighter shades of purple. Over this are the words:

IPIANO
SHA SHA X KAMO MPHELA

I often refer to my contemporary musical interest with the shorthand of “tropical pop,” which is incorrect by what it excludes (I am not paying much attention to the music of the tropics in Asia or the Pacific), but is also incorrect by what it includes: South Africa, like northern Mexico, the southern US, and the urban centers of Argentina and Chile, is technically subtropical. South Africa is also the nation, of the nations I pay attention to, that I pay the least attention to: its highly-developed, globally popular dance scenes don’t need my attention, and the virtues of pop concision and individual attitude that I favor tend to be sublimated into epic, enormously collaborative bass workouts. (But also, I have somewhat of a grasp, in descending order, on English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and their creoles, but Zulu and Xhosa remain well beyond my linguistic reach.) So the South African music that makes it into my regular rotation is fairly random and tends to live or die on the vocal quality of the individual performers. But Sha Sha (who is Zimbabwean, though she sings in Zulu here) and Kamo Mphela have two of the most beautiful voices in amapiano, and Felo Le Tee’s generous, spacy production is a beautiful, understated setting for their twin jewels.

YouTube: 1.5M views | Spotify: 1.2M streams | TikTok: 347 vids

November 17, 2025 at 3:01 AM

J Bogart

@jonathanbogart.net

favorite movie genres:

let's put on a show!

everybody's lying to each other but get married at the end anyway

a murder happened but trying to solve it only makes everything more confusing

here are people living in a distant time and/or place: observe them closely

colors! shapes!

November 17, 2025 at 12:37 AM