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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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#TheTwen2ie5 Day 50

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

youtu.be/qXeuIxhv5YQ
Music video title card. Gyakie is standing in profile looking out onto the ocean, the water of which is brown near the beach fading to deeper blue-green near the horizon. There is hazy gold in the sky fading to deeper blue awat from the horizon. Gyakie is wearing a black shirt with large colorful flowers printed near the bottom. Over this, to one side so that the composition is balanced, in red letters that are at a lower resolution than the rest of the image, are the words: NEED ME GYAKIE 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 41

10. Bad Bunny [ft. Nesi], “Yo Perreo Sola”
(Puerto Rico, Feb 29 2020)
prod. Bad Bunny, Tainy, Subelo NEO

youtu.be/GtSRKwDCaZM
Music video title card. A shot of a child's television setup circa 1998, with a VCR on top, several VHS tapes stacked on the side, and posters and toys visible in the frame. The television is showing the YouTube logo, with Yo Perreo Sola in neon blue script, with a DIRECTED BY credit over two logos, one for Stillz and one for Bad Bunny. 10. Bad Bunny [ft. Nesi], “Yo Perreo Sola” (Puerto Rico, Feb 29 2020) prod. Bad Bunny, Tainy, Subelo NEO If anyone asked me who the most important, impactful and innovative pop star in the world in the 2020s is, I’d say Bad Bunny without hesitation. That I don’t listen to Bad Bunny more often is a failing on my part, not his; my (entirely anethical) habit of preferring female voices meant that I only got into him when he featured on a Cardi B song, that my all-time favorite of his songs, 2019’s “Callaíta,” is a compassionate, humanizing portrait of a woman, and that this, my favorite of his 2020s songs, is anchored by the uncredited voice of Nesi singing the title hook. Most of the media attention around the song five years ago was centered on Benito’s performance of drag in the video, a contestation of gender norms that, because it’s played for comedy, isn’t entirely free of transmisogyny. But expecting pop stars to be perfect is the path of madness; and anyway a smash hit club song that is a full-throated defense of women dancing alone, telling men to keep their hands to themselves and not to bother them, is the kind of thing no one else in music would do, at least not without sounding like a nerd. Bad Bunny, with his bro holler, never does. YouTube: 641M views | Spotify: 826M streams | TikTok: ??? vids
November 16, 2025 at 3:03 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 40

11. Paranoid 1966, “Pa Verte”
(Spain [Equatorial Guinea], Oct 5 2023)
prod. Boixy

youtu.be/rqlNoeCN6wk
Music video title card. A shot from above of a featureless room, with charis arranged in a large square U shape, each chair filled by a person in streetwear, many of whome are holding phones and recording with the flash on. Barely visible behind the text in the center of the chairs, Paranoid 1966 is lying face down on the floor. Over this, in bright cartoon letters, are the words: PA VERTE PARANOID 1966 11. Paranoid 1966, “Pa Verte” (Spain [Equatorial Guinea], Oct 5 2023) prod. Boixy I’ve written about Paranoid 1966 every year since 2019, and every time I feel like I still have to introduce her to the reader, because she remains a well-kept secret outside the esoteric world of Spanish indie uR&Bano. Which isn’t to say she hasn’t amassed a steady following over time, but only one video having cracked a million views suggests there’s a hard cap on her career, perhaps because she’s too black for the Spanish indiepop crowd but also too international indiepop for the Afro-Latin beat-centric crowd. Even a song like this, which uses reggaeton’s dembow riddim, doesn’t put it to reggaeton ends, but twists the tempos and turns the beat inside out, living up to her artistic name without providing the easy, singalong hooks that mass success demands. I’ve made the comparison a bunch of times to a much more famous eclectically indie Spanish singer, mostly because Rosalía’s track record with producer El Guincho was paralleled by Paranoid’s long collaboration with producer Boixy, but they occupy such entirely separate aesthetic universes at this point that my old grudge is pointless. Some half-dozen of her songs could have made this list, but “Pa Verte” [to see you]’s ambivalence about clubbing is very me. YouTube: 255K views | Spotify: 166K streams | TikTok: 163 vids
November 15, 2025 at 3:13 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 39

12. Mariah Angeliq, “Hey Siri”
(USA [Puerto Rico/Cuba], Apr 8 2022)
prod. Taiko, Mvsis

youtu.be/vM6NvkRkyg4
Music video title card. Mariah is standing in multicolored tights holding her hands above her head, stretching her long black ponytails out to either side. She is in front of a pool at night, reflecting green from trees behind; on the other side of the pool are a crowd of people watching her and partying. Over this, in slanted block letters reminiscent of a Fast & the Furious logo, are the words MARIAH ANGELIQ HEY SIRI In smaller words reminiscent of movie poster credits: UNIVERSAL MUSIC LATINO PRESENTS A BLUE SHRIMP FILMS PRODUCTION "HEY SIRI" STARRING MARIAH ANGELIQ CO-STARRING GABRIELLA BANDY, JORGE GARCIA, AND SIERRA RAVE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY NATALIA MOSCOSO GAFFER SEBASTIAN KOLDERUP STEADICAM DAN WILLARD PRODUCTION DESIGNER LESLIE CANO EDITED BY CHINNAKRIT "OAK" SOONTHORNWAN VFX BY VANGUARD STUDIOS EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY ROSHON PRODUCED BY THOMAS MACIAS DIRECTED BY GIOVANNI VALLE 12. Mariah Angeliq, “Hey Siri” (USA [Puerto Rico/Cuba], Apr 8 2022) prod. Taiko, Mvsis Reggaeton is so central to what I care about in modern music that it’s a little strange that this is only the second reggaeton song on my list of 50 (so far; there are more coming). But I think of reggaeton in the 2020s like I think of straight-ahead Elvis Presley-style rock & roll in the 1960s: everything exciting and modern is built on that chassis, or at least on one that came off a related production line, so even if actual examples of the thing itself that get me excited are thin on the ground, it’s still there beneath the surface waiting to sprout, Mariah Angeliq, who used to just go by Mariah because she was born in 1999 and that’s her name, but the lawyers of the diva she was named after got in touch, has been my favorite of the Vicodin-tongued generation of young female reggaeton singers whose singing style could be praised as deadpan and understated or criticized as monotone and lifeless, since her 2019 mini-hit “Perreito” [little twerk]. But for once, she’s only a slight part of the reason I first gravitated toward this song: what really stopped me in my tracks was the bold chutzpah of the production, the bass being close-miked physical, fretless bass strings instead of an 808 or Logic sample. Reggaeton is in its psychedelic era. YouTube: 2.3M views | Spotify: 2.5M streams | TikTok: 2.1K vids
November 14, 2025 at 3:01 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 38

13. J Noa, “No Me Pueden Parar”
(Dominican Republic, Mar 24 2023)
prod. Brasa, Nico Clinico

youtu.be/JMlnnvDSGro
Music video title card. A police tape-style strip of golden plastic with black lettering, over a black background, with light reflected on bits of the plastic. The lettering on the tape says: NO ME PUEDEN PARAR JNOA 13. J Noa, “No Me Pueden Parar” (Dominican Republic, Mar 24 2023) prod. Brasa, Nico Clinico The most rockist of all my picks is this sixteen-year-old rapper from the Dominican Republic who was nominated for a Latin Grammy and did a COLORS show and a Tiny Desk Concert within two years of her first release. (N.b. she was sixteen when recording this song; she’s twenty now.) The Babymetal of Spanish-language rap, her virtuosic flow and pursuit of the venerable (and traditionally masculine) craft of rapping rather than the commercial lure of dembow (which has been all too happy to chew up teenage girls who have some hard bars and spit them back out again) has given her immense appeal to the “real music” gatekeepers, which normally would, if not turn me off an artist entirely, at least downgrade their appeal to me, but J Noa is too much the real deal for the aura of classicism to obscure her very real talent and smart, incisive lyricism. This song is hand-picked to appeal to rockist rap fans, of course, with its crunchy guitars, double-time third verse, and lyrics about combating misogyny and not getting involved in drugs. Her more recent work has only grown in ambition, and she’s reached a detente with dembow, but this song smacking me across the face the first time I heard it, and every time since, means a lot. YouTube: 2.3M views | Spotify: 168K streams | TikTok: 1 vid
November 13, 2025 at 3:44 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 37

14. Jada Kingdom, “Dickmatized”
(Jamaica, Mar 18 2022)
prod. Di Genius, Ayo Rodey

youtu.be/oizzzFsBWmg
Music video title card. A shot of well-trodden sand, with foliage and golden velvet fabric draped to the extreme right side of the screen. On the left, a yellow serpent is moving across the sand. Over this, in golden block letters, are the words: JADA KINGDOM DICKMATIZED 14. Jada Kingdom, “Dickmatized” (Jamaica, Mar 18 2022) prod. Di Genius, Ayo Rodey Given how central specifically Jamaican innovations have been to my current musical interests, the amount of attention I pay to actually Jamaican music is proportionally far too low. Megastars like Spice or Shenseea will always get a hearing, and there’s always a handful of newer performers I try to keep tabs on to get a sense of what’s developing out of the spotlight, but although I like a lot of what I hear out of Jamaica, little of it sticks with me beyond a season. The one exception in the past half-decade has been this slinky island-flavored R&B tune from perhaps the best Jamaican singer to have emerged in the back half of the 2010s. I’m no doubt biased because I’ve been paying attention to Jada Kingdom from the beginning of her career in 2017 (she was among the first handful of newer performers I tried to keep tabs on, though she’s since graduated to just below megastar status), but her smoky voice, forthright attitude, and melodies rooted as much in soul and jazz traditions as in reggae and dancehall ones mean that her songs stick in my head whether I want them to or not, and none more than this, which takes a jocular piece of slang and turns it into an achingly sensual meditation on the self-destructive nature of desire. YouTube: 6.8M views | Spotify: 7.1M streams | TikTok: 934 vids
November 12, 2025 at 3:10 AM
jonathanbogart.net
My father checked this out of the library, was disappointed to realize it was a book of comedy instead of proper crime stories, and gave it to me, age 16, to return. I read it in one sitting and have spent thirty years chasing a high that proper genre fiction can never give.
Wodehouse on Crime A Dozen Tales of Fiendish Cunning P.G. Wodehouse Edited and with a preface by D.R. Bensen Foreword by Isaac Asimov
November 12, 2025 at 12:18 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 35

15. Guchi, “No Touching”
(Nigeria, Aug 21 2024)
prod. Tuzi

youtu.be/UIBgKaqcg70
Music video title card. A shot of the interior of a Nigerian hospital, with workers in scrubs, face masks, and hairnets, engaging in preparation for surgery. IV drips, room dividers, and medical charts are visible in the background. Over this, in bold white letters, are the words: NO TOUCHING 15. Guchi, “No Touching” (Nigeria, Aug 21 2024) prod. Tuzi I don’t think I would have predicted at any point in the past six years that this would be my highest-ranking Nigerian song of that same period. No Yemi Alade? No Tiwa Savage? None of the more world-shaking Nigerian hitmakers to have emerged in the 2020s? Guchi is a minor figure at best in the panoply of Nigerian pop; successful, sure, but not overwhelmingly so, and with such a pronounced tendency toward playing fresh-faced schoolgirl roles in her videos that I was mildly surprised to learn she’s 27. (But given that she started in 2019, that makes sense. Everyone looks younger and younger, the older I get.) But this song, man. I said in my 2024 year-end roundup that I was hearing it as a song of asexual desire for connection even if it wasn’t intended as one, but after spending months with it I can’t believe that it wasn’t intended as one, even if those aren’t the words Guchi or her songwriters would use. “Cause I need it for my healing, for my healing.” Asexuality doesn’t have to be unconditional to be real, and maybe it’s the fact that I gleefully embrace so much allo- and even specifically hypersexuality in pop that makes this gentle plea for presence, rather than verbal or physical caress, to be the medium of love for now hit so hard. YouTube: 977K views | Spotify: 941K streams | TikTok: 71K vids
November 11, 2025 at 3:08 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 34

16. Baby Cortes, “Loki Puti Fina”
(Cuba, Dec 20 2024)
prod. Roberto Ferrante, Ernesto Losa

youtu.be/N_-6lf84q54
Music video title card. A ahot of Baby Cortes surrounded by five dancers in an open, empty warehouse-style building. Over top, in a leopard-print font, are the words: BABY CORTES LOKI PUTI FINA 16. Baby Cortes, “Loki Puti Fina” (Cuba, Dec 20 2024) prod. Roberto Ferrante, Ernesto Losa One of the most exciting, novel, and explosively growing genres of urban music across Latin America today is Cuban reparto: a relief for those of us deeply aware of Cuba’s central place in Latin music history, but also of how the post-1962 embargo has systematically excluded Cuba (with some exceptions) from the broader conversation in Latin music in the generations following hip-hop and dancehall. Reparto can be understood as a Cuban analogue to Puerto Rican reggaeton or Dominican dembow, but born of the specific cultural and economic pressures of Havana. I talk about it less often than I could because my bias towards female voices mean that the big names in the current generation of reparto (Bebeshito, Wampi, etc.) have a tendency to slide off my attention, but I’ve become a devoted fan of the one woman currently given resources by Italian label Planet Records, Baby Cortes. Daughter of the late José Luis Cortes, the virtuosic flautist of Los Van Van, Irakere, and his own NG la Banda, she’s pushing reparto in a pop direction, as in this whistle-hook girl-power dance number with amapiano accents that is, save for the build-and-release kickdrum parts, barely reparto at all. Most excitingly, I don’t think she’s made her best work yet. YouTube: 408K views | Spotify: 4.2K streams | TikTok: 1 vid
November 10, 2025 at 3:20 AM
jonathanbogart.net
in every phase of media
Peanuts strip with Lucy at an early version of her Psychiatric Help 5¢ booth. Charlie Brown: I have deep feelings of depression… what can I do about this? Lucy: Snap out of it! Five cents please
November 9, 2025 at 4:29 PM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 33

17. Karol G, “Ay, DiOs Mío!”
(Colombia, Jul 10 2020)
prod. Ovy on the Drums

youtu.be/Ou2c2aj5Fcw
Music video title card. An animated shot of white 8-bit clouds in a blue sky, with a pink heart emerging from between the clouds. In pink, also in an 8-bit font, are the words: Ay, DiOs Mío! 17. Karol G, “Ay, DiOs Mío!” (Colombia, Jul 10 2020) prod. Ovy on the Drums 2020 was hard for everybody. One of the ways I coped with the (barely, in my case) increased isolation and (very much, in any case) increased social anxiety and online paranoiac meltdown was to retreat to a handful of songs that captured my attention over the course of the year and play them over and over again. “Ay, DiOs Mío!” was one of them, despite the fact that I had a bit of a grudge against Karol G for being one of the enormously popular Euro-passing Colombians who had become the face of reggaeton in the latter half of the 2010s over the Afro-Latin Panamanians and Puerto Ricans who had originated and popularized it. But my first loyalty was not to reggaeton but to pop, and this was a perfect pop song, from Ovy’s music-box plinks to the sudden injection of rhythm in the “me hizo tra-tra” bit (a callback to a reference point for #48 on my list; everything’s related). Karol’s attack here is feather-light and deceptively sweet: the song describes her being giddily seduced by a fan who she refers to as “tu man” (your man) throughout — but whether she’s taunting his betrayed partner or she’s delivering herself as a willing third to a couple “que le gustaban toda’ mis canciones” (who liked all my songs) is left as an exercise for the listener. YouTube: 617M views | Spotify: 675M streams | TikTok: 57K vids
November 9, 2025 at 3:44 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 32

18. Malaïka, Joey Montana & Elisama, “Dos Pedas”
(Mexico [Haiti] + Panama, 2023)
prod. Andy Aranda, Erick Pérez, Bobby Sierra

youtu.be/SB3aWtVUXIM
Music video title card A shot of Malaï in red cowboy gear leaning agaijst the bar in a smoky, dimly lit taberna. Joey Montana and Elisama are vaguely visible in the shadows. Over this, in red semitransparent letters, are the words: DOS PEDAS JOEY MONTANA | MALAÏKA | ELISAMA 18. Malaïka, Joey Montana & Elisama, “Dos Pedas” (Mexico [Haiti] + Panama, 2023) prod. Andy Aranda, Erick Pérez, Bobby Sierra The only song in my whole list that isn’t based on an African or Afro-Latin rhythm; although there’s some busyness with the sticks on the edges of this song, structurally it’s an waltz-time corrido tumbado with banda accompaniment. Malaïka is a young singer from Guadalajara whose ancestry is both Haitian and Mexican: her debut song back in 2022, was a self-portrait soca-inflected tune called “La Mulata” (the mulatto woman), and she’s also experimented with reggae, disco, afrobeats and zouk rhythms. But this classic Mexican taberna sound, with two Panamanian reggaeton singers as her guests, is my favorite of her songs: a spiteful, woozy kiss-off to a shitty ex, full of scabrous Mexican slang that should deal a death blow to any man unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of it. Joey Montana is a handsome, popular nonentity, but I first paid attention to this song because of Elisama, my favorite discovery of 2019 whose career has yet to break out of the lots-of-features- no-real-hits stage. This wasn’t one either, too trad for the urbano audience and not macho enough for the corrido one. YouTube: 21K views | Spotify: 264K streams | TikTok: 93 vids
November 8, 2025 at 3:01 AM
jonathanbogart.net
me and today’s nyt strands
Th-this is my hole! It was made for me!
November 7, 2025 at 2:27 PM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 32

19. Amaarae, “Reckless & Sweet”
(USA [Ghana], Mar 17, 2023)
prod. KZ Didit, Cadenza

youtu.be/oBMiNencjrU
Music video title card. A shot from above of what looks like grainy, lined CCTV footage of a car parked on a narrow road, its headlights on. Barely visible in the darkness, a figure stands a few feet ahead of it. Over top of this, in a script that also has CCTV artifacts, are the words: Reckless & Sweet 19. Amaarae, “Reckless & Sweet” (USA [Ghana], Mar 17, 2023) prod. KZ Didit, Cadenza Following my interests down their own rabbit holes has also left me oddly blinded to the ways they resound in the wider music world; I was taken by surprise when Amaarae was all over my Bluesky timeline earlier this year upon her new album’s release, because in my head she was still the weird little Ghanaian indie girlie whose sweet but muted voice I had fallen in love with back in 2018; sure, I realized that she had gotten bigger since (the lavishness of her videos increased with every album cycle, which doesn’t happen if you don’t do numbers), but because I was mostly attuned to her collabs with African performers I didn’t realize that she was getting bigger over here, where she lives, too. I’m not really a fan of the new album, because she’s dropped the smoky, detailed afrobeats I’d been loving her for and gone in a more hyperpop direction without being at all hyper herself. But I’ll always have songs like this one, produced by Londoners to a kind of smeared afrobeats effect, Amaarae singing bummed-out poetry about people who want to use her for her money, and vowing to be all about the money herself in revenge. It seems to have worked, if the publicity push she’s getting is any indication, but I’ll always kind of miss my ignorance. YouTube: 2.7M views | Spotify: 46M streams | TikTok: 1.3K vids
November 7, 2025 at 3:23 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 31

20. Shiiloh, “Touch”
(St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Jan 7, 2022)
prod. Stadic

youtu.be/UieWcJpUJDg
Music video title card. A shot of Shiiloh in a vaguely African headdress and bodysuit, on a red plush divan surrounded by bric-a-brac that looks simultaneously cheap and expensive. Over this, in glowing letters, are the words: TOUCH PRODUCED BY STADIC 20. Shiiloh, “Touch” (St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Jan 7, 2022) prod. Stadic My approach to what I call “tropical music” (African, Caribbean, and Latin American urban rhythmic music) requires me not to care about popularity. It’s nice information to have, of course; and having a grasp on what the broad publics in various regions, or across them, do focus their attention on is a useful method of learning about music I’m otherwise disconnected from culturally, geographically, linguistically, and economically. But unlike a lot of the fan discourse within the genres I pay attention to, I don’t — I can’t — assign any spiritual significance to a flop. Shiiloh, an appealing Vincentian singer briefly promoted by hitmaking Vincentian-born, Trinidad-based producer Stadic, never made any particular waves even within the tiny Caribbean scenes she was aiming for; the low commercial profile of even the best-known and most popular female soca artists, as measured by radio play, streams, and concert sales, has been the subject of journalistic handwringing on the islands for a while now. I’ve had to come to terms with “Touch” being just my special little jewel of a song, its sweet alto sax reconciling me to my shameful Kenny G teen years, plus a strikingly art-directed video that has turned into a bit of a comfort watch. YouTube: 16K views | Spotify: 17K streams | TikTok: 17 vids
November 6, 2025 at 3:36 AM
jonathanbogart.net
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 30

21. Shaydee’s x Maureen, “Cvni”
(Martinique, Jan 24, 2025)
prod. Mikado

youtu.be/obtOBQ8Zvs8
Music video title card. An underwater shot of the corner of a swimming pool as shadow passes above. Over it are the words: SHAYDEE'S X MAUREEN CVNI DIR. CHRIS MACARI | PROD. FENTY LENTIN | ASS PROD. ARUEÉLIE SIMÉON DOP. MARTY.MOV | ELEC. JEOFFREY RAMAMANJAONA STYLE. LILOU CATTANEO AND THÉO KIMBALOULA | MUA. LUA.PRO | CHORE. TASHINDA AND ISSAKA EDIT. SARA ADJAHO | COLOR. RRONNY.709 | VFX. AILEBERT DIR CAST: DENZEL KIMYAH | DANSERS. CHRISTY, NAOMI, CHRISTELLE plus logos for Chris Macari and Fenty LS Prod 21. Shaydee’s x Maureen, “Cvni” (Martinique, Jan 24, 2025) prod. Mikado Another 2025 banger! I haven’t publicly noticed Shaydee’s before, but she’s a respected elder in the Martinican shatta scene (which is so recent that she can’t be more than thirty), and it’s really just been the luck of the draw that nothing before has struck me as joyfully, as confrontationally, and as rhythmically masterful as this. The spelling of “Cvni” is a way to get around online censorship of a slang term that is short for cunnilingus, and this song is an ultimatum to any prospective lovers: “Si tu ne fais pa de cunni t’auras pas de fesses / sexe” (If you don’t do cunnilingus you won’t get ass / sex). Superstar producer Mikado’s beat is slippery and wriggling, difficult to get a bead on (is shatta taking cues from Senegalese mbalax these days?), but Shaydee’s and Maureen ride it like professionals, glorying in their power as toasters, dancers, and desirable dancehall queens. Maureen was one of the first shatta singers to grab me back in 2019 with “Flex,” and her evolution over the past six years has been remarkable: if I’m any judge she’s a superstar in the making, and it looks like she’s attempting that level up now; she dropped an album less than two weeks ago that opens with a Jamaican collab called “Welcome to Shattaland.” YouTube: 853K views | Spotify: 337K streams | TikTok: 56 vids
November 5, 2025 at 3:26 AM