By Ike Nnabuife

60 seconds make a minute… 60 minutes make an hour… 60 songs make the year.

FYNE PRINT is a segment where interviewees offer deeper insight into their artistry and taste, and say it all with a song — indirectly curating a playlist for us. In this installment, we say goodbye to 2025 by taking a closer look at the fynds that made this year so unforgettable.

If you look at the charts, you would wonder if any new music came out at all. When you take a closer look though, you see the rap tracks lost in time, a new wave spilling out of Atlanta, developing Black talents seeking citizenship in Country music, and Copenhagen becoming the de facto music capital of the world. We’ve sacrificed true blockbusters in music for some of the most personal songs in exchange.

Over halfway through the decade, music this year proved you don’t have to see it (but rather hear it) to believe the recession is here.

(As time goes on, the arbitrary lines stratifying genre have faded as sound is more classified by audience, mood, and setting than instrumentation nowadays. For spots 60-41, I’ve offered the more traditional genre but also a more niche descriptor or potential playlist name alongside it.)

60 — bada bing bada boom — diamond*, Tezzus

Genre: Atlanta Rap // The New New Underground

59 — entitled — kwes e

Genre: Highlife Rap // The Other black british music (2025) // The Other “N*ggas in Paris”

58 — Jezebel — Natanya

Genre: R&B // Hairspray Pop

57 — all the things — quinn

Genre: Chipmunk Soul // Hyperpop-meets-Drumless-Rap

56 — SATURN — zayALLCAPS, Anto the Wayward

Genre: Pop R&B // Late Night Drive

55 — For The Both Of Us — Liim

Genre: Bedroom Pop // “WUSYANAME” but underground

54 — Special — dexter in the newsagent

Genre: Indietronica // Timeless AM Pop

53 — uncomfy (feat. OsamaSon) — xaviersobased, OsamaSon

Genre: Cloud Rap // ZoomerGaze Rage

52 — Always The Horse, Never The Jockey — Cleo Reed, IWWE

Genre: Alt-Country // Black Americana is Americana

51 — Always Treat U RITE — Khadija Al Hanafi

Genre: Detroit House // Ghetto Mellow

50 — God — I’m A Monster [Edward Skeletrix]

Genre: Rage // Bizarro Trap

49 — Something Tells Me — Bickle

Genre: Bedroom Pop // Hopeless Romantic Pop

48 — Habits — OsamaSon

Genre: Rage // Tweaker Blackout Noise

47 — Doesn’t Really Matter — Car Culture, Physical Therapy, Squirrel Flower

Genre: Ambient Soft Rock // Seasonal Depression Treatment

46 — Tested — Moh Baretta, kuru, jackzebra

Genre: Rage // Sandbox Rap

45 — Destiny Arrives — SPELLLING, Weyes Blood

Genre: Art Pop // Baroque Music to Go on a Quest To

44 — Ensalada (feat. Anderson .Paak) — Freddie Gibbs, The Alchemist

Genre: Gangsta Rap // Dynamic Duos

43 — summer’s herE — Luwa.Mp4

Genre: Alté // Naijaground

42 — Coach — Sex Week

Genre: Indie Rock // Woodland Psychedelia

41 — Arc de Triomphe — Aminé

Genre: Hip House // Song of the Summer // Suburban African Child Rap

(Spots 40-31 deserve a little rumination.)

40 — Speedrun — Anysia Kym, Tony Seltzer

Genre: Ethereal R&B // Drum Heaven

Ephemeral and free like a butterfly in the rain.

39 — Issy — Zack Villere, Phoenix James, Mulherin

Genre: Alternative R&B // We have Blush at home

The pianos sound like tears in a Ghibli movie.

38 — TOURMALINE — Earl Sweatshirt

Genre: Abstract Rap // Father of the Year Nominee

When Earl sings along to a sample, it automatically makes the list.

37 — You Can’t Always Get What You Want — Erika de Casier

Genre: Downtempo // Copenhagen Boom Bap

This song is like a cold shower after getting ghosted again.

36 — BABY BABY / Tossed Away — Nourished by Time

Genre: Hypnagogic Pop // Anti-Capitalist R&B // Kid Cudi but Bedroom Pop

Gen Z has two emotions, and these are them.

35 — Tantrum — Paris Texas

Genre: Trap Rock // Funniest One-Liners of the Year

I don’t know the last time I heard genre-blending this good.

34 — Believer — Annahstasia

Genre: Contemporary Folk // Black Americana is Americana

Cowboy Carter but without a billionaire cosplaying as working class.

33 — DIOR LEOPARD — Che

Genre: Rage // Victorian Child Killer

It’s rare to hear music this fleshed out on this side of the underground.

32 — Stateside (with or without Zara Larsson) — PinkPantheress

Genre: UK Garage // Movie Star Planet Pop

This is the contemporary “American Boy”.

31 — defense attorney — R.A.P. Ferreira, Kenny Segal

Genre: Art Rap // Liberal Arts Hip Hop

Poetry in the Henry Dumas Cinematic Universe.

(Music is the greatest teacher. Spots 30-11 showcase potential courses [some more academic than others] that could be based around these tracks. Or maybe think of them as the titles of essays one would write about each song.)

30 — blade bird — Oklou

Genre: Art Pop // French Ethereal

Music as A Second Language

29 — Tomorrow is Perfect — mark william lewis

Genre: Slowcore // Greyscale Rock

Method Acting for a David Lynch Film

28 — FOMDJ — Playboi Carti

Genre: Southern Trap // Big Car Music

Cues Of American Upward Social Mobility

27 — DEAD — Sudan Archives

Genre: Electropop // Baltimore Club

Black Fitness: Dancing in the Dark & Crying ‘til It Hurts

26 — Man in the Mirror / Artist of the Century (feat. Venna) — MIKE

Genre: Abstract Rap // Boom Bap with no Boom

Hidden Figures in African American Civil Rights & Self-Determination

25 — El Palomo y La Negra — Natalia Lafourcade

Genre: Mexican Folk // Acoustic Ear Porn

Mexican Love Spells: Playing with International & Spiritual Borders

24 — Cross Your Mind — Shelly

Genre: Indie Pop // Melody of the Year

Where Do We Go From Here: Mental and Emotional Navigation for the Abandoned

23 — MAKKA / Snow White — fakemink

Genre: Cloud Rap / Underground Rookie of the Year

Psychology of First-World 20-Somethings

22 — 5 — Dean Blunt, Elias Rønnenfelt

Genre: Alternative Rock // Unofficial Copenhagen National Anthem

Esoteric Music Theory: Capturing Feelings With No Words to Capture Them

21 — City Walls — Twenty One Pilots

Genre: Alternative Rock // Post-Tumblr Ohio-core Radio Rock

How To Make Good Christian Rock

20 — Mind Loaded (feat. Caroline Polachek, Lorde, & Mustafa) — Blood Orange

Genre: Alternative R&B // Tears Melting in the Rain

Mental Health Across the Diaspora: (Barely) Surviving Black British Suburbia

19 — Free — Little Simz

Genre: Conscious Rap // Finishing each other’s…

From the Home to Sudan: Emotional, Political, and Racial Liberation

18 — Triangle offense — Niontay, MAVI, Sideshow

Genre: Abstract Rap // Modern 1Train

Public Speaking: Junior Mastery of Posse Cuts

17 — SLOW DANCE IN A GAY BAR — Benjamin Booker

Genre: Bedroom Blues // “I Need A Hug” // Afro-Surrealist Pop

Shades of Black Masculinity and Homosociality

16 — LAST ONE ALIVE’! — Pink Siifu

Genre:  Experimental Rap // Shootout Music

Longevity Medicine: The Black Male Life Expectancy

15 — Doggy — Blush [Geezer (Kevin Abstract & Dominic Fike) + Love Spells and Truly Yours]

Genre: Pop Rap // Pastel Sunflower Pop // Break-up Pop

Jungian x Freudian Psychology: Parenting Your Inner Child Amid A Tantrum

14 — Berghain — ROSALÍA, Björk, Yves Tumor

Genre: Orchestral Pop // Classical/Gospel Music without being Racist or Elitist

Contemporary Theology: Born-Again Psychology

13 — You got time and I got money — Smerz

Genre: Copenhagen Trip Hop // Oxytocin // Stomach Butterflies

Flirting Workshop

12 — I Lied to You — Preacherboy (Miles Caton in Sinners), Ludwig Gorasson, Raphael Saadiq

Genre: Blues // Transcendent Griot Pop (African Masquerade + ATL Cowbell + G-Funk + Southern Gothic)

An Oral History of Filial Piety

11 — BAILE INOLVIDABLE — Bad Bunny

Genre: Contemporary Salsa // Neo-Traditional Latin Pop

I Move When You Move: Dance as an Act of Resistance

(Once again, I could write essays about the Top 10 Fynds, but you should just listen to them.)

10 — Sushi — FKA twigs

Genre: Art Techno // Afrofantasy Ballroom

Listen if you like: eating out, lesbian dates, voguing, Bushwick, sake, contagious butterflies, strutting/walking too fast, hating your 9-to-5

If EUSEXUA was an afrofuture, Afterglow is an afrofantasy. 

Confusingly shuffling past EUSEXUA’s ethos of reimagining black futures through pleasure and anthropological study of rave culture, “Sushi” shines at the peak of Afterglow’s post-high that sees you hungering for the next night out before you are even done processing this one. It is the feelings painting a scene after a lover leaves. It is the footprint of a moment made memory.

Its sexy mechanical bass gyrates and jaunts as the chemistry is just initially being explored. Gradually, a moment transforms from the memory of how they made you feel into a montage of all things you’ll [hope to] do. After some ‘social lubrication’, the momentum carries you past the movie night you originally agreed on. Now you see yourself swallowed whole by the night and getting led by the hand, diving (or more accurately: death-dropping) through local festivals, restaurants, and bars.

The dazing ballroom outro makes me wish I didn’t look like I was doing the polka every time I tried to vogue. The escalating boil there is a mind-numbing tease but worth the wait.

9 — Play — james K

Genre: Indietronica // Shoegaze Jungle

Listen if you like: moving on, saying “f*ck it, we ball”, the night, the ocean, reading during a storm

It’s so easy to feel like an alien.

I can kind of understand Narcissus in the sense that I’ve always wanted to see myself in someone else. We download all these apps and go out weekend after weekend to find our people but always end up bonding over where we differ. “Play”’s slow burn from a hopeful whisper to a spirited howl over these cascading jungle drums mirrors a relationship’s unfettered growth where these differences escalate from inquisitive chats to tormenting arguments.

And when you are sick of looking at people, all you can do next is look at yourself… or look at the stars. And then you just wonder if you would feel more at home up there.

james K’s voice is a heavenly power that challenges gravity, creating this odd buoyancy and leaving you with a choice to float or fall. She leaves you feeling freed yet thrown around in this otherworldly current.

8 — So Be It — Clipse (Pusha T & Malice)

Genre: Gangsta Rap // Unc Still Got It // Stank Face-core

Listen if you like: rooting for the villain, Arabic samples, movie soundtracks, heist montages, hip hop documentaries, lyrical rap, brotherhood/fraternity, Superfly (1972) (or just black crime films in general), comebacks

This might be purely a Zillennial-brained take, but Pharrell(or in this case: “Saturn”)’s time contracted as one of Gru’s minions has made it feel like he’s at his best making songs for movies. Everyone raves about the Sinners-tinged “Chains & Whips” — alley-ooped by hip hop protagonist Kendrick Lamar — but “So Be It” is a generational villain theme song with one of best Arabic samples in mainstream hip hop since “Big Pimpin’”. 

The chorus cuts through your brain like a knife through butter. Push raps with the certainty of an old-school bad guy you love to hate. Malice pens an epistle that walks a death rope between sage wisdom and decadent brags. In spite of the “apolitical” zionist producer and overbearing LV product placement, the only way you won’t like this song is if you just hate rap music.

7 — YAYO (WHITE PARIS) — untiljapan

Genre: Underground Trap // Creole Cloud Rap but not really

Listen if you like: French, beat switches, Snowfall, Atlanta Rap, the “Leap of Faith” scene in Into the Spider-Verse

Distinct from everything else in the underground, untiljapan brings intention and heart. Ezeokonkwo’s so early into his career, but his development has already been so pronounced. He funnels together the moody aesthetics of peak A$AP Rocky and the subversive choral samples of Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake to ignite a trap song that sends chills down your back before erupting into an outro that sees him punctuating his metamorphosis into one of the best young rappers rising out of ATL.

In contrast with the scatter-brain firecrackers that rely on controversy and nostalgia-bait to garner attention, his voice exudes the confidence of a writer meticulously penning the details of their own story and taking their time stepping into the spotlight.

6 — Yamaha — Dijon

Genre: Bedroom Pop // Photosynthetic Dad Pop

Listen if you like: Jai Paul, family, Superman (2025), believing in true love, slow dancing, stargazing

This album is so good it makes me want to start a family.

Everyone starts out seeing their dad as Superman. The first time I heard Dijon belt “BABYYY, IIIIIII–” on a loudspeaker, it felt like getting catapulted into the air by my father after yelling “uppies” as a kid. 

The chords sparkle like constellations. The warm samples titter like fuzzy VHS tapes. The outro swells like a bioelectric “up, up, and away.” Its maximalist pop energy saved me like how Superman saves the world or how Lois Lane and his friends save him.

Baby as a whole is such a powerful album due to the versatility of the word “baby”. We are all conceptualized before we are even born. Dijon captures the word “baby”’s implications of potential, literal infancy, endearment, and all its nuances where past, present, and future are constantly in flux. The album, but most specifically “Yamaha”, embodies the haywire rhythms of family life in a way that hasn’t resonated for me since Awaken My Love.

Similar to Geese, Dijon is an artist that you cannot ragebait the fans of because the music is so good that any attempt to ridicule it falls flat. Every tweet claiming it just sounds like “Ed Sheeran produced by JPEGMAFIA” or “Prince for babies” can be parried with “BABYYYY, IIIIII–”

5 — I’ll Take Care of You (feat. Yebba) — Tyler, The Creator

Genre: Alternative Jungle // Ghetto Mellow

Listen if you like: footwork, remixes, soft vocals on aggressive drums, aggressive lyrics on soft synths, vibing

When Annie in Sinners speaks of “music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death; conjuring spirits from the past… and the future”, she was talking about songs like this.

To take a crunk classic like “Knuck If Ya Buck” and arguably Tyler’s biggest missed opportunity of a song “CHERRY BOMB” and transmogrify it into this is a criminal level of alchemy that would either have you “disappeared under mysterious circumstances” or straight-up burned at the stake decades ago. The footwork drums lay the groundwork for this awe-inspiring and timeless ode to Black Movement that has followed us across every nook and cranny of the diaspora.

For Mr. Concept himself to make a dance album and say “none of that deep sh*t” is a recession indicator, but this track is Okonma’s most earnest thesis in his mission to find some type of throughline for all Black American archetypes and escape the idea of blackness as a box or limiter.

4 — Taxes — Geese

Genre: Art Rock // New Unofficial American National Anthem

Listen if you like: freedom, the Rolling Stones, the Strokes, jam bands, New York, singers that sound like Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai

“Au Pays Du Cocaine” invokes memories of every girl that has ever ghosted me — a sad plea to the mentally ill and emotionally unavailable. “Taxes” conjures memories of the ones I inadvertently chased away — the times it was better to cut my losses than make amends. It’s a declaration of emotional bankruptcy, and that’s what hits hardest right now.

Every claim that one was “born in the wrong generation” is rightfully met with eye-rolls and sly retorts, but the questionable state of American Rock made it an increasingly fair (yet still corny) assessment for stateside guitar music fans. “Taxes” is to the Windmill Scene what America landing on the moon is to the Space Race: the musical equivalent to America losing every milestone except the finish line. The cathartic drop strikes like the moment we returned to “the good timeline” — or the ding at midnight on the day we finally find the hope to build something better from our burning empire after doomsday.

“Taxes” is a deeply American song on a deeply American record that sees a priest-like singer songwriter crumbling under the weight of their own freedom as they are forced to deal with the consequences of their choices.

3 — Corinthians — billy woods, Despot, El-P

Genre: Abstract Rap // Decolonial Rap

Listen if you like: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Frantz Fanon, decolonialism, horrorcore, English Class, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, family history

“It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see. The language of the camera is the language of our dreams.” – James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work.

2025 was full of comically evil villains doing things many did not think they were actually going to (or could) do right before our eyes. As seen historically in the Vietnam War and in ongoing genocides, the camera is a powerful weapon that can overturn public sentiment overnight.

Over EL-P’s eerie production, woods and Despot point the camera at the bad miracles of our world. The track frames American imperialism in the same way as a Star Destroyer eclipsing the sun or Darth Vader peering through desolate smoke to lay waste to rebels on Alderaan, Mars, Arrakis, and Gaza alike. At the center of an album about colonialism is a nightmarish movie you cannot turn off. A movie with Africans made into zombies. Former colonies made into puppets. Civilians made into powerless scarecrows. Nobody is spared from this commodification.

2 — Dancing with your eyes closed — Jane Remover

Genre: Electroclash // We Don’t Need Anymore Recession Indicators

Listen if you like: playing video games on hard mode, overstimulation, ignoring noise level warnings, fireworks, manic episodes

Every song on Revengeseekerz is a level in a supernatural video game where the player unlocks a new power-up to help them complete the dungeon. Across this thrilling and self-destructive bout with trans rage and hedonistic escapism, the dynamic “Dancing with your eyes closed” is the ULT that burns brightest.

No matter how low you turn the volume, the song spills out the speakers — magically making its way back to full volume — drowning you in Jane’s debilitating hell where only they can guide you. Music’s ability to move mountains and spirits has jealous evangelicals branding it satanic, claiming the highs and drops we keep chasing will never satisfy us, but Jane Remover impresses endlessly and raises the roof higher and higher. Here, they prove that whenever you think you are at rock bottom, you can always dig deeper.

There are arguably too many perfect songs on Revengeseekerz, but the concise and expertly orchestrated “Dancing with your eyes closed” is just the most perfect. The desperate track is Jane setting themself on fire just to be seen.

1 — father — Jim Legxacy

Genre: Chipmunk Jerk / Yanny/Laurel Rap

Listen if you like: snippet syndrome, Late Registration, stimming, auditory illusions, nostalgia, your father, DJ tags

I promise, it’s only a coincidence that he’s Nigerian.

But if I made music, I would want it to sound like this. 

With genre-blending and homage collecting bottomless residuals, the question of “waste or taste” is always at play, but Legxacy’s bite-sized “father” is an ontologically perfect song that answers it definitively. Its circular storytelling rings like you are watching him surgically craft a myth in real time. The song’s only flaw is that it isn’t long enough, but that promise only makes it better. 

On one hand, I cannot believe YT gave this beat away, but on the other hand, I cannot imagine anyone other than the Avatar of Rap flowing on this.

—

0 — 0$ — Cameron Winter

Genre: Chamber Folk // Drunkenly Telling Your Friends You Love Them

I hate putting songs from the previous year on year-end lists, so this has an honorary spot at #0. This is the actual song Moses sang when he came down from Mt. Sinai. Winter’s writing captures a phase of youth that gets you called an old-soul over dreamy pianos. His tremulous voice is the soundtrack of a god who hides behind the eyes of a hobo. The lyrics are like when your grandpa’s delirious rant clicks into poetic gospel. $0 is heavy like a broken heart, cold like scrap metal, and disconnected like a microculture-addicted youth.