2024 Unwrapped

my favorite reads, first-time watches, and music of the year!

There’s no one word to accurately summarize a year like 2024. Eventful serves as an adequate, if sinisterly nuetral, descriptor. Creative blesses several corners of expression. Vacuous lends compassion. For some months, photos are the only evidence I have that I even existed, my mind stubbornly refusing to register memories. What is a good year? What is a bad year? How much more corrugation can our timelines endure?

Which word comes close to what I want to tell you? This is my 2024: demure, fatalistic, inspiring, convoluted, heartbreaking, maternal, overwhelming, unhinged, revolutionary, prophetic. Have I painted a picture? No matter! Among all these overdue endings and surprising beginnings, one principal truth remains evident: I consumed great art!

Here are my favorite albums, songs, first-time watches, and reads of the year.

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20 ALBUMS

24 SONGS

1. Kendrick Lamar, “Not Like Us”

2. Beyoncé, “YA YA”

3. Chappell Roan, “Good Luck Babe”

4. Charli XCX feat. Lorde, “Girl, so confusing”

5. GloRilla with Megan Thee Stallion, “Wanna Be”

6. KAYTRANADA feat. Childish Gambino, “WITCHY”

7. Tyla feat. Gunna & Skillibeng, “JUMP”

8. Amaarae, “THUG (Truly Humble Under God)”

9. Sabrina Carpenter, “Don’t Smile”

10. Vince Staples, “Etouffee”

11. Karol G, “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido”

12. Victoria Monét feat. Usher, “SOS (Sex on Sight)”

13. Chlöe, “FYS”

14. Megan Thee Stallion, “Bigger In Texas”

15. Cynthia Erivo feat. Ariana Grande, “Defying Gravity”

16. Aminé and Smino, “Passenger Princess”

17. Ariana Grande, “supernatural”

18. Remi Wolf, “Wave”

19. Raveena, “Baby Mama”

20. Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”

21. Billie Eilish, “BIRDS OF A FEATHER”

22. Smino feat. Thundercat and reggie, “Hoe-nouns”

23. Bad Bunny, “EL CLúB”

24. Ryan Castro with SOG and Selección Colombia, “EL RITMO QUE NOS UNE”

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Out of the 82 films I watched this year, here are my favorite first-watches.

• The Wizard of Oz (1939)

• Wicked (2024)

• Woman of the Hour (2023)

• An Affair To Remember (1957)

• Grey Gardens (1975)

• Mermaids (1990)

• Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

• Eve’s Bayou (1997)

• Infernal Affairs (2002)

• Oldboy (2003)

• The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)

• The Age of Innocence (1993)

• The Stepford Wives (1975)

• You Are So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (2023)

• X (2022)

• Past Lives (2023)

• Chungking Express (1994)

• The Boy and the Heron (2023)

• Poor Things (2023)

• Erin Brockovich (2000)

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Out of the 57 books I read this year, these are the best, reality-altering, timeline shift reads.

• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1985)

• Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver (2022)

• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (2004)

• The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017, Rashid Khalidi (2020)

• Another Country, James Baldwin (2006)

• Down the Drain, Julia Fox (2023)

• Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell (2021)

• Assata: An Autobiography, Assata Shakur (2001)

• White Teeth, Zadie Smith (2001)

• How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney (1981)

• I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Casey McQuiston (2022)

• Las Madres, Esmeralda Santiago (2023)

• You, Again, Kate Goldbeck (2023)

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)

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happy new year!

xoxo,

LaTesha