The Rap Music That Defined 2025

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music I’ve been fixated on recently.

After working in music journalism for over 10 years, if there's one thing I've come away feeling it's a true hatred for making lists. The very process of having to pick 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 of the best songs or albums or whatever and make it sound definitive is annoying in itself. When you add the inevitable consternation from the readership, then it becomes even more untenable. There's not one list I've ever made where I didn't immediately regret something about it: either I left something off I shouldn't have, or ranked something higher than I would've even a month later, or ignored something fun because it didn't seem serious enough for the prestige implied by these lists. The idea that any reader would treat a list as definitive, rather than just the collected opinions of people who listen to so much shit that they've lost their grip a little, actually baffles me. But here we are, at the end of the calendar, trying to lazily fill the weeks before the last two big holidays of the year with lists and recommendations.