There were strong contenders for jam of the year this year. Strong contenders. Let’s do a top 5. A top 5 which won’t feature A$AP Rocky, who was on the jam of the year 2 years running. So that’s a surprise.
#5 – Aminé – “Shimmy”
Let’s be clear: 2020 wasn’t anyone’s year.
But despite that, “Shimmy” sounds like the most fun anybody had on a single this year. And it’s on Limbo, an album that sounded like it was wild fun to make.
2020 should have been the year that Aminé splashed onto the mainstream scene. But it wasn’t. It was the year we all stayed home and tried hard as hell to stay sane with varying degrees of success. “Shimmy” is an anthem for a year that should have been, but never was.
#4 – Khruangbin – “Time (You and I)”
I’ve said before that Khruangbin is what happens when you make a whole band out of “Genius of Love.” Which is maybe the best possible impetus for starting a band at all. “Time” is the purest distillation of that sound so far.
This came out like right after we all went home. 7 days after they canceled the show I had tickets for, I think. Ugh. I get it, but I hate it. I’m hoping that bands everywhere treat 2021 like a 2020 do over and just tour the shit out of their good records.
#3 – The Cool Kids – “Super Smash Bros”
Shout out to the whole Griselda movement, but “this the smile Scar had when he smoked Mufasa” was the hardest bar of 2020.
#2 – Shintaro Sakamoto – “Don’t Tinker With History”
Look, man. If your shit sounds even remotely like “Special Delivery (and, by extension, “Uproar”), it’s got a good chance of ending up on this list. This song has that sound and makes brings to mind a future that sounds like the funky, groovy 70s. What else do you want out of music even, you know?
#1 – Run the Jewels – “Ooh La La”
As if there was ever any doubt.
2020 was built for these dudes. As a year, it was the culmination of exactly the type of dystopian misery that RTJ luxuriates in and laughs at to keep from crying. This was their moment, and they knew it, and they rose to the occasion with their album RTJ4.
On “Walking In the Snow,” Killer Mike drops a verse that might be the purest distillation of what it was like to live through this year.
On “Ju$t,” they put Pharrell together with Zack De La Rocha and manage to make paranoid, literary verses sound catchy as hell along the way.
But on “Ooh La La,” like in the video, they set fire to the racist, capitalist structure that gave rise to 2020 in the first place. It’s the sound of 2 journeymen making the best music of their careers and using their new, bigger platform to say some real shit and shout out their heroes. When El-P says “DJ Premier,” and Primo starts scratching? I get those goosebumps every time. It’s the jam of the year.