Top 10 Albums of 2024 – DJ Mista.Cal

For the past several years I’ve been posting a whole slew of albums on my Instagram because a proper Top Ten just seemed impossible (you can still find these in my story highlights). I’d do ‘best hip hop’ ‘best heavy rock’ ‘best electronic’ etc. This usually amounted to 80-100 albums. I like taking stock of the year this way because it feels more representative of the releases that came out that year. But this time I shrunk it back down to an actual top ten because I realized that in a time of such incredible excess—where every album you love has 5 or more analogs that sound almost identical to it—the more reasonable way to approach a year-end list is to actually hone in on what affected YOU. What made your wheels turn, and your heart sing. So it’s not a list of “Best’s” but rather a list of “Favorites”. A lot of KGNU DJs probably came to this realization years ago, maybe I’m just catching up. Happy Holidays