Your music is a reflection of who you are, so if you want your music to be a certain way, you have to be that way. | | | | "My Queen Is Janelle Monáe" will perhaps be a song on Sons of Kemet's next album. San Francisco, Aug. 12, 2018.
(Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “Your music is a reflection of who you are, so if you want your music to be a certain way, you have to be that way.”
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| | rantnrave:// Some left their mark with a single video or a single concert. For others, it was a singular musical vision, a personal reinvention or an unstoppable drive. Today we share stories of the women (and men, too) who stepped up with music and song in 2018. Most of them moved the pop-culture needle in one way or another. Others simply moved music fans like us. Which is to say, this is subjective, obviously... For one last 2018 look at the artists who moved everybody else, here are the nearly 300 entries we've collected so far in our MusicSET "Best Music of 2018: The Year in Lists." | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Stereogum |
| For a singer who for years has been her generation’s closest thing to an old-school pop diva, the road to the top involved bringing pop stardom in step with the breakneck evolution of modern life. | | |
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 | Noisey |
| Black art rarely gets space to be nihilistic. Childish Gambino's "This Is America" is divisive, explosive, and embodies reality. | | |
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 | The New York Times |
| After hiding behind an alter ego for years, the pop star is ready to step into a more authentic self with "Dirty Computer." | | |
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 | Texas Monthly |
| The country music provocateur and East Texas native talks growing up, ”getting weird” onstage, and taking risks with her new album. | | |
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 | The Muse |
| To call Bad Bunny up-and-coming would betray an Anglo-centric vantage point. Though he just released his first full-length album, "X100pre," on Christmas Eve, in the world of urbano music, Bad Bunny has been famous for nearly two years, since his days of uploading tracks to SoundCloud while he also worked bagging groceries | | |
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 | NPR Music |
| Confessional and funny, boastful and self-deprecating, poetic and profane all at once, Mitski's songwriting captures the experience of youth in the 21st century. | | |
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 | The Ringer |
| The K-pop boy band are a worldwide music phenomenon, and their concerts help explain why. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed |
| By celebrating and offering up a history lesson on black music, the pop star’s Coachella performance was a brilliant rebuke of the whiteness of most music festivals. | | |
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| Noisey |
| The drummer's new album 'Universal Beings' was recorded in four cities with four bands, turning moments of improvised genius into ecstatic beatwork. It's a testament to the power of music without borders. | | |
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 | NME |
| For the second time, The 1975 have topped NME's albums of the year list. We caught up with Matty to find out how he's feeling about all the hype. | | |
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 | The New Yorker |
| “Whack World,” her début album, is an exciting and disorienting project of economy, a fierce and imaginative effort to expand the parameters of her medium by compressing them. | | |
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 | Village Voice |
| Even her detractors can’t deny the palpable strength of will that makes “Invasion of Privacy” vibrate with personality. | | |
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 | The Undefeated |
| From counted out to counted on: The rapper’s new freedom comes with reality’s nightmare — and a chance to change lives. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| With the success of his movie "Sorry to Bother You," the musician and long-time radical is having an unexpected second act. | | |
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| NME |
| Hardcore heroes Turnstile's latest record 'Time & Space' is a boundary-pushing reimagining of everything a punk band can be. Tom Connick catches them in the midst of a dizzying world tour to talk taking hardcore to dazzling new heights. | | |
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 | PopMatters |
| The early '80s subgenre cowpunk defied genre purism and redefined authenticity. That paved the way for today's hottest alt-country hero, Sarah Shook. | | |
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| The Ringer |
| "Meant to Be," the crossover hit featuring Florida Georgia Line, is about to make country music history--but no one in the industry can figure out why. | | |
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 | Pitchfork |
| Whether he’s singing about poignant heartache or “beautiful boobies,” the pop star’s party music is curiously affecting. | | |
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| The New York Times |
| The rapper’s new album, “Daytona,” is filled with crisp rhymes over Kanye West beats. But his post-release war of words with Drake has had an even bigger impact. | | |
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 | BuzzFeed News |
| Lady Gaga is the kind of multifaceted pop star A Star Is Born doesn’t quite know how to portray, but her talent both brings Ally to life and proves that Gaga’s star is still rising. | | |
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| The Muse |
| Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker are a welcome addition to the dusty supergroup canon. Jezebel talked to them about what they’ve learned from each other, how to deal with boygeniuses in real life, and why each of them is more than just a Sad Girl. | | |
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 | Resident Advisor |
| Sleepless nights, kick drums and cheap sunglasses. Matt Unicomb travels to Hamburg to meet one of dance music's most intriguing artists. | | |
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| Pitchfork |
| "Aviary," Holter’s most audacious record yet, was the result of asking questions with no answers, and finding answers for questions she hadn’t even begun to ask yet. | | |
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| The Muse |
| Rosalía, hailing from Sant Esteve Sesroviras in Catalonia, Spain, has been a celebrated, rapidly rising flamenco artist in her home country for the past year—deemed “our Beyoncé” by the Madrid-based women’s magazine Telva, “the latest great patron of contemporary flamenco” by Vogue Spain, and given the Woman of the Year award by the newspaper El Pais. | | |
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| The Ringer |
| The steadily rising young singer-songwriter has reached a flashpoint of fame: Her generation knows all about her. Everyone else is next. Here’s why. | | |
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| Noisey |
| With "Astroworld," the Houston rapper and noted director of vibes displays a new polish to his best skills. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| He's on a mission to globalize reggaeton. Will the United States answer the call? | | |
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| The New York Times |
| Today, a rap recorded in 20 minutes can go from internet obscurity to a Drake-approved club smash. The artists Sheck Wes, 16yrold and Take A Daytrip show us how they did it. | | |
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 | YouTube |
| | | | | | My favorite protest song of 2018, and I have no idea if that was the band's intent, it might be a love song, I just know that it lifted me and pushed me forward more than once when I really needed it. And I know that they, whoever they are, are indeed gonna get us to come together. |
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