Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
This Is Not Happening‘s 2021 comes to an end with a look back at the many musical highs of a memorable 2021 and count down our top ten albums of the year. Despite the many challenges musicians have been facing in making music in a pandemic, it’s been a truly exceptional year, from the likes of Wolf Alice, Japanese Breakfast, Arlo Parks, Billie Eilish, The Weather Station and many others, but there’s only room for one winner – who’s it going to be?
We’ll also be nominating our tracks of the year, from a very tough long list of amazing records. Here are our our 4 monster fave tracks of 2021, one from each of us, below.
The full top 10s and playlists and all our music discussions over the last ten years can be found on the blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which will run alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. So check them out so to see what we like and where we clash, and comment if something catches your eye. We’d love to see what you think. You can also find our longer tracks of the year here on Spotify.
Episode #19 will see us take on one of 2021’s most underrated albums – Joy Crookes‘s incredible debut Skin – and we’ll be delving deep into it in January. The episode will land in the second half of January.
In one of our most enjoyable chats to date we delved into Skyzoo’s latest effort ‘All the Brilliant Things’ on Episode 13.
Within the chat David requested a Skyzoo playlist looking into his previous work or perhaps a quick trip into the Brooklyn artists that inspired Skyzoo…. I chose to do both!
First and foremost lets delve into some of the most formative hip hop tracks from Brooklyn. Where do you start and more so end?
And then Skyzoo. Like the Brooklyn playlist it could be much longer and was tough to keep it down to 10 tracks (plus a bonus).
Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
Episode 13 of This Is Not Happening stays in NYC with Skyzoo‘s new album All The Brilliant Things following up the 70s palette of St Vincent: Daddy’s Home. The much-respected Brooklyn MC‘s 7th album finds him writing a paen to his changing city, gentrification and history. It’s a beguiling work that Nolan brought to us get deep on as we move into season 2 of the podcast.
In the second half of the episode, we talk tracks of the summer, with a favourite from us that reminds of us the warm months. Our longlist is here, see what we thought of the picks:
July’s album of the month and all our new tracks, playlists, and chat from the past decade or more can be found on our blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. Head down there and hopefully you’ll like what we’re talking about and if you do, we’d love to hear from you on the socials (links below).
Episode #14 takes us into the summer and is Joey’s chance to bring us a classic slice of modern pop with Japanese Breakfast‘s Jubilee. The next episode will be landing before the end of August.
Festive Greetings from This Is Not Happening and welcome to our year-end, 2025 wrap-up episode. As always we split the pod into Part 1 and Part 2.Part 1 features our Top 10 favourite albums of 2025. We use a proprietary algorithm to create our list our collective favourite albums, we're talking nascent data-science excellence! Every year it throws up some surprises as our tastes are so different (and in some ways so similar.Part 2 features a festive Spin It or Bin It. We each bring a candidate for track of the year and ask the age old question 'Spin It or Bin It' … will anyone really bin anyone elses Track of the Year? Probably.To retain the tension, I won't share any spoilers here … other than to share a 40 track playlist of some of our favourite 2025 tracks … here.Whatever you do at this time of year, who ever you do it with … have a good one.Please join us in January where we will go back to the usual format of Album of the Month + Spin It or Bin It.We've been writing the blog for years come and have a look – https://thisisnothappening.net/
How has a year gone by!? But here we are, on Season 2 of This Is Not Happening, an Album of the Month podcast from four of us: Guy, Joey, Nolan and David. We choose an album: we digest it, we praise it, we question it. And we bring tracks to the table. Every month. And you get to listen. Think of this as a highlights package.
We’ve loved every minute so thanks to everyone that’s listened so far. We hope the next year will be just as enjoyable. We’ve got Skyzoo lined up next before the end of July and after that, Japanese Breakfast. After that? Who knows? That’s the fun.
For all the albums of the month and all our new tracks, playlists, and chat from the past decade or more head to our blog at www.thisisnothappening.net, which runs alongside the podcast choices and much, much more. Swing by and you’ll hopefully enjoy what we’re talking about and if you like it, we’d love to hear from you on the socials (links below).
At best we will choose a hip hop album for our album of the month yearly, and it’s for good reason. Hip Hop is at times hard to approach, and hard to find time to listen to away from your kids as 4 middle aged fathers.
For me there’s more of an issue. I remember when I first heard the likes of Nas, Common (Sence) and Rakim. Each song was a lyric twisting journey into their world. As time passes I find it harder to find MC’s that blow me away with their word play. I often wonder is why latter generations of MC’s are less focussed on this? Does it matter anymore? The genre of Hip Hop is a bit confusing these days. I find it hard to understand how much of the hip hop that ‘the kids’ like these days is listenable. Misogyny, violence and criminality seem to be more prevalent than ever.
I came across Skyzoo in 2014 through his collaboration with his New York collaborator weight Torae. Instantly I was a fan. His word play and commentary put him amongst the hip hop heavy weights that I love. The more you listen to his lyrics the more layers to his lyrics you discover. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 90’s made him a student of some of the greats such as Biggie to Jay-Z and it shows. He has an uncanny ability to bring you into his world and keep you there. I was hooked and instantly delved into previous releases which included a heralded mixtape produced by 9th Wonder, followed by his debut album on 9th’s Jamal records (home of Rapsody amongst others) and later releases on two of my favourite labels; Duck Down Records and Mello Music.
You can find music from Skyzoo over the last 20 years, but the last 10 have seen him at his best. Releasing at least an album a year, it’s hard to find any weak piece of work among them. It’s understandable why he’s become one of the most respected underground MC’s around the globe. From working with boom bap super producer Apollo Brown to hip hop general Pete Rock, Skyzoo’s output is diverse and more-ish.
So this brings us to his latest effort, ‘All the Brilliant Things’. Like last month’s St Vincent album, it comes with a theme. This is an album about the gentrification of Brooklyn. Not only highlighting the change but also the world Skyzoo has grown up in, why he loves it, the memories, the stories and the dreams.
My notes for this album have been extensive. I was lost for words, how do you encapsulate the plethora of Skyzoo and what he does to this album? Lucky I read an interview with him where he described it perfectly. He said ‘My music has always been a combination of a few things: storytelling, motive, and intention’. That narrative rings true with another Brooklyn native that I love, Spike Lee. In fact there are cross overs throughout between the two. Perhaps I’ve seen too many Spike Lee movies.
I love hip hop albums that set the scene for the album on the first track and ‘Free Jewellery’ does it to a tee. Skyzoo dives in from the start. Weaving, layering, and provoking thoughts with each line. Amongst the journey he dips his toes into the irony of the critic’s interpretations his world whilst at the same time gentrifying it themselves.
‘So don’t mistake me, yo, I don’t do this for Complex
Nor a Pitchfork or any other facade
Where the culture is determined while chugging a PBR
And telling you how to represent all of the shit that you made
While they move in your building with their roommates’
‘Culture-ish’ is another remarkable track. Full of recollections…
‘I was buying art, my friends was buying dope.
I went and made friends with rappers that was buying both’
….was the line that caught my ears, but every line in the song is spotless. I’ve spent so much time getting my head around the layers of lyrics. He reminds me of Jay-Z on Reasonable Doubt. From Brooklyn or not, you’re pulled into his world (then and now) as you sit ring side in Skyzoo’s world in Brooklyn.
There are lyrics throughout outlining changing worlds. In line with the theme, but not blatantly. ‘The Scrimmage’ looks into money and how it’s made, old and new and it’s ruthlessness. I love the track lyrically, but when the track finishes with a clip of two people talking about being removed from their neighbourhood, it makes you listen again…. Because he was talking about it the whole time.
Hip Hop was born in the Bronx, but since its inception the New York boroughs all battled to own the top spot. Brooklyn arguably has a strong claim for the top spot. Jay-Z, Biggie, Sean Price, Yasin Bey (Mos Def), the list goes on. That mixed with exceptional graffiti artists and their influence on me is the reason Brooklyn has always facinated me. That fascination of Brooklyn for me and so many others may just kill where that fascination comes from; it’s soul. This album concept is well overdue. ‘Bed-Stuy Is Burning’ is not only the stand out track on the album but one of the best hip hop songs that has been released in recent memory as Skyzoo delves into the world he loves and how it’s crumbling at his feet.
‘To whom it may concern, don’t let this happen to you
True to what you heard, they want this back like a loop
They gave you a curb and kept you back on the stoop
And now what they prefer is to help you pack when you move’
There are few reviews on this album, but many podcast interviews with Skyzoo. From a fan point of view some say it’s his best lyrically rounded album while some say it’s too long and the beats could be better on many tracks. I don’t disagree with either to a point. Personally I think that this is an album that when digested the four of us will use as a reference point for many albums in the future as this in its’ bones has the feels. The song by song justification and the ability to continually discover with each listen. Its’ long term importance to all of us is unseen but on different levels this album is important to all four of us and is worth everyone digesting. I’ve stayed in New York three times for work, once in Brooklyn. I’ll take Brooklyn and day of the week. It’s mind kind of place. It’s cool. Like east London is cool. The hipsters came in and made it cool for the middle classes. But at what cost? This album is about that cost. About a changing neighbourhood. This message transcends globally.
One of most common narratives on the blog and on the podcast is album length. ‘All the Brilliant Things’ is 14 songs long and just over 55 minutes which is standard for a hip hop album. At first I considered that the album could drop the middle three or fours tracks, but lyrically they’re growers and some of the best on the album.
The more I listen to this album the more I discover. Will it be perfect to the lesser hip hop fans? I’m not sure. I love it because it’s out and out hip hop that also delivers on a social commentary that we should all digest.
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