Words by David C. Obenour
David C. Obenour is the founder and editor for Off Shelf. Prior to that, they served as the editor and co-publisher of Ghettoblaster’s print magazine, and wrote as a contributor for Under the Radar, The Big Takeover, Filter, Devil in the Woods, Metro.pop, and a number of other current and long gone publications. Here are their top ten albums in descending order.
Manslaughter 777 – God’s World (Thrill Jockey)
I’m a sucker for the blasted apart percussive sounds that Lee Buford has mastered through The Body (see 2021 and 2024) along with a dizzying Discogs listing of other projects. Reviving one of these for 2025 was the return of Manslaughter 777, Bufford’s collaboration with Zac Jones of Nothing. Bringing Seth Manchester of Machines with Magnets into the mix, God’s World sounds like a blownout radio half-tuned to an unlicensed station playing the most infectious grooves you’ve never heard before but can instantly lock into. Shit’s tight.
Dano – Nuevos trapos (Ziontifik Music / Mécèn Ent.)
I first heard Spanish rapper Dano as a guest on Supreme Dump Legend: Soul Cook Saga by Cookin Soul & Tha God Fahim. Amidst all the goodness there, his vocals rolled out smooth and with unmatched ease – prompting me to dig deeper to discover 2023’s El Hombre Hace Planes Dios Se Rie. He’s kept grinding and I’ve kept following, so here we find ourselves in 2025 with Nuevos trapos, roughly translating to new threads. As before, his delivery keeps heads nodding as he speaks to a life both familiar and foreign to us on the other side of the Atlantic. A high school friend now living in Germany is coming home for the holidays with a copy on CD (international shipping rates are out of control) and I’m eagerly anticipating the dissecting of its liner notes.
Yaya Bey – Do It Afraid (drink sum wtr)
I used the word “cool” a lot in describing Remember Your North Star in 2022 which felt trite but two albums later I still don’t think there’s a better adjective for describing Yaya Bey. And while Ten Fold absolutely was cool, Do It Afraid takes the grooves even deeper. These are dark times and that isn’t lost here but her focus seems set on working at it and finding the beauty, or at least finding the fun in “throwin that ass around”. There’s also some inspired exploration of her Bajan heritage, that makes Do It Afraid a very exciting, promising, and – sure, why not? – a very cool album.
Damon Locks – List of Demands (International Anthem)
In pulling together my favorite albums from this year, I started with a long list I brutally slashed my way through. So brutally, that once the dust had settled I found myself with less than ten albums. The bar was set, the justifications had been rationalized, so it was back to the Bandcamp links! No matter how much music you hear in a year, there is so much more – and some of it could be amongst your favorites, as with Damon Locks’ List of Demands. A musician (Trenchmouth, Exploding Star Orchestra, Black Monument Ensemble), visual artist, and educator, List of Demands was born out of Locks contribution to the exhibition, Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part. Constructed entirely from spoken and text-based works, the musicality of these “spoken” pieces is stunning and his lifetime of crate-digging is well spent in sourcing these samples. I may have just discovered List of Demands but I’ll spend years in its revelations.
Karol G – Tropicoqueta (Bichota / Interscope)
It’s unfair that summer had passed before I realized that Karol G had a new album out this year. The Colombian singer is a global icon but outside of the major US markets, it’s a tossup whether her albums are filed under Pop or World Music (or more likely, not filed at all). Which is our collective loss because Tropicoqueta is phenomenal. Spanning familiar music traditions from across Latin America, the songs are inspired by the music she grew up listening to on the radio. Full bands, live instrumentation, filled with confidence every bit as much as they are filled with joy. Beautiful in its own right, it turns out her last album, Mañana será bonito was prophetic as well.
Bad Bunny – DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (Rimas)
Too cheap for vinyl and too much a luddite for streaming, I spent the better part of 2025 waiting for the CD release of DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS. Failing that, a bootleg version found its way to me and my car’s speakers have been rattled ever since. Reaching the heights of fame on 2023’s Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana, Bad Bunny explored thoughts of meaning and legacy related to his art. What results is a highly personal album that explores traditional elements of Puerto Rican music, features up-and-coming artists from the island, and seeks to understand and celebrate its place and culture. It also does all of that and still absolutely bumps.
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks – G O M B E R T (Another Timbre)
Having experienced a brush with mortality, Another Timbre label head Simon Reynell commissioned what he believed to be a highly personal project of recontextualizing the early music compositions of Flemish master, Nicolas Gombert. Working with contemporary composer, James Weeks and the Apartment House ensemble, what results is one of the most unexpectedly beautiful albums of the year. Taking these arrangements, normally relegated to lofty choral performances presented with a high degree of ostentation, Weeks masterfully translates them for string players and adds his own compositions to connect the works. It feels both contemporary and perhaps even more true to the spirit and setting of the source material.
Johnathan Blake – My Life Matters (Blue Note)
Percussionist led jazz ensembles tend to resonate with me so when I saw Johnathan Blake’s new release on Blue Note I gave it a go. And amidst another exciting year of new music, here we are at #3! Inspired by works from Max Roach, John Coltrane and many more, My Life Matters continues jazz’s lineage of grappling with the brutal realities of being black in America. The music is charged and personal, with further weight given to the performances from song titles like “Last Breath”, “Requiem for Dreams Shattered”, and “That Which Kills Us Makes Us What?”, while still hopeful with others like “I Still Have a Dream” and “Can Tomorrow Be Brighter?”. Drawing the set to a near close is “We’ll Never Know (They Didn’t Even Get to Try)”, which plays like a heartbroken reflection of the state of things balanced with a determination on still finding beauty. Or that’s how a 42-year-old white guy from Ohio hears it, anyway.
billy woods – GOLLIWOG (Backwoodz Studioz)
Golliwog is an unsettling masterpiece delivered from a once in a generation talent. If you’re following the script so far, this is woods getting even more surreal and cinematic in his lyrics and samples. I keep dancing around making the comparison to Jordan Peele’s films because it feels lazy, and hopefully not me being reductive, but… it also doesn’t feel wrong? The songs are dark with an undercurrent of mystical horror set in real contemporary surroundings (which themselves are fairly bleak). Although the tracks are accessible to lock into, everything about the production is dizzyingly intentional and intelligent, making you feel like you could experience this time and time again with a new takeaway. woods keeps managing to somehow get better as things keep managing to somehow get worse.
LUX is not the album that Rosalía needed to have follow Motomami. Having infused flamenco with an exciting modern relevancy over the last two albums, she has won an international audience enamored with her music and herself. But that’s the thing. She was never doing it for us. Rosalía is making music for herself and we love her for it. On LUX she explores themes of the “feminine mystique, transformation, and spirituality,” through four movements, sung in 14 different languages, each corresponding to a different female saint. Recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, it’s one of the most audacious efforts in modern music and perhaps the most remarkable because of how it delivers.