The Hottest Year on Record by Sasco

As a young person emerges into the world, they receive encouragement to solve every emergency they encounter, but our confrontation with the absolute immobility of our governing structures immediately alienates us from this purpose. Though Sasco never shies away from the innumerable crises that appear stubbornly unsolvable, their new album The Hottest Year on Record identifies a path of self-defense that provides us with healthy, meaningful lives despite these systemic quagmires. This experimental hip hop album pulls a wide array of samples and features, emphasizing this music as a collaborative, communal space that persists in spite of and in response to a world of insurmountable chaos. Glitchy, swingy beats adorned in layers of decadent, detailed production underpin a broad diversity of lyrical flows and subjects, all of which coalesce around a celebration of community. For the typical person with a typical level of influence over global crises, this path towards artistic expression as enabled by community could yield a more fulfilling and potentially even more impactful existence than any other lifestyle could.