Why Beyoncé Deserve 2024’s Top Grammy Prizes

We look at some of the best R&B, hip-hop, and Afropop of 2024 – and make the case for the greatness of Beyoncé’s country departure and Kendrick Lamar’s virtuosic Drake diss “Not Like Us”

Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter is much more than a country album — it’s actually a tour through the Black roots of American music that manages to be both thematically rich and stuffed with indelible pop songs, in multiple genres. Kendrick Lamar‘s virtuosic “Not Like Us,” meanwhile, completely transcends its status as a killing blow in the Lamar-Drake battle, packing in an astonishing amount of lyrical and musical density — and it’s somehow also the year’s most entertaining, endlessly replayable track.

In the new episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, we begin a multi-part look at the best music of 2024 so far, via picks from our staff — in this episode, Mankaprr Conteh joins host Brian Hiatt to run through her favorite R&B, hip-hop, and Afropop songs and albums of the year. Along the way, we make the case for Cowboy Carter as a top pick for the Album of the Year Grammy — including the obvious fact that Beyoncé is way overdue for it after multiple snubs. We also argue that “Not Like Us” should be the clear favorite for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

To hear the whole episode, go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play above.

Elsewhere in the episode, we dive deep on albums and songs by artists including Tems, Tyla, Normani, Kendrick Lamar, Megan Thee Stallion, Tierra Whack, Flo Milli, Card B, Sexyy Red, Schoolboy Q, Ayra Starr, Rema, Tems, Mustafa, Cash Cobain, J. Cole, SiR, Ab-Soul, Denzel Curry, Usher, Pheelz, Nnena, and Remi Wolf.

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