It’s that time of year again…when the sun chucks deuces before 5 p.m., you gotta check your Ring cam watch for Amazon package thieves and you start yelling words at a screen you wouldn’t use around your mama after reading any media publication’s year-end “best of” lists.
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Since no two lists ranking the best movies, music, film and television of a given year are ever the same, they all court controversy: No small number of fingers flying on social media lamenting the continued existence on the mortal plane of a writer who would dare not include the shit you couldn’t stop playing this year. Often, it’s mere butthurt subjectivity, but sometimes everyone agrees that a publication’s “best of” list completely shits the futon. This time, it’s Rolling Stone magazine.
Last week, the venerated publication released its 20 Best Movies of 2025 list, compiled by the magazine’s Film/TV critic David Fear, who looks like he’s about seven seconds away from flunking you in his British Lit class at a New England liberal arts college. Everyone who failed the Paper Bag Test immediately noticed one glaring omission from his list:
No “Sinners.”
As such, Black social media has been treating Fear like he has a Swastika tattooed on his forehead — a not-necessarily-fair-but-unsurprising response given Ryan Coogler’s passion project is one of the best reviewed (97% on Rotten Tomatoes) and performing ($367 million globally) films of the year. Oh, and his list included “Weapons” and “One Battle After Another,” neither of which is better than “Sinners” and the former which is wildly overrated.
A similar travesty occurred two months ago when Pitchfork released its 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time list. It started off worthy of immediate deletion from Tom Hanks’ internet by putting “Doggystyle” at 100, but the list’s most egregious sin is the mixtape “Rich Gang: Tha Tour Pt. 1” at number six. Because we’re supposed to take seriously a list that puts that project above “Enter the 36 Chambers” and “The Low End Theory.” Rich Homie Quan probably “hit the Quan” in his grave over that ranking, and it’s his damn album.
That they’re such podcast fodder alone justifies the continued existence of these lists. But there are several reasons why they should only be points of reference as part of a deeper dive for people seeking the best that a genre has to offer.
First, the perception of media critics as cognoscenti in the art in which they critique is flawed. Their Rock acumen isn’t necessarily better than yours because they can name the key in which Jimi Hendrix recorded that one deep cut he wrote while high on LSD in a hotel room in Topeka. Many of these self-important critics view “mainstream” as a pejorative and purposely buck against trends; it’s how we wind up with folks like Fear listing a bunch of art house films maybe seven people have ever heard of lieu of critical and commercial bangers like “Sinners.”
On the inverse, the staff of many of these publications consist of younger Millennials and a few Gen-Zers discussing the greatest hip-hop albums ever despite still being undeveloped ovum years after Nas, Ice Cube, Jay-Z and Scarface released their seminal works. Age bias is a thing, and I’m not sure I welcome the Chris-Brown-Over-Michael-Jackson contingent’s opinion on anything outside of “Fortnite” builds. Conversely, I don’t want to read lists from old heads who have Immortal Technique in their Top 5 or who believe hip-hop “died” when KRS-ONE retired.
Relatedly, we should also beware folks who judge and rank media based on a limited or myopic understanding of the genre. For example, I love Takashi Murakami’s art, but I’m no aesthete and I’m nowhere in the vicinity of being qualified to create a Top 10 Contemporary Artists list. I’d get laughed out of any granular discussion on art.
Finally, corporate interests and relationships have always played a quiet role in rankings and list placements. Those who remember the dark era of The Source magazine when pre-oak-tree-neck Benzino stunk up the whole place and had the gall to give a Mad Men album 4.5 Mics know of what I write. An album, song, film or show that has no damn business on a top-anything list likely indicates that palms are being greased one way or the next.
But not every single best-of list is disingenuous: For a thoughtfully curated (if still always controversial) take on the year’s best hip-hop, check out “Rap Radar” Podcast creator Brian “B-Dot” Miller’s long-running top 10 lists. And here at The Root, our technique for creating such lists is sound: Poll all staff and freelancers — who have a healthy several-decade age range –- to see what their faves are for the year and produce accordingly.
In fact, no publication with a series of staff should rely on just one person to pull together the best-of lists. That’s how your mentions turn to toxic waste – the likes of which David Fear is probably power-deleting as I type.
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