Baltimore music is more ubiquitous than you may realize. You could turn on a country station and hear Jackson Dean’s latest single “Heavens to Betsy,” or flip to an R&B station and hear Baltimore rapper Rye Rye’s voice sampled on British singer Jordan Adetunji’s smash “Kehlani.” If you went to the blockbuster comic book movie “Venom: The Last Dance,” you heard the score by Dan Deacon.
Whether it’s touched the mainstream or remains proudly underground, the music made by people from Baltimore and throughout Maryland has been beautiful, weird and thought-provoking, but almost never boring. Venues and record stores may close and beloved bands may break up, but it seems like every day someone around here is picking up a microphone, a guitar or a drum machine and doing something remarkable that nobody’s done before.
Here is our ranking of the top 10 albums from local acts both small and national that graced our ears this year.
10. Mario, “Glad You Came”
Mario Barrett was a teenager when he took R&B radio by storm with his debut single, “Just A Friend 2002,” and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005 with “Let Me Love You.” While he’s always been a skilled singer with a silky, soothing voice, the Baltimore native has never really had a consistent set of collaborators or a signature sound. Nearly every song on “Glad You Came,” however, is co-written by the highly respected hitmaker James Fauntleroy (Beyoncé, Rihanna), who guides Mario toward a playful take on seductive ’70s soul for his sixth album.
Standout track: “Space”
9. Natural Velvet, “Perma-Blues”
In 2024, as in many other years, a substantial amount of the best rock music recorded in Baltimore came out of J. Robbins’ Magpie Cage Recording Studio, including Robbins’ solo album “Basilisk” and releases by Manners Manners, Talking to Shadows and the post-punk quartet Natural Velvet. On Natural Velvet’s third full-length album, “Perma-Blues,” singer/bassist Corynne Ostermann voices relatable anxieties about the bleak American political climate, but the album’s big themes go down easy with swirling shoegaze guitars and Greg Hatem’s energetic drumming. “Soul Alone” and “The Dream” run together as an eight-minute suite that builds from some of the album’s quietest moments to its loudest.
Standout track: “More Than Shards”
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8. Maggie Rose, “No One Gets Out Alive”
Maryland native Maggie Rose moved to Nashville to pursue conventional country stardom as a teenager, but over the course of four albums, her music has become more earthy and eclectic. For “No One Gets Out Alive,” inspired by the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene of the 1970s, Rose sang live in the studio with an impressive band that includes members of the Alabama Shakes and Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit. The album just earned Rose her first Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album. She also recently took ownership of her master recordings and changed labels to One Riot/Virgin, so it feels like she’s only just getting started on an exciting new chapter of her career.
Standout track: “Fake Flowers”
7. YG Teck, “4th Quarter (Gangsta Grillz)”
DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz series may be the most revered mixtape franchise in hip-hop history, with superstars like Lil Wayne and Jeezy doing some of their best work on Drama tapes. So YG Teck becoming the first Baltimore artist with a Gangsta Grillz is a milestone moment for the city’s rap scene, and it’s exciting just to hear Drama yell ad libs over Teck’s signature motivational bars on the opening track, “Summer Over.” The real hometown pride moment, however, is the Tate Kobang-produced “Bomb,” which puts a Baltimore club music twist on Sisqó’s “Thong Song.”
Standout track: “Bomb”
6. Susan Alcorn, Simone Baron, Lynn Grissett and Killick Hinds, “New Baltimore Quiet”
Experimental pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn has released a lot of great music in 2024, including a duo album with Catherine Sikora, a key supporting role on Michael McNeill’s “Barcode Poetry” and a solo piece for the Longform Editions series. My favorite, however, would have to be her “New Baltimore Quiet” album, which is, appropriately, not quiet at all. Over the course of an hour, Alcorn coaxes strange and striking tones out of her instrument that have become her calling card. Her collaborators are Simone Baron, taking an equally unorthodox approach to accordion; Lynn Grissett, playing jazzy bursts of melody on trumpet; and Killick Hinds, playing an 18-stringed instrument he invented, called the h’arpeggione.
Standout track: “Visitanting”
5. Enslow, “Hello”
It’s rare to find a pop record by an independent artist that has the kind of immediately memorable hooks and easygoing charm that major labels often spend millions of dollars trying to achieve. Baltimore singer-songwriter Enslow’s debut album has songs that would probably fit right in on a playlist of your favorite Chappell Roan and Taylor Swift tunes, from the sunny acoustic pop of “Tennessee” to the gentle, bass-driven groove of “How You Do It,” which received frequent rotation on WTMD over the summer. Enslow wears her influences on her sleeve, and the closing track, “Brandy,” has more than a little Fleetwood Mac in it, but the songcraft on “Hello” is undeniable.
Standout track: “How You Do It”
4. Combat, “Stay Golden”
Combat frontman Holden Wolf is a proud product of Baltimore’s DIY scene. He sings about listening to local hero and avant-garde composer Dan Deacon over surging pop-punk guitars on “Epic Season Finale.” The members of Combat range from 20 to 22 years old, and the band’s second album, “Stay Golden,” brims over with the kind of energy, anxiety and thrill of discovery that can only come from a young band trying new things. Lots of bands can make a 70-second song as exciting and catchy as “Put Me In, Coach,” but few would be able to keep up that same level of intensity over the course of the nine-minute “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 2.”
Standout track: “Epic Season Finale”
3. KMack Knokville and Jay Funk, “UNK”
“This ain’t that pretty boy rap; this is hard-core,” KMack Knokville announces early on his recent collaboration with an old friend. KMack and producer Jay Funk are Baltimore hip-hop legends, and their early work with the group the Annexx Click is still highly sought after by collectors of ’90s underground rap. KMack’s raspy punchlines still sound perfect over Funk’s inventive, sample-driven beats. Mainstream hip-hop tends to be obsessed with youth and novelty, but LL Cool J and Common made some of the best rap albums of 2024, and any fan of those records would find something to love on “UNK.”
Standout track: “What It’s All 4”
2. Brittney Spencer, “My Stupid Life”
Brittney Spencer rubbed elbows with music royalty throughout 2024. The Baltimore native sang with Beyoncé on a cover of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” that was praised by Paul McCartney himself, and she spent the summer performing on the Outlaw Music Festival Tour with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. All of this was possible because she released a brilliant debut album, “My Stupid Life,” full of evocative songs like the coming-of-age slice of life “First Car Feeling.” Spencer grew up singing in a church in Baltimore before she fell in love with country music, and something special happens when she sings a bittersweet melody over slide guitars on “Desperate” and “If You Say So.”
Standout track: “I Got Time”
1. Future Islands, “People Who Aren’t There Anymore”
Samuel T. Herring recently revealed himself to be an impressive actor on the 2023 Apple TV+ series “The Changeling,” and he is a formidable rapper on several albums under his Hemlock Ernst alias. But we’re fortunate that he still loves making music with the college friends he met in North Carolina 20 years ago, because the surreal and cinematic synth pop of Future Islands, who’ve called Baltimore home since 2008, continues to intrigue and surprise. When Herring sings a mysterious phrase like, “A kind of cursive quiet/One with the starry eyelids” over Gerrit Welmers’ spacey synths and William Cashion’s driving basslines, it feels like you can only try to imagine some distant parallel universe they pulled these songs out of.
Standout track: “The Tower”
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