JAY-Z’s music picks for the year have arrived. Hov created a “2020 Vision” playlist for TIDAL on Thursday (December 3) putting the year in music in perspective. The playlist is filled with 40 tracks featuring a hint of R&B and varying styles dominating Hip Hop.
Tennis star Naomi Osaka wearing a George Floyd mask is the two-hour playlist’s featured image. Hov shows love to a bunch of Roc Nation artists, as Jay Electronica’s comeback album A Written Testimony has three of the 40 tracks.
Griselda was heavily spotlighted as well. Boldy James, Benny The Butcher and Westside Gunn’s Pray For Paris were all JAY-Z favorites for the year.
2020 vision. A playlist by JAY-Z.
(@S_C_)https://t.co/lhHwcyUi4v pic.twitter.com/sSL8yUkKAL
— TIDAL (@TIDAL) December 3, 2020
Jay’s former adversary Nas notched a couple of appearances on the playlist. Hov saluted Nas’ King’s Disease album with selections “Car #85” and “Spicy” featuring fellow Big Apple natives A$AP Ferg and Fivio Foreign. He also included 2 Chainz’s homage to him with “Southside HOV.”
Kicking off the new decade, there seems to be a changing of the guard on the horizon in Hip Hop. Hov kept his ear to the streets with an open mind regarding some of the younger leaders of the new school. He picked out a handful of Lil Baby cuts, whose My Turn sophomore went multi-platinum along with a run of blistering features.
Instead of choosing something from his Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon posthumous debut, Jay opted to go with Pop Smoke fan-favorite “Christopher Walking,” which appeared on his Meet The Woo 2 mixtape in February just days prior to his death.
During a November interview with GQ, Pop’s manager Steven Victor admitted he texted Hov some songs at the start of Pop’s career to get his thoughts on him as an artist.
“This kid knows how to make records,” Jay texted Victor back. “He’s special. Focus on him.”
Listen to the entire “2020 Vision” playlist below.