It may be titled вЂњWe are Mexico,вЂќ but the sentiment applies to anyone who has to work twice to hard to achieve half as much. In just eighty seconds, Becky G vividly portrays the struggle of Mexican immigrants, illustrating strong family ties, menial labor, and the struggle to keep out of law enforcementвЂ™s way.

ItвЂ™s hard to believe heвЂ™ll sit out the next riot. Queens rapper Bas pulled no punches on this crude, hilarious title track from his sophomore album that memorably notes, вЂњThey used to make it a crime to fuck white women / But damn, better give me a lot of time.вЂќ He also (less provocatively) calls out the TSA, NSA, and lying leaders who вЂњtreat us like prisoners.вЂќ It was released in March. WeвЂ™re fucked, but at least this song is great. Thundering drums and triumphant horns herald the arrival of a now-guaranteed cataclysm. Rather than address the politicians who (with the help of their wealthy donors) are destroying our planet, ANOHNI commandeers their nonchalance and makes it violent: вЂњI want to burn the sky, I want to burn the breeze, I want to see the animals die in the trees,вЂќ she croons sweetly. Sung from the perspective of a nine-year-old girl in Afghanistan whoвЂ™s so drained of hope after the drone murder of her family that she begs to join them, this track confronts the sinister core of drone warfare: under its ruthless terms, even children cannot be truly innocent. And may a song called вЂњI Just Killed a Cop Now IвЂ™m HornyвЂќ give us an absurd laugh between tears.

May it grant us the strength to keep going in a tunnel whose opening light has yet to appear. May the catharsis of this art, and the art borne out of whatever comes next, prop up our sanity. They confront, with humor or anger or beauty, nearly every issue that came up in 2016, from the seemingly minute to the unspeakably horrific. So weвЂ™ll look again and again to these songs, chosen by our music contributors, which this year addressed already-existing horrors sure to worsen in the coming (hopefully only four) years. Not art, not the life it imitates, and that goes especially for those who were oppressed even during the only eight years a black man ever ran this country. Nothing is going to get better if Donald Trump is, as expected, sworn in on January 20. The year began with a prominent lefty website bemoaning the death of protest music we disagreed, and boy, do we need that stuff now more than ever.

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