My Very Best Writing from 2016

2016 was my first full year with my own site.

Not coincidentally it is also the first year since 2012 in which I did not publish a book.

Rather than dive into a book, I instead chose to try to build my site, balancing my penchant for writing long, in-depth analysis on topics few people think about with some shorter stream of consciousness pieces, lists, and videos.

I also continued to write on Medium and contributed to The Musical Outcast in the U.K., while at the same time also establishing new partnerships with Hip Hop Golden Age, My Trending Stories, Sitcom World, Fatherly, and others.

A year is a long time and some things are missed or forgotten, so just as I did in 2015, I’ve compiled the best things I wrote this year.

Thanks for reading!

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HIP-HOP

• Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown’s lasting impact twenty years after their debuts

• The connection of Mobb Deep, Nas, and Raekwon

• The relationship between Hip-Hop and the NBA

• Ranking all 21 “Best Rap Album” Grammy winners

• A look at how file sharing changed three major hip-hop albums in 1999

• Imagining the supergroup Jay-Z, Ja Rule, and DMX could have been

• Revisiting Jadakiss vs. Beanie Sigel’s epic battle

• An analysis of the importance hip-hop soundtracks once played

• It’s a shame that the events surrounding Guru’s death have in some ways overshadowed his greatness

• My final edition of Flashback Friday, examining Jay-Z’s unretirement album, Kingdom Come

• What place, if any, does the album have in today’s musical landscape?

• Revisiting the 20 best hip-hop albums of 1996

• When his comeback album, Relapse, wasn’t totally embraced, Eminem completely changed his career forever

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BOOKS

• My difficulties with moderation and how collecting something becomes an obsession of mine

• A book about the rise of humanity changed my view on my own life

• My 1st book’s 4th birthday

• Four Books that Changed My Life

• Get more out of your books by interacting with them

• The best books I read in 2016
  

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MOVIES

• An appreciation of Once Upon a Time in America: an epic gangster film most people have not seen

• Deconstructing and explaining Marvel, DC, superhero films, and shared universes

• Reexamining the smallness – and badness – of Tim Burton’s Batman films

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TELEVISION

• Ranking the 10 best scenes from The West Wing

• Ranking the 10 other best scenes from The West Wing

• A list of questions after years of watching Sofia the First

• A (sorta) Q & A with the creator of Sofia the First

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SPORTS

• Remembering being in attendance for Michael Jordan’s final game

• Examining how the narrative of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning has changed over the years

• A conversation with other writers about March Madness and if it exploits student-athletes

• Supporting Sam Hinkie and “The Process”

• I saw LeBron play in high school

• Steph Curry is far from the greatest player ever

• Comparing Jordan and LeBron by their Finals records is stupid

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LIFE

• Whether something is good luck or bad luck is based on your perception

• I went back to my hometown for the first time in almost 15 years and the memories came flooding back

• While I have all of the things that make me an adult – career, mortgage, family – I still don’t feel like an adult

• So many self-help articles focus on walking away from your job or having a bulletproof morning routine, but life for most of us isn’t so cut-and-dried

• Life is full of disappointments. The important thing is how we respond to them

• Lean in? Regardless of whether you’re male or female, you can only lean so far

• A few thoughts on the event of my daughter’s 4th birthday

• We’re all self-involved people that exist in our little bubble

• Mistakes are good

• Cooking with your child is the best and the worst

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MONEY

• How personal finance experts give great advice, but it’s so often unrealistic or not applicable

• We like to mock rich kids, but if I were a millionaire at 18, I would not have been any better

• The Founding Fathers were just as bad at personal money management as the rest of us

• My 401(k) was lost, then doubled, then negative – all in a week (and not because of the market)

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WORK

• On creating for yourself because, in the end, you’re the one that has to live with it

• How do we define and measure success?

• The next step in my career

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MISCELLANEOUS

• My contention that the media coverage about Bill Cosby is about fame more than race

• My experiences as a 21st Century gentrifier

• Medium used to be a wonderful place for writers and readers to connect. That’s no longer the case

• An open letter to critics that try to tell you what to like and how to think

• Why do fans care about how much money a project makes?

• The rapid demise of David Lee Roth, Free FM, and the recent softening of Howard Stern

See you in 2017!

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Christopher Pierznik’s eight books are available in paperback and Kindle. His work has appeared on XXL, Cuepoint, Business Insider, The Cauldron, Medium, and many more.Subscribe to his monthly reading review newsletter or follow him on Facebook or Twitter.