Photo-Illustration by Sarah Schumacher Photography by Mike Brooks, Getty Images and Adobe Stock
Audio By Carbonatix
What a year it’s been for the North Texas music scene.
If 2025 as a whole were given a theme, it would seem appropriate to designate it as “a kaleidoscope of chaos.” Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
As for here at home, we watched as some of the city’s best skyrocketed to new heights. BigXthaplug took a break from dominating hip-hop to dominate country music. Mesquite’s Hannah Jadagu made the concept of a sophomore slump seem feeble with her gorgeous second offering on Sub Pop Records, Describe. Dezi 5, one of the hardest working entertainers in the city, blessed us with one of the year’s most electric, unforgettable shows at The Kessler Theater to celebrate the release of his new album, Dirty Laundry: Unfolded.
We were also reintroduced to the Vandoliers’ Jenni Rose when she came out as a transgender woman, reminding us of the grit that fortifies the honest, transcendent storytelling reverberating all over our backyard. Cure for Paranoia’s Cameron McCloud gave us hometown pride every single day of the year as he spent 2025 writing a daily rap verse. He did that between touring, working on a just-released EP called Work of A.R.T., and helping launch U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate campaign. We’re still trying to work out how it’s possible that we share the same number of hours in a day with him.
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Our excellent (and yet still utterly underrated) hip-hop scene continued to prove influential for the genre at large, as we saw both the rise and reign of some of Dallas’ best rappers.
Meanwhile, Erykah Badu continued teasing us with the promise of new music when she announced (and then delayed) a forthcoming album with The Alchemist. That’s kind of on us, though — it’s well understood that she does whatever the hell she wants whenever she wants. And you know what? We’ll still gladly await her every move regardless.
We didn’t go without our fair share of heartbreak in 2025, though.
We lost Chris Penn, owner of Good Records, and, to a greater degree, a beloved pillar of the North Texas music scene whose influence on local artists and music lovers alike can’t be understated. Not long after, a light in Deep Ellum extinguished with the passing of longtime neighborhood fixture, “Keyboard Bob” Crawford.
Some of our favorite venues faced existential threats in their own right when the City of Dallas tried to ban cover charges at restaurants, which would have effectively prevented local musicians who rely on such gigs from earning a living wage.
Yella Beezy, one of the city’s most meteoric successes of the last decade, was charged with capital murder in a murder-for-hire plot related to the 2020 death of fellow Dallas rapper Mo3. He’s currently set to stand trial in February.
And there were so many more moments, both fleeting and enduring, triumphant and tragic, that filled the chorus of this year. We find solace in knowing that, despite the chaos of it all, no matter what’s waiting for us in 2026, there’s a constant in the fact that the city will have a damn good soundtrack to get us through it all.
To see more of our end-of-year music coverage, click the links below.
