Gordon Withers – Revolving Doors
Elijah Cole – Green Dolphin Street
Suzanne Brindamour – Pilots Rendezvous
Scythian – Last Days of Summer
Theater of Soul – Memories Of A Time Long Ago
Paperhaus – Silent Speaking
Möbius Strip – IG-88
Jackie and The Treehorns – So Many Ways (To Turn You On)
Adam Stamper – Movements of the Anansi
Empresarios – Alegria
Chester Endersby Gwazda – Globes
Roger Aldridge – Twilight Sail
Matt Chaconas – Goodnight
Constant Alarm – Cairo
Blues Condition – Lucky Star
David King – Suspension
Diamond District – Streets Won’t Let Me Chill Instrumental
Black Masala – Cool Breeze
Dan Harris – Pell Mellish
The Fishermen Band – Someday

Stranger In the Alps – Love/Afraid
Martyn – Fashion Skater
Suzanne Brindamour – Fireflies
Timothy Soller – Water and Light
Miyazaki – Torrents
Projekt Eins – Vacillate-Venerate
The Shifters – She’s So Fine
Aaron Agre – Stormglass
Young Rapids – Singing World
Feedel Band – Ethiopian Ocean (Live At WAMU)
Klauss – Mixer
Peals – Koan 1
Borracho – Redemption
Ricky Eat Acid – Big Man’s Last Trip Outside
Vandaveer – The Knoxville Girl
aerialist – proteus
ZOMES – Beckoning Breeze
Flash Frequency – Corner of The Room
Bonjour, Ganesh! – Tito
Diamond District – Back to Basics Instrumental

Chopteeth – Weigh Your Blessings
Koshari – Into Shreds
Sligo Creek Stompers – Cuckoo’s Nest
Brian Whitmer – Kelly’s Lament
Peals – Belle Air
Young Rapids – Ugly
Five State Drive – Dry Clean Express
Teen Mom – Kitchen
Diamond District – Streets Won’t Let Me Chill
M.H. & His Orchestra – Cobblestone
Hailu Mergia and the Walias – Muziqawi Silt
The Caribbean – Echopraxia
Sara Curtin – A Little Again
Louis Weeks – Calder
GroundScore – Here We Are
Drop Electric – What Now, of Paradise?
Jonathan Parker – Sundown
Domingues & Kane – No. 5
Lo Fang – Invention No. 11
AXB – Quantum Chill
Wale – Love Hate Thing (Tone P Instrumental)
Elikeh – The Conversation
The Sweater Set – Lost At Sea
Warren Wolf – 427 Mass Ave

The EP kicks off with “Asked About You,” which finds the producer and lyricist sing-rapping à la Drake. “Lifting Shadows” sounds like an outtake from March On Washington, Oddisee’s stark and straight-talking 2014 album with D.C. trio Diamond District. Other hazy tracks hark back to 2011’s Rock Creek Park, sounding dislodged from a dusty crate of ’70s soul singles — or a nag champa-clouded session with D’Angelo.

AlWasta follows the Brooklyn resident’s 2015 LP, The Good Fight, and it precedes two Oddisee releases expected out this year: an instrumental album slated for May and a proper full-length this fall.

The EP’s promotional materials say Oddisee derived the name AlWasta from an Arabic word that “describes a member of the community who acts as a connector using their wealth of social currency.”

When writing the EP’s lyrics, Oddisee aspired to “[understand] the value of social currency and how to use it (for better or worse),” a release says.

AlWasta premiered on Stereogum today. Stream it below.

Nationwide this week is called Banned Books Week. At the D.C. Public Library, it’s called “Uncensored.”

Banned Books Week was established in 1982 to raise awareness of books that people want off the shelves. It’s not an issue limited to the McCarthy era — even now, parents, leaders and various interest groups rally to censor or remove books from libraries for all kinds of reasons. But the D.C. Public Library widens the scope of Banned Books Week, looking at any form of expression that’s been challenged, including music.

That’s why the library has made a playlist for Banned Books Week two years in a row, says Maggie Gilmore, a librarian in DCPL’s adult information services division. This year, the D.C. Public Library Foundation asked her to compile a list of songs with a dual theme: censorship and D.C. music.

Gilmore consulted her fellow librarians for ideas and solicited input from attendees at August’s D.C. Record Fair at Penn Social. This is the resulting playlist, streamable via Spotify and YouTube, below:

Bad Brains, “Banned in DC”
Chain & the Gang, “Free Will”
Parliament, “Chocolate City”
Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, “Run Joe”
The Evens, “Wanted Criminals”
The Cornel West Theory, “DC Love Story”
Ice-T, “Freedom of Speech”
Coup Sauvage & the Snips, “Don’t Touch My Hair” (JD Samson Remix)
Minor Threat, “Straight Edge”
Bikini Kill, “Rebel Girl”
Unrest, “Malcolm X Park”
The Blackbyrds, “Rock Creek Park”
The Roots with Wale and Chrisette Michele, “Rising Up”
Diamond District, “March Off”
Marvin Gaye, “Got To Give It Up”

The playlist comes across as a celebration of outspoken music — not hard to find in this town, Gilmore says.

“[D.C.] is a natural environment for people to discuss political issues,” Gilmore says. Plus, she says, the city’s constantly shifting population can aggravate local tensions.

“With D.C. having so many people moving in and out of the city, there’s always been tension in the various groups that are represented in D.C.,” Gilmore says. She cites D.C.’s signature funk sound as an example. “Go-go has always been challenged by those who may feel it’s obtrusive — and maybe not even the music itself, but the social scene around go-go.”

The playlist debuted at last Friday’s opening party for “Uncensored: Information Antics,” the library’s new exhibit in honor of Banned Books Week. The show remains on view at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library through Oct. 22.

Gilmore says “Uncensored” and this playlist are part of the library’s larger efforts to document and support local expression in all forms. DCPL’s D.C. Punk Archive has been in the works for a year now. Gilmore coordinates the library’s series of punk-rock basement shows, meant to highlight its punk collection. After this, the library focuses on archiving go-go, then jazz, Gilmore says.

“Trying to highlight local music, [D.C.’s cultural] history and current artists — that’s one of the main goals of the basement shows, to provide a space for bands to play,” Gilmore says. “So this was an opportunity to continue on that.”

Related: WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show airs a segment on Banned Books Week Tuesday at 1:32 p.m. Can’t tune in? The segment will be archived on kojoshow.org.

Warning: Some songs contain explicit lyrics.

Via Spotify:

“In all honesty, I am probably more like Tha Alkaholiks or Devin the Dude” — MCs who fall closer to the party-rap end of the spectrum — “than I am Common or Mos Def,” writes the Fort Totten resident in an email.

“It breaks down to me not being silent and trying to make sense of what confuses me. Everything from assimilation to social groups to the dangers of the advancement of technology,” Ardamus writes. “At the same time, I drink, like to party, and listen to raunchy comedians. So, yeah, my style is the dark side of conscious rap at this point.”

Dark side or not, Ardamus calls it like he sees it on his recent EP, I Can’t Replace Me Part 1: Improve. His unflappable honesty stands out on the release’s second track, “If Only I Gave Ah.”

Over a robotic march laid down by Diamond District’s Oddisee, Ardamus speaks about the grim realities facing kids who “cop gangsta rap out of vending machines,” declaring failure “a drug that’s spine-injected.” Fellow Washingtonian Kokayi frames the uneasy mood with a frank chorus, and Chicago’s Open Mike Eagle brings historical perspective with a thoughtful closing verse.

Asked about the song’s intent, Ardamus writes, “I feel like these kids get into these situations where they want to be the winner in every aspect of what they have been taught… I realized chasing all that when you’re young like that gives a warped perception of what else is out there.”

The artist says he has a personal tie to the issues he talks about. “I grew up in a middle class neighborhood where it was mixed races; yet still, we had dudes trying to sling and rob in the suburbs when they didn’t need to,” he writes. “On another end of it, I’m like, ‘It’s none of my business, so should I care?’ And yes. I do care.”

I Can’t Replace Me is the most recent release in prolific streak from Ardamus: Since November, he’s also dropped a single and an EP and plotted a string of live performances as a member of funk outfit The Lucky So and So’s and D.C. hip-hop supergroup FAR EXP. Next year, he plans to release a sequel to the EP called Part 2: Develop and a new project called DropLockers with local producer Edword Asis. He credits the surge to surviving a dicey encounter.

“I actually got robbed nearby my old place, and it freaked me out because it was situation where I could have ended up dead,” Ardamus writes. “After some months of adjusting to the loss of material things and counting my blessings of how was still living, I came up with that title. It’s an ode to going from one level to the next level, to always elevate.”

Warning: Explicit lyrics.

Ardamus performs with FAR EXP Jan. 10 at Rock & Roll Hotel and as himself Jan. 26 at Velvet Lounge.

Some of this year’s most unforgettable local songs didn’t come from comfortable experiences. They sounded fed up, and particularly urgent in a year marked by growing inequity at home and multiple slayings by police in places that didn’t feel far away.

In one of the year’s rawest rock songs, Thaylobleu cranked up its guitars to tell a personal story of police harassment. Chain and the Gang and Jack On Fire assailed gentrification with wit and hyperbole. Punk band Priests declared everything right wing. Two remarkable hip-hop works channeled frustration and fatalism among young black Americans: Diamond District’s Oddisee cried, “What’s a black supposed to do — sell some crack and entertain?”, while Virginia MC GoldLink rapped about all the glorious things he imagines happening to him — when he dies.

Not that peace and love felt impossible in 2014: In a touching song released two years after his death, Chuck Brown sang of a “beautiful life” enriched by the warmth of community. Promising newcomer Kali Uchis made us kick back with a soulful number steeped in giddy infatuation. Experimentation thrived in D.C. music: Young artists built on the region’s strong punk pedigree and expanded its boundaries. Mary Timony’s band Ex Hex embraced a classic sound and made one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll records. Local bands with shorter but distinctive resumes — like Laughing Man, Two Inch Astronaut and Deleted Scenes — sounded better and more creative than ever before. A Sound of Thunder and Gloom reminded us that the D.C. area is still a reliable producer of top-notch metal.

As expected, Bandwidth contributors faced hard choices while making this list of the year’s best local songs, and not only because it’s our first one. Up until deadline, we were still hearing new D.C. songs we wanted to include. But in a place where mounting wealth has created a challenging environment for art, that’s not a problem, really. It’s a testament to a music scene that perseveres despite long odds. —Ally Schweitzer

Warning: Many of these songs contain explicit lyrics.

March On Washington Redux hands over Oddisee’s productions to an assortment of underground beatmakers to reshape: In the hands of California producer/rapper Oh No, album highlight “These Bammas” still skewers Diamond District’s slackin’ peers, but with an otherworldly touch heard (in way more bonkers form) on Oh No’s work with Gangrene.

Elsewhere, The Doppelgangaz bring a booming beat to “You Had To Be There,” morphing the jazzy cut into a jam fit for a late-night drive through L.A.:

Stream and purchase March On Washington Redux on Bandcamp.