America's whitest big city? Portland has a thriving black community, too.

My "diversity beat" at The Oregonian most often is a gentrification beat. For the past few years, I've written narratives about the displaced, about the communities lost. A reader and community leader has often pushed back on some of those stories. Rightly, he asked why I only wrote sad stories about African Americans. He sent me numbers showing the population was growing. Both narratives are true -- African Americans have been pushed out in big cities across the country. But there are others who are thriving, making a home in a place the rest of the country knows for quirky whiteness.

Here's the latest piece I did, the first in a little series that will continue through the fall. Photos by Beth Nakamura, my favorite journalist and best tag team partner.

After gentrification: America's whitest big city? Sure, but a thriving black community, too.

Every few months, a national news outlet travels to Oregon to trek through a familiar narrative. Portland is America's whitest big city, they report. Black people have been shoved out, shut down.

Yes, at 76 percent white, Portland is less diverse than Omaha or Salt Lake City. And gentrification did displace and disperse what was once a dense black community in North and Northeast Portland. Others left willingly, realtors said, for bigger lots and better schools.

But those are not the only stories black Portlanders have to tell. Frustrated by the steady dirge, some of Portland's black leaders have begun sharing another narrative. African-Americans aren't disappearing, they say. Some are thriving.

The number of black Portlanders increased 4 percent between 2000 and 2010, they note. And new Census data, released this year, shows the metro area had nearly 5,000 black-owned businesses in 2012, a 42 percent increase over five years.

"We just don't all live in Northeast Portland anymore," said economist Stephen Green, a 39-year-old African American who grew up in Aloha but lives in Woodlawn, among a few Northeast neighborhoods that have added black residents in recent years.

Green understands why the other narrative proliferates. Older black people miss knowing their neighbors. Young white liberals feel guilty for driving up rental prices.

But that story has outlived its use, he thinks.

If people think Portland has no black residents, they won't support its black businesses. Smart, ambitious young African Americans won't stay or move here.

The whitest city in America will become only whiter.

READ THE REST ON OREGONLIVE

Mood v.5: Feel like bustin' loose

Back yard heat nearly touching 100, I dance around til the sun slips low. Here are the songs that ease my summer afternoon transitions.

Or listen on Apple Music.

White Portland Police captain, black actor salve wounds with words

They were a microcosm, just one white police officer and one black man, talking. But the conversation Friday between a Portland Police Bureau captain and a local actor shifted something.

It was the antidote, they both said, to a week of shootings that left officers and black men across the country dead.

Portland Police Capt. Michael Crebs and Alonzo Chadwick first met last Wednesday at a performance of "Hands Up," a series of seven monologues, each written by a black playwright after Ferguson. Each piece explores race or police violence.

Some of the monologues were "real negative" toward police, Crebs said. It "took some effort," but he pushed himself to sit there, to listen.

"For me to be my best, I need to hear those experiences," Crebs said. "As a police officer, it's so important for me to understand the people that I serve. We are all just humans trying to get by on this earth."

Chadwick performed "Superiority Fantasy," a 10-minute monologue that tells the story of a man routinely hassled by police.

Like that narrator, Chadwick's experiences with police have been negative. The 36-year-old first encountered an officer in a Northeast Portland park when he was 14.

"I was treated as if I didn't deserve to be there," Chadwick said.
 

Then, when he was 19 and driving his first car, a female officer pulled him over on Northeast Alberta Street. Three other cars quickly appeared, he said.

"My mom had given me the talk, taught me how you should comply so you can come home alive," Chadwick said. The first rule: Never reach for anything. An officer might think you are looking for a weapon.

"I was crying," he said. "I knew I was getting ready to die. She told me to roll the window down. I told her I couldn't. My window button is in the middle of the car, and if I reach over you're going to think I'm reaching for something and you'll kill me."

The stop ended without incident, Chadwick said, but before the officer drove off, she said she had stopped him because his tail light was out.

"I asked her, 'You did all that because I had a tail light out?'" he recalled. "And she said, 'You fit the description of somebody we're looking for.'"

Since then, Chadwick said he has had about 25 encounters with police, 80 percent of which have been negative.

So when Crebs stood up at the end of Chadwick's performance last week, the actor wasn't sure what to think.

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Mood v.4: Spread too thin

Strangely grey July here in Portland. I've been working and writing non-stop.  Here are the songs steering me through.

Or listen on Apple Music.

This time I'm really going off, fireworks

We skipped the fireworks and the outside fun, stayed home to paint the sky sparkly.

Mood v.3: It's about us right now

May was unseasonably warm. I bounced through streets listening to all the new songs everyone else is. These, plus Beyonce, too.

How did Chance find such light in Chicago? I felt guilty, dumb-grinning on the bus the day his album came out. It transported me back to my childhood revivals, when we grabbed bliss however we could find it, stubbornly shutting out the dark that creeped in around the edges. His Kirk Franklin feature reminded me of this older tune, "Stomp," which makes me just as happy in my 30s as it did as a Christian teenager.

Last Days of the Joyce Hotel

Few things are as fun as collaborating with a brilliant photographer on a story. A few months ago, Beth Nakamura asked me to work on a story about The Joyce Hotel with her. The motel is an old single-room occupancy hostel that has, for decades, housed some of the city's poorest. The block around it has gentrified, though, and the owner was shutting the motel down.

Beth and I spent a few months there, getting to know the workers and tenants. The resulting project came out this weekend. Check out Oregonlive to see Beth's photos and hear two of the residents tell their stories:

The beds sagged. The windows rattled, and the walls stayed sticky. But for 90 people, the Joyce Hotel was home.

Most had spent years at the Southwest 11th Avenue motel, forking over $40 a night to claim their little slice of downtown.

Then, last weekend, the Internet and cable television both went dark. A clerk collected keys.

After decades of housing some of the city's poorest, the Old Joyce had closed down.

The building's owner, who turned down multiple offers to save one of downtown's last remaining single-room occupancy hotels, was coy about its uncertain fate. He evicted the tenants in the middle of a citywide housing emergency.

"I already miss it," said Arnold Drake World, a 54-year-old artist who lived at the Joyce for three years. "Just the thought of leaving is terrible."

Poor people have been staying at the Joyce since at least 1965, when the owners began advertising furnished rooms for $32 a month. (In 2016, that would be just $242.) The 104-year-old building was another cheap lodge, the Hotel Treves, before that.

Occasionally, travelers booked a night at the Joyce. Men newly released from prison stopped by on their way to freedom. But mostly the hotel attracted longtime transients too picky to stay in shelters or on the streets.

"Most of us that do have any pride left, we're not trying to go to a Mission Gospel or anything like that," World said. "Because let's talk about lice, ticks, fleas and everything else that comes with those free scenarios."

The other guests, most of them men, shared that sense of dignity. They liked their bathrooms clean, their hallways free of drama.

Sometimes a drunk upset the balance, tumbling down the stairs or picking a fight with a lifer. And several people died inside, either from overdrinking, overdosing or once, in 2010, strangulation. A man fell to his death in 1991 while trying to rappel from a hotel window using a standard-issue bedsheet. That same year, one guest stabbed another in the heart.

But most learned to co-exist. They took turns using two washing machines and one microwave. They showered in shifts and shared beers when life turned dark.

The rooms were spare, but residents often personalized the cinder block walls. One resident left behind a Fleetwood Mac poster. Others stashed hot plates on the radiators and turned chests of drawers into food prep stations.

READ THE REST ON OREGONLIVE.COM

People in the city: 1.1

Debbie Wooten talks about discovering she is black.

The best part of being a journalist is going to interviews. You get paid to have great conversations. Then, the hard work begins in translating those great moments into articles. No matter how well I write, the words never seem to live up to hearing people tell their own stories.

Last year, I started to lose the ability to hold a pen. My right elbow, wrist and thumb won't stay in the joints anymore, so gripping -- especially chopsticks and writing utensils -- is painful. I bought huge pens, which helps, but ultimately, I decided to start recording my interviews. I just can't write as fast as people talk anymore. But there's a gift in this pain: I now have records of those original, beautiful conversations. I'll share some of the ones I've liked best here in the coming months.

First-up, Debbie Wooten. She had polio as a kid, and in her later years, the symptoms have come back. A few months ago, she couldn't walk. I'm following her as she tries to get back into the comedy scene. I loved this little part of our conversation where she told me about the time she first realized she is black.

Mood v.2: upper echelon for no reason

The rap stations in Louisiana and Mississippi play brooding beats. I drove around last week in my grandma's aging Crown Vic, windows down and Kevin Gates up loud enough to rattle the roads around me.

Lost in Transition

A little more than a year ago, Oregon became the fourth state to offer Medicaid coverage for gender transition. I thought I would follow someone through the process of using the new benefit. A few people agreed, but after a few weeks or months, they backed out. They kept running into roadblocks, bureaucratic red tape that sent them into depressed states.

I kept talking to one person as she tried over and over again to get help. Eventually, I realized that was the story. Over the last year, I spoke with about 75 patients, doctors and insurance representations. The result is a new series -- Lost in Transition -- that launches in the Oregonian this weekend. Michelle Storm's story, as well as a few sidebars, make up the first part. The series will continue in to the summer.

LIFE ON LAYAWAY

Michelle Storm has spent her life closing her eyes when she takes a shower.

She knew in grade school that she is female, not the boy her parents thought they were raising. As an adult, after a stint in the Army, she legally changed her name and started referring to herself as "she." And then she started taking estrogen.

That was nearly two decades ago. The 42-year-old still feels queasy when she removes her clothes. What she wants most is a surgery she says will finally finish correcting her gender.

"I hate the anatomy I currently have," she said, "with an utter passion."

Last year, for the first time, the Oregon Health Plan decided to cover medical services for low-income transgender people. Since then, doctors, insurance representatives and even a U.S. senator have tried to help Storm, an Army veteran who cannot afford the $30,000 surgery, to get what she needs.

More than a year later, she is still waiting.

Read the series on Oregonlive.

Mood v.1: Give Me My Month

Back in college, we traded and cataloged mixes, a new theme every week. Tapes were retro then, but now the discs themselves are obsolete. I still keep a spindle of blanks, still stack together 80 minutes for road trips or special occasions. But I miss the regularity of sharing a stream of songs with other people. I'll try to reclaim that. Here's my first offering, a dark loop through February, what Antonya Nelson calls "the slim month of misery."

What did you learn about these two old women?

I've been working on a documentary about a rural North Louisiana town for the past seven years. I've watched and logged 7 terabytes of footage, edited together teasers and even screened a few shorts. We're editing the full-length film now, and occasionally I find a tiny clip of my grandmother that I don't remember seeing before. Today I found this one, from a 2012 trip. I had been out all day trying to find out information about Roy, the main character. My grandma started me on this goose chase a decade ago. She wanted to know about Roy, she said. After three months of searching, she started to be ready for a new topic. What, she wanted to know, was I learning about her? I've watched it a few times this morning, and I feel a little lighter every time I do.

Driving a big truck

I've spent the past year working on a project about transgender healthcare. It's crunch time now, so I'm going back through notes on hundreds of interviews. Last summer I interviewed a woman who asked the state 20 years ago to pay for sex reassignment surgery. Newspapers from Texas to Alaska covered the story. The state declined, but her name was out there. Her friends abandoned her. Neighbors harassed her. She lost her job and now lives in a garage on a cot. Here's a little quote she said to me over a breakfast of hashbrowns and endless coffee refills.

"People like us aren't inferior. I’m a straight woman. I like redneck men. There’s nothing you can do to keep me away from them, especially when they’re driving a big truck."

Books read in 2015

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson

The beginning was an enjoyable read. But it just turned darker and crazier. That darkness alone doesn't bother me, but narratively, just too much goes down. Maybe being a social worker is like that - constant havoc - but it ruined the reading experience for me. I felt like every time I started a new chapter, some huge disaster had occurred. Now this character is a prostitute! Now the FBI is shooting at one of his clients. Now this boy is homeless and in juvie and throwing hot chocolate against someone's face. Then the ending - the mid sentence cliffhanger - just felt like a gimmick.

I guess this is the kind of book people who like Breaking Bad and Cormac McCarthy read. I'm just not that kind of girl.

The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum

"Matricide," the first essay in this collection, is perfect. So perfect that the rest of the book felt a tiny bit like a letdown. I couldn't really enjoy the final essay about the coma because I had already read about it in the first perfect essay. Overall, this is a very smart collection. "Invisible City," about a game of charades played at Nora Ephron's place, is so hilarious I had to read huge chunks of it out loud to friends.

Family Life by Akhil Sharma

Nice, quick little book that works on many levels. Great characters, great slice of life that reveals what it is to be a young immigrant. Even in such a short read, the pace moved realistically enough until the end, when the author rushed through the end of life in two pages. Those pages felt irrelevant, like the text that runs after a movie has wrapped up.

Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell

This really rode the line between subtle and boring for me. Certain chapters seemed to be doing a lot of work with very little. Others felt tedious.

Heat by Bill Buford

Part memoir, part profile, part cookbook, part history - this book accomplishes a ton in a relatively short amount of space. I found it super insightful and very charming.

What is the What by Dave Eggers

Perfect title, perfect structure, perfect ending. This story gives life - real, human life - to the news stories so many people gloss over. There is woe here, but just as often there is joy and love. Beautiful sentences, too.

Ghettoside by Jill Levy

There is so much to praise about this book - impeccable reporting, great sentences, unbelievably astute descriptions. Somehow Leovy allows readers to see the humanity in every side of this horrific nightmare.

It should be required reading. There is so much to learn from GHETTOSIDE about poverty, violence and policing. Reading it definitely opened my eyes.

I do have two criticisms, though. First, the title. She makes case enough in the book for calling it GHETTOSIDE, but I find it alienating. I think it will stop some people from reading it. It just seemed too cheap and easy. I felt embarrassed reading it on the bus.

Second, the structure. After page 200, it goes really weird. It's hard to tell if this is a book with a neat narrative arc - the story of one case to stand in for them all - or an arc with spires and waves emanating everywhere. She is very good at making people come alive in only a few sentences, but as a reader I found it hard to keep track. And author is supposed to weed out what I don't have to know so that what I do does not lose any power. Unfortunately the side stories of other detectives and so so so so many other cases muddled the reading for me. Her earlier drive-bys with the list style, sentence for every killing, better showed me the scope of what these guys are dealing with. I couldn't connect in the later chapters because I just couldn't keep track of who I was supposed to know.

Still, this is a huge feat of reporting and writing, and I hope it wins lots of awards.

A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor

Pretty sentences but hard to track. The "a novel" tag on the front doesn't seem quite right. It's more meandering prose poem, shifting perspective and time - beautifully but opaquely. I couldn't finish it.

The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez

I think these chapters might work better as mini-essays. Right now, they don't add up to a greater narrative for me: chapters and chapters to by in the beginning without ever establishing any stakes.

The voice is charmingly casual, but it almost undermines what could have been a great memoir. It just needed a round or two more or thinking - past this is a great and funny anecdote to what does this mean?

I could finish it, but my time would probably be better spent just rereading The House on Mango Street.

The Green Mile by Stephen King

I never imagined myself reading a Stephen King book. Then I read a recent short story of his in The New Yorker and loved the sentences so much I decided to give a whole novel a try.

The Green Mile is awesome. The sentences are still beautiful. The characters are wrought just perfectly. And the tension builds at just the right pace. I'm glad I gave King's work a shot.

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I like the idea of this book, and I like the structure. But I never felt like the author took me to a deeper level. Somehow the book often felt like paraphrasing. Even the interior thoughts somehow felt distant, rushed, surface or obvious. I guess obvious is the best description. I felt like Ng often chose the most obvious struggles and plot twists. I did not enjoy this book. The suspense is exciting, though. If you're looking for a quick read, this might be a good option.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel

He is a master. This is so well reported and so well written, a perfect example of sentence and structure.

The Martini Shot by George Pelecanos

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

Some of the themes were executed with a heavy hand, and I don't know that all of the neighbor vignettes worked, but I loved this book. It had a great plot, great characters and great sentences. Each narrator really felt distinct and real. I can't wait to see what she writes next.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

I don't think of myself a pure plot devotee, but this novel is SO repetitive that it made all the non-repetitive yet still off-plot details feel extraneous. Maybe there was deeper meaning in some, but at a certain point it just annoyed me to have to read exchanges like his asking Olga to eat dinner and her saying it was her Mother's Day birthday. I was so happy for this book to be over!

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Thank god for the family tree listed at the beginning. I flipped back to it every few pages, trying to suss out the subtle varieties in Aurealianos and Arcadios.

This novel has such great sentences -- descriptors like no other -- and such imagination. But the plot is a mess, more paraphrase and recounting of sexual encounters (more than one instance of incest and another of pedophilia) than narrative arc. It is definitely not an easy read.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

The sentences are almost too pretty, the structure too tricky. Both overwhelm my ability to really get lost in what could be an exciting book. The short chapters keep me reading at a nice clip, but the back and forth through time makes keeping all the characters straight confusing. At times, reading this is fun, but often it feels like work. Just a touch of lightness could give it more balance, too.

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

This was just so fun to read. Maybe I have previous reading bias: I read "All The Light We Cannot See" just before this -- an impressive but so un-fun book. This was a relief, a novel I couldn't wait to read at the end of every day. Groundbreaking? Nope. But I read it in the summer!

The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

"The Turner House" somehow encompasses the entire 21st century African American experience -- hard labor, the Great Migration, redlining, Detroit's boom and bust -- without ever feeling didactic. Instead, Flournoy renders real characters here, a family with mysteries and problems like any other. It's an educational novel, but foremost, it is a pleasure to read.

Sick in the Head by Judd Apatow

I loved this book at first. It's such a treat to hear from so many brilliant minds. But as the book wore on, Apatow shared the same anecdotes over and over. The interviews became, increasingly, about him. Of course, he's not a journalist. This is memoir disguised as interviews. And there are great, great moments. But I came away really disliking, or more accurately, feeling sorry for Judd. He seems so badly to want to be regarded in the same ilk as those interviewed here. And the thing is: he is a great filmmaker. He doesn't need to try so hard for esteem.

His younger interviews are so great, so inquisitive. I wish that boy had asked all of the book's questions. But if he had to grow up and inward, I wish he had hired a better editor -- someone to cut the repeated anecdotes or throat-clearing bits of transcription, someone to tighten this into the brilliant book that does lies within.

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

This book seems so simple, the story of a few fishing trips. But in those, love unfolds and dread builds. So much is contained here.

I didn't love all the descriptions of fishing, but it's his book, not mine. The debaucherous brother-in-law scenes are super entertaining.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo

I was put off, at first, by the heavy-handed, didactic dialogue -- conversations on Leviticus and antimen just felt too on-the-nose. But then Evaristo really found her groove. Stick with this book. Each of the characters becomes more complicated. I love how the author explores the effects Barry's secrets and reveals have on each person.

The sections about Carmel are Rita Dove level poetry, too. Whooo.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

It's an impressive, beautiful book. And yet: it is so so hard to follow. You're left anchorless for a long while. I kept searching for a slang conversion or a CliffsNote version, hoping I could find out what happened so I could go reread and just enjoy the beauty. Instead I spent so much time trying to find out what happened or what Papa Lo or Josey meant. I loved Nina and the free verse approach to violence.

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast

So funny and laid bare. Chast lets all the embarrassing parts of herself -- the self that worries more over money, the self that never felt close to her mother -- show. There are so many tender moments, so personally human that they'll resonate universally.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Best book I read all year, no contest.

M Train by Patti Smith

M Train is totally weird and meandering, so unlike "Just Kids." Yet it's just as moving. It, too, feels like an elegy, albeit what that comes together and filaments and fringes. It really touched me. I loved getting glimpse into her heart and brain, her repeated habits.

Erratic Facts by Kay Ryan

Hunger Makes me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf

Enlightening and easy to read, nice look, charming at times, and yet ... Some details feel extraneous, others don't dig deep enough. I finished the book not feeling especially connected to him or longing for more.

A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk

So much to love here -- the characters, the sentences, the scope and history. But it wasn't focused enough. I didn't need to read lengthy chapters on every job he ever had. A slightly simpler story could have been more powerful

Outline by Rachel Cusk

This is the best fiction book I read all year. I rented it from the library then had to go buy it because there were so many lines I wanted to underline. This is the kind of book you could finish then immediately begin reading again. She reveals so much character in this slim novel. So much about life, too.

Best songs of 2015

To Pimp A Butterfly album out now iTunes: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterfly Target: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterflyTG Google Play: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterflyGP Amazon CD: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterflyCD Amazon MP3: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterflyAmz Best Buy: http://smarturl.it/ToPimpAButterflyBB http://vevo.ly/Ijp0KJ

1. Kendrick Lamar - Alright / For Sale?

“To Pimp a Butterfly”’s standout track comes just after its most brutal. The screams and drunken blubbering of “u” fade up into a most hopeful, catchy hook. It’s telling that Black Lives Matter protesters in Cleveland chose “Alright,” rather than an angrier track to chant as they marched through Ohio. They -- and Kendrick -- were reclaiming their lives. Much of “To Pimp a Butterfly” is angry and hurt. Here, Lamar sees all the bad of the world laid out -- "Lookin at the world like, 'Where do we go?" and yet he grabs the future for himself anyway. I’m including both songs because those angelic backing voices continue into “For Sale,” becoming more hypnotic as the interlude progresses. “Alright” is God whispering into Lamar’s ear. “For Sale” is the Devil trying -- in a hook even sweeter-sounding than its predecessor -- to pull his attention the other way.  “For Sale?” sounds just as the devil does in desperation -- hypnotic, cunning, relentless. How easy to just lean in, let all the bad of the world fall away.

2. Vince Staples - Summertime

Don’t let the Drake-era fool you: Rap rarely deals in the personal. “Feelings known to get you killed,” Vince Staples rap/sings in “Summertime.” Still he risks it, delivering 2015’s most personal rap song. On its surface, “Summertime” is a love song, a yearning to make a relationship last. But deeper truths thread through Staples’ confessions. What does it mean to be a young black man when your mom tells you you’re a king and history tells you you’re dispensable? I love everything about “Summertime” -- the fuzzy production, his baritone curving over lyrics both complicated and simple. But what sticks with me most is the feeling that a young man has just done the most difficult thing possible -- opened up and asked for connection.

3. St. Vincent - Teenage Talk

I’ve never liked St. Vincent before, but this song includes all my favorite non-rap lyrics of 2015. I’m bad with nostalgia, and listening to this piece, I can feel so distinctly what it was to be a teenager in the South, romping around town with my best friend Lizz. “That was before we had made any terrible mistakes.” It’s all there -- the infinite goodness of being young and drunk and closer to friends than you’ll ever be as an adult. And yet, as the song progresses, Annie Clark delivers the killer lines that only an adult could know to be true: “I don't think the past is better, better / Just ‘cause it's encased in glass.” All those memories become lies that haunt you. Life was never that simple, but the belief that it was will make you forever unsatisfied later in life. The final stanza gnawed at me all year: “How do you see me now? Now that I'm a little bit older? Nevermind the albatross smoldering on my shoulder.”

4. Kendrick Lamar - The Blacker the Berry

I can think of no more exhilarating musical moment this year than when Lamar released “The Blacker the Berry.” You thought he went commercial with “i?” This track came out roaring, promising that Lamar gives zero f*** about selling singles. It was a harbinger of the monster, challenging record to come, unabashed and percussive, all the anger of 2015 distilled. If “i” was Martin Luther King, “The Blacker the Berry” was Malcolm X: “Came from the bottom of mankind: My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide. You hate me, don't you? You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture. You're f** evil. I want you to recognize I'm a proud monkey." The song builds and builds as Lamar promises he'll tell you by the end of the song why he is the biggest hypocrite of 2015. Those final lines make me break down every time. You think he's angry? “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street, when gang banging make me kill a n*** black than me?”

5. Drake - Know Yourself

He’s rapping celebration, running around with money and friends, but the creeping, heavy-lidded beat suggests that double-entendre of “WOEs” is intentional. Is this dude happy? I preferred imagining a physical embodiment of pain, a man crashing through life with sadness in a sidecar.

6. Justin Bieber - Where Are U Now / Sorry

Different songs, but addicting for the same reasons -- Bieber’s soothing voice anchors Skrillex’s tropical vibes. These are the kinds of infectious dancehall anthems that make you move unabashed.

7. Tame Impala - Let it Happen

The year’s most sonically satisfying song. So lush.

8. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Sunday Candy

Chance the Rapper doesn’t need many lines to paint a full portrait of his grandmother. He’s an economical rapper, able to tell the story of his own life and the matriarch who kept him in line with only 11 bars. He even sneaks in a line reminding you that she is a singular woman -- "You singing, too, but your grandma ain't my grandma.” His is a spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child type, a church bound Chicagoan who paid and lit his way.

9. Vince Staples - Lift Me Up

Each verse is dense with story. He's talking about big issues -- race relations, wealth, changing social classes, capitalism -- but he manages to paint neat little character portraits in here, too. He knows the contradictions that come with being a banger and a rapper: "We love our neighborhood, so all my brother bang the hood ... All these white folks chanting when I asked 'em where my n*** at? Goin' crazy, got me goin' crazy, I can't get wit' that. Wonder if they know, I know they won't go where we kick it at."

10. Alabama Shakes - Gimme All Your Love

This song doesn’t need many lyrics to be powerful. Brittany Howard’s voice veers from rasp to sword, cutting through the organ and guitar and all else clattering here. The little music solo that starts at 2:15 is one of my favorite parts of any song this year.

11. D’Angelo & The Vanguard - Really Love

He has the most delicate touch.

12. Miguel - Coffee

13. Erykah Badu - Cel U Lar Device

Just when we grew tired of “Hotline Bling,” Badu flipped and slowed it down.

14. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Necessary Evil

15. Carly Rae Jepsen - All That

As if Blood Orange songs weren’t good enough sun by Dev Haynes, he one-ups his own self by handing the microphone over to Jepsen.

16. Tame Impala - The Less I Know The Better

17. Abraham Blue - Let’s Escape (J-Louis Edition)

18. Mura Masa - Lovesick

19. Zhu X Skrillex X They - Working for It

20. Selena Gomez - Good for You

21. Alabama Shakes - Don’t Wanna Fight

22. Vince Staples - Lemme Know (featuring Jhene Aiko)

23. Janelle Monae & Jidenna - Yoga

Like a Rihanna song, only better. Those tongue-twisting Jidenna bars are the stuff of summer fun

24. The Internet - Just Sayin’

25. D’Angelo & The Vanguard - Another Life

26. Jeremih - Impatient

I can’t believe he’s not more of a star. His songs have the best of The-Dream and Trey Songz with a better, rangier voice. He sounds his best here. I would have placed this song higher if it didn’t have that gross Ty Dolla $ign rap.

27. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Miracle

28. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-love

The thesis-statement for a beautiful concept album on polyamory starts off with one hell of a line: “Multi-Love checked into my heart and trashed it like a hotel room.”

29. Young Thug - Constantly Hating

Like Little Wayne, only better. I always feel a little guilty vibing to Young Thug, but he is just so technically skilled. He has the kind of naturally weird voice Fetty Wap dreams and tinkers to have.

30. Erykah Badu - Phone Down

There’s basically one lyric in this song -- “I can make you put your phone down” -- but in these cell-obsessed times, is there any greater declaration of love?

31. With You - Ghost (featuring Vince Staples)

32. Kendrick Lamar - King Kunta

So many of the stories about people of color tend to focus on the struggle, the moment Kunta Kinte’s foot is chopped off. Look beyond, Lamar urges. “Black man takin’ no losses. B*****, where were you when I was walkin?”

33. Vince Staples - Norf Norf

34. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Slip Slide

The return of Busta Rhymes!

35. Drake - Back to Back

The return of the rap battle! This is LOL funny, hashtag rap turned smart barbs. It’s so not serious music in a year heavy on the heavy, but Drake is in on the joke.

36. Missy Elliott - WTF (Featuring Pharrell)  

I can’t think of many comebacks as satisfying as this one. It’s as epic and danceable as Missy ever has been.

37. Kamasi Washington - Re Run Home

The most epic song on “The Epic.” This song is clash and restraint, Washington’s tenor sax winds and climbs, skats then pulls back. It is the sound of having played a whole sweaty set in a club. I can never listen to another song right after.

38. Calvin Harris - How Deep is Your Love (featuring Disciples)

Can’t help dancing to this.

39. Kerbside Collection - Boganger

This Australian jazz funk put out a super solid album this year. This is the standout track.

40. Grimes - California

41. The Weeknd - The Hills

Maybe we believed after “House of Balloons” that Abel Tesfaye would grow out of the all dark scenarios. “The Beauty Behind the Madness” makes clear he hasn’t. He isn't looking for love or anything real. I can’t think of many sadder lines this year than this: “When I’m f***** up, that’s the real me.”

42. Jamie XX - I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times) (featuring Young Thug)

This is all sonic pleasure. If vile lyrics dampen the mood, but I try to tune the words out, hearing Young Thug’s crazy voice as just another slap-happy instrument in this polyphony.

43.  D’Angelo & The Vanguard - Back to the Future (Part I)

44. Jay Prince - Polaroids

Smooth-grooving hook that sounds like a ‘90s throwback

45. Grimes - Flesh Without Blood

46. Vince Staples - Might Be Wrong

Vince Staples pulls back from storyteller mode to analyze the world of violence around him, a world in which black men who have nothing still have a lot to lose. Maybe gang violence or crime will kill him. Why risk it? The song’s most heartbreaking line reveals: "You should seen the crib, though, so fucking nice ..."

47. Demi Lovato - Cool for the Summer

48. Jeremih - Oui

49. Courtney Barnett - Depreston

50. The Electric Peanut Butter Company - Mr. Pink

51. Raury - Her

52. Grimes - Art Angels

53. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion

54. Drake - Legend

55. Erykah Badu - Hello (Featuring Andre 3000)

56. Seoul - Stay With Us

57. Leon Bridges - Coming Home

58. Fetty Wap - Trap Queen / My Way

59. Chance the Rapper - Israel (featuring Noname Gypsy)

60. The Weeknd - Often

61. Jeremih - Pass Dat

62. Kamasi Washington - Final Thought

63. Mark Ronson - Feel Right (Featuring Mystikal)

64. Jay Prince - The Trip (Featuring Fabienne)

65. Nicole Cruz - Colibria

66. Carly Rae Jepsen - I Really Like You

67. Chvrches - Afterglow

68. Jamie xx - Gosh

69. A.CHAL - Gazi

70. Adelle - Hello

71. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Go

72. Post Malone - White Iverson

73. Justin Bieber - What Do You Mean?

74. Rihanna - FourFiveSeconds (Featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney)

75. Hudson Mohawke - Ryderz

Best Albums of 2015

I grew up in the golden age of East Coast hip-hop. Jay-Z, Nas and Biggie told stories about the neighborhoods I grew up in. They were also sly and fun, as much about the hook and the come-up as the projects that formed them.

Their music was part charm and part trapping. But the East Coast album that has stayed with me for 20 years is Nas’ “Illmatic.” His was an album both of and apart from his geography. New York has never really delivered a predecessor. California has.

For me, the year’s two best albums are bleak West Coast narratives, two men laying bare what it means to be a black man in Southern California now. Kendrick Lamar and Vince Staples deal in similar fare on “To Pimp a Butterfly” and “Summertime ‘06.” Both rap about violence and vulnerability and the conundrum of having to live two lives at once. The appointed good guys are bad and the bad guys are both savior and wrecker.

“To Pimp a Butterfly” is dizzying and relentless, the kind of album that can only be summed up with variations on the word genius. His yelps are anthems, his pain and fury the rallying cries that will grab life back from oppressors. But it’s “Summertime ‘06” that stuck with me this year.  Never has violence felt so close at hand. Staples’ narrator is a boy with no good options, a boy suddenly a man still reaching for any anchor. He’s not as fast a rapper as Lamar is, but his lines are dense ( "My momma was a Christian, Crip walkin' on blue-waters" ) and nimble (“From the city where the skinny carry strong heat”). And if the lyrics left any doubts, the creeping beats remind you: There is no light here. Parks are turf to dominate, seagulls sound like vultures.

Lamar’s album, too, is full of darkness, but he’s writing from a later vantage point. “Butterfly” is the work of a man in his prime, a man for whom success and deliverance have only further complicated life. His narrator doesn’t need those outside validations. He will claim success for himself. When “i” came out, people lobbed so many criticisms that Lamar had gone soft and cheesy. But it’s the perfect climax to “Butterfly.” We’ve felt that awful struggle. We know how hard life will continue to be. The tension is so thick that when Lamar sings, “I love myself,” it feels like the year’s most radical statement.

My other favorite albums range from lush, funky disco ("Currents," "Multi-Love") to neo-soul both long-gestating and quickly formed ("Black Messiah," "But You Cain't Use My Phone.") The year's best instrument was either Kamasi Washington's sax or Brittany Howard's voice. It was a fun year in pop, too, and I'm just the kind of mass consumer that listens to all of those Bieber songs with a goofy smile on my face.

1. Vince Staples - Summertime '06

2. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly

3. Alabama Shakes - Sound & Color

4. Tame Impala - Currents

5. D’Angelo & The Vanguard - Black Messiah

6. Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - Surf

7. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Multi-Love

8. Erykah Badu - But You Cain't Use My Phone

9. Drake - If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

10. Jeremih - Late Nights

11. Grimes - Art Angels

12. The Internet - Ego Death

13. Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

14. Carly Rae Jepsen - E*MO*TION

15. Justin Bieber - Purpose

Honorable mentions: Kamasi Washington - The Epic, Kerbside Collection - Boganger

'I'm not an it'

I traveled to rural Oregon, where a small community showed up to protest administrator's decision to allow a transgender teenager to use the boys bathroom. Schools across the country are fielding these debates. Monday night, two dozen people signed up to testify against Elliot. After an hour or two of comments, he got up and spoke. Here's the story that came of it:

No one testified at the Dallas School Board meeting in November. People in this working class Oregon town tend to trust their elected officials. But the chairs filled so fast at December's meeting volunteers had to bring in dozens of extras.

Most in the crowd of 75 didn't look up when Elliot Yoder slipped in five minutes late, red hair peeking out from beneath an Oakland Raiders cap. The 14-year-old leaned against the wall, and his 5-foot-1-inch frame suddenly seemed even smaller. His eyes widened behind black plastic frame glasses.

He was the reason they were all there.

This fall, Dallas School District officials sent a letter to the 67 students in Yoder's gym class announcing they would allow an unnamed transgender student to use the boys locker room, the facility that matched his gender identity but not his anatomy.

Many school districts are seeing students come out for the first time, sometimes as early as elementary school. Rural and urban districts alike are struggling to decide which locker and bathrooms those students should use.

The U.S. Department of Education ruled in early November that an Illinois school district violated federal Title IX regulations when administrators prevented a transgender female from using the girls' facilities. The federal ruling applied only to one student, but school districts across the country have paid attention, believing that a precedent was set.

In Dallas, a town of 15,000 just west of Salem, district lawyers told school officials that enforcement of Title IX rules had changed "significantly" in recent years: The law passed in 1972 to ensure women had equal access to education now protects transgender students from discrimination.

The letter Dallas administrators sent home with students Nov. 16 explained their decision wasn't up for debate.

That didn't sit well with Dallas residents, who packed the December school board meeting even though the issue wasn't on the agenda. The audience fidgeted as board members cycled through reports about the holiday bazaar, a robotics competition and the Oregon School Board Association's annual convention.

Finally, the testimony began.

Yoder, the student in question, settled into a seat near the back with a deep sigh.

"This isn't going to be fun," he whispered.

READ THE REST ON OREGONLIVE.COM

Counting crows

Many of my coworkers are retiring this month, including Jeff, a longtime political guru who spends winter afternoons pressing legislators and watching for crows.