2016: The Last Obsession of Our Generation?

10 years already!

Tumblr accounts designed as personal moodboards. Work playing on repeat. Yeezys—both authentic and fake. The iconic Blonde. Snapchat’s dog filters and flower crowns. Instagram feeds edited through Retrica. Hours spent digging through SoundCloud, searching for a feeling and an aesthetic as much as a sound. That year, music went beyond our speakers and headphones. It became part of the clothes we wore, the images we shared, the captions we wrote, and the identities we were beginning to build online.

Music, fashion, the internet, and aesthetics all started speaking the same language.So naturally, one question remains: was 2016 the last great obsession of our generation?

Ten years later, we look back at five moments that explain why this year still captivates us.

ANTI, Blonde, The Life of Pablo...

Rihanna releases what remains her latest album to date. Frank Ocean delivers what is still his most recent studio project. Solange reshapes the boundaries of neo-soul, while Kanye is still at the height of his creative influence.

As if that wasn’t enough, 2016 also gives birth to projects like Lemonade, Views, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight, and Jeffery. Ten years later, this lineup feels almost like a photograph of a moment that can never be recreated.

The Iconic, Freestyle Freshman XXL

More than just a class photo.

Artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, Kodak Black, and 21 Savage arrived with a new set of codes: more melodic, more spontaneous, and deeply connected to the way a generation was discovering music through platforms like SoundCloud, YouTube, and Twitter.

This moment feels like the opening chapter of a new era in rap. What was initially perceived as a disruption eventually became the soundtrack of an entire generation.

The Timeless: Insecure

Issa Rae introduced something that was still rarely seen on television at the time: a series created by a Black woman, centered almost entirely around Black characters, without their identities being constantly defined by trauma or exceptional circumstances.

The show explores situationships, friendships, career ambitions, everyday awkward moments, and the uncertainty that comes with finding your place in the world. Carried by a carefully curated soundtrack and its intimate approach to storytelling, Insecure became the television equivalent of SZA’s “20 Something” before the song even existed.

It captured a generation at a very specific moment in life: the stage where you are trying to build yourself while still figuring out where you are going.

Maybe that is why, years later, it remains a comfort show for an entire generation.

Forever Young, Summer 2016

Work. One Dance. Controlla. Needed Me. Pick Up The Phone. Broccoli.

Ten years later, these songs still carry something unique: they still feel like summer.

More than just a collection of hits, the summer of 2016 feels like one of those rare moments when an entire generation shared the same soundtrack. The same songs were playing everywhere, becoming the background music of long vacations, late nights, and memories that were being created in real time.

But if that summer remains so vivid, it is also because it takes us back to a very specific moment in our lives. A time between middle school and high school, when summers felt endless, freedom was just beginning, and we were discovering the tastes and identities we were choosing for ourselves.

SoundCloud era

Long before TikTok, there were the late nights spent on SoundCloud.

One song would lead to another. Then another. And another. That’s how a generation discovered artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, Trippie Redd, Denzel Curry, and 21 Savage.

We were searching for the song that nobody else had found yet. Maybe that’s what the SoundCloud era truly represented: the last moment when discovering music still felt like an obsession.

"Summer's not as long as it used to be"

2016 is also, and above all, about albums like Blonde that continue to resonate far beyond nostalgia.

Maybe it is because they explore themes that never truly age: the passing of time, evolving relationships, and that strange feeling of watching an era drift away while never fully leaving it behind. In a way, 2016 still belongs to all of us.

A time before algorithms turned our shared cultural references into thousands of individual paths.