Papa Mbye Is Racket’s First-Ever Picked to Click Winner

We asked over 100 local music experts who their favorite new artists are. Here are the results.

11:53 AM CST on November 4, 2024

She’s Green, Papa Mbye, Ber

|Photos provided

As the aged among you may remember, for 30 years, City Pages ran an annual poll of local musicians, showgoers, and miscellaneous insiders to determine who was the best new musical artist in town.

Jim Walsh conducted the inaugural poll in 1991, and the first winner was the Macalester-formed alt-rock trio Walt Mink. The final champ was ambient Minneapolis electronic musician Iceblink in 2020, announced just weeks before the Star Tribune pulled the plug on City Pages.

Some of the poll’s top vote-getters went on to bigger things; some immediately disbanded or otherwise threw in the towel before the next poll. There was talk of a “Picked to Click” curse that doomed its winners. Some of the biggest names in Minnesota music, like Lizzo, topped the poll. Others, like Low and Atmosphere, were only runners up.

As with all institutions (most definitely including City Pages), people loved to complain about Picked to Click. It was a popularity contest. It turned art into a competition. It existed solely for advertisers. It had overstayed its welcome. In 2010, former CP music writer Jim Meyer argued (on the City Pages music blog, no less) that it was time to pull the plug.

So why bring it back?

First off, polls are fun. Asking 100+ people who pay attention to local music what they’re into these days? A genuine pleasure. And hopefully the source of a useful cheat sheet for more casual local music fans. (Though tabulating their responses—and triple-checking the math—can be a stupid amount of work.)

Also, let’s face it: Probably 90% of the music coverage at Racket falls to one 54-year-old cis straight white man who often needs a nap. And though I’m pretty broadminded for my demographic (and probably yours too), I do have my opinions and my areas of inexpertise. Hopefully, Picked to Click helps fill in the gaps.

And finally, for all the times Picked to Click supposedly “got it wrong” over the years, it offered a remarkable snapshot of who people were talking about at the time. (If only the Star Tribune thought those archives were worth preserving online.) Picked to Click often sucked at predicting the future. But when it came to capturing the present, it was unrivaled.

Which brings us to our own current moment, and Racket’s first Picked to Click winner. A terrific new album, Parcelles 16, helped vault this year’s winner, Papa Mbye, to the top of the poll, and deservedly so. The music he makes—drawing from rap, electronic music, and indie rock—would have been unthinkable in 1991, and he’s only getting started, but now, as a Picked to Click winner, he’s an indelible part of Minnesota music history.