[dropcap]J[/dropcap]anuary tends to be the month when people make predictions about the year, but it is difficult to say where exactly 2015 might take us when this month has already seen a surprise collaboration between musical behemoths Kanye West and Paul McCartney. Where else can music possibly take us now that Yeezy has channelled his dead mother in an evocative song addressed to his daughter, accompanied by a Beatle on the keyboard? It’s hard to know but, nonetheless, we’ve strived to take a look at the rest of this month in the hopes of finding out. There are BBC Sound of 2015 winners Years & Years with their exuberant brand of electropop, as well as the Blog Sound of 2015 winner Låpsley, with her strangely pretty ambience. Sia and Nicki Minaj both continue to dominate, respectively – the former with the glitchy glitz of Elastic Heart and the latter with the certain brash nonchalance of Want Some More. Minaj makes the cut again with her guest role on Rae Sremmurd’s track Thro Sum Mo, which is similarly, fantastically in-your-face. Hip hop gets a further nod with tracks from the likes of Joey Bada$$ (whose much-anticipated debut album is out this week) and the latest from A$AP Rocky (whose presence on the playlist is also a respectful acknowledgement of the tragic recent death of A$AP mob founder A$AP Yams). There’s a jaunty little number from D’Angelo, similarly upbeat R&B from Phony Ppl, odd, glimmering pop from Panda Bear and the gritty ostentatious sounds of Future Brown’s track with Tink. We get some fierce riotgrrrl from the long-awaited return of Sleater-Kinney, some wonderfully hazy, transcendent beats from Hashman Deejay and the lovely, electro-lullaby smoothness of Vallis Alps’ Young. The playlist ends with the Emile Haynie produced A Kiss Goodbye, featuring a veritable dream-team of contemporary pop with Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sampha and Devonté Hynes. It is impossible to say where 2015 will be going musically, but it seems acoustic is mainly out of the window anyway. And it might be a safe bet to make that the Ringo Starr/Young Jeezy collab isn’t coming anytime soon – but at this stage who even knows?