Billboard's 50 Best Albums of 2018 (So Far)

Amber Mark is an open book. In 2017, the New York-based singer/songwriter’s debut EP, *3:33am*, grieved for her late mother with staggering honesty. On this follow-up, she chooses to work through faltering love, swapping some of *3:33am*’s vulnerability for shape-up-or-ship-out bite—all wrapped in a velvet glove of lounge- and house-tinged R&B. Throughout, Mark’s subtle majesty recalls Sade, who’s given her enthusiastic approval to the spare, bass-heavy cover of her 1988 single “Love Is Stronger Than Pride.”

In 2016, Alex Turner received a piano for his 30th birthday and started playing seriously for the first time in over 20 years. Songs for Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album eventually emerged—a collection of brooding, cosmic lounge-pop that’s typical of the band only in its disdain for playing it safe. Here, light-years from their previous riff-driven adventures, melodies unspool slowly but stick faster with every listen. A watering hole on the moon provides the conceptual framework for Turner to muse on life, pop culture, and technology with heavy-lidded introspection. “I need to spend less time stood around in bars/Waffling on to strangers about martial arts,” he sighs on “She Looks Like Fun.” He shouldn’t be hasty: Wherever he finds inspiration, it takes his band to daring new places.

Motivated by the words of a teacher who thought her dreams of making music were too fanciful, Ashley McBryde titled her debut album *Girl Going Nowhere*. Suggesting quite the opposite, the Arkansas singer/songwriter brings a rock edge to classic country, sharing the hard-won wisdom of a decade of singing in bars. Breakthrough track “A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega” is a tribute to the uplifting power of music in tough times, but occasionally the assured swagger in her voice gives way to vulnerability and reflection, most stirringly on “Andy,” a tale of enduring love.

Swapping producer Chris Coady for Spaceman 3\'s Pete \"Sonic Boom\" Kember, Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand fully embrace their bliss on *7*, their haziest, dreamiest album yet. They move seamlessly from meditative to trippy, adopting swelling, stately, Spector-swilling-martinis-with-Eno arrangements on \"Last Ride\" and entering a reverb-drenched citadel of synths on \"L\'Inconnue.” Seeming more unabashedly themselves than ever, this is the sound of Beach House doubling down on the aqueous dream-pop perfection that made them indie heroes in the first place.

7 is our 7th full-length record. At its release, we will have been a band for over 13 years. We have now written and released a total of 77 songs together. Last year, we released an album of b-sides and rarities. It felt like a good step for us. It helped us clean the creative closet, put the past to bed, and start anew. Throughout the process of recording 7, our goal was rebirth and rejuvenation. We wanted to rethink old methods and shed some self-imposed limitations. In the past, we often limited our writing to parts that we could perform live. On 7, we decided to follow whatever came naturally. As a result, there are some songs with no guitar, and some without keyboard. There are songs with layers and production that we could never recreate live, and that is exciting to us. Basically, we let our creative moods, instead of instrumentation, dictate the album’s feel. In the past, the economics of recording have dictated that we write for a year, go to the studio, and record the entire record as quickly as possible. We have always hated this because by the time the recording happens, a certain excitement about older songs has often been lost. This time, we built a "home" studio, and began all of the songs there. Whenever we had a group of 3-4 songs that we were excited about, we would go to a “proper” recording studio and finish recording them there. This way, the amount of time between the original idea and the finished song was pretty short (of the album’s 11 songs, 8 were finished at Carriage House in Stamford, CT and 2 at Palmetto Studio in Los Angeles). 7 didn’t have a producer in the traditional sense. We much preferred this, as it felt like the ideas drove the creativity, not any one person’s process. James Barone, who became our live drummer in 2016, played on the entire record. His tastes and the trust we have in him really helped us keep rhythm at the center of a lot of these songs. We also worked with Sonic Boom (Peter Kember). Peter became a great force on this record, in the shedding of conventions and in helping to keep the songs alive, fresh and protected from the destructive forces of recording studio over-production/over-perfection. The societal insanity of 2016-17 was also deeply influential, as it must be for most artists these days. Looking back, there is quite a bit of chaos happening in these songs, and a pervasive dark field that we had little control over. The discussions surrounding women’s issues were a constant source of inspiration and questioning. The energy, lyrics and moods of much of this record grew from ruminations on the roles, pressures and conditions that our society places on women, past and present. The twisted double edge of glamour, with its perils and perfect moments, was an endless source (see “L’Inconnue,” “Drunk in LA,” “Woo,” “Girl Of The Year,” “Last Ride”). In a more general sense, we are interested by the human mind's (and nature’s) tendency to create forces equal and opposite to those present. Thematically, this record often deals with the beauty that arises in dealing with darkness; the empathy and love that grows from collective trauma; the place one reaches when they accept rather than deny (see “Dark Spring,” “Pay No Mind,” “Lemon Glow,” “Dive,” “Black Car,” “Lose Your Smile”). The title, 7, itself is simply a number that represents our seventh record. We hoped its simplicity would encourage people to look inside. No title using words that we could find felt like an appropriate summation of the album. The number 7 does represent some interesting connections in numerology. 1 and 7 have always shared a common look, so 7 feels like the perfect step in the sequence to act as a restart or “semi-first.” Most early religions also had a fascination with 7 as being the highest level of spirituality, as in "Seventh Heaven.” At our best creative moments, we felt we were channeling some kind of heavy truth, and we sincerely hope the listeners will feel that. Much Love, Beach House

After exhilarating dips into guitar rock and country, Carlile returns to her sweet spot: tear-jerking Americana that shows off her crackling croon. It’s her sixth album and her most moving, with vulnerable outsider anthems rooted in healing and hope. There are ballads about addiction (“Sugartooth”), suicide (“Fulton County Jane Doe”), heartbreak (“Every Time I Hear That Song”), and starting over (“Harder to Forgive”), but underneath the hard truths is plenty of optimism. In “The Joke,” a song for kids who don’t fit traditional roles, she offers a light at the end of the tunnel: “I’ve been to the movies/I’ve seen how it ends/And the joke’s on them.”

Anchored by the bittersweet-but-bumping smash \"Havana,\" the solo debut from Camila Cabello is a surprisingly candid affair, often disguising her soul-baring confessionals as irresistible slow jams. The former Fifth Harmony diva exults in the dangerous euphoria of love with aching electro-pop opener \"Never Be the Same\" and closes with a plea for emotional intimacy on the moody R&B anthem \"Into It.\" But while the album\'s peaks also include a pair of anguished piano ballads, *Camila* isn\'t just about romantic turmoil: \"Inside Out” is a playful, tropical-tinged pledge of devotion.

Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow,” the most chantable song of 2017, introduced the Bronx MC’s lively around-the-way-girl persona to the world. Her debut album, *Invasion of Privacy*, reveals more of Cardi\'s layers, the MC leaning forcefully into her many influences. “I Like It,” featuring Bad Bunny and J Balvin, is a nod to her Afro-Caribbean roots, while “Bickenhead” reimagines Project Pat’s battle-of-the-sexes classic “Chickenhead” as a hustler’s anthem. There are lyrical winks at NYC culture (“Flexing on b\*tches as hard as I can/Eating halal, driving a Lam”), but Cardi also hits on universal moments, like going back and forth with a lover (“Ring”) and reckoning with infidelity (“Thru Your Phone”).

For many pop stars facing down their second album, “maturity” means dour confessionals, but Charlie Puth flips the script, bringing grown-up emotion to these easy-to-love grooves. On first listen to the nakedly romantic lyrics and bump-and-grind beats of *Voicenotes*, it may be hard to imagine that this is the same guy behind the peppy acoustic ballads and big-budget pop that filled his 2016 debut, *Nine Track Mind*. “Attention” is the steamy, bass-up-front strut designed to flip Puth’s public persona from grinning nice guy to wounded R&B player, and “Done for Me” seals the deal with its electro-funk duet with Kehlani. But it’s the album’s deeper cuts that really reveal Puth’s uncanny feel for classic soul music, including the harmony-rich Boyz II Men collab “If You Leave Me Now” and the throwback-disco rush of the Hall and Oates cowrite “Slow It Down.”

German electronic producer DJ Koze has always been a self-selecting outsider, the kind of artist who sits blissfully on the sidelines of the big picture while the world passes him by. His third proper studio album unfolds like a daydream: breezy, sunny, and strangely beautiful, filled with ideas that don’t make sense until they suddenly—thrillingly—do. As with 2013’s *Amygdala* (as well as his endlessly inventive DJ sets and remixes), the style here is curiously out of time, touching on house (“Pick Up”), hip-hop (“Colors of Autum”), and downtempo soul (“Scratch That”), all with a slightly psychedelic twist that keeps everything hovering an inch or two off the floor. Fashion is fine, but it’s no match for a muse.

Transangelic Exodus, Ezra Furman’s second album for Bella Union, is a new landmark for the American singer-songwriter: “not a concept record, but almost a novel, or a cluster of stories on a theme, a combination of fiction and a half-true memoir,” according to its author. “A personal companion for a paranoid road trip. A queer outlaw saga.” The music is as much of an intense, dramatic event, full of brilliant hooks, with an equally evolved approach to recorded sound to match Furman’s narrative vision. In honour of this shift, his backing band has been newly christened: The Boy-Friends are dead, long live The Visions. In other words, the man who embodies the title of his last album Perpetual Motion People is still on the move... Or in the vernacular of the new album, on the run. “The narrative thread,” Furman declares, “is I’m in love with an angel, and a government is after us, and we have to leave home because angels are illegal, as is harbouring angels. The term ‘transangelic’ refers to the fact people become angels because they grow wings. The have an operation, and they’re transformed. And it causes panic because some people think it’s contagious, or it should just be outlawed. “The album still works without the back story, though,” he vouches. “What’s essential is the mood - paranoid, authoritarian, the way certain people are stigmatised. It’s a theme in American life right now, and other so-called democracies.” After “Perpetual Motion People” was released in July 2015, Furman had moved back from California (Oakland) to his home town of Chicago. But after a year, he returned to the west coast (Berkeley this time). “I just seem to keep moving,” he sighs. Still, Transangelic Exodus was mostly recorded – as all Furman's records have been since 2011 - at his bandmate (saxophonist/producer) Tim Sandusky’s Ballistico Studios in Chicago, and with the other Visions - Jorgen Jorgensen (bass, and on this album, cello), Ben Joseph (keyboards, guitar) and Sam Durkes (drums/percussion). Just as Furman’s band hasn’t really changed, so his musical DNA remains intact – a thrilling, literate form of garage-punk rooted in The Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman and ‘50s rock’n’roll. But Transangelic Exodus is noticeably different to its predecessors. “2016 was a hard year,” Furman recalls. “While the political and cultural conversation devolved in a very threatening way, we travelled and toured a lot. We saw ourselves coming to the end of what we were, and we wanted to become something new.” Furman cites Vampire Weekend’s “Modern Vampires Of The City”, Beck’s “Odelay”, Sparklehorse’s “It’s A Wonderful Life”, Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly”, Kayne West’s Yeezus, Angel Olsen’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness and Tune-Yards’ Who Kill – “artists making the most interesting music with the available resources” – as influences on Transangelic Exodus, plus Brian Wilson, Bruce Springsteen and James Baldwin’s ground-breaking, gay-themed 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room. “My previous records were original in their own way, but got classified as an off-kilter version of a retro band, and I wanted something that sounded more original,” he explains. “So we took time off touring, and made sure we took time with every song. I demoed with different band members, and then combined different demos – some parts even made the final album. So, the sound is more chopped up, edited, affected, rearranged.” One prime example is the album’s lead single ‘Driving Down To LA’, a sparse, but explosive, mix of doo-wop and digital crunch. Another is the haunting ‘Compulsive Liar’. “I wrote it as a ballad on a classical acoustic guitar, but we made it stranger, which brought out the emotion of the lyric more than it would have in its original form,” Furman says. “It’s less predictable; you don’t know where the song might go, and that makes me happy.” Furman once said, “The opening lines of my records tend to be summary statements.” So, what does, “I woke up bleeding in the crotch of a tree / TV blaring on the wall above the coffee machine” (from ‘Suck The Blood From My Wounds’) say about Transangelic Exodus? “I like the opening lines so much, I had to keep them even though they don’t make a lot of sense! You’re dropped into this story or situation, unsure where you are or what’s going on, and suddenly you’re moving. That’s what being alive feels like to me. Unknown and intense. It’s a big part of the record’s mood.” Checking Furman’s successive album covers will show his personal journey, coming out as queer and gender-fluid, which the jagged, agitated ‘Maraschino-Red Dress $8.99 at Goodwill’ meets head on, namely “the painful experience of being a closeted gender-non-conforming person. Having ‘trans’ in the album title has a lot to do with being queer, like [album finale] ‘I Lost My Innocence’ [“…to a boy named Vincent”). That early experience marks the narrator for life. From a young age, because of issues surrounding gender and sexuality, I felt fated to have an outsider perspective. It radicalises you.” Transangelic Exodus addresses another kind of coming out, as Furman addresses his Jewish faith on record much more openly than before, from the shivery ballad ‘God Lifts Up the Lowly’ (which includes a verse in Hebrew) to the exquisite ‘Psalm 151’ and the line “I believe in God but I don't believe we're getting out of this one” in ‘Come Here Get Away From Me’, a heady blend of rock’n’roll rumble and ghostly clarinet. “There is a lot of longing and anger in those songs,” Furman reckons. “A longing for God, and God’s help, wondering how long this can go on. It feels like we’re in exile – the innocent, persecuted, oppressed and threatened. But it’s hard in pop culture to make explicitly religious statements, as many people – including myself - have been hurt by religion.” Part of Furman’s motivation is the, “fear of fascist takeover,” expressed in the video to ‘Driving Down To L.A’ (filmed in Virginia, and uncannily storyboarded before the state’s infamous Charlottesville “Unite The Right” rally), as Ezra and his angel are pursued by modern-day Nazis. “At school, we learned all about the Holocaust, and were invited to imagine what would happen if the Nazis invaded again. As white supremacy has become more explicitly institutionalised in the US, my childhood nightmares have started to show up in songs.” Crossing between love, gender, sexuality and religion, and singing in solidarity with the innocent, persecuted, oppressed and threatened, Ezra Furman has soundtracked the current fear and loathing across America like no other, while pushing ahead with his own agenda, always on the move.

Written over the course of 2016 and 2017 and recorded in the summer of the latter year by Frances Quinlan (songwriter/vocalist/rhythm guitar), Tyler Long (bass), Joe Reinhart (guitar), and Mark Quinlan (drums), the album addresses disappointment, particularly in man's misuse of power, and relates accounts from the periphery -- one's attempts to retreat from the lengthening shadows of tyrants, both historical and everyday. It considers what it’s like to cast off longheld and misguided perceptions, yet without the assurance of knowing what new ones will replace them. Much like on Hop Along’s first and second records, Get Disowned and Painted Shut, Quinlan seeks in real time to work through these issues. Throughout the album, one gets the sense that Quinlan is wandering in the thicket of a forest—a state of being that will feel familiar to longtime listeners—and on this outing, they haven’t left a trail of breadcrumbs behind them. The album’s artwork, which Quinlan painted themself, invites the listener into that forest, as well. “There is a terror in getting lost,” they say, “the woods are at the same time beautiful and horrifying.” This curious wandering gives the album, both lyrically and musically, a heightened dimensionality. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is, without question, Hop Along’s most dynamic and textured record yet. Self-produced and recorded at The Headroom in Philadelphia by Reinhart and Kyle Pulley, Bark Your Head Off, Dog features the familiar sounds that have always made the band allergic to genre: grunge, folk, punk, and power pop all appear, with inspiration from ELO to Elvis Costello to ‘70s girl group vocal arrangements. This time around, they’ve added strings, more intricate rhythms, lush harmonies (featuring Thin Lips’ Chrissy Tashjian), along with a momentary visit with a vocoder. In more than one place, Mark Quinlan drums like he’s at a disco with Built to Spill. Most significantly, Bark Your Head Off, Dog shows the band at its strongest and most cohesive. Hop Along (which originally began as Quinlan’s solo project under the moniker Hop Along, Queen Ansleis) has never sounded so deliberate, so balanced. “So strange to be shaped by such strange men” is a line that repeats on more than one song on the album. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot. That I just deferred to men throughout my life,” Quinlan says. “But by thinking you’re powerless, you’re really robbing yourself. I’m at a point in my life where I’m saying instead, ‘Well, what can I do?’”

Released in 2018, J. Cole’s fifth studio album came together in just two weeks, after Cole shared the stage with fellow voice-of-a-generation rapper Kendrick Lamar during his *DAMN.* tour, and decided he was ready for another anthemic body of work. The result, *KOD*, is riddled with social messages and symbolism, starting with the title itself, which is an acronym for many things: Kids on Drugs, Kill our Demons, and King Overdosed. The colorful album art, meanwhile, displays children taking pills, snorting cocaine, smoking weed, and sipping lean (when you look closer, the children can be seen morphing into morbid figures, under the cloak of a jewel-encrusted king). The lyrics on *KOD* are even more provocative, and find Cole leaning inward, unpacking his own traumas, demons, and vices, warning about unhealthy dependencies to materialism and drugs. On “Once an Addict,” the platinum-selling rapper uses his mother’s story to ruminate on the intergenerational effects of alcoholism, while “Kevin’s Heart” finds him using comedian Kevin Hart’s publicized infidelities as a vehicle to discuss Cole’s own internal struggles with monogamy. These are weighty topics. But listeners didn’t mind: *KOD* not only topped the album charts, it broke numerous streaming records on its first day of release.

While writing his second album, UK singer/songwriter James Bay adopted a David Bowie quote as his mission statement: “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.” Secretly hunkered down in a basement studio when he was supposed to be on a six-month break, Bay felt free to experiment. He reemerged with a questing set of songs that crosses into simmering funk-rock, taut alt-pop, and folky electro-R&B from Bon Iver’s neck of the woods. The risk in diverting from the Americana-tinged pop-rock of his GRAMMY®-nominated debut, *Chaos and the Calm*, is mitigated by unshakable melodies and Bay’s versatile voice, which continues to crackle with the joy and pain of love. Mission accomplished.

After two concept albums and a string of roles in Hollywood blockbusters, one of music’s fiercest visionaries sheds her alter egos and steps out as herself. Buckle up: Human Monáe wields twice the power of any sci-fi character. In this confessional, far-reaching triumph, she dreams of a world in which love wins (“Pynk\") and women of color have agency (“Django Jane”). Featuring guest appearances from Brian Wilson, Grimes, and Pharrell—and bearing the clear influence of Prince, Monae’s late mentor—*Dirty Computer* is as uncompromising and mighty as it is graceful and fun. “I’m the venom and the antidote,” she wails in “I Like That,” a song about embracing these very contradictions. “Take a different type of girl to keep the whole world afloat.”

With hints of Americana and help from Chris Stapleton, the pop superstar enters a new chapter. Dually inspired by his Tennessee roots and growing family—Timberlake\'s son, Silas, was born in 2015—*Man of the Woods* imbues his signature R&B grooves with harmonica and fiddle. It’s a bold move, but he never drifts too far from home. \"The Hard Stuff” and Stapleton collaboration “Say Something” are pop-rock ballads with flickers of Nashville, while the Timbaland-assisted “Filthy” and The Neptunes-produced “Higher Higher” are natural continuations of his beat-minded classics (think: “SexyBack” and “Suit & Tie”). The standout? “Morning Light,” a neo-soul duet with Alicia Keys that’s so textured and expressive, it makes you wonder if there’s anything JT can’t do.

*“Excited for you to sit back and experience *Golden Hour* in a whole new, sonically revolutionized way,” Kacey Musgraves tells Apple Music. “You’re going to hear how I wanted you to hear it in my head. Every layer. Every nuance. Surrounding you.”* Since emerging in 2013 as a slyly progressive lyricist, Kacey Musgraves has slipped radical ideas into traditional arrangements palatable enough for Nashville\'s old guard and prudently changed country music\'s narrative. On *Golden Hour*, she continues to broaden the genre\'s horizons by deftly incorporating unfamiliar sounds—Bee Gees-inspired disco flourish (“High Horse”), pulsating drums, and synth-pop shimmer (“Velvet Elvis”)—into songs that could still shine on country radio. Those details are taken to a whole new level in Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. Most endearing, perhaps, is “Oh, What a World,” her free-spirited ode to the magic of humankind that was written in the glow of an acid trip. It’s all so graceful and low-key that even the toughest country purists will find themselves swaying along.

It was worth the wait for Colombian-American songstress Kali Uchis’s first full-length. A romantic collage of artists and sounds she’s encountered along the way—Tyler, The Creator and Bootsy Collins on “After the Storm”, and Gorillaz’ Damon Albarn on the surfy “In My Dreams”—the album draws on Latin pop (“Nuestro Planeta”), hypnotic R&B (“Just a Stranger”), and high-flying psych-rock (“Tomorrow,” with production from Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker). It’s a sign of Uchis’ artistic vision that she pulled so many creative minds into a single body of work that sounds so distinctly her own.

On his brilliant 2015 debut album, *Coming Home*, Texas singer/songwriter Leon Bridges invited comparisons to Sam Cooke and Otis Redding with his authentic take on soul. *Good Thing*, his 2018 follow-up, finds Bridges leaving the ’50 and ’60s, instead embracing ’70s icons like The Stylistics (“Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand”) and Chic (“You Don’t Know”). More surprises come in “If It Feels Good (Then It Must Be)” and “Bad Bad News,” contemporary jams that show he can swag it out with the likes of Usher and Pharrell too. Bridges\' warm tenor is sturdy and smoky as mesquite wood as he combines deep emotions and nimble wordplay on “Beyond,” “Forgive You,” and “Georgia to Texas”—a moving story of his family’s history.

On “Welcome to the Rodeo,” the elastic intro to *Life of a Dark Rose*, Lil Skies proclaims that he’d tattooed his face to keep himself committed to music. The Pennsylvania native’s faith paid off before he was old enough to drink—his “Red Roses” was one of 2017\'s biggest underdog success stories. That song, while melodic and ethereal, betrays the impressive lyrical precision that Skies packs into much of *Life of a Dark Rose*. He\'s a dynamic vocalist and wordsmith, just as prepared to ride the emo guitar line of “Cloudy Skies” as he is to rattle off complex couplets over spacey chimes on “Signs of Jealousy.”

Lucy Dacus is done thinking small. After her 2016 debut "No Burden" won her unanimous acclaim as one of rock’s most promising new voices, Dacus returns with Historian, a remarkably assured 10-track statement of intent. It finds her unafraid to take on the big questions — the life-or-death reckonings, and the ones that just feel that way. It’s a record full of bracing realizations, tearful declarations and moments of hard-won peace, expressed in lyrics that feel destined for countless yearbook quotes and first tattoos. Dacus and her band recorded the album in Nashville last March, re-teaming with No Burden producer Collin Pastore, and mixed it a few months later with A-list studio wizard John Congleton. The sound they created, with substantial input from multi-instrumentalist and live guitarist Jacob Blizard, is far richer and fuller than the debut — an outward flowering of dynamic, living, breathing rock and roll. Dacus’ remarkable sense of melody and composition are the driving force throughout, giving Historian the immersive feel of an album made by an artist in full command of her powers. The year leading up to "Historian," with its electoral disasters and other assorted heartbreaks, has been a rough one for many of us, Dacus included. She found solace in crafting a thoughtful narrative arc, writing a concept album about cautious optimism in the face of adversity, with thematic links between songs that reveal themselves on repeat listens. “It starts out dark and ends hopeful, but it gets darker in between; it goes to the deepest, darkest, place and then breaks,” she explains. “What I’m trying to say throughout the album is that hope survives, even in the face of the worst stuff.”

The gentle bounce of \"Felices los 4\" may have turned Maluma into an international sensation among listeners searching for romantic Latin pop with a club-ready edge. But the Colombian boundary breaker refuses to settle into a single groove on his third album, which ventures into styles far beyond the tender reggaetón of his breakthrough hit. R&B singer Jason Derulo helps lend the tropical pop of \"La Ex\" its bump-and-grind appeal, and legendary producer Timbaland juices the intimate \"Mi Declaración\" with hip-hop thump. But even without guest-star help, Maluma strikes out in new directions, bringing a seductive charm to the playful trap of \"How I Like It\" and baring his soul on the standout acoustic ballad \"Marinero.\"

MGMT’s music has always pinballed between accessibility and experiment, pop, and psychedelia—a tension that has produced some of the catchiest, most synapse-stretching music of the young century. Reining in the freak-outs of 2013’s *MGMT*, the band’s fourth album plumbs their (relatively) accessible side, refracting ’80s-style synth-pop (“Little Dark Age,” “One Thing Left to Try”) and ’60s jangle folk (“When You Die”) through a warped, surrealistic sense of humor—a sound at once cheerful and violent, eerie and inviting, light and thrillingly dark.

2018 seems light-years away from the time when Migos felt so implored to stake a claim in hip-hop that they’d call their sophomore album *Culture*. And yet, *Culture II* arrives only a year after its predecessor, Migos having fully established themselves as three of the most influential voices in rap. This latest offering is a flex, the group delivering no less than 24 tracks of their signature multisyllabic, baton-passing raps. The party starters are here (“Walk It Talk It,” “Auto Pilot”), but they’ve allotted themselves room to experiment, as on the funky Pharrell collab, “Stir Fry,” and Kanye West coproduction, “BBO (Bad Bitches Only),” built on a triumphant horn riff. Migos\' output just prior to *Culture II* may be what made them into superstars, but if their first offering of 2018 proves anything, it’s that there’s plenty more where that came from.

From the time he broke in 2008, Nipsey Hussle was one of the West Coast’s brightest hopes for a post-Snoop Dogg superstar. Though he\'d go on to deliver numerous classic street-level projects in the time since, *Victory Lap* is officially billed as Hussle’s debut. The album is rife with the neo-G-funk sound that made his name (“Last Time That I Checc’d,” “Dedication”) as well as the platforms he\'s most proud of: turf-life activism and black business advocacy (“Young N\*\*\*a,” “Million While You Young”). The clout of guests like Puff Daddy, Kendrick Lamar, and Cee-Lo Green is not to be understated, but Hussle’s collaborators, no matter their own fame, understand his importance.

He’s been labeled a hip–hop artist, but as the song says, Post Malone is a rockstar too. His second album regales fans with tales of the hedonism and excess that 2016’s astoundingly popular *Stoney* afforded him. The *beerbongs & bentleys* universe is one of partying, girls, money, and Saint Laurent clothes, but he makes no secret of the downsides to success. Money is everything—except true happiness, and this tenderness adds a dark depth to his addictive songs. This album, like his previous releases, proves that Post holds the recipe for the perfect chart-topper: a wild lifestyle, exceptionally catchy melodies, and the ability to fit Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee and heartfelt acoustic ballads alongside fiery features from Nicki Minaj, YG, and 21 Savage.

Back when he was still one-half of Clipse, Pusha-T dazzled listeners of the Virginia duo\'s mixtape series *We Got It 4 Cheap* by annihilating popular beats of the day. The project\'s sole criticism was that the production was already so good, it could carry anyone. *DAYTONA*, copiloted by hip-hop production genius Kanye West, upends that conceit, with contemporary boom-bap built from luscious soul samples that would swallow a lesser MC. With Pusha at the absolute top of his game, *DAYTONA* is somehow more than the sum of its parts, a fact the rapper acknowledges proudly on “The Games We Play”: “To all of my young n\*\*\*\*s/I am your Ghost and your Rae/This is my Purple Tape.”

The complementary nature of the relationship between Rae Sremmurd members Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee is never more apparent than when each MC stands on his own. And they stand alone plenty on their third official offering: a triple-length package featuring *SR3MM* (an album as a duo) and their solo projects *Swaecation* and *Jxmtro*. Producer Mike WiLL Made-It oversees the collection, which has something for anyone who has ever enjoyed a Rae Sremmurd song. *SR3MM* expands upon the duo’s flawless record for party-starting, *Swaecation* allows Swae Lee to indulge in the type of melody he brought to French Montana’s “Unforgettable,” and *Jxmtro* gives Jxmmi space to work his most aggressive and inventive flows.

It only took Shawn Mendes three years to realize his pop dreams. After catching a wave of fame on Vine, he steered it into solo stardom with two chart-topping albums, a world tour, and a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. Then, the Toronto-area native got right to work on his third album, an adventurous voyage of texture and tempo, with songwriting support from pop heavyweights like Ed Sheeran, Julia Michaels, and John Mayer. Lyrically, he’s still the same Shawn—brooding, broken, heart on his sleeve—but age and experience have emboldened him; heartbreak is no longer a curb on his powers, but his creative fuel. With a skillful balance of poise and risk-taking, he explores slick funk (“Particular Taste”), soulful piano ballads (“Perfectly Wrong”), and Kings of Leon-inspired pop-rock (“In My Blood”), showing us just how much he’s capable of.

Clean presents Sophie Allison as a singular artist, wise beyond her years, with an emotional authenticity all her own. “It feels like my first real record,” says Allison. “It’s my first real statement.” It’s an emotional album, heavy on themes of growth, isolation, and change, but balanced by a lightness of touch, and with hooks to spare. Clean is a true step forward, a mature, powerful album from an artist just coming into her power.

Composed of eight international artists recruited from all over the globe, London-based cooperative Superorganism made waves with 2017’s woozily addictive hit “Something for Your M.I.N.D”. For their debut the octet lift city sounds and place them center stage—expect revving engines, arcade clatters, and fizzing soda cans. It’s a hybrid of laidback dream-pop (“Reflections on the Screen”) and sunshine-soaked psychedelic jams (“Everybody Wants to Be Famous”) that radiates pure joy. These weird and wonderful anthems are ready to transport you to summer, whatever the weather.

The Weeknd\'s 2016 album, *Starboy*, was the musical equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster: action-packed, star-studded, with a little something for everyone. Here, he returns to his unfiltered, art-house roots with a release so intimate and tortured, you’ll feel like a fly on his bedroom wall. Stuttering snares, gauzy production, and R-rated lyrics about sex and drugs (“I got two red pills to take the blues away,” he coos through a vocoder on “Privilege”) paint a vivid picture of a brooding Lothario—one that strongly resembles the dark artist we initially met on *House of Balloons*. This time around, he’s tapped gothic electro king Gesaffelstein to bring a sheen to the shadows with neon synths and fuzzy echoes that lift his signature anguish into new emotional heights.

On their second album, young hardcore heroes Turnstile slice, dice, and defy genres at every turn. Leadoff ripper \"Real Thing\" cranks a turbocharged riff against melodic backing vocals and a loungey piano outro, while \"Generator\" spins a Helmet-esque groove into a psych-grunge bridge and hyper-metallic guitar solo. Bassist Franz Lyons takes over for frontman Brendan Yates on the soaring staccato groove of \"Moon\" (which also features subtle backups from Sheer Mag\'s Tina Halladay) and \"Right to Be,\" which boasts spacey production from Diplo.

“Take me to the darkness/Hang me out to dry,” implores Underoath vocalist Spencer Chamberlain over the chiming keys and propulsive beat of “Rapture,” a particularly infectious track from the band’s first album in eight years. Embracing their shadow selves after disbanding in 2013, *Erase Me* finds the Floridian post-hardcore outfit reemerging with a kinetic set of pulsing pop anthems (“Wake Me,” “In Motion”), torrid industrial grooves (“Hold Your Breath,” “On My Teeth”), and soaring power ballads (“Ihateit,” “I Gave Up”), each amplified by expertly wielded electronics.