Complex's 50 Best Albums of 2024

If there were any remaining doubts as to hip-hop’s MVP, consider the decision stamped: Kendrick Lamar officially won 2024. There were whispers that Compton’s finest was working on an album in the wake of his feud with Drake, a once-in-a-generation beef that kept jaws dropped for months. (Perhaps you’ve heard of a little song called “Not Like Us,” an immediate entry into the canon of all-time great diss tracks.) After a sold-out celebration at the Kia Forum, an armful of Grammy nods and streaming records, and the headlining slot at next year’s Super Bowl, Lamar ties up his biggest year yet with a bow with his sixth album, *GNX*, the most legitimately surprising surprise drop since *BEYONCÉ* in 2013. Named for his beloved classic Buick, *GNX* finds Kendrick wielding a hatchet he’s by no means ready to bury, still channeling this summer’s cranked-to-11 energy. On “wacced out murals,” he’s riding around listening to Anita Baker, plotting on several downfalls: “It used to be fuck that n\*\*\*a, but now it’s plural/Fuck everybody, that’s on my body.” (Yes, there’s a nod to his Super Bowl drama with Lil Wayne.) If you’ve been holding your breath for Jack Antonoff to link with Mustard, wait no more—the seemingly odd couple share production credits on multiple tracks, the explosive “tv off” among them. Still, K.Dot keeps you guessing: It’s not quite 12 tracks of straight venom over world-conquering West Coast beats. SZA helps cool things down on the Luther Vandross-sampling “luther,” while Lamar snatches back a borrowed title on “heart pt. 6” to remember the early days of TDE: “Grinding with my brothers, it was us against them, no one above us/Bless our hearts.” He cycles through past lives over a flip of 2Pac’s “Made N\*\*\*\*z” on “reincarnated” before getting real with his father about war, peace, addiction, and ego death, and on “man at the garden,” he outlines his qualifications for the position of GOAT. Here’s another bullet point to add to that CV: On *GNX*, Lamar still surprises while giving the people exactly what they want.

As someone who invited fame and courted infamy, first with inflammatory albums like *Wolf* and later with his flamboyant fashion sense via GOLF WANG, Tyler Okonma is less knowable than most stars in the music world. While most celebrities of his caliber and notoriety either curate their public lives to near-plasticized extremes or become defined by tabloid exploits, the erstwhile Odd Futurian chiefly shares what he cares to via his art and the occasional yet ever-quotable interview. As his Tyler, The Creator albums pivoted away from persona-building and toward personal narrative, as on the acclaimed *IGOR* and *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, his mystique grew grandiose, with the undesirable side effect of greater speculation. The impact of fan fixation plays no small part on *CHROMAKOPIA*, his seventh studio album and first in more than three years. Reacting to the weirdness, opening track “St. Chroma” finds Tyler literally whispering the details of his upbringing, while lead single “Noid” more directly rages against outsiders who overstep both online and offline. As on his prior efforts, character work plays its part, particularly on “I Killed You” and the two-hander “Hey Jane.” Yet the veil between truth and fiction feels thinner than ever on family-oriented cuts like “Like Him” and “Tomorrow.” Lest things get too damn serious, Tyler provocatively leans into sexual proclivities on “Judge Judy” and “Rah Tah Tah,” both of which should satisfy those who’ve been around since the *Goblin* days. When monologue no longer suits, he calls upon others in the greater hip-hop pantheon. GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Sexyy Red all bring their star power to “Sticky,” a bombastic number that evolves into a Young Buck interpolation. A kindred spirit, it seems, Doechii does the most on “Balloon,” amplifying Tyler’s energy with her boisterous and profane bars. Its title essentially distillable to “an abundance of color,” *CHROMAKOPIA* showcases several variants of Tyler’s artistry. Generally disinclined to cede the producer’s chair to anyone else, he and longtime studio cohort Vic Wainstein execute a musical vision that encompasses sounds as wide-ranging as jazz fusion and Zamrock. His influences worn on stylishly cuffed sleeves, Neptunes echoes ring loudly on the introspective “Darling, I” while retro R&B vibes swaddle the soapbox on “Take Your Mask Off.”

On Doechii’s 2024 release, the Tampa-born rapper showcases the blend of clever rhymes with deep, philosophical musings that have punctuated early releases like 2020’s *Oh the Places You\'ll Go* mixtape and 2022’s *she / her / black bitch* EP. Lead cut “STANKA POOH” finds the Top Dawg Entertainment artist wrestling with her artistic mortality and role as a Black woman in music. She raps: “Let’s start the story backwards/I’m dead, she’s dead, just another Black Lives Mattered/And if I die today I die a bastard/TikTok rapper, part-time YouTube actor.” Obviously, Doechii aims to be bigger than viral clips and TV shows so small they can fit on your computer screen. On *Alligator Bites Never Heal*, Doechii asserts herself as one of rap’s most impressive bar-for-bar MCs. “DENIAL IS A RIVER” is a classic narrative cut in the style of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story,” while “NISSAN ALTIMA” is an electro-rap thriller designed to keep the dance floor hot and heart rates up. She sums it up simply enough when she raps: “All beef gets smoked/I’m a real fly bitch, you in coach.”

Billie Eilish has always delighted in subverting expectations, but *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* still, somehow, lands like a meteor. “This is the most ‘me’ thing I’ve ever made,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And purely me—not a character.” An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it’s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at her feet—and knows it. In a tight 45 minutes, Eilish does as she promises and hits listeners with a mix of scorching send-ups, trance excursions, and a stomping tribute to queer pleasure, alongside more soft-edged cuts like teary breakup ballads and jaunts into lounge-y jazz. But the project never feels zigzaggy thanks to, well, the Billie Eilish of it all: her glassy vocals, her knowing lyrics, her unique ability to make softness sound so huge. *HIT ME* is Eilish’s third album and, like the two previous ones, was recorded with her brother and longtime creative partner FINNEAS. In conceptualizing it, the award-winning songwriting duo were intent on creating the sort of album that makes listeners feel like they’ve been dropped into an alternate universe. As it happens, this universe has several of the same hallmarks as the one she famously drew up on her history-making debut, 2019’s *WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?*. In many ways, this project feels more like that album’s sequel than 2021’s jazzy *Happier Than Ever*, which Eilish has said was recorded during a confusing, depressive pandemic haze. In the three years since, she has tried to return to herself—to go outside, hang out with friends, and talk more openly about sex and identity, all things that make her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, normal. “As much as *Happier Than Ever* was coming from this place of, like, \'We\'re so good. This sounds so good,\' it was also not knowing at all who I was,’” she tells Apple Music. FINNEAS agrees, calling it their “identity crisis album.” But *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* is, she says, the reverse. “The whole time we were making it, we were like, \'I don\'t know if I\'m making anything good, this might be terrible…’ But now I\'m like, \'Yeah, but I\'m comfortable in who I am now.\' I feel like I know who I am now.” As a songwriter, Eilish is still in touch with her vulnerabilities, but at 22, with a garage full of Grammys and Oscars, they aren’t as heavy. These days it’s heartache, not her own insecurities, that keeps her up at night, and the songs are juicier for it. “LUNCH,” a racy, bass-heavy banger that can’t help but hog the spotlight, finds Eilish crushing so hard on a woman that she compares the hook-up to a meal. “I’ve said it all before, but I’ll say it again/I’m interested in more than just being your friend,” she sings. The lyrics are so much more than lewd flirtations. They’re also a way of stepping back into the spotlight—older, wiser, more fully herself. Read below as Eilish and FINNEAS share the inside story behind a few standout songs. **“LUNCH”** BILLIE: “One of the verses was written after a conversation I had with a friend and they were telling me about this complete animal magnetism they were feeling. And I was like, ‘Ooh, I\'m going to pretend to be them for a second and just write...and I’m gonna throw some jokes in there.’ We took ourselves a little too seriously on *Happier Than Ever*. When you start to embrace cringe, you\'re so much happier. You have so much more fun.” **“BIRDS OF A FEATHER”** BILLIE: “This song has that ending where I just keep going—it’s the highest I\'ve ever belted in my life. I was alone in the dark, thinking, ‘You know what? I\'m going to try something.’ And I literally just kept going higher and higher. This is a girl who could not belt until I was literally 18. I couldn\'t physically do it. So I\'m so proud of that. I remember coming home and being like, ‘Mom! Listen!’” **“WILDFLOWER”** BILLIE: “To me, \[the message here is\] I\'m not asking for reassurance. I am 100% confident that you love me. That\'s not the problem. The problem is this thing that I can\'t shake. It’s a girl code song. It\'s about breaking girl code, which is one of the most challenging places. And it isn’t about cheating. It isn’t about anything even bad. It was just something I couldn’t get out of my head. And in some ways, this song helped me understand what I was feeling, like, ‘Oh, maybe this is actually affecting me more than I thought.’ I love this song for so many reasons. It\'s so tortured and overthinky.” **“THE GREATEST”** BILLIE: “To us, this is the heart of the album. It completes the whole thing. Making it was sort of a turning point. Everything went pretty well after that. It kind of woke us back up.” FINNEAS: “When you realize you\'re willing to go somewhere that someone else isn\'t, it\'s so devastating. And everybody has been in some dynamic in their life or their relationship like that. When you realize that you\'d sacrifice and wear yourself out and compromise all these things, but the person you\'re in love with won’t make those sacrifices, or isn’t in that area? To me, that\'s what that song is about. It\'s like, you don\'t even want to know how lonely this is.” **“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE”** FINNEAS: “The album is all about Billie. It\'s not a narrative album about a fictional character. But we have always loved songs within songs within songs. Here, you\'ve just listened to Billie sound so heartbroken in ‘THE GREATEST,’ and then she sings this song that\'s like the antibody to that. It’s like, ‘You know what? Fuck you anyway.’ And then she goes to the club.” **“BLUE”** “The first quarter of ‘BLUE’ is a song Finneas and I made when I was 14 called ‘True Blue.’ We played it at little clubs before I had anything out, and never \[released it\] because we aged out of it. Years went by. Then, for a time, the second album was going to include one additional song called ‘Born Blue.’ It was totally different, and it didn’t make the cut. We never thought about it again. Then, in 2022, I was doing my laundry and found out ‘True Blue’ had been leaked. At first I was like ‘Oh god, they fucking stole my shit again,’ but then I couldn\'t stop listening. I went on YouTube and typed ‘Billie Eilish True Blue’ to find all the rips of it, because I didn\'t even have the original. Then it hit us, like, ‘Ooh, you know what\'d be cool? What if we took both of these old songs, resurrected them, and made them into one?’ The string motif is the melody from the bridge of ‘THE GREATEST,’ which is also in ‘SKINNY,’ which starts the album. So it also ends the album.”

“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Linda Martell cackles at the beginning of “SPAGHETTII.” Perhaps the name Linda Martell isn’t a household one, which only proves her point. She was the first Black woman to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, but her attempt to move from soul and R&B into the realm of country in the 1960s was met with racist resistance—everything from heckling to outright blackballing. Beyoncé knows the feeling, as she explained in an uncharacteristically vulnerable Instagram post revealing that her eighth studio album was inspired by a deep dive into the history of Black country music following an experience where she felt similarly unwelcome. *COWBOY CARTER* is a sprawling 80-minute tribute not only to those pioneering artists and their outlaw spirit, but to the very futility of reducing music to a single identifying word. Another key quote from that post: “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album.” It’s more than a catchy slogan; anyone looking for mere honky-tonk cosplay is missing a much richer and more complex point. Listening in full to Act II of the presumed trilogy Bey began with 2022’s *RENAISSANCE*, it’s clear that the perennial overachiever hasn’t merely “gone country,” she’s interrogating what the word even means—and who merits the designation. On “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” in a voice deep and earthy as Texas red dirt, the Houston native sings, “Used to say I spoke too country/And then the rejection came, said I wasn’t country enough.” She nods again, as she’s done before on songs like “Formation,” to her family ties to Alabama moonshiners and Louisiana Creoles. “If that ain’t country,” she wonders, “tell me what is.” With subtlety and swagger, she contextualizes country as an offshoot of the Black American musical canon, a storytelling mode springing from and evolving alongside gospel and blues. Over the wistful pedal steel and gospel organ of “16 CARRIAGES,” she tells you what it’s like to be a teenage workhorse who grows into an adult perfectionist obsessed with ideas of legacy, with a bit of family trauma buried among the riffs. On “YA YA,” Beyoncé expands the scope to rock ’n’ roll at its most red-blooded and fundamental, playing the parts of both Ike and Tina as she interpolates The Beach Boys and slips in a slick Playboi Carti reference, yowling: “My family lived and died in America/Good ol’ USA/Whole lotta red in that white and blue/History can’t be erased.” A Patsy Cline standard goes Jersey club mode on “SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN’,” with a verse from the similarly genre-flouting Shaboozey and a quick note regarding *RENAISSANCE*‘s Grammy fortunes: “AOTY I ain’t win/I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them/Take that shit on the chin/Come back and fuck up the pen.” Who but Beyoncé could make a crash course in American music history feel like the party of the year? There’s the one-two punch of sorely needed summer slow-dance numbers: the Miley Cyrus duet “II MOST WANTED,” with its whispers of Fleetwood Mac, followed by “LEVII’S JEANS” with Post Malone, the “in those jeans” anthem filling the radio’s Ginuwine-shaped hole. *RENAISSANCE*’s euphorically nasty house bounce returns, albeit with more banjo, on “RIIVERDANCE,” where “II HANDS II HEAVEN” floats on clouds of ’90s electronica for an ode to alternately riding wild horses and 24-inch spinners on candy paint. (Houston, Texas, baby!) There are do-si-do ditties, murder ballads, daddy issues, whiskey kisses, hungover happy hours, cornbread and grits, Beatles covers, smoke breaks, and, on “DAUGHTER,” what may or may not be a wink in the direction of the artist who won AOTY instead. There’s also a Dolly-approved Beyoncification of “Jolene,” to whom the protagonist is neither saying please nor begging on the matter of taking her man. (“Your peace depends on how you move, Jolene,” Bey purrs, ice in her veins.) Is this a genre-bucking hoedown? A chess move? A reckoning? A requiem? If anyone can pull it off, it’s *COWBOY CARTER*, as country as it gets.

Whether as Marshall Mathers or Slim Shady, Eminem never fails to make a strong impression. His discography regularly documents a struggle between the Detroit-bred rap superstar’s two outspoken personas, an artistic battle followed closely by his most ardent and attentive fans, while pitchfork-wielding outsiders and his more casual listeners never bothered to discern the difference. The willfully profane Slim and the comparatively less sacrilegious Marshall compose a dramaturgical dyad that makes each of his album releases feel like blockbusters. That said, the stakes feel dramatically high on *The Death of Slim Shady (Coup De Grâce)*, its title the most thematically loaded of his two-and-a-half-decade career. If this does end up the genuine final curtain call for Eminem’s most notorious alter ego, he makes it a point to execute it on his own controversy-baiting terms, whether people like it or not. Addressing his detractors head-on, “Habits” defensively dismantles criticisms both internal and external, taking personal inventory while decrying political correctness. Cancel culture and wokeness as existential threats stay front of mind throughout, looming particularly large over the combative “Antichrist” and the Dr. Dre co-produced “Lucifer.” Repeated references to Caitlyn Jenner won’t quell the perpetual transphobia accusations Eminem has long faced, but on songs like “Evil” and “Road Rage” he at least aims to clarify his positions amid his characteristically clever wordplay. Naturally, Slim isn’t about to go out quietly. Ever the eager pugilist, he exploits his upper hand with Fight Club panache on “Brand New Dance” and “Trouble.” The character’s antagonism vacillates between self-destructive outbursts and strategic gaslighting, gleefully poking at touchy topics on “Houdini” and assigning we’re-in-this-together complicity to Marshall on the surprise sequel “Guilty Conscience 2.” Yet even as the tragicomically intertwined foes grapple with one another, the album still makes room for something as personal as “Temporary,” a heartfelt message to his daughter for after he’s gone. With the added benefit of a few unexpected cameos, including Michigan-repping cut “Tobey” with Big Sean and BabyTron, the over-the-top theatricality driving *The Death of…* feels like fan service, giving his longtime patrons the Eminem show they’ve come to expect from him.

Laila! begins her debut album *Gap Year!* with a snippet from a live show. It’s an acoustic-guitar jam called “Talent Show,” and it’s ostensibly a performance from a high school talent event. She showcases her dexterous voice on the unvarnished cut, and it establishes some of the themes she explores on the record. Laila!, whose father is celebrated rapper Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), presents her unfiltered self on the collection, using this “gap year” between childhood and her foray into professional music as an official introduction. On “R U Down?” she cues up a disco-inspired groove and asks a potential partner to come at her from a place of mutual respect. “I’m not that mean,” she sings, before adding, “I just mean what I say/You know that.” She lets her vulnerability lead the charge when she concludes, “I’m just a girl, and I don’t know what I’m feeling.” Laila! saves the pre-release smash “Not My Problem” for the end, and after she spends the album ruminating on her place in the world as an adult, the song’s message hits all the harder: “Bitches talkin’ shit, it’s not my problem.”

A Top Dawg Entertainment fixture since the early 2010s, ScHoolboy Q played no small role in elevating the label to hip-hop’s upper echelon. With his Black Hippy cohorts Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul, and Jay Rock, the tremendously talented Los Angeles native made a compelling case for continuing the West Coast’s rap legacy well beyond the G-funk era or the days of Death Row dominance. Even still, his relative absence from the game after *CrasH Talk* dropped in 2019 has been hard to ignore, particularly as the most prominent member of his group departed TDE while SZA became the roster’s most undeniable hitmaker. Indeed, it’s been nearly five years since he gave us more than a loosie, which makes the arrival of his sixth full-length *BLUE LIPS* all the more auspicious. His concerns as a lyricist draw upon the micro as well as the macro level, as a parent decrying mass school shootings on “Cooties” or as a rap star operating on his own terms on “Nunu.” Elevating the drama, the *Saw* soundtrack cue nods of “THank god 4 me” accent his emboldened bars targeting snitches, haters, and fakes. Q’s guest selection reflects a more curatorial ear at work than the gratifying star-power flexes found on *CrasH Talk*. Rico Nasty righteously snarls through her portion of the menacing “Pop,” while Freddie Gibbs glides across the slow funk groove of “oHio” with scene-stealing punchlines. A producer behind TDE records by Isaiah Rashad and REASON, Devin Malik steps out from behind the boards to touch the mic on a handful of cuts, namely “Love Birds” and the booming paean “Back n Love.”

Though SahBabii has been a staple of the rap scene for over a decade, his 2024 album *Saaheem* is only his second full-length LP. SahBabii sounds so confident, though, that it’s clear he spent his off-seasons practicing. The Chicago-born rapper moved to Atlanta as a young teen, and the blend of trap and drill that he brings to his albums is an effortless combination of the two subgenres. On *Saaheem*, which is also his birth name, SahBabii doesn’t force-feed these different aspects of his musical style. Rather, they subtly shape his sonic worldview, creating an album that’s fascinating in its understated variety. Take “Viking,” a booming, rumbling track that features the canonlike bass of Windy City street rap with the triplet hi-hat rhythms and syrupy flow of ATL mainstays like Young Thug and Migos. On “Kodak,” he plays with the plugg style prevalent on the East Coast, crooning over pillowy synths so warm they practically wrap him in a hug. No matter what city he touches down in, SahBabii sounds at home.

“In my head, I was looking at this album like a TV show,” Nigerian singer Ayra Starr tells Apple Music about her sophomore album *The Year I Turned 21*. “Every song is an episode.” Structured as a series of life’s key moments, the album features the sonic adventures and lyrical savvy that saw Starr’s debut album, 2021’s *19 & Dangerous*, set Afropop streaming records. Brimming with self-confidence and unvarnished introspection, *The Year I Turned 21* covers a range of topics, from the fear of failure, newfound love, growing fame and fortune, and gender positivity to parental loss, intimacy, and mental wellbeing. Starr blends R&B and Afropop with stylistic borrowings from Latin pop, Jamaican dancehall, Nigerian highlife, gospel, and more. “Dem never know I kala,” she sings on “Commas.” The phrase (a mixture of pidgin and Yoruba, which means being underestimated based on looks) shows a keenness for being accessible, a theme explored throughout the album. Combinations of languages and instrumentals abound, buoyed by disparate samples that include ’70s R&B, a field recording, and taped confessions from family members. Production was provided by notable hitmakers that include LONDON, P2J, P-Prime, and Starr’s brother and frequent songwriting collaborator, Milar. The main attraction, however, remains Starr’s singing voice, which has grown along with her stardom. “This album has made me who I am now,” she explains. “It was proper character development.” Here, she talks through the album, track by track. **“Birds Sing of Money”** “My brother, who is a music video director, paid a guy to just sing a Fuji song about me, which is in the beginning of ‘Birds Sing of Money.’ This was a day after I released my first EP, as a gift. And the guy was just hyping me up. That’s a very Yoruba thing.” **“Goodbye (Warm Up)” (with Asake)** “This is one of my favorite tracks I’ve ever recorded. Ever. Before I sent it to Asake, I wasn’t even sure if he was going to like the song. He was like, ‘OK Ayra, give me some time.’ He sent me his verse in two days. I was like, ‘Oh, this is sounding good.’” **“Commas”** “‘Commas’ is about how God has blessed me and I’m really grateful for where I am in life and where I’m about to go. I’m grateful for just even being present in this moment and being alive. I feel like that’s what has brought me here, my gratitude and the continuous hard work I will keep putting into this job. God is good.” **“Woman Commando” (with Anitta & Coco Jones)** “‘Woman Commando’ is such an Afrobeats/amapiano banger in a way, because of the log drums, and I wanted different perspectives. I’ve been watching Coco Jones since I was 12 on Disney’s *Let It Shine*. I sent her a different song, which she loved, but she was like, ‘Ayra, I want to be on your Afrobeats vibe,’ and I was like, ‘Say less.’ Anitta is such an amazing musician and I really just knew that I wanted to go for that Latin element. Her verse is perfect.” **“Control”** “Is relinquishing control the same as submission? It depends on how the listener, the audience wants to take it. The lyric goes: ‘I’m lit tonight/You know my lips lie.’ I want you to take control. I want you to be the man. Do your thing. It’s not really about submission, it’s more like I’m giving you hints—take control.” **“Lagos Love Story”** “‘Lagos Love Story’ is about being in a very happy state of mind. We have that moment where we are so happy, \[that\] it starts to feel wrong. It starts to feel like, ‘I feel guilty for being this happy.’ You kind of feel relieved when something bad happens, because you’re not used to that amount of happiness. That’s what the song is about: being in a very high state of happiness.” **“Rhythm & Blues”** “When I released ‘Rhythm & Blues’ \[in 2023\], I didn’t know if it was the right time. The headspace I was in was a lot of work. I remember recording this song for the first time and how beautiful it was. Also, there is a lyric that goes, ‘My jigga, my muse,’ which I wrote because you don’t expect girl singers to refer to a male love interest as a muse.” **“21”** “The first demo of ’21’ was a 21st birthday gift from a friend. Writing it, I was kind of stuck because I don’t really know how to write about myself. I’m really good at writing about other people and the TV shows I watch and movies I watch, but never myself. So this album was the first time I actually put myself out there and learned how to write by myself.” **“Last Heartbreak Song” (with GIVĒON)** “GIVĒON’s verse made me cry the first time I heard it; I was so happy. I’ve always wanted to see what we would sound like together, because we both have really low range. GIVĒON came with the most perfect perspective, because anybody that has been in an argument with a man, or any man that’s been arguing with a girl, would know \[that\] ‘Last Heartbreak Song’ is literally the dynamic.” **“Bad Vibes” (with Seyi Vibez)** “Translating Yoruba to English is so annoying sometimes because it doesn’t just hit the same in English. In the hook, the lyric in Yoruba means ‘Don’t poke me in my eye or don‘t hit me in my eye. I don’t break. I’m good.’ It’s an idiom, right? For the guest feature, I wanted a perspective from somebody that would understand what I was trying to do with the song. I felt like that with Seyi Vibez, we sound amazing together.” **“Orun”** “‘Orun’ is a highlife song and a juxtaposition of a puzzle of life. Highlife songs are usually known for being joyful and you want to dance to it. But with ‘Orun,’ it’s kind of different because I’m talking about mental health and depression.” **“Jazzy’s Song”** “I’ve been wanting to sample a Don Jazzy production \[Wande Coal’s 2009 single ‘You Bad (feat. D’banj)’\] for so long and I’m glad I did. The title ‘Jazzy’s Song’ shows my respect for him and how much I admire him as a person, as an artist, and as a musician.” **“1942” (with Milar)** “This song is introspective and so vulnerable. I’ve been working for so long, and for the first time in my life, I took a vacation on my birthday. I remember being in the pool with a bottle of 1942 tequila, and I was like, ‘Wow, this moment makes everything all worth it.’ After all the time we’ve put into this job, all the hard work, everything I’ve done, that moment of relaxing in that villa, overlooking the ocean, made everything worth it.” **“The Kids Are Alright”** “Turning 21 is a big \[moment\] and you start to notice things—like certain behavioral patterns are reflections of certain childhood trauma, or things that you’ve gone through in the past. I noticed that I had not really mourned the death and the loss of my father, and it was something I was holding at the back of my head.” **“Santa” (with Rvssian & Rauw Alejandro)** “I’ve been a big fan of Rvssian for so long, and we’ve been wanting to work \[together\] for so long. I recorded the verse and was made to sing in Spanish, literally. It’s so crazy that, once it drops, it becomes this global song, and I’m so happy.”

Card-carrying members of the #FutureHive remember where they were on the two consecutive weekends of February 2017 when rap’s reigning king of gorgeously toxic masculinity dropped a pair of albums that nailed the yin and yang of the whole Future thing. The first one, simply titled *FUTURE*, exemplified his singular breed of haunted club crushers, like “Mask Off,” a Metro Boomin joint that became his highest-charting single at the time. Hot on its heels was *HNDRXX*, named for his softer, trippier side, a buoyant return to the romance of his *Pluto*-era hits. Both albums debuted at No. 1 and felt like a return to form for a rapper who’s had more thrilling returns to form than just about any other rap star of the past 15 years. A similar feeling floats on the breeze with the release of *WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU*, Future’s second collaborative album with Metro Boomin in less than a month. From the spacey and vaguely French disco pulse of the Weeknd-featuring title track, you get the sense that *WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU* is the *HNDRXX* to *WE DON’T TRUST YOU*’s *FUTURE*—a balmy sunrise after a dark night of the soul. That feeling is confirmed by the shimmering bacchanalia of “Drink N Dance” and the Brownstone-sampling “Luv Bad Bitches,” an instant addition to the canon of Future’s best love songs (“I like good girls, but I love, love, love bad bitches!”). Metro’s productions have rarely sounded prettier, and Future Hendrix fires on all cylinders, reminding you that for all his red-eyed “fuck love” bangers, at his core he’s a romantic. Kendrick Lamar’s surprise verse on *WE DON’T TRUST YOU* reopened the “Big Three” debate floor; with *WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU*, it’s time to start seriously considering the idea of the “Big Four.”

Almost six years after releasing her breakout single, 2018’s “Mr Rebel,” Nigerian superstar Tems delivers her debut LP, *Born in the Wild*. Of course, that interim has been characterized by a trajectory that’s trended upward at almost every turn. From her acclaimed 2020 debut EP *For Broken Ears* to global megahit collaborations with Wizkid (and later Justin Bieber) on “Essence” and Drake on “Fountains” to 2021’s sophomore EP, *If Orange Was a Place*, to appearances on 2022’s *Black Panther: Wakanda Forever* soundtrack (including songwriting credits for Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up”) and Beyoncé’s *RENAISSANCE* and a Grammy win for Future and Drake’s “Wait for U” in 2023—the alté-R&B star has experienced an almost exponential rise. That kind of journey is part of what makes *Born in the Wild* all the more captivating. Over 18 tracks, Tems cracks open her journal through those career highs, and reveals how the person behind them grappled with it all. “I had to step back a bit, to check in with myself,” Tems (Temilade Openiyi) tells Apple Music, “and also just find healing from all the trauma and everything I experienced before ‘Tems.’ I think I had to unlearn a lot of things. This album is just a new way of me expressing myself, while still centering who I am in it.” Here, she works through moments of feeling like an impostor, of rebuilding her self-confidence, of learning the ins and outs of relationships, and of learning to trust herself. Don’t read that as insecure, however—this is the journal of someone who’s done the work, and who’s fully ready to embrace the next chapter. It’s all brought to life through Tems’ usual brand of honest, mature storytelling—and here, as ever, the centerpiece remains a distinctive voice that simultaneously balances multiple layers of raw, delicate emotion and a natural, unforced ease. That reflective songwriting shows a sonic maturity that’s unrestricted by genre: She traverses from R&B (“Burning”) to fusions of Afrobeats and amapiano (“Get It Right”), balanced with celebrations of culture and heritage, like her reimagined version of Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 hit, the breezy “Love Me JeJe.” Below, Tems talks through these and more key tracks from *Born in the Wild*. **“Born in the Wild”** “‘Born in the Wild’ is a story of transformation from a cocoon to a butterfly. It speaks on surviving a mental wilderness that comes with life, and coming to a place where one can thrive. It\'s about accepting oneself, and embodying the woman I was born to be. It shows the different dimensions of who Tems is, and her journey from a cub to a lioness.” **“Burning”** “‘Burning’ is about the feelings I felt when I first started getting popular as Tems. I didn\'t really understand what was happening, and everything was happening so fast. And it\'s about me looking back on that time and realizing that we are all going through something. We all have our internal battles. We all have the things that we struggle with, our triggers. And ‘Burning’ is really about understanding that I have my triggers too, and now I know that I\'m not alone. And there\'s many people that have felt the way I do about not wanting to be seen, not really being used to attention, and people trying to take advantage of you in many different ways.” **“Love Me JeJe”** “‘Love Me JeJe’ is a sweet, happy song about finding unconditional love. The joy of finding a love that doesn\'t run out and not settling for anything else. Just basking in the sun, basking in that unconditional type of love.” **“Get It Right” (feat. Asake)** “This is just about a conversation between two people and one is saying, ‘I know you\'re scared, but if you do me right, I always got your back, because that\'s who I am.’ And it\'s just about two people feeling each other and wanting to explore more.” **“Unfortunate”** “‘Unfortunate’ is about realizing that the person that you put your trust in isn\'t worth your time. And also being thankful that the person showed themselves early, and the person disappointed you. And it\'s basically finding the good in the bad. This was a disappointment, but it is actually great that it was, because it means that I\'m winning, and I\'m going to overcome this, and I don\'t need to be with you anymore. It is a blessing that I\'m not obligated by any means to stay with you, and it\'s a blessing that I\'m not with you.” **“Forever”** “Forever is about the aftermath of a breakup, when the guy comes circling back, and it\'s coming from a place of healing, it\'s coming from a place of ‘I’ve moved on already, but it\'s interesting to see you scramble because I\'m moving on. It\'s the desperation for me from you. I love that you are so desperate to get me back you\'re always checking for me, stalking me, checking for what I\'m doing, and it\'s really intriguing and fascinating to see.’” **“Free Fall” (feat. J. Cole)** “This is about, after you fell in love with someone, they fell in love too. It was great until you realize that you both were new to it, and they didn\'t really know what to do in the relationship. It\'s about knowing, ‘If I stay, I\'m going to be drained,’ and knowing your limits and setting your boundaries. It\'s basically reflecting on all of that. Reflecting on the fact that I had to go, because if I didn\'t go, it would have been detrimental.” **“Me & U”** “‘Me & U’ is about reconnecting with God. It\'s a new conversation. It\'s about reconnecting with your inner child and the truth. It\'s about now being honest with yourself about who you are, and about having faith that everything is going to be okay, as long as you believe.” **“You in My Face”** “‘You in My Face’ is a conversation with the inner me, the inner child, and it\'s about finding peace within, and also hoping that I don\'t get lost again.”

The scrappy Memphis rapper has been on a two-year victory lap since her 2022 breakthrough hit “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” established her as one of rap’s most promising new voices. Since then, GloRilla’s dropped an EP (2022’s *Anyways, Life’s Great...*) and her first studio mixtape (2024’s *Ehhthang Ehhthang*), scored a Grammy nomination, and sold out arenas alongside Megan Thee Stallion for the Hot Girl Summer Tour. The glow-up is real on *GLORIOUS*, her official debut album, but let it be known that the reigning queen of crunk is still hanging out the window with her ratchet-ass friends when the opportunity arises. “It’s 7 pm Friday/It’s 95 degrees/I ain’t got no n\*\*\*a and no n\*\*\*a ain’t got me,” she declares in the opening bars of “TGIF,” a worthy “F.N.F.” follow-up made for blasting at max volume. There’s plenty of the rowdy girl-power anthems fans have come to expect from Big Glo, among them the bad-bitch motivational “PROCEDURE” with Latto and “WHATCHU KNO ABOUT ME,” a Sexyy Red collab that riffs on the Trill Entertainment classic “Wipe Me Down.” Less expected is “RAIN DOWN ON ME,” a gospel number with a blessing from Kirk Franklin, though it’s really only fitting for a rapper born Gloria Hallelujah Woods.

It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”

It’s not easy being ahead of your time: You have to wait years for the world to catch up. Such was the case when an 18-year-old Chief Keef followed up his anthemic major-label debut (2012’s *Finally Rich*) with a pair of self-released 2013 mixtapes (August’s *Bang, Pt. 2* and October’s *Almighty So*) that sounded obscure in comparison, prompting many a claim that he’d fallen off as quickly as he’d gotten on. These days, you can hear echoes of both projects everywhere, in particular *Almighty So*, the better of the two. You might argue that the slurry, intuitive style which has dominated the past decade of rap began here. Eleven long years later, the project’s sequel arrives after a half decade of teasing. (Keef previewed *Almighty So 2*’s initial cover art way back in 2019.) Hip-hop’s reinvented itself a dozen times over in that time span, perhaps the only constant being Keef’s enduring influence. On *Almighty So 2*, the 28-year-old veteran sounds as if he’s well aware of just how tall his legacy looms. “I done been through so much smoke to where I couldn’t even see myself,” he raps in his oft-copied swing on “Treat Myself” before busting out a classic Sosa-ism: “Diamonds shining off my charm, I think I Christmas tree’d myself!” He spits fire and brimstone over sinister church choirs on “Jesus,” puffs out his chest on the soulful “Runner,” and offers up the most demented Scarface impression since Future circa 2011 on “Tony Montana Flow.” And on “Believe,” the former teenage phenom is now a man who’s done some soul-searching in his time off from shaping the sound of modern rap.

Some people kill their nemeses with kindness; Sabrina Carpenter, the breakout pop star of summer 2024, takes the opposite tack, shooting withering one-liners at loser exes via featherlight melodies, a wink and a smile. The former Disney Channel star began her music career at age 15 with her 2014 debut single “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying.” Now 25, the singer-songwriter is making the catchiest, funniest, and most honest music of her career at a moment when all the world’s watching. But on songs like “Please Please Please,” on which she begs her boyfriend not to embarrass her (again), she’s poking fun at herself, too. “A lot of what I really love about this album is the accountability,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I will call myself out just as much as I will call out someone else.” It’s not because Carpenter’s “vertically challenged,” as she puts it, that she named her sixth album *Short n’ Sweet*. “I thought about some of these relationships, how some of them were the shortest I’ve ever had and they affected me the most,” she tells Lowe. “And I thought about the way that I respond to situations: Sometimes it is very nice, and sometimes it’s not very nice.” Hence songs like “Dumb & Poetic,” a gentle acoustic ballad that’s also a blistering takedown of a guy who masks his sleazy tendencies with therapy buzzwords and a highbrow record collection, or the twangy, hilarious “Slim Pickins,” on which she croons: “Jesus, what’s a girl to do?/This boy doesn’t even know the difference between there, their, and they are/Yet he’s naked in my room.” With good humor and good taste (channeling Rilo Kiley here, Kacey Musgraves there, and on “Sharpest Tool,” a bit of The Postal Service), Carpenter reframes heartbreak through the lens of life’s absurdity. “When you’re at this point in your life where you’re almost at your wits’ end, everything is funny,” Carpenter tells Lowe. “So much of this album was made in the moments where there was something that I just couldn’t stop laughing about. And I was like, well, that might as well just be a whole song.” Carpenter wrote a good deal of the album on an 11-day trip to a tiny town in rural France, where the isolation unlocked her brutally honest side, resulting in unprecedentedly vulnerable music and one song she readily admits shouldn’t work on paper but hits anyway: “Espresso,” the song that catapulted her career with four delightfully strange-sounding words: “That’s that me espresso.” “There really are no rules to the things you say,” she tells Lowe on the songwriting process. “You’re just like, what sounds awesome? What feels awesome? And what gets the story across, whatever story that is?” Still, she’s painted herself in a bit of a corner when it comes to placing an order at coffee shops worldwide: “They’re just waiting for me to say it,” she laughs. “And I’m like, ‘Tea.’”

Listening to the 23-year-old rapper born Noah Olivier Smith, you get a sense of what it must feel like to witness a UFO: awestruck, confused, a little frightened, but convinced of intelligent life beyond this planet. The follow-up to the ever-mysterious rapper’s 2023 album, *AftërLyfe*, is loosely organized around the late-21st-century dystopia in which Yeat apparently already lives: “I’m in 2093, where your life at?” he yelps on the thunderous “Psycho CEO.” The Portland rapper’s best known for rapping over rage beats—dark melodies, booming bass, trap drums—but here he occasionally veers into subterranean techno (“Riot & Set it off”) or scuzzy house rhythms, like the strangely addictive title track. Lil Wayne and Future make brief cameos, but Yeat’s most fascinating on his own, left to ponder life’s great mysteries and make cryptic proclamations that future generations of rap scholars might make sense of in the 2090s. “I made every god cry…I know what happens when you die,” he warbles ominously over the decaying thump of “Team ceo.” Somehow, you kinda believe him.

Where 2023’s *Love Sick* provided a means for Don Toliver to live out his funk-soul fantasies, the subsequent *HARDSTONE PSYCHO* finds him on an arena-rock-star wave. To be sure, this doesn’t at all mean the Houston rapper/singer is awash in gaudy guitar noodling or engaged in performative posturing here. Instead, he treats his chosen premise like a new state of mind, transmuting the weight and complexity of his catalog into this larger-than-life version of his artistry. So when some distinct riffs launch “BANDIT” and “TORE UP,” he effortlessly slips into the leather-jacketed cool in a manner that historically has eluded most rappers who’ve attempted such a move. Divided into four movements, *HARDSTONE PSYCHO* may mirror classic-rock indulgence in terms of overall structure, but more specifically it delivers on what fans from his *Heaven or Hell* or *Life of a DON* days desire. His voice, pliable and otherworldly, carries the muted fuzz of “KRYPTONITE,” the bleep-laden R&B of “DEEP IN THE WATER,” and the trippy trap of “4X4.” On “HARDSTONE NATIONAL ANTHEM,” he follows through on the titular promise with a showstopper that expertly reconfigures the pop-wise power ballad format. As before, Toliver’s brought a few guests along to amplify and augment himself on record. Naturally, his Cactus Jack benefactor Travis Scott makes a handful of appearances, first as a sleek spitter on “ICE AGE” and later as his crooning co-conspirator on “INSIDE.” *Love Sick* standout Charlie Wilson returns to briefly feature on the Cash Cobain collab “ATTITUDE,” its low-end rumble and inventive Pharrell callback giving considerable chills, while Future and Metro Boomin reignite their “Too Many Nights” torch for “PURPLE RAIN.”

After nearly two decades in the game, Rapsody’s left no room for doubt when it comes to her formidable pen. But it wasn’t until 2020, when she began piecing together her fourth studio album, *Please Don’t Cry*, that Marlanna Evans realized that she’d shared very little of herself beyond her mic skills. “People had to put up a mirror for me,” she admitted to Apple Music’s Ebro Darden, recalling a pivotal conversation with the producer No ID. “He was like, ‘Everybody knows you can rap, but I can’t tell you five things that I know about you.’” Thus began the North Carolina native’s journey inward: Before she could reintroduce herself to her fans, she’d have to know herself first. The result of that journey, *Please Don’t Cry*, is Rapsody’s deepest and boldest work yet. “Who are you in your rawest state?” asks the gentle voice of the album’s narrator, Phylicia Rashad. Making the record, Rapsody found her mind wandering towards *The Matrix*, in particular the relationship between Neo and the Oracle. “He’s trying to find his way, trying to find himself…and she’s kind of his guiding voice,” she tells Darden. “I was like, ‘That’s kind of what this journey has been for me, but who would be my Oracle?’” Rashad was the first name that came to mind. Through interludes, the Tony Award winner nudges Rapsody further down the path of vulnerability: “Who are you when you’re joyful? What makes you sad? Why do you cry?” Rapsody doesn’t hold back her answers on tracks like “Diary of a Mad Bitch,” a cathartic shit-talking session, or the bittersweet “Loose Rocks,” where she grapples with a loved one’s dementia diagnosis with backup vocals from Alex Isley (yes, that Isley). Intense emotions are countered with airy, meditative beats on the gorgeous “3:AM,” a late-night love song with a hook from Erykah Badu, and the balmy reggae jam “Never Enough.” By the closing track “Forget Me Not,” her fear of vulnerability feels like a distant memory as she raps: “I want to know everything/I want to feel, I want to be alive/It’s too good.”

Perhaps the biggest compliment one could pay Rema is that he has always had clarity of vision regarding his artistry. Since dubbing himself “the future” right out of the gate in 2019, Rema (born Divine Ikubor) has operated with the assured air of a generational talent. His otherworldly melodies, energetic stage performances, and eerie imagery have inspired a new generation of emerging artists—and made him a beacon for Afropop’s global expansion. A lot has happened in the two years since he released his debut album, *Rave & Roses*—including standout single “Calm Down,” and its Selena Gomez-assisted remix, launching the singer to the top end of the charts across Europe and in the US. *HEIS*, the follow-up to *Rave & Roses*, arrives with hardly any warning and is packed with more of the freewheeling experimentation that Rema has built his reputation on. The album—11 songs in under 30 minutes—sees Rema step into a new era as he reckons with the thrills of global stardom and the pressures of being at the forefront of Afropop. He’s keen to be respected for his contributions to the culture, defiantly placing himself at the top of Afropop’s taxonomy on the punk-adjacent “HEHEHE.” Over a riotous instrumental on the title track, he makes a case for cross-continental pollination by infusing Swahili into the song proclaiming his musical greatness. Both of Nigeria’s 2023 breakout stars join Rema’s metaverse here: Fellow Benin native Shallipopi dials in for a love letter to their hometown on “BENIN BOYS,” while Abuja rapper ODUMODUBLVCK delivers a thumping verse on “WAR MACHINE.” Still, the narrative of *HEIS* is solely Rema’s as he declares that he’s primed for more success on “MARCH AM” and reels off his accomplishments on the P.Priime-produced “YAYO.” It all feels like the work of a candid creator reminding his listeners that he’s still operating at the cutting edge of Afropop and laying the building blocks for the genre’s future.

“I don’t be trying to get too involved in the ‘extra big shoes to fill’ shit,” Latto tells Apple Music of her provocative and spirited third album. “I just do me, and I really feel like that have worked for me. I feel like all that is due to just me being me.” On *Sugar Honey Iced Tea*, the rapper elevates her work beyond what she feels is a “single-driven and club-driven” culture. “I wanted to make a cohesive project,” she says. “And I think with that, to sit through, what, an hour of one person, you have to be dimensional and be multidimensional, and I think you have to showcase different sides and versions of your artistry.” And with “Big Mama,” she found a single that didn’t compromise her vision. “I was like, ‘Okay, this the best one. It shows the versatility in the song.’” The album is also brimming with smooth collaborations—including Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Ciara, Flo Milli, Young Nudy, Hunxho, Coco Jones, Mariah the Scientist, and Teezo Touchdown—which was Latto’s goal. “Everybody on there, I’m a fan of personally,” she says. “I made the music first and then I was like, ‘Okay, I think this person. Let me call this person. I want them to get on it.’ Or ‘I feel like they could add to the song.’ So everything was very intentional.” The bouncy and playful “Squeeze” with Megan Thee Stallion is Latto’s answer to the success of her 2021 hit “Big Energy.” “I didn\'t want to just run away from that pop fanbase that I had built,” she says. “So I wanted to incorporate some of that without it sounding too poppy, because I don’t think that’s where I’m rooted. I come from a rap competition show. I think it’s very clear, very evident that I’m a rapper first.” Certain tracks may shed light on her personal life, too. If “Prized Possession” featuring Teezo Touchdown tells the story of a toxic relationship (“I think I was very keen on it being a mood,” she explains), the sexy and sultry “Look What You Did” with Mariah the Scientist captures how Latto has been feeling running up to the album’s release. “This whole project is about my last two years,” she says. “And I feel like I found someone who uplifts me as a person.” But even so, Latto reminds us where the focus should be: “Listen to the music and you’ll know what you need to know.”

Vince Staples knows his songs aren’t soundtracking too many wild Friday night parties; they sound way better on the long, contemplative walk home. “I’ve always been aware of where I fit within the ecosystem of this whole thing, and that allows me to create freely,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “No one’s coming to me from a fan standpoint looking for a single, or looking for a party record. But I do know the people who listen to my music are probably looking for thoughtfulness or creativity.” Since breaking through a decade ago with his debut EP *Hell Can Wait*, the Long Beach rapper has been the go-to guy for heady West Coast rap: songs that may not make you dance, but always make you think. Still, his sixth studio album (and the last one on his Def Jam contract) isn’t quite the downer that the title suggests. Where its predecessor, 2022’s *RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART*, looked back at his bittersweet youth, *Dark Times* is a snapshot of Staples right now: on top of the world on paper, but the reality is trickier. (“I think I’m losing it,” he raps on the bass-heavy “Black&Blue.” “Hope you’re along for the ride.”) On “Government Cheese” he grapples with survivor’s guilt, mourning his brother and lying that all’s well to his friend in prison who saw him on TV. Still, light enters through the cracks with breezy, soulful beats from frequent collaborators Michael Uzowuru and LeKen Taylor, not to mention Staples’ trademark dry wit: “Don’t be no crab in the bucket, be a Crip at the Ritz,” he quips on “Freeman.” There’s even a few tracks you could bump at the function: “Étouffée,” a love letter to New Orleans rap, and “Little Homies,” a lo-fi house jam on whose hook Staples crows, “Life hard, but I go harder.” And no matter how heavy things get, Staples is realistic about what his work means in the grand scheme of things. “They\'re just songs, man,” he says. “It doesn\'t need to go past that point. I know everybody values things differently—but for me at least, put it out, people listen to it, they like it or they don\'t. And then if you get to do it the next time, that\'s the gift that you get is the ability to do it the next time, because most people don\'t get that.”

Over the course of his decade-plus in the spotlight, Future has allowed his many alter egos a turn at center stage. There’s Future Hendrix, the soulful hippie for whom 2017’s *HNDRXX* is named, and *The WIZRD*, a nickname given by his uncle and the namesake of 2019’s *Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD*. Super Future represents him at his catchiest, where Fire Marshal Future shows the rapper at his most lit (as in, the fire marshals are going to have to shut the club down). But it’s been a while since we’ve seen Pluto, the character associated with his earliest projects, including 2012’s *Pluto*, the debut studio album that revealed him as a secret romantic and unexpected hitmaker. That eerie, pink-lit house on the cover of *MIXTAPE PLUTO*, Future’s first solo release of 2024, is none other than the Dungeon, the Georgia studio from which some of history’s most vital and inventive rap music emerged, from Goodie Mob to Outkast to Future himself. The basement studio was owned by Rico Wade, Organized Noize producer and Future’s older cousin. When Wade died at 52, Future posted a poignant message to Instagram: “This life wouldn’t b possible if it wasn’t for my cousin. Love u forever.” Across the album’s 17 featureless tracks, Future pays tribute not only to his uncle and mentor, but also to the era from which he emerged. “SKI,” “MJ,” and “READY TO COOK UP” deliver elevated updates on his narcotized rasp circa 2011’s *Dirty Sprite*, 2012’s *Astronaut Status*, and 2013’s underrated *F.B.G.: the Movie*. (“READY TO COOK UP,” in particular, feels like a high-end sequel to *Dirty Sprite*’s haunting title track: He might pull up in a helicopter, but he still knows how to use a Pyrex.) But it’s his soulful side that shines on tracks like “SURFING A TSUNAMI,” a shimmering hallucination of mermaids and giant waves, or on “OCEAN” when he croons, “So many tears, I could fill up an ocean.” And on the heartbreaking “LOST MY DOG,” he mourns a friend who died from a fentanyl overdose: “His mama tried to raise an angel, turned out gangster like his daddy/We share the same pain, so I knew he wasn’t happy.” It’s further evidence for Future as one of our greatest living bluesmen.

“I\'ve always wanted to be a pop star, but beyond that, I wanted to be an African pop star,” Tyla tells Apple Music. “The roots of my sound are in amapiano music, in South African and African music.” Though the megaviral 2023 single “Water” may have put the South African singer-songwriter on the proverbial map—first as a social media sensation, then as the highest-charting African female soloist ever on Billboard’s Hot 100, earning her the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance—she’s been carefully plotting her path to the top for years. “Since I started experimenting with amapiano, I just feel like it\'s really helped me get to this point where I created something that is fresh and new, but still familiar and comes from home,” she says. “It\'s a sound of Africa, and it\'s something that I couldn\'t be more proud about.” She weaves through a blend of pop, R&B, amapiano, and Afrobeats (“pop-piano sounds cute,” she admits) across *TYLA*, a coming-of-age chronicle through love, heartbreak, and self-discovery. “I’m speaking about the things that I\'ve gone through while creating the album—basically three years in the making,” she explains. “I was becoming a woman. So it was a lot of growing that happened, and me realizing my worth, and realizing how I want to be treated—and how basically, I\'m that girl, and people need to know I\'m that girl.” While the project was brought to life with the help of global producers including Sammy Soso, Mocha, Believve, Rayo, and Sir Nolan, Tyla made sure they all had a taste of her homeland. “\[It was important\] to bring some to South Africa,” she explains, “so when we get in the studio, they have context. Some people that try amapiano sound so watered down, it\'s cringey. So even though I am mixing it with pop and R&B, I didn\'t want it to sound watered down. Music is our everything in Africa. The way we speak, the way we dance, literally, our dance moves—they come so naturally. It\'s just in us. It’s our essence.” Below, Tyla talks us through her debut album. **“Intro” (Tyla & Kelvin Momo)** “I wanted to start off my album with something that was truly South African, something that showed people the root of where I started, before ‘Water,’ before all of these mixtures. I secretly recorded a voice note when I was in a session with Kelvin Momo. I loved hearing the people in the session, speaking, hearing the language, the accents. It was so raw and real. Kelvin Momo is my favorite amapiano producer—his music and his sound is my heart.” **“Safer”** “The message of the song is something that I feel like a lot of people could relate to. And the energy of the song I feel like is a strong intro to open an album.” **“Water”** “‘Water’ surpassed all expectations. I could\'ve never expected all of these accolades—a Grammy, the Billboard Hot 100, people all over the world dancing and pouring water down their back. From the time I finished recording the song, it was all that I was listening to. It was also like a step away from what I was used to, because I \[had been\] *very* PG. And with this one, I was more grown up and I was experimenting more. And even though I don\'t enjoy vulgar music, I feel like we were able to make the song speak about what it speaks about, but in a way that\'s friendly.” **“Truth or Dare”** “This was the song where I was playing more house-y with it. It’s me calling out people, being like, ‘Hey, *now* you care.’ I\'m not that type of person, but these are feelings that I felt around the time where I\'m like, ‘Where did this person come from? Out of nowhere, you want to now talk to me?’ and I literally hate it. I\'m sure a lot of people have felt that.” **“No.1” (feat. Tems)** “Tems and I had been wanting to make a song for long now. We ended up making it work, and Tems\' voice alone is so amazing, so unique. The song is for everyone, but when I had it in mind, it was really for the girls—me and Tems, girl power, African girls—and we were just really pushing that message of ‘I\'m leaving. I don\'t need anybody. If this is not serving me anymore, I’m gone, and I\'m going to be okay.’ Always put yourself before anything.” **“Breathe Me”** “It\'s a song that\'s so emotional and so real. It\'s just about love, of how strong love is, and how you don\'t even need anything else. I don\'t need anything else. You don\'t need anything else—just me, and you; just breathe me and we\'ll be fine.” **“Butterflies”** “With ‘Butterflies,’ I was in a session with \[producer and songwriter Ari PenSmith\] and he was playing me some stuff that he\'s worked on, and I was like, \'Cool, cool, cool.\' And then he played this, and I fell in love with it. It sat so perfectly with my voice. I connected with the song instantly, and it was too specific to what I was going through to not do anything with it.” **“On and On”** “This was \[an initial\] version of my sound, before ‘Water’ and everything. I made this with Corey Marlon Lindsay-Keay in South Africa. We were supposed to go out, and we didn\'t end up going out, so I was dressed up in a whole outfit in the studio session, and he was producing. I love the song so much because it\'s so nostalgic but new. I love that it feels like old-school R&B. I love that it has hints of Aaliyah\'s influence, but it\'s new, and fresh, and African—all things that are Tyla. The messaging is not so serious—it’s literally about not wanting a party to end.” **“Jump” (Tyla, Gunna & Skillibeng)** “‘Jump’ is a very different vibe. I really just wanted to tell people who I am, and I had to show my confidence through the song. And the opening line, with Skilli being like, \'Original girl, you want a replica? No.\' There\'s no replica. That intro was already perfect, and it segues to that line of me saying, \'They\'ve never had a pretty girl from Joburg/They see me now and that\'s what they prefer.\' That line is just—it’s too iconic for me, and I\'m just so excited to hear all the girls sing it, all the Joburg girls sing it, all the girls from home. And having Gunna on it, I really feel like it took me into that world further, making it even more raw and cool.” **“ART”** “When I\'m with someone that treats me so good, treats me well, treats me like art, treats me like a princess, I will be there for them. I will be their art piece. We also played with that wording where it can be ‘art piece,’ but also your peace and your comfort. As a woman, that\'s how I want to be treated, and that\'s how I would treat you if you treat me that way. It’s about being treasured.” **“On My Body” (Tyla & Becky G)** “This was such a fun one because it’s in my world, but also I played a bit with the Latin vibes. The feature came so organically—I was in studio, and she was in a session next door. She loved it, and she recorded a verse, and I absolutely died. I died. I just love her touch, and how it just broadened the audience, because now it\'s just bringing everybody into this experience. It\'s a melting pot with all these genres, and I love that I was able to expand it even further.” **“Priorities”** “This song was probably the most difficult to share, because it\'s really letting people into my heart and mind, and how I feel I\'ve been with myself. I feel like people would resonate with it, and it speaks about what a lot of people feel and may not express. \[The idea of having spread yourself too thin\] is something that\'s so raw and real, that not even just women, men, everybody feels.” **“To Last”** “I love this song with all my heart. I was in the Vaal with LuuDadeejay, and I literally finished this song in five minutes. It was based off an experience that my friend was going through at the time. About a year prior, I wrote the lines ‘You never gave us a chance, it\'s like you never wanted to last.’ And that note just came to mind, and the song just flowed out of me. I ended up going through something that made me feel that way. It was like I told the future, which is not good—but I fell in love with the song again. It’s so South African: It’s amapiano, it\'s house-y, it\'s our sound.” **“Water (Remix)” (Tyla & Travis Scott)** “Travis reached out—he loved ‘Water,’ and around the time, I was like, \'I don\'t want a remix, I\'m cool.\' But Travis Scott was so unexpected that I wanted to do it so bad, and he absolutely killed it. He added some South African shout-outs in his verse, and I just knew that people from home were going to love it—he acknowledged us, and he mentioned \[the South African telephone country code\] +27 and all those things. And I also love that he brought a different energy to the song. Everyone knows ‘Water’ to be that summer banger, and now Travis made it still the summer banger, but also more gritty. Putting him on an African-sounding song was just the perfect collab.”

It’s understandable if Gunna feels a bit isolated these days. For some two years now, the Georgia-bred rapper has been on the defensive—first, when he was indicted in a sweeping YSL Records RICO case and, subsequently, in the time since his release by the feds. “I’m still fighting,” he tells Apple Music. “I still got friends incarcerated, and I’m still growing, too and getting massive.” Indeed, amid the sly whispers and outright accusations levied against him in hip-hop’s court of public opinion, he nonetheless managed to maintain both his commercial viability and star status with 2023’s *a Gift & a Curse*. That earned him one of the biggest singles of his career in “fukumean,” which, like the rest of the album, eschewed features and put the spotlight squarely upon himself. “It’s a bittersweet moment for me,” he admits. Nearly one year later, he returns with *One of Wun*, another defiant and largely solo testament to his endurance in the face of genuine adversity. Opener “collage” seems to take stock of his current situation, dismissing those who wish he’d retire or otherwise quit the rap game. From there, Gunna faces down opposition with impeccable drip while reveling in the lifestyle he’s become accustomed to, conflating matters on “whatsapp (wassam)” and the title track. From his perspective, professional jealousy and rumor-mongering are no match for his swag. “I’m wearing clothes differently now,” he says of his sartorial aesthetic, which comes up not infrequently throughout the project. “It’s not just about the name. It’s more like really where it come from or the cut of it.” Unlike on *a Gift & a Curse*, a few guests do stop by to show support. Gunna and Offset go way back to the *Drip Season 2* days, making their reunion on “prada dem” all the more momentous. Another repeat collaborator, Roddy Ricch comes through for “let it breathe,” a sleek and moody rebuttal to the haters.

No matter how hard he appears to try, Rod Wave seems unable to escape the sadness. As the veritable king of pain rap, the St. Petersburg, Florida, artist has frequently sworn off the emotional depths that came to define his catalog, only to return to this thematic well again and again to produce masterful works born of hard times and mired in misery. As such, the trap-soul hybrids his fans continue to expect and, perhaps, demand from him persist on his sixth studio album *Last Lap*. Case in point: The finality implied by its title runs counter to the title track’s closing refrain, his inability to let go less a choice than a calling. From the very beginning, Rod shows that he’s still wrestling with demons. Opener “Turtle Race” mourns the lost while fretting over fresh woes, not the least of which being an ominous interaction with law enforcement. “Federal Nightmares” furthers the narrative as he watches loved ones ensnared by a carceral system while wondering if he too will be harmed or even destroyed by it. Not surprising given the gravity of its contents, only a few vocal guests get to enter his inner sanctum this time around. Lil Yachty and Lil Baby trade knowing verses with their peer on the unfiltered “Fuck Fame,” while Rylo Rodriguez shares some experiences worth processing on the frank advice session “Jersey Numbers.” Thankfully, a hopeful streak emerges now and then to counter the anxious gloom, evidenced by the heartfelt declarations of “25” and the powerful positive thinking behind the gospel-tinged “The Best.” No passive figure in his own story, he strikes back against hater mentalities on “Apply Pressure” and jet-sets defensively on “Passport Junkie.”

Sporting one of the most outsized personalities in all of hip-hop history, LL COOL J made rap braggadocio into an art form. During his mid-’80s emergence, the Queens-bred MC used his inherently aggressive delivery to prove himself bigger and deffer than the competition. In the ’90s, he channeled that tenacity even more effectively on the seminal *Mama Said Knock You Out* and its gritty successor *14 Shots to the Dome* while increasingly amplifying his libidinous loverman side to great commercial effect. It worked so well that, by the time he popularized the term “GOAT” on his sexually charged 2000 album of the same name, few could argue he wasn’t a contender for that prestigious title. Yet those who arrived during James Todd Smith’s R&B crossover era, or the many more who’ve come to know him primarily as an actor on television and in film, may not know what a tremendous rapper he was—and remains. His first studio album in some 11 years, *THE FORCE* shows his microphone prowess has in no way waned over the past decade. There’s a core combativeness to his contemporary approach, unquestionably bolstered by the distressing and galvanizing events of recent years. Out the gate, on the Snoop Dogg-assisted “Spirit of Cyrus,” he conjures a vivid Black vigilante fantasy where racists receive their comeuppances in brutal fashion. With a similarly vibrant Busta Rhymes in his corner, he outlines a revolutionary mindset on the thunderous “Huey in the Chair.” As should be expected with an artist with his tenure, he also reveals a sentimentally nostalgic streak in a number of instances here, calling back to his come-up on “Basquiat Energy” and realizing that the you-can’t-go-home-again axiom rings truer than expected on “30 Decembers.” “Black Code Suite” synthesizes his tendencies quite beautifully, its Afrocentric bent mixing memory with militancy. Part of what makes *THE FORCE* such a tremendous record comes from producer Q-Tip. Rather than chase trends, the Natives Tongues veteran gives LL a series of instrumentals (and, on more than one occasion, hooks) that veer far from legacy-act stagnation and instead towards a mature yet rugged vibe. This translates to the laidback synth slap of the Saweetie duet “Proclivities” as much as the far squirmier funk of his Eminem collab “Murdergram Deux.” From the reconfigured throwbacks of “Passion” and “Post Modern” to the timeless grooves of “Runnit Back” and “Saturday Night Special,” their robust artist pairing ensures that *THE FORCE* is an album to reckon with.

Fousheé has never been known to box herself into one genre of music. Since she burst onto the music scene in 2020 with her viral breakout hit “Deep End,” the singer-songwriter has cemented herself as an artist to watch as she seamlessly bounces from alt-R&B to folk to punk and rap within her projects and features. Where Fousheé’s second full-length *softCORE* mashes up pop-punk grit with airy R&B, the Up Next alum’s latest effort *Pointy Heights* broadens her palette and paints an entirely new sound. Dedicated to her grandfather, who founded and owned a stretch of land in Jamaica, *Pointy Heights* is an autobiographical love letter to her roots. Fousheé invites listeners into a world shaped by her home, where old-school reggae, dance-friendly rhythms, and melodies run free. It is rich with sounds of crackling basslines and sharp and lively drum sounds that are anchored by Fousheé’s honest and vulnerable songwriting, which tackles issues of acceptance (“still around”), love (“closer”), and heartache (“flowers,” “loversland”) and pays homage to the people around her (“feel like home”). She looks for peace and tranquility on the groove-driven track “war,” while on the Steve Lacy-co-produced track “100 bux,” Fousheé details her recovery from a lousy hangover over an interpolation of Musical Youth’s 1982 reggae classic “Pass the Dutchie.”

The first sign that a new era had arrived was Camila Cabello’s platinum blonde locks. Then came “I LUV IT,” the shake-up of a lead single for the Miami native’s fourth studio album—loud, brash, and diamond-hard, with a hook that interpolates a 2009 Gucci Mane classic (“Lemonade”) and an expressionistic verse from Playboi Carti. Speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, the 27-year-old singer emphasizes *C,XOXO*’s most crucial evolution: For the first time in her career, the songwriting feels like her own. “Letting go of the safety net of other co-writers in the room allowed for there to be more space for me to hear my own voice,” she tells Lowe. “When you are younger, you feel like you are looking for other people to point out the way a little bit more, and that voice inside you, you’re listening to, but you don’t totally trust. I think as I’ve gotten older, I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to listen to myself. I’m comfortable being, like, it’s on me today, and whether it fails or succeeds, I can trust myself to do it.” Call it a vibe shift or a reintroduction or, as Cabello cheekily called *C,XOXO*, her “hyper-femme villain arc,” with dreamy production from Spain’s El Guincho. There are odes to her tropical hometown, as she recruits City Girls to twerk out the sunroof on Collins Avenue for “Dade County Dreaming.” She’s covered in glitter and dressed for revenge on “pretty when i cry” and tempting an ex on the scorching “HOT UPTOWN,” which features Drake in peak *Honestly, Nevermind* form. Things get deeper on moody, wispy tracks like “June Gloom” and “Twentysomethings,” downcast odes to messy, complicated relationships: “Twentysomethings, gotta have a sense of humor/When it comes to us/Don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” she coos on the latter. But it’s the gorgeous and strange “Chanel No.5” that best represents Cabello as a songwriter. It’s an ethereal experiment she describes as having “pop melodies, but with rap structure,” with twinkly piano and lyrical nods to Haruki Murakami and Quentin Tarantino, spritzes of perfume, and chipped nail polish. “It is the thesis statement for the album,” she tells Lowe. “I was like, this is literally the voice of *C,XOXO*. It’s playful. She’s in control. She’s putting on her lip gloss. She’s toying with this guy. She’s magical. She’s sensitive.”

Denzel Curry’s *King of the Mischievous South Vol. 2* continues a series that began way back in 2012, and the South Florida spitter illustrates just how far he’s come on the sequel. He unites rappers of all different generations on the project, taking cues from the Raider Klan crew he cut his teeth with in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Key Nyata and That Mexican OT represent the new school, while 2 Chainz and Juicy J hold it down for the old heads. As is often the case with Curry, the album is full of high-energy bangers, like the Maxo Kream-assisted “SET IT,” which burns and bounces with the half-speed swagger of Maxo’s Houston roots. Employing his now-classic triplet flow, Zel recalls how real the struggle was when he was cutting his teeth in the game: “They always told me more money, more problems/But when I was broke, they gave me shit for less.” On the Armani White-featuring “WISHLIST,” the duo turn in a club anthem, beaming with arena-ready synths and drums that will be perfect for one of Denzel Curry’s rowdy concert mosh pits.

It feels fairly remarkable that Lil Tecca is now five full-length projects deep into his rap career. After all, it seems like only yesterday that the Queens, New York, phenom broke out in a big way with the 2019 smash “Ransom” and the corresponding *We Love You Tecca* mixtape. Over the next half-decade, he regularly logged chart hits, including the 2023 standout “500lbs.” For his fourth album in as many years, he continues to mine a sound built on swirling synths, post-trap percussion, and melodic vocals. Preceded by booming singles like “BAD TIME” and “NEVER LAST,” *PLAN A* shows an artist living in—and sounding like—this specific moment in time. Having come into stardom as a teen, Tecca’s youthful energy ensures his delivery neither slackens nor wanes across these 18 tracks. He documents his endurance on the shimmering “24HRS” and brags about the type of baddies he pulls on “HOMEBODY.” Even when the tempo noticeably drops, as on the drill-adjacent “SELF2SELF” or the steal-your-girl warning “NUMBER 2,” he stays engaging and engaged. There appears to be no limits to his sex life, a topic he expounds upon at length throughout the album’s runtime. Whether calculatingly limiting his communications with an eager lover on “4U” or pondering whether a taken woman is worth the pursuit (“COLD GIRLS”), he seems exceedingly comfortable in his young-lothario niche. A rare exception to these predominantly solo cuts, the bass-heavy “I CAN’T LET GO” brings Don Toliver into the studio to extoll the virtues of their hip-hop celebrity vices.

Whether singing in Spanish or in English, Kali Uchis continually proves herself to be a versatile performer. Following 2020’s *Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)* and its hit single “telepatía,” the Colombian American singer eventually boasted that she had two more albums, one in each language, more or less at the ready, the first being 2023’s soulful *Red Moon in Venus* and the next being *ORQUÍDEAS*. With lyrics primarily (though not exclusively) in Spanish, she delivers an exquisite pop-wise R&B set here, one replete with clubby highs and balladic depth. The dance floor is well served with cuts like “Me Pongo Loca” and “Pensamientos Intrusivos,” her ethereal vocals elevating them further. The collaborations reflect her journey as well as her status, as she links with superstar KAROL G on the polished perreo throwback “Labios Mordidos” and música mexicana sensation Peso Pluma for the romantic duet “Igual Que Un Ángel.” On “Muñekita,” she bridges her two worlds with the aid of Dominican dynamo El Alfa and City Girls rapper JT, who combine to produce an irresistible dembow moment.

The award for “most meteoric come-up of 2024” goes to Tommy Richman, the 24-year-old singer who blew up seemingly overnight with “MILLION DOLLAR BABY,” the groovy TikTok sensation that went on to take over the charts. Though he seemed to come from nowhere, the Woodbridge, Virginia, native and trained opera singer released his first EP, *Paycheck*, in 2022, then signed to kindred spirit Brent Faiyaz’s label in 2023. Still, to launch a song-of-the-summer contender amidst the great Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef of 2024 isn’t just beginner’s luck. Most newcomers would milk that kind of success for all it’s worth, but you won’t find “MILLION DOLLAR BABY” on Richman’s debut album, *COYOTE*. Bold play. Richman’s an old soul, drawn to ’80s funk and the kind of R&B that had men doing choreography and wearing their hearts on their silky sleeves. That’s *COYOTE*’s mood from top to bottom, with each of its 11 tracks flowing seamlessly into the next, giving the feeling of a party with an excellent DJ. There’s pathos in his echoing falsetto, which hits a little harder when he doesn’t quite hit the note, as on “WHITNEY,” a Frank Ocean song run through a shiny ’80s funk filter. “TENNESSEE” channels SoundCloud rap boosted with vintage Bay Area bounce, while “LETTERMAN” has the young nostalgist draping his letterman’s jacket on his girl’s shoulders before taking her out to the speakeasy. It’s a fresh, cohesive introduction to an artist poised to transcend “one-hit wonder” status.