Complex's Best Albums of 2020

If we’re comparing it to the year prior, 2019 was something of a quiet one for Atlanta MC Lil Baby. Sure, he featured on singles by DaBaby, Lykke Li, and Yo Gotti, among others, but ever since 2018’s *Street Gossip*, Lil Baby seemed content simply to share the sauce with collaborators. With the release of *My Turn*, however, Baby has declared that he’s finished letting anyone else spread their wings and is ready to reclaim his spot atop hip-hop’s throne. *My Turn* is of course built on Lil Baby’s verbose and ever formidable bar construction and under-heralded wordplay. Songs like “Grace” and “No Sucker” find him in fine form, rapping, as he admits outright on track 13, that he’s still got “Sum 2 Prove.” Guests on the project lean toward animated yet high-caliber MCs like Future, Lil Uzi Vert, and Lil Wayne, while frequent collaborators Quay Global, Twysted Genius, and Tay Keith hold down the production. Songs like “Emotionally Scarred” and “Hurtin” show a more vulnerable side of the MC, but their respective follow-ups “Commercial” and “Forget That” show us that the turn-up is never far. “Woah,” the 2019 hit that gave an already popular dance a proper anthem, is here, as is the Hit-Boy-produced “Catch the Sun,” which first appeared on *Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack*—two songs Lil Baby may have included to remind us that we’ve always gotten the best of him, even when we’ve wanted more.

One of the most heralded hip-hop artists of his generation, Lil Uzi Vert built no small part of his well-deserved reputation off of the promise of a record nobody had heard. For nearly two years, fans eagerly anticipated the release of *Eternal Atake*, a maddeningly delayed project whose legend grew while tragedy befell some of the Philadelphia native’s emo rap peers, including Lil Peep and XXXTENTACION. With the wait finally over, the patient listenership that made do with running back to 2017’s *Luv Is Rage 2* again and again can take in his glittering opus. Without relying on showy features—save for one memorable duet with Syd on the otherworldly “Urgency”—Uzi does more than most of those who’ve jacked his style in the interim. He imbues the post-EDM aesthetic of “Celebration Station” and the video-game trap of “Silly Watch” alike with speedy, free-associative verses that run from gun talk to sexual exploits. An obvious influence on Uzi’s discography, Chief Keef provides the woozy beat for “Chrome Heart Tags,” reminding that there are levels to Uzi’s artistry.

Midwestern by birth and temperament, Freddie Gibbs has always seemed a little wary of talking himself up—he’s more show than tell. But between 2019’s Madlib collaboration (*Bandana*) and the Alchemist-led *Alfredo*, what wasn’t clear 10 years ago is crystal now: Gibbs is in his own class. The wild, shape-shifting flow of “God Is Perfect,” the chilling lament of “Skinny Suge” (“Man, my uncle died off a overdose/And the fucked-up part of that is I know I supplied the n\*\*\*a that sold it”), a mind that flickers with street violence and half-remembered Arabic, and beats that don’t bang so much as twinkle, glide, and go up like smoke. *Alfredo* is seamless, seductive, but effortless, the work of two guys who don’t run to catch planes. On “Something to Rap About,” Gibbs claims, “God made me sell crack so I had something to rap about.” But the way he flows now, you get the sense he would’ve found his way to the mic one way or the other.

Coming at the tail end of a steady wave of solid 2020 Griselda Records projects, the Buffalo, New York-based imprint may very well have saved the best for last. While his core labelmates Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine may have had more prolific release years, Benny the Butcher’s first project since the 2019 trio effort *WWCD* for Eminem’s Shady Records presents him in a singular context. Part of what makes *Burden of Proof* such a standout stems from the beat selection, all of which comes via Hit-Boy. Fresh off of a career highlight with Nas’ *King’s Disease*, the producer meshes exceptionally well with Benny’s street-informed verses on cuts like “Famous” and the animated boom-bap “Trade It All.” And as if his vibrant and boisterous bars weren’t enough, esteemed guests like Freddie Gibbs and Rick Ross sound energized by the upstate lyricist’s dynamic flows here.

The impending arrival of 21 Savage’s *SAVAGE MODE II* was announced with a trailer directed by Gibson Hazard and narrated by Morgan Freeman. The takeaway, aside from the fact that Savage and collaborator Metro Boomin were emerging together from separate and presumably unrelated periods of inactivity, is that the project was much more than just two pals hanging out. With *SAVAGE MODE II*, the pair have effectively reached back to the era when 21 Savage wanted nothing more than to let rap fans know he was a “Real Ni\*\*a” with “No Heart.” *SAVAGE MODE II* follows 2017’s *Without Warning*—also featuring Offset—as the third collaboration between the pair, the first being 2016’s *Savage Mode*. Savage and Metro would go on to become exponentially more successful in the years following, but *SAVAGE MODE II* songs like “Glock in My Lap,” “Brand New Draco,” and “No Opp Left Behind” effectively recreate the us-against-the-world energy of the original. Elsewhere on the project, Savage is every bit the rap superstar we know in collaboration with Drake and Young Thug on “Mr. Right Now” and “Rich N\*\*\*a Shit,” respectively. But whether he’s talking about “Snitches & Rats” (with Young Nudy) or opening up about a relationship gone sour on “RIP Luv,” 21 Savage sounds like he\'s at the top of his game while he’s back in the saddle with Metro. Or as Morgan Freeman puts it in the trailer, “When someone is in Savage Mode, they’re not to be fucked with.”

The theme of the fourth Tame Impala album is evident before hearing a note. It’s in the song names, the album title, even the art: Kevin Parker has time on his mind. Ruminating on memories, nostalgia, uncertainty about the future, and the nature of time itself lies at the heart of *The Slow Rush*. Likewise, the music itself is both a reflection on the sonic evolution of Parker’s project as it’s reached festival headliner status—from warbly psychedelia to hypnotic electronic thumps—and a forward thrust towards something new and deeply fascinating. On “Posthumous Forgiveness,” Parker addresses his relationship with his father over a woozy, bluesy bass and dramatic synths, which later give way to a far brighter, gentle sound. From the heavy horns on “Instant Destiny” and acoustic guitars on “Tomorrow’s Dust” to the choppy synths and deep funk of “One More Year” and “Breathe Deeper,” the album sounds as ambitious as its concept. There’s a lot to think about—and Kevin Parker has plenty to say about it. Here, written exclusively for Apple Music, the Australian artist has provided statements to accompany each track on *The Slow Rush*. **One More Year** “I just realized we were standing right here exactly one year ago, doing the exact same thing. We’re blissfully trapped. Our life is crazy but where is it going? We won’t be young forever but we sure do live like it. Our book needs more chapters. Our time here is short, let’s make it count. I have a plan.” **Instant Destiny** “In love and feeling fearless. Let’s be reckless with our futures. The only thing special about the past is that it got us to where we are now. Free from feeling sentimental…we don’t owe our possessions anything. Let’s do something that can’t be undone just ’cause we can. The future is our oyster.” **Borderline** “Standing at the edge of a strange new world. Any further and I won’t know the way back. The only way to see it is to be in it. I long to be immersed. Unaware and uncontrolled.” **Posthumous Forgiveness** “Wrestling with demons of the past. Something from a long time ago doesn’t add up. I was lied to! Maybe there’s a good explanation but I’ll never get to hear it, so it’s up to me to imagine what it might sound like…” **Breathe Deeper** “First time. I need to be guided. Everything feels new. Like a single-cell organism granted one day as a human. We’re all together. Why isn’t it always like this?” **Tomorrow’s Dust** “Our regrets tomorrow are our actions now. Future memories are present-day current events. Tomorrow’s dust is in today’s air, floating around us as we speak.” **On Track** “A song for the eternal optimist. The pain of holding on to your dreams. Anyone would say it’s impossible from this point. True it will take a miracle, but miracles happen all the time. I’m veering all over the road and occasionally spinning out of control, but strictly speaking I’m still on track.” **Lost in Yesterday** “Nostalgia is a drug, to which some are addicted.” **Is It True** “Young love is uncertain. Let’s not talk about the future. We don’t know what it holds. I hope it’s forever but how do I know? When all is said and done, all you can say is ‘we’ll see.’” **It Might Be Time** “A message from your negative thoughts: ‘Give up now… It’s over.’ The seeds of doubt are hard to un-sow. Randomly appearing throughout the day, trying to derail everything that usually feels natural…*used* to feel natural. You finally found your place, they can’t take this away from you now.” **Glimmer** “A glimmer of hope. A twinkle. Fleeting, but unmistakable. Promising.” **One More Hour** “The time has come. Nothing left to prepare. Nothing left to worry about. Nothing left to do but sit and observe the stillness of everything as time races faster than ever. Even shadows cast by the sun appear to move. My future comes to me in flashes, but it no longer scares me. As long as I remember what I value the most.”

The first time that Mac Miller and Jon Brion formally met, Miller was already hard at work on what would become 2018’s *Swimming*, an album that Brion would sign on to produce. “He comes in and he plays five or six things,” Brion tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “There was more hip-hop-leaning stuff, and it was great and funny and personal—the tracks were already pointing someplace interesting. After a couple of those, he goes, ‘I’ve got these other things I\'m not sure what to do with.’” Those “other things” were the beginning of *Circles*, a now posthumous LP that Miller had envisioned as a counterpart to *Swimming*—one that finds him exploring levels of musicality, melody, and vulnerability he’d only hinted at before. It feels more akin to Harry Nilsson than hip-hop, and the breadth of Brion’s CV (Kanye West, Fiona Apple, Janelle Monáe) made him the perfect collaborator. With the support of Miller’s family, Brion completed *Circles* based on conversations the two had shared before Miller’s death in September 2018, adding elements of live percussion, strings, and various overdubs. Here, Brion takes us inside the making of some of *Circles*’ key songs and offers insights on what it was like to work so closely with Miller on something so personal. **Circles** “That\'s what he played me. I added a brush on a cymbal, and a vibraphone. Throughout all of his lyrics, his self-reflection is much more interesting than some other people’s. ‘Circles’ and a few other songs on this record: You hear him acknowledging aspects of himself, either that he doesn\'t feel capable of changing or things he thinks are questionable. Things you\'ll hear in the lyrics directly—‘I’m this way, and I think other people might not understand how I think, but actually I\'m okay with that.’ It\'s so pointed. I was just a hundred percent in from the get-go.” **Complicated** “I think that vocal was done, if I recall correctly. He\'d play me things in various states, and the whole batch, meaning both albums’ worth of songs. He\'d play things, and I might just go, ‘That\'s great. All it needs is for the low end to be a little better.’ Almost every time I\'d make a suggestion like that, he\'d go, \'Oh, I\'m so glad you said that. I just didn\'t know how to do it with this type of thing.\' Other times, I might listen to something and go, ‘I love it. I love what you\'re saying. I like that vocal. I like the rhythm. In this case, about halfway through, my mind wanders, and I don\'t want the listener\'s mind to do that, because what you\'re saying is great.’” **Good News** “It was him singing over a very minimal track. The lyrics were incredible. It didn\'t have the chorus. He said, ‘I just think you should play a bunch of stuff on it.’ I gingerly asked, ‘Do you like the chords that are there?’ He\'s like, ‘No.’ I\'m like, ‘Okay. Well, I\'m going to play, and every time you hear something you like, let me know.’ I did with him what I\'ve done with a bunch of directors, which is watch the body language, when somebody\'s happy or not. He came into the control room, and he was really excited. He started singing over it in the control room, and he sang the chorus. I’m in the middle of the keyboard over top and I look up and go, ‘That\'s great. Go run onto the mic.’ After he first did it, he came in and he was still a little unsure, like, ‘Yeah, I don\'t know, maybe that\'s a different song.’ And thank god he lived with it and saw the sense in it. Again, that\'s not something I created—that\'s something he was doing. I think I did say to him when he was walking around in front of the speakers and he was singing that, like, \'Look, there\'s a reason that came to you right now.\'” **I Can See** “It’s not fair to give words to the heaviness of it, but I can tell you that the week I had to listen through stuff was a torture and a delight. Torture because of the loss. And then ‘I Can See’ would come up and I\'d be beyond delighted because I\'m like, ‘This is good by anybody\'s standards, in any genre, this human being expressing themselves well.’ It would turn back to a torture because you\'re like, ‘Oh my god, you were capable of that. I didn\'t even get to hear that one yet.’ I could sit there and wonder, would I have? Was it something he was nervous about, or because it was already so complete, did he not feel a need? No idea. You can ascribe all sorts of things to his sense of knowing. But people are going to have that experience because he was already self-aware and was unafraid of expressing it. But beyond that lyrical wonder of honesty, the melody just made me cry.” **That’s on Me** “He had come back from Hawaii. I was sideswiped by the song and the feeling of it. He usually said, ‘Oh, you should just play everything.’ I\'m like, ‘No, you\'re already great, I\'ll play along with that.’ Inevitably, he\'d finish a take and say, ‘Was that all right?’ And all I could do is honestly go, ‘Yeah, it was great. I\'m having a blast.’\" **Hands** “He wanted it big and expansive and cinematic, had no idea how he had one keyboard pad implying that. I said, ‘Oh, I\'ve got this notion of Dr. Dre-influenced eighth notes like he would have on a piano sample. Instead of it being piano or a piano sample, let\'s take the influence of that era, but I want to do it on orchestral percussion but a lot of different ones. So it\'s sort of subtly changing across the thing.’ And he was like, ‘Just put everything you want on it.’ So that\'s one where I went to town. He was really excited but had no idea how one would even go about that.” **Once a Day** “He came over, played two or three things—that was one of them, and it had a little mini piano or something. I couldn\'t believe the songwriting. I looked forward to his visits so much because every time, there was this new discovery of, ‘You\'re hiding this?’ Honestly. I don\'t know what else he\'s got undercover, but this thing is fully fleshed out. It\'s personal. It\'s heartbreaking. I went through the rigmarole to get him to play it and I did what I thought was the right production decision. I left the room, but I didn\'t close the door. I didn\'t leave, not even slightly. I stood in the door, basically a room and a half away from the control room with the door open. And he started playing and the vocal was coming out and I wasn\'t having to be in the room and he did a pass and I could hear there was something on the keyboard needing adjustment. It needed to be brighter or darker, and I just sort of came running in like, ‘Oh, sorry, just one thing.’ And I went back out and I stood in the hallway and I listened to a couple of takes. And this is how I can tell you I\'m not looking at it with the loss goggles: I bawled my eyes out. Heard it twice in a row. I kind of poked my head around the door and said, ‘Oh, I heard a little bit of that. That sounds good. Just do a double of that keyboard just right now while the sound’s up. Okay, cool.’ Boom. Ran out into the hallway and cried again and dried my eyes out and went back in and sat through the usual ‘Was that good? Are you sure you shouldn\'t just play it?’ Maybe it\'s something the rest of the world wouldn\'t see and I will be blinded by personal experience, but I don\'t fucking care. It\'s what happened. It\'s what I saw, and I just think it\'s great and doesn\'t need any qualifiers, personally. So there.”

Musically, there are a number of things long familiar to fans of the Buffalo-hailing rap crew Griselda Records. There’s the fervent appreciation for both high fashion and professional wrestling; there’s the vivid and unending stories of local legacies built on the drug trade; and then, maybe most notably, there’s the incessant vocalized recreation of the sounds of guns firing (“Boom-boom-boom-boom,” goes a popular one). All of these are fully present on Westside Gunn’s *Pray for Paris*, an album which follows the crew’s hefty one-two punch of Gunn’s *Hitler Wears Hermes 7* solo mixtape and their *WWCD* Griselda compilation at the end of 2019. What fans might not have seen coming, however, are guest appearances from Wale, Joey Bada\$$, and Tyler, The Creator (among others), along with production credits from Tyler (separate from the song he raps on), hip-hop legends DJ Muggs and DJ Premier, and one-time Vine star Jay Versace. Gunn is clearly aiming to up the creative ante with *Pray for Paris*, having commissioned the project’s cover art from friend and admitted Griselda fan Virgil Abloh. It’s a lot to process at face value, but it all works under the discerning vision of Gunn, who has often said he is less a rapper than a proper *artist*. But lest we forget—amongst the wealth of artistic flourishes the MC has included here—who Westside Gunn actually is, he reminds us in his signature high-pitched delivery on “No Vacancy” that he is still the man who will “blow your brains out in broad daylight.”

If the uproar over the original cover of *Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon*—designed, per Pop Smoke’s wishes, by Virgil Abloh—tells us anything, it’s that hip-hop fans cared deeply for the slain Brooklyn rapper. As Smoke’s official debut and the project following up the well-received *Meet the Woo* mixtape series—not to mention the first one Pop wouldn’t be around to deliver—*Shoot for the Stars* meant enough to fans that they’d object in droves to what they believed was an unfit representation of their hero. What they’d find once they got past the artwork, though, is that Smoke had quite a bit of music diverging from the quintessential Brooklyn drill he was best known for. *Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon* was executive produced by 50 Cent, the veteran MC having formed a mentor-like relationship with Smoke sometime during Smoke’s meteoric rise. “When me and Pop went to go see 50 originally, he told 50, ‘Yo, I\'m working on this album,\' and he was sending 50 songs,” Pop Smoke’s friend and manager Steven Victor tells Apple Music. “\'Yo, get Chris Brown on this song for me. I’m thinking about putting this song on my album. What do you think about it?\' They were already in conversation about his album.” Following Smoke’s untimely passing in February 2020, 50 would take the reins as a means of honoring his friend’s vision. “I recorded three records and then I was like, \'Don\'t let me overkill or *over-50* on Pop\'s s\*\*t,\'” 50 Cent tells Apple Music. “There\'s certain joints there that Steven will tell you—because of my process, I understood what he was doing.” 50 Cent appears on a single song on *Shoot for the Stars* (“The Woo”), which doesn’t make it any easier to determine where Smoke’s aspirations of diversifying his sound ended and 50’s curation began. Smoke flows gruffly over R&B samples on “Yea Yea” and “Diana,” and then chooses to explore the whole of his vocal range on the CashMoneyAp-produced “For the Night.” Attempting to channel a regional vibe, he’s not-so-inconspicuously titled his Tyga collab “West Coast S\*\*t.” UK-based producer and longtime collaborator 808 Melo is all over the album, along with guest appearances from homegrown NYC MCs Rowdy Rebel and Lil Tjay. There are also three separate songs featuring Quavo, as well as appearances from a handful of first-time collaborators who also happen to be some of rap’s most dependable hitmakers (Future, DaBaby, Roddy Ricch). Then there is “Enjoy Yourself,” a feel-good pop-rap collaboration that features Colombian vocalist KAROL G rapping in Spanish. But it is the uniquely charming NYC-bred aggression and sex appeal of Smoke himself that tie together the disparate features of *Shoot for the Stars*. And to let Victor tell it, the project is the realization of where he and Smoke knew the MC was destined to be. “It’s crazy because everything was coming together the way we spoke about it,” Victor says. “The whole idea was we were going to put out a series of mixtapes: *Meet the Woo* 1, *Meet the Woo 2*, *Meet the Woo 3*—however long it took to make his name a staple. Then from there, we would go to the album. After the second mixtape, he was \[already\] making a name for himself.”

When Polo G released his sophomore project *THE GOAT*, MCs declaring themselves the \"greatest of all time” was as ubiquitous in hip-hop as claiming to be desirable to the opposite sex. But within the project, the still-ascending Chicago MC presents a version of himself matured enough beyond 2019’s *Die a Legend* that he’s entitled to a little confidence. *THE GOAT* features somber piano lines throughout (“Don’t Believe the Hype,” “33,” “No Matter What,” “Be Something”), but Polo is considerably bigger here than the “pain music” descriptor his work often gets lumped in with. He is reflective storyteller on “Heartless,” smitten lover on “Martin & Gina,” and equal parts technical rap show-off and riot-starter on “Go Stupid” (which also features Stunna 4 Vegas and NLE Choppa). The album contains additional appearances from Mustard, Lil Baby, and BJ the Chicago Kid, but it’s “Flex,” a collaboration with fallen comrade Juice WRLD, that delivers some of the best rapping of Polo’s young career.

A mere 11 months passed between the release of *Lover* and its surprise follow-up, but it feels like a lifetime. Written and recorded remotely during the first few months of the global pandemic, *folklore* finds the 30-year-old singer-songwriter teaming up with The National’s Aaron Dessner and longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff for a set of ruminative and relatively lo-fi bedroom pop that’s worlds away from its predecessor. When Swift opens “the 1”—a sly hybrid of plaintive piano and her naturally bouncy delivery—with “I’m doing good, I’m on some new shit,” you’d be forgiven for thinking it was another update from quarantine, or a comment on her broadening sensibilities. But Swift’s channeled her considerable energies into writing songs here that double as short stories and character studies, from Proustian flashbacks (“cardigan,” which bears shades of Lana Del Rey) to outcast widows (“the last great american dynasty”) and doomed relationships (“exile,” a heavy-hearted duet with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon). It’s a work of great texture and imagination. “Your braids like a pattern/Love you to the moon and to Saturn,” she sings on “seven,” the tale of two friends plotting an escape. “Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long.” For a songwriter who has mined such rich detail from a life lived largely in public, it only makes sense that she’d eventually find inspiration in isolation.

The title for Gunna’s heavily anticipated *WUNNA* album—his first full-length project since 2019’s *Drip or Drown 2*—is an acronym for “Wealthy Unapologetic N\*gga Naturally Authentic.” The Atlanta MC has also claimed that it represents an alternate identity, a chance to step away, if only momentarily, from the franchises that made his name, *Drip Season* and *Drip or Drown*. Thankfully for Gunna fans, however, the MC we get in *WUNNA* isn’t all that different from the man who taught us the meaning of drip. Across beats from a veritable wish list of can’t-miss producers including Wheezy, Turbo The Great, and Tay Keith, Gunna raps in effortless non sequitur about clothing, jewelry, and women. He’s joined by frequent collaborators Lil Baby, Young Thug, and Travis Scott, and also Roddy Ricch, who guests on “COOLER THAN A BITCH,” a song dedicated to anyone mistakenly believing that they’re operating on the same plane as he is. Across 18 tracks, *WUNNA* is everything fans could have wanted from an MC who’s dedicated his career to establishing himself as a trendsetter. In fact, the only place the drip is missing is in the title.

The harmonies that Chloe and Halle Bailey conjure sound like heaven. It\'s what got them tens of millions of views on YouTube; it\'s what eventually attracted Beyoncé\'s attention; and it\'s what continues to make them a force on their second album, *Ungodly Hour*. The duo experiments with a multitude of sounds and textures—many of their own making—while keeping their voices centered and striking as ever. Where their 2018 debut *The Kids Are Alright* played up an almost angelism that connected that moment to their origins as child stars, this new project is about maturation—both musically and otherwise. “I feel like we were more sure of ourselves, more sure of our messaging and what we wanted to get across in just showing that it\'s okay to have flaws and insecurities and show all the layers of what makes you beautiful,” Halle tells Apple Music. “I feel like we\'ve come a long way and in our growth as young women, and you\'d definitely be able to hear that in the music.” This time around, they\'re owning their sexuality and, along with it, the messiness that comes with being an adult and trying to figure out your place. On its face, *Ungodly Hour* is an uplifting album, but it doesn\'t shy away from the darker feelings that come along the way. “A lot of the world sees us as like little perfect angels, and we want to show the different layers of us,” Chloe says. “We\'re not perfect. We\'re growing into grown women, and we wanted to show all of that.” Here the sisters break down each song on their second album. **Intro** Halle: “This intro was made after we had finished making ‘Forgive Me.’ We thought about how we wanted to open this album, because our musicianship and musical integrity is always super-duper important to us, and we never want to lose the essence of who we are in trying to also make some songs that are a bit more mainstream. It felt like us being us completely and just drowning everyone in harmonies like we love to and just playing around. That was our time to play and to open the album with something that will make people\'s ears perk up as well as allow us to have so much fun creatively.” Chloe: “And the reason why we wanted to say the phrase ‘Don\'t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness’ is because that was a statement that wrapped and concluded the whole album. We should never have to apologize for being ourselves. You should never apologize for who you are or any of your imperfections, and you don\'t need to get permission from the world to be yourself.” **Forgive Me** Chloe: “I love it because it\'s so badass, and it\'s taking your power back and not feeling like your self-worth is in the trash. I remember we were all in the studio with \[songwriter\] Nija \[Charles\] and \[producer\] Sounwave, and for me personally, I was going through a situation where I was dealing with a guy and he picked someone else over me, and it really bothered me because I felt like it wasn\'t done in the most honest light. I like to be told things up front. And so when we were all in the session, this had just happened to me. I went in the booth and laid down some melodies, and some of the words came in, and then Halle went in and she sang ‘forgive me,’ and I thought that was so strong and powerful, and Nija laid down some melodies. We kind of constructed it as a puzzle in a way. It felt so good—it felt like we were taking our power back, like, ‘Forgive me for not caring and giving you that energy to control me and make me sad.’” **Baby Girl** Halle: “‘Baby Girl’ is a girl empowerment song, but our perspective when we were writing the song, personally, for me, it was a message that I needed to remind myself of. I remember we wrote this song in Malibu. We decided for the day after Christmas, we wanted to rent an Airbnb, and we wanted to just go out there with no parents and be by the beach and bring our gear and just create. And I remember at that time I was just feeling a little bit down, and I just needed that pick-me-up. So I started writing these lyrics about how I was feeling, how everybody makes it looks so easy and how everything that you see—it seems real, but is it really? So that was definitely an encouraging, empowering song that we wanted other girls to relate to and play when they needed that messaging—when you\'re feeling overwhelmed and insecure and you\'re just like, \'Okay, what\'s next?\' Like, nope, snap out of it. You\'re amazing.” **Do It** Chloe: “We just love the energy of that record. It feels so lighthearted and fun but simple and complex at the same time. We worked with Victoria Monét and Scott Storch on this one, and when we were creating it, we were just vibing out and feeling good. Our intention whenever we create is never to make that hit song or that single, because whenever you kind of go into that mindset, that\'s when you kind of stifle your creativity, and there\'s really nowhere to go. So we were just all having fun and vibing out, and we were just going to throw whatever to the wall and see what sticks. After we created the song, about two weeks later, we were listening to it and we were like, \'Uh-oh, we\'re really kind of feeling this. It feels really, really good.\' And we decided that that would be one that we would shoot a video to, and it just kind of made a life of its own. I\'m always happy when our music is well received, and it just makes us happy also seeing people online dancing to it and doing the dance we did in the music video. It\'s really exceeding all of our expectations.” **Tipsy** Halle: “‘Tipsy’ was such a fun record to write. My beautiful sister did this amazing production that just brought it to a whole nother level. I remember when we were first starting out the song, I was playing like these sort of country-sounding guitar chords that kind of had a little cool swing to it, and then we just started writing. We were thinking about when we\'re so in love, how our hearts are just open and how the other person in the relationship really has the power to break your heart. They have that power, and you\'re open and you\'re hoping nothing goes wrong. It\'s kind of like a warning to them: If you break my heart, if you don\'t do what you\'re supposed to do, yes, I will go after you, and yes, this will happen. Of course it\'s an exaggeration—we would never actually kill somebody over that. But we just wanted to voice how it\'s very important to take care of our hearts and that when we give a piece of ourselves, we want them to give a piece of themselves as well. It\'s a playful song, so we think a lot of people will have fun with that one.” **Ungodly Hour** Chloe: “I believe it was Christmas of 2018, and we knew that we wanted to start on this album. With anything, we\'re very visual, so we got a bunch of magazines, and we got like three posters we duct-taped together, and we made our mood board. There was a phrase that we found in a magazine that said \'the trouble with angels\' that really stuck out with us. We put that on the board, and we put a lot of women on there who didn\'t really have many clothes on because we wanted this album to express our sexuality. Halle\'s 20, I\'m 22. We just wanted to show that we can own our sexuality in a beautiful way as young women and it\'s okay to own that. So fast-forward a few months, and we were in the session with Disclosure. Whenever my sister and I create lyrics, sometimes we\'re inspired randomly on the day and we\'ll hear a phrase or something. I forgot what I was doing or what I was watching, but I heard the phrase \'ungodly hour\' and I wrote it in my notes really quick. So when we were all in a session together, we were putting our minds together, like, what can we say with that? And we came up with the phrase \'Love me at the ungodly hour.\' Love me at my worst. Love me when I\'m not the best version of myself. And the song kind of wrote itself really fast. It\'s about being in a situationship with someone who isn\'t ready to fully commit or settle down with you, but the connection is there, the chemistry is there, it\'s so electric. But being the woman, you know your self-worth and you know what you won\'t accept. So it\'s like, if you want all of me, then you need to come correct. And I love how simple and groovy the beat feels, and how the vocals kind of just rock on top of it. It feels so vibey.” **Busy Boy** Halle: “So ‘Busy Boy’ is another very playful love song. The inspiration for it basically came from our experiences, kiki-ing with our girls, when we have those moments where we\'re all gossiping and talking about what\'s going on in our lives. This one dude comes up, and we all know him because he is so fine and he\'s tried to holler at all of us. It was such a fun story to ride off of, because we have had those moments where—\'cause we\'re friends with a lot of beautiful black girls, and we\'re all doing our thing, and the same guy who is really successful or cute will hop around trying to get at each of us. So that was really funny to talk about, and also to talk about the bonding of sisterhood, of just saying all this stuff about this guy to make ourselves feel better. I mean, because at the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that even though you may be cute, even though you may be trying to get my attention, I know that you\'re just a busy boy, and I\'m going to keep it moving.” **Overwhelmed** Chloe: “Halle and I really wanted to have interludes on this album, and we were kind of going through all of the projects and files that were on my hard drive listening on our speakers in our studio. This came up and we were like, wow. The lyrics really resonated with us, and we forgot we even wrote it. We went and reopened the project and laid down so many more harmonies on top of it. We just wanted it to kind of feel like that breath in the album, because there\'s so many times when you feel overwhelmed and sometimes you\'re even scared to admit it because you don\'t want to come off as weak or seeming like you can\'t do something, but we\'re all human. There have been so many times when Halle and I feel overwhelmed, and I\'ll play this song and feel so much better. It\'s okay to just lay in that and not feel pressured to know what\'s next and just kind of accept, and once you accept it, then you could start moving forward and planning ahead. But we all have those moments where we kind of just need to admit it and just live in it.” **Lonely** Halle: “This song is so very important to us. We did this with Scott Storch, and it ended up just kind of writing itself. I think one friend that we had in particular was kind of going through something in their life, and sometimes, a lot of the situations that we\'re around we take inspiration from to write about. We were also feeling just stuck in a way, and we wanted to write something that would uplift whoever it was out there who felt the same way we did, whether it was just being lonely and knowing that it\'s okay to be alone. And when you are alone, owning how beautiful you are and knowing that it\'s okay to be by yourself. We kind of just wrote the story that way, thinking about us alone in our apartment and what we do, what we think when we\'re in our room, and what they think when they go home. I mean, what is everybody thinking about in all of this? When people are waiting by the phone, waiting for somebody to call them, and the call never comes—you don\'t have to let that discourage you. At the end of the day, you are a beautiful soul inside and out, and as long as you\'re okay with loving yourself wholeheartedly, then you can be whoever you want to be, and you can thrive.” **Don\'t Make It Harder on Me** Chloe: “We wrote this with our good friend Nasri and this amazing producer Gitty, and we were all in the studio, and I believe Halle really inspired this song. She was going through a situation where she was involved with someone, and there was also someone else trying to get her attention, and we kind of just painted that story through the lyrics: You\'re in this wonderful relationship, but there\'s this guy who just keeps getting your attention, and you don\'t want to be tempted, you want to be faithful. And it\'s like, \'Look, you had your chance with me. Don\'t come around now that I\'m taken. Don\'t make it harder on me.\' I love it because it feels so old-school. We wanted the background to feel so nostalgic. Afterwards, we added actual strings on the record. It just feels so good—every time I listen to it, I just feel really light and free and happy.” **Wonder What She Thinks of Me** Halle: “I was really inspired for this song because of a story that was kind of happening in my life. I mean, the themes of \'Don\'t Make It Harder on Me\' and this song as well are kind of hand in hand. There was this amazing guy who\'s so sweet, and it just talks about this bond that you have with somebody and how this person came out of nowhere. And then all of a sudden, you kind of find yourself wanting that person, but they\'re in a situation and you\'re in a situation, and you don\'t want to seem like you\'re trying to take this girl\'s man. We spun it into this story of being the other woman—even though, just so you know, Chloe and I were never that. So we pushed that story so far, and it was really fun and exciting to talk about, because I don\'t think we had ever experienced or heard another song that was talking about the perspective of the other woman—the woman who is on the side or the girl who wishes so badly that she could be with him and is always there for him. So we flipped it into this drama-filled song, which we really feel like it\'s so exciting and so adventurous. The melodies and the lyrics and the beautiful production my sister did, it just really turned out amazing.” **ROYL** Chloe: “I love \'Rest of Your Life\' because it kind of feels like an ode to our debut album, *The Kids Are Alright*, with the anthemic backgrounds and feeling so youthful and grungy. With this song, we just wanted to wrap this album up by saying, \'It doesn\'t matter what mistakes you make, just live your life, go for it, have fun. You don\'t know when your time to leave this earth is, so just live out for the rest of your life.\' And even though we are in the ungodly hour right now, and we\'re learning ourselves through our mistakes and our imperfections, so what? That\'s what makes us who we are. Live it out.”

“I’m honored that people have accepted these songs, that my fans enjoy and that have such feeling in them,” Bad Bunny tells Apple Music about the success of “Ignorantes” and “Vete,” the two hit singles that preceded the surprise Leap Day release of *YHLQMDLG*. The album’s title is an acronym for “Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana,” or “I Do What I Want,” and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio spends his highly anticipated follow-up to 2018’s *X 100PRE* living up to that promise, luxuriating in the sonic possibilities, presenting exemplary versions of Latin trap and reggaetón while expanding the genres in new directions with elements of rock and global pop. While *X 100PRE* featured a relatively small number of credited vocal guests, the follow-up embraces música urbana’s love of collaboration, pairing El Conejo Malo with an impressive array of features. Reaching back towards reggaetón’s 1990s roots, he taps veteran Yaviah for the hypnotic “Bichiyal” and the inimitable Daddy Yankee for “La Santa,” while linking up elsewhere with contemporary Latin R&B wave runners like Mora and Sech. Bad Bunny talked with Apple Music about a few of his favorites off the album and some of the people who helped make *YHLQMDLG* a reality. **Si Veo a Tu Mamá** “All of my songs come from my experience or are based on a real-life experience of mine. Everyone falls in love in life. Everyone has relationships. Everyone has had someone. There’s something so natural in writing about love, because we all feel love every day and share love.” **La Difícil** “What I like most about collaborating with \[producer duo\] Subelo NEO is how talented they are. They are such humble people who know how to work as a team. They understand the good vibes that I’ve built my fame on, because we shared them at the beginning of my career. I like what they do.” **La Santa** “This was a very special track for me. Working with Daddy Yankee is always an honor and a pleasure. I’ve learned a lot from him in the studio. This one inspired me so much. Always, always, always when I do something with Daddy Yankee, it’s just so exciting, fabulous, and makes me feel very happy and proud.” **Safaera** “This was something that I have always wanted to do. It is a very much a part of Puerto Rican culture and the roots of reggaetón. It was special because I made it with one of my best friends in my entire life, someone I started out with in music and who supported me a lot from the beginning and to this day, DJ Orma. He fell in love with this music just like me, with this type of rhythm—reggaetón, perreo old-school.” **Hablamos Mañana** “I love this one. It’s the most energetic of the album and the most different. In general, there’s a lot of strength and feeling in rock music. I’ll make whatever music that God allows me to. At some point, if I felt like making a rock en español album, I would. If I wanted to make a bachata album, I would.”

The first verse we hear on Jay Electronica’s *A Written Testimony* comes from JAY-Z. The God MC opens “Ghost of Soulja Slim,” the second track on the album, which follows an intro comprising mostly remarks from Minister Louis Farrakhan—adding an extra four minutes to the decade-plus many fans have waited to hear Jay Electronica rap on his debut album. Having Jigga bat leadoff registers as much less of a stunt in the context of the full project, and only helps build the anticipation. JAY-Z appears on nearly every song on *A Written Testimony*, assuming a partner-in-rhyme role not unlike the one Ghostface Killah played on Raekwon’s seminal *Only Built 4 Cuban Linx*. The Jays sound likewise inspired by each other, yielding the mic for continuous intervals of elite-level MCing, delivering bars both forthright and poetic, and also steeped in phrasings uncommon outside of the written word. “If you want to be a master in life, you must submit to a master/I was born to lock horns with the Devil at the brink of the hereafter,” Electronica raps on “The Neverending Story.” Electronica is credited with the bulk of production on the album, with additional contributions from No I.D. and The Alchemist, along with the all-star team (Swizz Beatz, Araabmuzik, Hit-Boy, G. Ry) responsible for “The Blinding.” The MC raps in Spanish on “Fruits of the Spirit,” and though he shouts out Vince Staples, Marvel villain Thanos, and cosmetic butt injections, there are very few references on *A Written Testimony* that could date the album long-term. The goal here was very clearly to make a timeless project, one we should appreciate considering there’s no telling if or when we will get another.

Pop Smoke opened the title track of his 2019 debut *Meet the Woo* with a series of bars that distill exactly what the Brooklyn MC is all about: “Baby girl, come and meet the Woo/She know we keep a tool/Big knockin\' on my body/Watch who you speaking to.” The album—propelled by the breakout single “Welcome to the Party”—made a star out of a previously unknown MC, at once familiarizing the rap game with this promising voice, as well as the Canarsie hood he came from. *Meet the Woo 2*, as its title suggests, is another helping of the consistently intimidating, endlessly catchy contemporary Brooklyn drill music that gave Pop Smoke his fame. Success has only served to fortify his earliest claims of citywide dominance (“Invincible,” “Christopher Walking,” “Element”), but he isn’t too self-important to share the mic with several of New York City’s most celebrated young voices (A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Fivio Foreign, Lil Tjay), spreading love in the Brooklyn tradition.

The Mobile, Alabama, newcomer gets a new hater every single day (or so she raps on “Pockets Bigger”), and guess what? She’s loving it. With her brash, bratty delivery and supersized confidence, Flo Milli comes off like the cool girl at school—complete with a mouthful of braces—on her debut mixtape. A 12-track blast through swaggering boasts and bubblegum trap beats, Flo’s got punchlines for days on breakthrough hit “Beef FloMix,” hands for anyone who wants ’em on “Send the Addy,” and no time for thirsty dudes on the SWV flip “Weak.” Short and not-so-sweet, *Ho, why is you here ?* feels like the 20-year-old rapper’s official arrival.

“I like to describe *So Help Me God!* as a light during a dark time,” 2 Chainz tells Apple Music. “It\'s a time capsule of what we\'ve been experiencing during this pandemic, during this year. But it\'s the light side. It\'s the other side of the pillow.” Before COVID-19 changed the direction of 2020 for the world, 2 Chainz had already delivered *No Face No Case*, a project serving mostly to showcase his T.R.U. clique. The pandemic would void any plans of in-person promotion, so in addition to the extra time he’d get with family, Chainz did what he’s always done, retreating to the studio to accumulate music for what would eventually become *So Help Me God!* Feeling the weight of the era like everyone else, he focused his creative energy on delivering a proper distraction, a body of work that features a diversity of production (Mike WiLL Made-It, Cool & Dre, David Banner, Chief Keef), guest vocals (Kanye West, Mulatto, Kevin Gates, Brent Faiyaz), and novel concepts, all which speak to the MC’s impeccable taste and uncanny ability to wring humor from the street life he knows so well. (See “Vampire” for a hilariously pointed quip about how he distinguishes hustlers who’ve always had money from those who are new to it.) “When people hear this album, they can\'t tell me they knew I was coming like this,” 2 Chainz says. “Ain’t no way. I switch my pitch every time. So, that\'s what this is. We\'re switching up the pitch.” Read on as 2 Chainz breaks down *So Help Me God!* track by track and explains what makes it the next best installment in his catalog. **Lambo Wrist** “Most of the time I like to warm people up—I might give them their soup and their salad before I give them their meal. But this time was a little bit different: I was trying to go entrée first and just recognize what I do, who I am, and what I bring to the game. Sometimes confidence and cockiness can get misconstrued, but I do feel like I\'m one of the best to do this, so I didn\'t want to play with them this time.” **Grey Area** “I went to the ’yo and I was rocking with my man Dallas Martin and he had a young producer over there, Jay the Great. When producers play beats, they \[get\] three to five. I don\'t like to listen to beats all day. I don\'t want to hear your \'experimental folder.\' So I told them three to five beats, and this was the third beat and I just went straight in, and that’s what was on my mind, I guess.” **Save Me (feat. YoungBoy Never Broke Again)** “I be doing a little light production around here. People don’t be knowing, but \[the bounce\] element is what I added to the record because, one, it has my man on there, NBA YoungBoy, and he\'s from Baton Rouge and that\'s just an element that they have in some of their music. I didn\'t want it to be overbearing, but I’m like, we coming with this nostalgic R&B with this bounce, this is a wave, this is a vibe. I could see me doing three or four more joints like this.” **Money Maker (feat. Lil Wayne)** “\[Me and Wayne\] are actually working on *ColleGrove* 2, so while we were doing that, I sent him this from my album. I needed him on this. One reason is because I got the sample from Southern \[Louisiana’s Southern University\] but I just be trying to make everything make sense, sonically and conceptually. \[‘Money Maker’\] is an articulation of the Black experience, the HBCU experience, band culture, halftime, all of those things rolled into one. And then ‘Piece of My Love’ is top of the food chain.” **Can’t Go for That (feat. Ty Dolla $ign & Lil Duval)** “Using Ty Dolla $ign and Lil Duval, that idea came from when JAY-Z did ‘Girls, Girls, Girls,’ when there were different people doing different hooks, from Biz Markie to maybe Beanie Sigel? It was different voices. So for \[Lil Duval and Ty Dolla $ign\], I had originally called on them to do the hooks differently, but I put them all together and it leads up to the point at the end where you just hear Ty going crazy. It rises with each hook, but people don\'t really notice it, and then at the end it\'s a jam session.” **Feel a Way (feat. Kanye West and Brent Faiyaz)** “The thing with me is I’m able to do a lot of different things. I\'m also someone that may be a little too in-tune or be a little too smart when it comes to the process, because I\'m data-driven as well and I understand what the majority of the fans like to hear from 2 Chainz. But I got other bags. I have a whole folder full of this vibe if you need that.” **Quarantine Thick (feat. Mulatto)** “Mulatto is from the South side. She from Clayco: Clayton County is where I\'m from. I thought, who\'s new or fresh who I can support and it\'d be organic—she pulled up on me at the studio and we knocked that shit out. So I fuck with her for that.” **Ziploc (feat. Kevin Gates)** “Kevin Gates pulled up on me at my crib in LA, and we went in. In this time of pandemics and internet, a lot of features are done through email—you send them and send them back—but when he came through, we vibed, we chilled, we chopped it up for an hour or so. Then we pulled up some beats and we did that one on the spot. It was one of my most memorable recording sessions because of just how we were getting to it on that thing, for real. Steel sharpens steel.” **Free Lighter (feat. Lil Uzi Vert & Chief Keef)** “People don\'t know, man, I\'ve rocked with Sosa, I be hollering at Sosa, I like what he do, I like how he bring his individuality to the game. Chief Keef is one of them people that we have to give him his roses too and he hard on the beats, too. So I talked to him and I said, \'Send me some beats.\' Then I did it and I sent it back and he thought it was so hard, he jumped on it. I think then Uzi may have heard it, and it just came together super organically. It\'s one of them records that I\'ve been sitting on. I\'ve been ready to get that boy out of here.” **Toni** “Toni talks in third person a lot. So, it\'s conceptual. \'Toni\' derives from the neighborhood I’m from, Old National: Everybody who sold powder or anything like that, their name was Tony. You would get called Tony: Black Tony, White Tony, Big Tony, Lil Tony—all the different likenesses. I\'m just Big Toni at this particular point in my career. The biggest Toni.” **Southside Hov** “I got a lot of admiration for the big homie, he been around for a few decades. He\'s been relevant and successful, in our eyes. He’s a businessman, philanthropist, he be helping the hood; married with the kids. He\'s not a bad person to look at when you want some advice or trying to figure a couple of things out. So I just really talk about my business savvy on there, mixed with my hustling savvy, which is kind of where he came from, the same thing. From hustling to the Fortune 500 type of flow.” **Vampire** “So I got the track from Dallas \[Martin\] and I do the track and I loved the track. And then I sent it back to Cool & Dre and they give it back to me *all* different—with heavy 808s…like some Florida shit. Maybe the beat was unfinished when I got it, but they don\'t know I fell in love with it like that. So I had to take things back off or whatever, but I\'ve *been* fans of those boys. I\'ve been fucking with those boys forever. It was just time to do it, and it was time to do something different.” **YRB (feat. Rick Ross & Skooly)** “So we needed a little spoken word on here, and my boy MIKE DEAN had made this, like, four-bar pass, with just the vibes. Then my boy KY, who mixes all my stuff, he was like, ‘You gotta put Big Rube on here to give them folks some game.’ \[We placed it\] right before Ross come on and it just fit like a glove.” **Wait for You to Die** “I had a little partner pass away, he was only 17 years old. And he passed away from something unfortunate, but I saw somebody else say, ‘I never looked up to nobody younger than me before.’ So it was about how he didn\'t even know. No one knew that. As soon as you die, somebody want your girl, the label make money off of you—like all this stuff is going to happen as soon as you pass away. So, it\'s just like a reality check. David Banner did the beat, too.” **55 Times** “I’ve talked about this before, but I have a couple of friends whose sons have passed away. My homie Crazy called me one time and told me that Big’s son just got killed and I didn\'t believe it. So Big called me a lot of times before I answered the phone. I don’t know if it was 55 times, but it was a lot of times before I found out the horrible news. And then when Johnny passed, I was asleep, out of town, and my wife was calling. I don\'t know what happened, either, my phone was dead or—by the time I got to the phone, I had so many missed calls and it was bad news. So basically with this song I talk about how God keeps blessing me for some reason. I was in a storytelling format where I talk about some of the dark times, but how God continues to bless me throughout.”

“This album was so many albums before it was this one,” Kehlani tells Apple Music of *It Was Good Until It Wasn\'t*. Yet her second proper studio album arrives perfectly suited for this moment that is filled with uncertainty—when so many are taking stock of the things we often take for granted and yearning for closeness we can\'t have, whether due to physical or emotional separation. As she aptly sums up in the initial seconds of “Toxic,” the slick opening track, “I get real accountable when I\'m alone.” A central and familiar theme emerges early: the eternal war between need and want, between the sentimental and the carnal. Songs like “Can I,” a lurid come-on, and “Water,” an astrological seduction, smolder with sexual appetite that masquerades as control and confidence. But she offsets the posture in turns—“Hate the Club,” gilded by Masego\'s golden saxophone lines, is passive-aggressive; “Can You Blame Me” reflects the push-pull of desire at odds with pride, and “Open (Passionate)” portrays the insecurity of emotional nakedness. Taken together, it\'s a revelation about how easily, as she proclaims on “F&MU,” “\'I hate you\' turns into \'I love you\' in the bedroom.” But the whole picture isn\'t one that is so neat or simple; the album\'s real feat is its depiction of how we are all many things at once, often contradictory but sincere nonetheless. Kehlani\'s rendering of the personal as universal is a matter of course, but it\'s when she mines her experiences with unblinking specificity that she becomes transcendent. “I\'m kind of in a relationship that has put me in a space of almost processing my parents a little bit,” the Oakland-born singer says, adding that her father passed away from a “gang-related situation” when she was young. “I started diving into \[that\] headspace with the music I was making.” That link emerges most explicitly on “Bad News,” one of the album\'s most poignant performances, which finds her pleading with a lover to choose her over a lifestyle which threatens to pull them apart. Kehlani has always been powerful when she\'s vulnerable—the essence and through line of her music is in the way she allows that which makes her weak to make her strong again. *It Was Good Until It Wasn\'t* arrives in May 2020 as many people remain under orders to stay at home and practice social distancing, but this music can be a vehicle to another place, even if that place is your own head. Kehlani shrewdly captures the tangled intricacies of connection in a time defined by disconnect—a hurdle not just to relationships but to productivity as well. “The biggest thing about this whole quarantine was that I impressed myself,” she says. “That\'s why no matter what happens with this album, this might be my favorite project I\'ve ever put out.”

Released in June 2020 as American cities were rupturing in response to police brutality, the fourth album by rap duo Run The Jewels uses the righteous indignation of hip-hop\'s past to confront a combustible present. Returning with a meaner boom and pound than ever before, rappers Killer Mike and EL-P speak venom to power, taking aim at killer cops, warmongers, the surveillance state, the prison-industrial complex, and the rungs of modern capitalism. The duo has always been loyal to hip-hop\'s core tenets while forging its noisy cutting edge, but *RTJ4* is especially lithe in a way that should appeal to vintage heads—full of hyperkinetic braggadocio and beats that sound like sci-fi remakes of Public Enemy\'s *Apocalypse 91*. Until the final two tracks there\'s no turn-down, no mercy, and nothing that sounds like any rap being made today. The only guest hook comes from Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Mavis Staples on \"pulling the pin,\" a reflective song that connects the depression prevalent in modern rap to the structural forces that cause it. Until then, it’s all a tires-squealing, middle-fingers-blazing rhymefest. Single \"ooh la la\" flips Nice & Smooth\'s Greg Nice from the 1992 Gang Starr classic \"DWYCK\" into a stomp closed out by a DJ Premier scratch solo. \"out of sight\" rewrites the groove of The D.O.C.\'s 1989 hit \"It\'s Funky Enough\" until it treadmills sideways, and guest 2 Chainz spits like he just went on a Big Daddy Kane bender. A churning sample from lefty post-punks Gang of Four (\"the ground below\") is perfectly on the nose for an album brimming with funk and fury, as is the unexpected team-up between Pharrell and Zack de la Rocha (\"JU$T\"). Most significant, however, is \"walking in the snow,\" where Mike lays out a visceral rumination on police violence: \"And you so numb you watch the cops choke out a man like me/Until my voice goes from a shriek to whisper, \'I can\'t breathe.\'\"

*F\*\*k the World* is a curious title for a half-hour-long project that not only features a voice so inviting that it sounds like it was meant to sell dreams, but also revels in earthly pleasures like expensive clothing, casual sex, and the luxury of unencumbered travel. But it’s likely just the phrase that happened to be on Brent Faiyaz’s mind the day he decided to name it; at least, that’s how the verses on *F\*\*k the World* come off. Across the project, the 24-year-old Maryland native seems beholden only to a sort of Socratic whimsy, with songs like the title track and “Clouded” playing out like audits of his personal life, while “Skyline” and “Let Me Know” allow him to question the world at large. Then there is the after-party-perfect “Lost Kids Get Money,” which sounds in the very best way like a freestyle off the top of the dome. His voice—accompanied in most instances by very minimal production—sounds particularly naked here, and as such hard to reconcile with the nihilistic title.

You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognize its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, *Fetch the Bolt Cutters* could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless. Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me,” are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channeling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.

When Drake released the dance-routine-ready “Toosie Slide” roughly a month ahead of his *Dark Lane Demo Tapes*, fans were near incredulous that he’d discovered yet another musical frontier in which to stake his claim. (Those who weren’t busy choreographing TikTok videos to the song, anyway.) With the release of *Dark Lane Demo Tapes*, Drake delivers a handful of additional forays into the sound of right now. The project, per Drake’s own Instagram, features music compiled by OVO cohorts Oliver El-Khatib and Noel Cadastre, and comprises “some leaks and some joints from SoundCloud and some new vibes.” Found within are Drake-helmed masterpieces of post-regional drill music (“Demons,” “War”), linkups with Future (“Desires”) and Chris Brown (“Not You Too”), and a Pi’erre Bourne-produced Playboi Carti collaboration (“Pain 1993”), as well as the kind of hazy, regret-steeped R&B that so many contemporary playlists are built on (“Time Flies”). In its approach to these familiar vibes, this particular collection of music is the most of-the-moment Drake has ever sounded—more present than his usual prescient.

In a great bit of rap mythmaking, Detroit’s 42 Dugg got his start in part while bonding over high-stakes dice games with Lil Baby. And if you’re inclined to believe him (hustlers\' tales go better with a grain of salt), he not only whipped up the second volume of *Young & Turnt* in short order, but freestyled the whole thing. Truth or sales pitch, who knows, but there’s a liveness to what Dugg does that makes the high points on *Y&T 2* some of the more exciting rap of 2020: the ragged sing-along of “Hard Times,” the trash talk of “Habit,” the way Dugg’s voice (nasal) and his flow (restless) make it sound like he can’t wait for the bell to attack the beat. And for those who mistake tenderness for honesty, behold a stray confession from “It Get Deeper”: “Fell out with my best friend over six grams/Now I ain’t got a best man but I got fans.”

Looking for a respite from the gloomy cycle that has been 2020? Then Megan Thee Stallion\'s got you covered. “I feel like I had to name my album *Good News* because we\'ve been hearing so much bad news,” she tells Apple Music. “It\'s like, \'Okay, look, Megan Thee Stallion finally coming with the good news.\'” The Houston rapper\'s long-awaited (and, yes, aptly titled) debut album is a distillation of her best qualities punched up for maximum impact. It\'s skillful and clever, but not at the expense of style and levity. Hope you\'ve done your stretches. To start, she wastes no time addressing the controversy that had been trailing her, using the album\'s opening moments to put to rest any discussion about the shooting incident that left her wounded. It\'s brief, fiery, and filled with haymakers, as Megan takes aim at her perpetrator (who remains nameless on wax—“I know you want the clout so I ain\'t saying y\'all name,” she declares) and any naysayers. Never one to wallow, she spends the next 16 songs showcasing exactly why she\'s earned the respect and adoration of peers and fans alike. Songs like “Do It on the Tip” (featuring City Girls) and “Freaky Girls” (featuring SZA) are flirty, twerkable, and emblematic of the \'girls just wanna have fun\' mantra that seems to rule her world, while others like “Movie” and “What\'s New” are all attitude and take-no-prisoners displays of the lyrical dexterity that makes her freestyles so charming. Elsewhere, “Intercourse,” which features Jamaican artist Popcaan, and “Don\'t Rock Me to Sleep” find her outside of her comfort zone, the former a dancehall-inflected romp and the latter a singsongy pop record. And for Meg, that kind of ambition felt right for the current moment. “When I started recording the songs for this album, I knew it sounded like album songs,” she says. “And I\'m like, \'This is it. This is the time. Quarantine is happening, everybody\'s basically in the house. I have everybody\'s attention. Everybody wants new music and you can sit down and actually absorb it.\" By the time the album wraps up with a run of previously released singles (including, of course, her “Savage Remix” with Beyoncé), it feels like we’ve glimpsed past, present, and future. The fan-favorite styles of old are now well-developed and existing alongside the possibilities of what may come next. *Good News* lives up to its name with ease—a tenacious effort that makes room for pleasure, dance, and feeling good (and oneself) despite contrary circumstances. And, really, who among us couldn\'t use just a little more of that?

One of YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s most popular songs is “Outside Today,” from 2018’s *Until Death Call My Name Reloaded*, in which he takes great pains to explain just how much he doesn’t want to leave the house. If *Top*, the second YoungBoy offering of 2020’s quarantine period, tells us anything about the Baton Rouge MC, it’s that solitude is clearly still the preferred vibe. The MC sounds like he’s in a great space across songs like “Kacey Talk,” which features his infant son, and also “Callin,” a song where YoungBoy—paired with maybe the perfect guest, Snoop Dogg—works through his own very relatable need for weed. He’s sharper-tongued on “Murder Business,” a quick reminder that life is the cost of disrespect, but reveals himself sensitive on “All In,” rapping: “Hope God put loyalty in all my friends/’Cause lord knows that I got they back till the end.”

You don’t make a 22-track album without experiencing doubts—even when you’re Britain’s biggest band. “We kept laughing to ourselves,” The 1975’s Matty Healy tells Apple Music. “‘Can we really put out a record like this? Can we really be where we are?’ The success of \[2018 album *A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships*\] didn’t change us, but it certainly made us think, ‘God, this is a lot of responsibility. To be compared to Radiohead. Fucking hell. What are we going to do?’” The way they saw it, there were two options. The first was to play to expectation and try to become even bigger. The second—the path they chose—was to return to when they were smallest. “Go back to when we were wearing Spider-Man T-shirts,” says Healy, “and the reason I wanted Ross \[MacDonald\] to play bass was not because we could eventually be in some culturally informative, cool thing but because that noise sounded cool with this noise.” On an album that begins with an address by Greta Thunberg and winds down with a song written by Healy’s dad, Tim, the noises that sound cool together include folk, UK garage, Max Martin-inspired pop, and hazy, discolored indie. Over that questing backdrop, Healy digs further into his inner self. “It has a lot of heart, this record,” he says. “A lot of the ideas have evolved. There was stuff like \[2015 single\] ‘Love Me,’ earlier work, which was about ego; those ideas are still there, but it’s now more about self-love in the truest sense—that people only change when it’s too hard not to. You’ve got to look out for yourself, accept that you’re not a Superman. There’s a lot of self-reflection. It’s the most me record. It’s the truest.” Here, he talks us through that truth track by track. **The 1975** “We were talking about how we were going to do *that* statement—the same statement that we always make musically—and we wanted it to be us at our most modern. That first track always has to be us checking in. That got us into the conversation of what is the most modern statement, or who has the most modern statement, and Greta was the decision. I think it sounds like how a lot of us feel. There’s a lot of hope in it, but it’s quite a somber piece of music. It’s very 1975 in the way that it’s quite beautiful superficially but also quite sad, quite pretty but also quite ominous. Greta has a lot of reach, but I really wanted to see her exist formally in pop culture, not just as an anecdote of somebody.” **People** “This song is right back to where we came from—almost what we were like in our first incarnation of the band. Very inspired by bands like Refused and Converge and stuff like that. It was around the time of the Alabama abortion bill and we’d just played a show in Alabama. It was the feeling of oppressive, conservative religion. It happened up on the tour bus. It was kind of like our ‘Youth Against Fascism’—\[UK journalist\] Dorian Lynskey said that. I was definitely thinking about that Sonic Youth song. I think that it’s about fear and apathy and referencing how annoying responsibility can feel. I wanted there to be like a slapstick madness to its urgency.” **The End (Music for Cars)** “The actual reason that it\'s called ‘(Music for Cars)’ is because...I wasn\'t going to tell anybody, but there was a song called ‘Hnscc,’ which was an ambient piece of music about death, the death of one of my family members, that was on the \[2013\] EP *Music for Cars*. And ‘The End’ is a reinvention of that, basically an orchestral version. And yeah, ‘Music for Cars’ has kind of become the umbrella title for this whole era.” **Frail State of Mind** “\[During our early teens\], we were super into hardcore and making noise and, like most people in the UK, super into dance music. I think Burial is quite an obvious one that you can hear on this, and even people like MJ Cole. That darker side of garage is something that I’ve always really loved. It’s very dreamy and sounds like driving down the M25 at night with the passing of lights and the smoking of stuff. Mike Skinner spoke about how garage clubs and the actual garage scene was always a bit intimidating to him as a late teen, so he would experience these things at his mates’ houses or in cars with his mates smoking weed. That’s what my experience was—with so much time spent in my car listening to music and then going home and making music with George \[Daniel, drummer and co-producer\] and then going out in my car and listening to it for context. That was one of the happiest times of my life.” **Streaming** “Sonically, it’s a tribute to our formative years and what we were into–Cult of Luna and Godspeed \[You! Black Emperor\] and Sigur Rós, all of these big ambient artists. And UK garage music. This record is like a bit of that with a bit of Midwest emo thrown in. What we love in ambient music, we call it Pinocchio-ing: It’s stuff that’s trying to sound like a real boy. Sigur Rós sounds like it’s striving to sound like a river or a landscape. All of the kind of visuals that you get with that kind of music. It really takes you back to one’s relationship with nature and texture and temperature. To be honest with you, we took quite a lot of that off. A lot of that made way for more actual songs.” **The Birthday Party** “It was the first thing that I wrote for this album that I knew was great. And it was the first thing that we got excited about. Inherently, excitement equals projection, \[so it was originally going to be the first single\]. And then we went off on tour and I wrote ‘People.’ And we were like, ‘Right, well. If we don’t start with this, where are we going to put it?’” **Yeah I Know** “I fucking love ‘Yeah I Know.’ I don\'t know what it reminds me of. It\'s kind of like Hyperdub. I remember super, super minimal ravehead music when I was growing up. It was just a synth and a drum kit. We’re also big Thom Yorke fans, outside of Radiohead, so I think there\'s probably a bit of that.” **Then Because She Goes** “It doesn\'t have a bridge or anything. It’s just this little moment. But this is how I feel about life. There’s so many fleeting moments of beauty on the record, which was really important because most of my favorite records always have them. Especially if we’re talking about shoegaze records. I think a lot of that comes from the slacker mid-’90s thing of Pavement or Liz Phair. There’s a lot of Life Without Buildings and stuff like that, especially in this song. And it’s like faded splendor, as I always call it. I love pop songs that sound like they’re drowning. Like My Bloody Valentine. Like a Polaroid that’s gasping for air. That really sunny but sun-flared feeling is quite across the record because—for the time and for the kind of person that I am, and my political views—it’s inherently quite a warm record.” **Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America** “This song happened quite early in the record. It reminded me of America so much in its ambience. It even goes back to \[*A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships*\]—I think I wrote it around that time. There’s quite a bit of folk music on the record. I’ve never really collaborated with anybody before, and it was so easy making music with \[guest vocalist\] Phoebe \[Bridgers\] that every time I had an idea or I wanted a slightly different texture to the vocals, I just got her to do it. Phoebe does all the backup vocals on ‘Roadkill’ and then ‘Playing on My Mind.’” **Roadkill** “‘Roadkill’ is about touring America, it’s about getting burnt out and searching for things. Anecdotal things that happen on the road—pissing myself on a Texan intersection, all those kind of things. I don\'t know what it sounds like—maybe like Pinegrove, or there’s a band called Limbeck that I used to love.” **Me & You Together Song** “We’ve gone full circle–this album is very like the early EPs: dreamy, hazy, and quite broken and deconstructed. A lot of our hardcore fans emotionally relate to our EPs and see them as our first albums, so it’s nice that we’ve ended up back there. Our favorite music is music that’s kind of inherently beautiful. It’s not pretty but kind of fractured or a bit jangly or overly distorted. I think the whole record is like that, and this is a stark example of that idea.” **I Think There\'s Something You Should Know** “It’s explicitly about impostor syndrome, depression, that kind of a sense of isolation. I think there’s a lot of that in this record. I think it’s also about the lack of desire to communicate about those things as well—like, if I’m talking to someone close to me who’s not aware of what’s going on. And I think the reason for that is normally because it’s exhausting to take it out of your head and put it on the table.” **Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied** “It’s quite a lo-fi hip-hop track. It came from George jamming on the piano, and I was putting a really low-resolution breakbeat over the top of it. Stuff like that is really fun for us sometimes. If it’s really simple and you’ve got a loop to work with, you can kind of just go into producer mode. And—like any producer normally is—we’re huge J Dilla fans and all that kind of stuff. Lyrically, it’s just more self-reflection. I think it’s about also doing your bit as an artist—if you give people nothing to work with, if you say nothing, then you leave room for people to project anything. I find that a lot of people who are out there doing their thing musically, who aren’t challenging any ideas, are only made interesting through association or projection. I don’t feel like a lot of people stand by stuff.” **Tonight (I Wish I Was Your Boy)** “This is the anomaly on the record for me. I don\'t know where it came from. That was me fucking around when the record was feeling really, really relaxed. It reminds me of all the kind of proper pop music that I grew up listening to, like Backstreet Boys. And it’s like an ode to early Max Martin, late-\'90s pop. I don\'t think we ever do anything retro. We never do anything pastiche-y. But there’s definitely a reflection on a certain time of our musical upbringing. And that was very much part of that. And it’s got a great Temptations sample at the beginning, and kind of reminds me of Kanye or something.” **Shiny Collarbone** “Cutty Ranks did all those vocals for us. It started out as a sample, but then we spoke to him to clear it and he was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just do it again.’ That’s Manchester, that tune, to me, man. That just sounds like going to town—that kind of dreamy, deep, dreamy, slow deep house music. Again, it’s like a fractured shard. There’s so many shards on this record. A lot of that is George. George always talks about how I’m quite expressive, how I have the ability, or even the desire, to express myself outside of music. And that can be in lyrics or in conversation. Whereas, because he’s not like that, he takes a really big responsibility on himself to express himself through sonics. That’s a really good way of explaining why a lot of our records are almost OCD in their detail. It’s because that’s George’s language.” **If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)** “If your vibe is instilled in people’s brain from what your earlier work is like, then probably \[it is the most 1975 song on the record\]. When I hear bands that are sounding—or are trying to sound—like The 1975, it’s normally *that* 1975 that they’re trying to sound like—that reference to post-punk pop, ’80s pop. And that does come out quite naturally in \[the album\] sometimes, because that’s very much in our blood. This song is very on-the-nose for this album. But I like that, because it’s another completely different tone to the album and it kind of comes out of nowhere.” **Playing on My Mind** “This takes us back into that American, James Taylor-y, Jackson Browne-y kind of sound. Again, Phoebe is just great to have there. As soon as I write something, if I get her to put a harmony on it or to just do something over the top of it, it completely changes. And that was really easy and really natural. I think this is my funniest record; there’s some lines in there that still make me smile when I listen to it. \[With\] ‘Playing on My Mind,’ there’s one line I really like: ’I won’t get clothes online ’cause I get worried about the fit/That rule don’t apply concerning my relationships.’ I thought that summed up me really, really well.” **Having No Head** “This is George, man. All George. It’s the only thing that George titled as well; he\'s very much into his Eastern philosophy. You can ask him what it\'s about. I don\'t fucking know. That\'s just George meditating. That\'s what that sounds like to me. That is how George gets it out, this big, sprawling ambience, his artwork, like tapestries.” **What Should I Say** “Bane of my fucking life. Honestly, for two years. This was going to be on *A Brief Inquiry*. It was just this piece of house music that we never really quite got right. I think it\'s about social media. It was kind of like Manchester again; we always thought about New Order when we were making this, for some reason. I’ve seen New Order, I’ve been a couple of times during the making of this record. I mean, we even met Brian Eno recently. The reality that we get to fuck with these people now: Whether it gives you a confidence...it gives you a *something*.” **Bagsy Not in Net** “We finished \[the album\] and after we’d done all of our deliberations, the record came down to 21 tracks. Now, we were looking at it and thinking, ‘But hold on: It *was* 22 tracks.’ It’s not that we didn\'t want to lose the preorders, it’s just that it didn\'t really make sense to me. But we weren’t just going to make up an interlude or something for the sake of it and put it on what we want to be our best album. We’d been with Mike Skinner recently, and I was talking to him about this tune, which is basically using that string sample. The conversation just turned to that, and then George started doing it, making the beat, and it was so fucking exciting. So we set the mic up and recorded the whole thing in, like, a day. It’s about wanting to die with your partner. Don\'t want to lose someone that I love. If somebody wanted to know what the album sounded like in a clip, I would play them this. We knew exactly what \[the album\] was just at the very end, whereas during the creation of it, we just didn’t.” **Don’t Worry** “‘Don’t Worry’ is the first song that I ever heard, I think. In 1989, 1990, our dad was in a band, just a fuck-around band, and he had this song that he wrote for my mum about her postnatal depression. It’s a song that I remember because my dad would play it on the piano. Looking back, in the way that \[this album\] is about me and my family and my life, it just felt right \[to do a version of the song\]. It was written 30 years ago, and it’s me and my dad singing—that was just a really special moment. He’s a good songwriter, my dad. It’s a very 1975 interpretation of his work. And he loves that. He’s very, very proud to be on the record.” **Guys** “There\'s not many love songs about some of the most beautiful, powerful relationships in your life. Especially straight guys or whatever in rock music, \[they\] tend not to write about how much they love their mates, or how this would be impossible and frivolous and completely pointless if we weren\'t all doing it together. One of the things we say to each other all the time is ‘Imagine being a solo artist. Imagine being here, now, on your fourth day in Brisbane, waiting to go…’ It’s hard out here if you’re just constantly traveling. And we’ve been a band since we were 13, and they’re my best friends. And we\'ve never fallen out. It’s a really true song. They’re the thing that gives me purpose.”

Arriving amid a veritable springtime surge of Brooklyn drill projects, *One and Only* finds regional pioneer Sheff G intently pushing forward the burgeoning sound he helped to popularize. An early sign of how well he achieves that, “2nd Intro” integrates a classic Roc-A-Fella-era vibe with his established aesthetic. Disinterested in resting on his laurels, he dismisses the copycat competition on “Moody” and goes for the jugular on the long-awaited “No Suburban” sequel. A prominent presence on 2019’s *The Unluccy Luccy Kid*, Sleepy Hallow once again proves a forbidding adjunct on “Lil Big Bro Shit” and the head nodder “Weight on Me.”

Unlike Ariana Grande’s last album, the contemplative and mournful *thank u, next*, which was released shortly after, and partly in response to, the tragic death of her ex Mac Miller, *Positions* is lighthearted and playful—a flirty wave from the other side. Her joy is deserved. During a grueling stretch that would have broken most musicians (a deadly terrorist attack at her own concert, Miller’s overdose, and her public breakup with then-fiancé Pete Davidson), Grande delivered two of the best albums—and one of the highest-grossing tours—of 2018 and 2019. That she might finally be experiencing some release, which is what these songs sound like, is a reminder to all of us that time and reflection can heal. So let’s move forward, shall we? Grande doesn’t waste a single second changing the tone. “All them demons helped me see shit differently/So don’t be sad for me,” she coos on “shut up,” the album’s sweeping, orchestral opener that puts trolls on mute. Strength and self-assuredness are themes throughout the album, and she gracefully takes credit for positive changes. She’s meditating and minding her karma (“just like magic”), blissing out on healthy habits and sexual vim (“nasty,” “34+35”), and diving into new romances without worrying too much about getting hurt (“safety net” featuring Ty Dolla $ign, “off the table” featuring The Weeknd). The implication is less about casual detachment and more about living in the moment: Pain and loss are a part of life, but so are pleasure and love. She seems acutely aware that we have little control over any of it. Accompanied by longtime collaborators like singer-songwriters Tayla Parx and Victoria Monét and producer Tommy Brown, Grande deftly explores new rhythms and moods—breathy retro-funk (“love language”), low-slung R&B (“west side”)—without drifting too far from soaring pop. “motive,” a duet with Doja Cat, tastefully shuffles between lurching trap and four-on-the-floor club beats. And the staggering “my hair,” easily an album highlight, feels like a late-’90s girl-group power ballad on which Grande effortlessly carries each part. Importantly, it never feels like she’s trying sounds on for size; she is the rare singer with a voice so powerful and an aesthetic so self-assured that subgenres, collaborators, rules, and trends all bend to her.

“This is some shit you go and pick your homie up from jail with,” Aminé announces to open *Limbo*, his second studio album. What follows reflects a wide-ranging version of the Portland rapper—at once introspective and lighthearted, weighty confessionals alongside freewheeling levity. It effectively captures the state suggested by its title, the messy, complicated, and triumphant glory of a quarter-life crisis. Of course romance is the primary recurring theme, because what is the heart if not life\'s greatest limbo. “Can\'t Decide” captures the indecision of situationships and those in-between states of maybe friends, maybe more, while “Riri” is a wounded survey of lost loves that manages to not sound wounded at all (and brims with pop culture references to boot). The silken “Easy” is a duet with Summer Walker about making it work even and especially when times are difficult. Elsewhere, he offers a show of maternal gratitude on “Mama” (“You\'re the only woman in my life who makes me smile,” he croons in falsetto), and conversely, “Fetus” wrestles with the prospect of parenthood and all that comes with it. Album closer “My Reality” pauses to breathe in all that life has brought to the rapper and exhales as a resounding thank-you. One of Aminé‘s greatest strengths is his versatility; he can effortlessly switch up his flows or a song\'s mood, going from a frenzied cadence to honeyed singing in a flash. He uses his voice as well as his production choices to build in contrast—nothing is ever too serious or flippant—and it makes for an intriguing listen that constantly pulls at the ear. At its core, *Limbo* is a searching album that often poses more questions than it answers, but Aminé makes the journey itself its own kind of pleasure.

A couple of months after releasing 2019’s *ZUU*, MC Denzel Curry joined the hardcore band Bad Brains for a rerecording of their 1986 classic “I Against I.” The point was clear: For as steeped as Curry is in the regional vernacular of southeastern rap, he also understood rap’s spiritual link to punk—music that channels the raw, noisy energy of youth. At eight tracks in 18 minutes, *UNLOCKED* is even shaped like a hardcore record, with tracks that mutate, Hulk-like, from sturdy weight-room rap to tangles of warped vocals and dissonant samples that play like experiments frothing over in real time (“Take\_it\_Back\_v2,” “DIET\_”). As exciting as Curry is—to paraphrase an old chestnut about great singers, one could listen to him yell the phone book—the anchor here is producer Kenny Beats, whose tracks mix the feel of classic boom-bap with a sample-splattered approach that captures the tabs-open fever of now.

Even after his *Slimeball* mixtape series and the corresponding 2019 *Sli’merre* with Pi’erre Bourne positioned Young Nudy as the next to pop from Atlanta’s trap music incubator, his long-anticipated official album debut stands out for one-upping that impressive streak. Adorned with highlights like the raunchy “Blue Cheese Salad” and the ultraviolent “Marathon,” *Anyways* gives the rapper an ideal set of unapologetic and 808-heavy tunes to demonstrate how far he’s come and how much he’s enjoying it. On opener “Understanding” he dwells on haters and snakes from the elevated vantage point of success, and he later spends “Cap Dem” explaining the sort of bad fate due to those who stand in his way now.

It\'s not easy to listen to *Legends Never Die*. From the album\'s opening moments, which feature clips of the late Juice WRLD\'s voice in interviews and closing out a show, we\'re reminded that he wasn\'t the sum of the demons he exorcised in his songs; he wanted to be a positive force in a world that so often feels negative. “I love myself so much as far as the way I make music, the way God made me, the way God wired me to do the things that I do and to change the world the way that I can,” he says. At the time of his death, in December 2019 at the age of 21, the Chicago rapper had cemented himself as a bona fide star whose vulnerability on wax was transcendent. Here, on the first posthumous album since, he gains immortality. The unblinking candor that made Juice WRLD such a force comes full circle throughout the course of the project. Every revelation lands like a prophecy and every rare buoyant moment a light at the end of an endless tunnel. On wrenching songs like “Righteous” and “Fighting Demons,” when he explicitly battles with addiction as a means of coping and the ways in which material success is rarely ever salvation, the heart shatters all over again. But then there\'s others, like “Screw Juice” or “Man of the Year,” which find him urging listeners to use his battle as motivation: “Let\'s raise our hands, let\'s sing and dance,” he declares on the latter. “I know my lyrics saved you.” Elsewhere, the single “Life\'s a Mess”—which best captures his ability to connect with audiences far beyond the emo rap genre while remaining true to its essence—manages to sound triumphant in spite of itself, like a reason to fight on. As posthumous albums go, this one scans as true to the creative vision Juice WRLD cultivated for himself. His diaristic laments aren\'t sanitized or watered down in an attempt to mute the pain of his reality, and thus, under the circumstances, these songs feel especially brutal and honest. It\'s an effective eulogy that captures the charismatic artist as his fans had come to know him—complicated but hopeful. Despite the turmoil that plagues these lyrics being no different than those he released in his lifetime, one thing remains clear: Juice WRLD wanted to live. And with every elegiac confession, even from beyond the grave, he implores his fans to find ways to do the same.

In times of turmoil, some retreat inward, some draw closer to their fellow humans, and others lean into spirituality. The multifaceted collective Spillage Village does a little bit of all three. As pandemic and social upheaval gripped the country, the artists—duo EARTHGANG, rappers JID and Jurdan Bryant, singers 6LACK and Mereba, and producers Hollywood JB and Benji—holed up in an Atlanta rental and came back with *Spilligion*. Built around religious signifiers and iconography, the album teases out the theme to create something that is ambitious in its scope and lush in its musicality. “Baptize” playfully incorporates the language of the sacred in a display of nimble lyricism; elsewhere, \"Judas\" deals with betrayal and loss, while “Oshun,” named for the Yoruba goddess of sensuality, and “Cupid,” named for the Roman god of desire, juxtapose experiences of romance. Throughout, hope, love, and camaraderie take center stage amid a backdrop of injustice and doom. “End of Daze” is an apocalypse (“God packed his bags and said bye-bye,” Mereba sings on the hook) set to candied neo-soul, while “Hapi” is a prayer for survival that resembles a sermon. The songs are collagic and, like church services, offer themselves up to be mined for whatever it is you need to heal or get free. Despite the cerebral nature of what brought Spillage Village to this album in the first place, *Spilligion* feels fun and carefree, intentional but not self-serious and brimming with a soulful Southern hospitality that goes down easy.

Traditionally, the “king’s disease” refers to gout, a form of inflammatory arthritis commonly associated with excessive consumption of rich foods and alcohol. For Nas, an MC whose catalog would lead us to believe he\'s been eating and drinking well for decades, *King’s Disease* the album is a chance for him to relive that sort of voracious glory verse by verse, if not bar by bar. The follow-up to 2018’s seven-song Kanye West collaboration *NASIR*—again helmed by a single producer, Fontana, California’s own Hit-Boy—finds the MC wistfully recounting the days when he and his associates were the gold standard of ill, detailing the ways they’d receive preferential treatment at legendary NYC nightspot the Tunnel (“Blue Benz”), the specific and calculated ways he would hustle (“Car #85”), and the surplus of fly women who yearned to spend time with him (“All Bad”). Touchtones of the era will strike a chord with those who lived or even admired it—(“Since Guess was spotted on my denim pockets/And my wave grease would amaze geeks and freeze fly chicks”)—while a reunion of ’90s supergroup The Firm (minus beloved Queensbridge spitter Nature, who replaced a reportedly incarcerated Cormega at the time of *The Album*’s release in 1997) speaks directly to the school of thought that real MCing is truely timeless. To that very point, Nasty (as he was once known) allows newcomers like Don Toliver (“Replace Me”) and Fivio Foreign (“Spicy”), among others, to bask in the deftness of a voice their own parents likely idolized. He plays educator on songs like “Til the War Is Won” and “The Definition,” but ultimately leaves his legacy in the hands of the people—as any great king should—asking humbly on “10 Points”: “Is there love for a Queens dude in Supreme shoes?”

If there was any concern that the red-bearded Queens emcee had abandoned his lyrical signature in favor of oceanography, *Only for Dolphins* opener “Capoeira” quashes that notion quickly. Here, the always entertaining Action Bronson clobbers his way through all of his favorite topics like a pro wrestling gauntlet match. The whistles and clicks made by its titular aquatic mammal play like hip-hop producer drops throughout, but apart from that the album recalls much of his canon and its easygoing greatness. A psychotropic joyride, “C12H16N2” trips through a Lincoln Center screening of Martin Scorsese’s *The Irishman* and its similarly ritzy after-party. From the reggae blasts of “Cliff Hanger” and “Golden Eye” to the lounge dirge of closer “Hard Target,” no matter what type of beat comes his way, Bronsolino mightily molds it to his whim.

The original 2018 *Just Cause Y’all Waited* mixtape was a way for Lil Durk to stay in touch with his fanbase while between label deals, but the stakes for the sequel are just a bit higher. “It was just an idea we came up with to see how can we get past this quarantine situation with everyone needing to stay in the house,” he says. The MC is continuously working on music and continues to record during the nationwide quarantine, but needed fans to know he hadn’t forgotten about them, even as he works toward another higher-profile release. “Me and Metro Boomin supposed to be doing a joint album called *No Auto*, but with the quarantine going on, it kind of slowed everything down,” Durk says. “So I was just being creative and felt like, while y\'all waiting on me and Metro, let’s feed ’em this.” Below, the prolific Chicago MC talks us through *Just Cause Y\'all Waited 2* track by track, going deep on what we get for our patience. **Different Meaning** “If I\'m in a relatable mode, I\'ll make all music to relate to the trenches, or to the streets, or just to the world. Whatever people are going through. This is not necessarily about somebody, it\'s just more relating and putting my thoughts together: what I\'ve been through or somebody around me been through.” **Street Affection** “I was just in a mode where it’s like, people will be lying saying they your brothers and you put people that you just met before your \[actual\] brothers. As soon as you meet some people, they say, ‘I love you.’ It just be fake. Some people just use the word. ‘Love’ is a strong word.” **3 Headed Goat (feat. Lil Baby & Polo G)** “Me and Lil Baby was in a studio and we did not finish the song. So I had the song on my hard drive. And then my hard drive crashed. I didn\'t have no sessions, only had \[what I had recorded on my\] phone and a little bit of the beat left playing. And then I just decided Polo G going crazy right now, I got to put Polo on there.” **All Love** “‘All love,’ that\'s how we brush shit off in Chicago. When somebody do something fake and they try to explain themself, you be like, \'It\'s all love.\' What I got in my mind is, \'I ain\'t ever fucking with you no more.\' It\'s like a nice way to dismiss somebody. It\'s really two ways: Somebody played you and you got love for them, you just tell them, \'Bet. It\'s cool. It\'s all love. We gon\' get through it.\' Or \'It\'s all love \[meaning\] I ain\'t fucking with you.\'” **Gucci Gucci (feat. Gunna)** “I like Gucci, I like Rhude, I like different clothing lines, but it\'s like, if you an artist, you let the music talk to you. As soon as the beat came on, all I heard was \'Gucci.\' So it ain\'t directly saying that \[Gucci is\] my favorite. It\'s just what I had on at the time.” **Viral Moment** \"I know some real ones that would lose it all for a viral moment. You would probably betray your friend just to go viral. You would probably do something goofy that\'s not in your character just to go viral. You would probably tell, just to go viral. You would probably expose a girl or just do anything just to go viral.” **248** “I got the title from how long the song is. I was really just putting bars together and just riding the beat. Just feeling it. Whatever came to my head, honestly.” **Triflin Hoes** “Me and my brother Chief Wuk, we was in the studio. He was telling me, ‘Oh man, this female playing with me.’ She calling his phone private, telling him, ‘Woo woo woo…’ And a couple of the guys had hit her already. So instead of him being like, ‘I\'m finna go on Instagram and put her on blast,’ I just made a song out of that.” **Internet Sensation** “You know how you have people look at people’s relationships and be like, ‘Oh, I want to be him,’ or ‘Well, look what she doing, look what he doing,’ and I\'m just saying, \'Stick to it. Don\'t let the internet break it up.\' So it’s just like a fun song, and it\'s for the females and anybody who’s open in their relationship on the internet.” **Street Prayer** “We was in the studio having a conversation about Muslims, Christians, Jews, and it\'s like, everybody makes it a big deal like, \'Oh, he\'s Muslim, he can\'t hang with no Christian.\' It\'s so crazy, because people say stuff like that. I just put my creativity with it \[to say\] the streets need a prayer. The kids need a prayer who are out here dying. People who locked up, they need prayers. No matter what your religion is. Everybody needs a prayer.” **Chiraq Demons (feat. G Herbo)** “I don\'t know what their \'demon time\' is, or \'demon talk,\' I just know ours is, like, them old Chicago evil ways. Them days where we were just so turnt up. Not even the violence, just having fun and being able to be outside without being shot at. Metro Boomin had just left the studio and I was in \'no Auto-Tune mode,\' so Herb was like, \'Let\'s do something like that,\' and we just rocked it.” **Doin Too Much** “\[This is for\] the doubters. The haters. Everybody\'s saying, \'You ain\'t going to go as far. You ain\'t going to do this. You ain\'t going to achieve.\' I grew up, look at me now. Basically like I\'m shitting on them.” **Broke Up in Miami** “This is about me and India \[Durk’s longtime partner\]. She\'s in Miami with her friends—it’s so petty—she called me twice, I ain\'t answer. And I called her back and literally 10 minutes later, \'Why you ain\'t answer the phone!?\' That’s why I said we broke up for \'five minutes.\' Just another mood. When I was making the song, we already were cool.” **Turn Myself In** “I made this song a day before I turned myself in on my recent case. I wanted to let the world hear me and let them see what type of time I\'m on before I go in. We got past it so we on a new vibe, but that song just means a lot.” **Fabricated** \"When we do do good things, the media don\'t cover it. You gotta let it be known. And it ain’t just for the kids. I want doctors, I want judges, I want lawyers—different people to look at me like \[in a positive light\]. I want to be able to come to a doctor\'s house and have a conversation with them, or a lawyer house and have a conversation. I don\'t want to never be stuck on one level where it\'s like I can\'t talk to them or relate to them.”

A Ty Dolla $ign verse or hook is like an adventurous spice—a recipe can be fine without, but the addition really elevates it. The singer and rapper has spent the past decade being that little extra something in every corner of music, from R&B and pop to electronic and hip-hop, and his third album, *Featuring Ty Dolla $ign*, is a celebration of that collaborative spirit. Over the course of an hour, it highlights both the contours of his silky smooth delivery and the agile manner in which he slots in alongside his peers. Whether in crooning or in rhyming, he shows up to each track prepared to inject it with whatever energy it needs. Despite the star-studded guest list, his voice, which is far too frequently heard as complement to someone else\'s, takes center stage here. On songs like “Real Life” (which features Roddy Ricch and DJ Mustard), “Lift Me Up” (which includes Young Thug and Future), and “Your Turn” (which welcomes Musiq Soulchild, Tish Hyman, and 6LACK), he shines through his guests, taking the qualities they bring and transforming them into his own. On solo tracks—“Nothing Like Your Exes,” “Time Will Tell,” and “Slow It Down” the standouts among them—he commands the space as if to remind us that he\'s still a force unto himself. This may be *Featuring Ty Dolla $ign*, but there\'s no mistaking who is, in fact, the main attraction.

*Forever, Ya Girl*, the debut album from Chicago-born, New York-based producer and singer-songwriter KeiyaA, is equal parts aural collage and healing meditation. Its expansive soundscape hinges on warped loops, improvisational textures, and sampled voices—from Nina Simone to Paula Moss in Ntozake Shange’s *for colored girls...*. The beats, most of which are of her own making, offer a compelling contrast to her vocals, which brim with gentle soul and resolve. In her deconstruction of traditional notions of genre and song, she erects a monument to radical self-love. On the stunning “Hvnli (Reprise),” she wraps her voice around itself to form a montage of affirmations: “I can barely afford to eat/But my love is heavenly.” It\'s a project that seeks to challenge its listeners not just sonically but spiritually. The mantras that emerge throughout—“I predicate my consciousness and state of well-being/On my own feelings” (“Rectifya”) or “Who\'s supposed to ride or die for me, if not I?” (“Negus Poem 1 & 2”)—are universal affirmations, but KeiyaA funnels them through a lens of black liberation. Her messages of vulnerability, love, and freedom are the sole constant atop a wavering sea of production that is as dynamic as it is unpredictable. Still, each song seamlessly flows into the next as if the album was intended as a single track, or dialogue, to be consumed—or, perhaps, meant to consume you—all at once, every time.