For athletes of both the professional and amateur ranks, the time between seasons is an opportunity to recuperate and to sharpen their tool set for the next run. Superstar MC J. Cole, whose career has long been informed by both basketball metaphor and actual basketball playing (in May 2021, ESPN reported that Cole had joined the Basketball Africa League\'s Rwanda Patriots BBC), has crafted his *The Off-Season* mixtape in the same mold, affirming that if he’s done anything in the time since 2018’s *KOD* album, it’s get even better at what he does. The 12-track tape is at once a testament to his actual rhyme skill and the reverence he’s earned within hip-hop. He’s sourced production from Boi-1da, Timbaland, Jake One, and T-Minus, among others, and has words—but not verses—from Cam’ron, Damian Lillard, and a man he admits to having once had an actual physical alteration with, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. Though he takes time to shout out both Chief Keef and Dave East—conspicuously opposite forces in the realm of contemporary rap—proper features here come from fellow Fayetteville native Morray and “a lot” collaborator 21 Savage. Over the course of his career, Cole’s been known as something of a lone wolf—J CoLe wEnT pLaTiNuM WiTh nO fEaTuReS. But in the scope of the energy we get from him on *The Off-Season*, it’s less likely that he’s been avoiding other rappers than that he\'s just left them all behind.
When *The Plugs I Met* dropped in June of 2019, Benny the Butcher was a promising if somewhat secondary member of the then-burgeoning Griselda Records empire. Upon the release of *The Plugs I Met 2*, composed with New York production stalwart Harry Fraud, he’s a certified star, so comfortable in his personal trajectory that’s he’s had the time—and resources—to launch BSF Records, a label comprising members of his Black Soprano Family crew. Save for Rick Hyde on “Survivor’s Remorse,” BSF is largely absent from *The Plugs I Met 2*, Benny having reserved the majority of the project’s guest spots for NYC rap legends French Montana, Fat Joe, Jim Jones, and the dearly departed Chinx. But no Griselda project is about the guests, and *The Plugs I Met 2* is no different in that regard, Benny painting vivid pictures of street life as he sees it. “For street n\*\*\*as I’m the new catalyst, but who fathomed it?/My heroes in federal sweatsuits and New Balances,” he raps on “When Tony Met Sosa.” The project on the whole is something akin to getting reps up in an empty gym: impressive, to be sure, but also exactly what we know he’s capable of.
In the five years between Shelley FKA DRAM\'s debut album, *Big Baby DRAM*, and its follow-up, *Shelley FKA DRAM*, the singer ascended through music\'s ranks (and the charts, thanks to smash hit “Broccoli”) with a radiant smile and a preternatural knack for levity in song, and then seemingly left as quickly as he\'d arrived. His rise also set off his spiral as he battled through addiction, largely going quiet after 2018, before getting sober in 2020. His rebrand from DRAM to Shelley was, at least in part, an effort to separate the bubbly demeanor that became his staple from the sensual lover that steers *Shelley FKA DRAM*. To that end, much of what has always made Shelley compelling remains intact here: His vocals are agile and opulent, slipping easily between buttery tones (as on “Something About Us”) and soaring falsettos (as on “Married Woman”), while his personality shines in moments of playful flirtation and earnest romance that especially come to life on the album\'s duets. There\'s a lushness to the instrumentation and arrangements that allows him to shine as not only a singer but a showman. The pacing of songs like “Exposure” or “Beautiful” has the improvisational feel of both a pulpit and a jazz lounge; others have spoken intros and outros as if recorded straight from the stage. It all combines to create an at once modern yet old-school collection—little innuendo is shrouded in abstraction, but he has a winking charm that calls to mind male R&B singers of the \'80s, whose ways of melding genuine sex appeal and lighthearted banter captured the era. It\'s a niche that few of his peers are capable of inhabiting (and certainly not with such conviction), and on *Shelley FKA DRAM*, he emphasizes the sublime style that\'s always been behind the smile.
There\'s power in reclamation, and Jazmine Sullivan leans into every bit of it on *Heaux Tales*. The project, her fourth overall and first in six years, takes the content and casual candor of a group chat and unpacks them across songs and narrative, laying waste to the patriarchal good girl/bad girl dichotomy in the process. It\'s as much about “hoes” as it is the people who both benefit from and are harmed by the notion. Pleasure takes center stage from the very beginning; “Bodies” captures the inner monologue of the moments immediately after a drunken hookup with—well, does it really matter? The who is irrelevant to the why, as Sullivan searches her mirror for accountability. “I keep on piling on bodies on bodies on bodies, yeah, you getting sloppy, girl, I gotta stop getting fucked up.” The theme reemerges throughout, each time towards a different end, as short spoken interludes thread it all together. “Put It Down” offers praise for the men who only seem to be worthy of it in the bedroom (because who among us hasn\'t indulged in or even enabled the carnal delights of those who offer little else beyond?), while “On It,” a pearl-clutching duet with Ari Lennox, unfolds like a three-minute sext sung by two absolute vocal powerhouses. Later, she cleverly inverts the sentiment but maintains the artistic dynamism on a duet with H.E.R., replacing the sexual confidence with a missive about how “it ain\'t right how these hoes be winning.” The singing is breathtaking—textbooks could be filled on the way Sullivan brings emotionality into the tone and texture of voice, as on the devastating lead single “Lost One”—but it\'d be erroneous to ignore the lyrics and what these intra- and interpersonal dialogues expose. *Heaux Tales* not only highlights the multitudes of many women, it suggests the multitudes that can exist within a single woman, how virtue and vulnerability thrive next to ravenous desire and indomitability. It stands up as a portrait of a woman, painted by the brushes of several, who is, at the end of it all, simply doing the best she can—trying to love and protect herself despite a world that would prefer she do neither.
There’s a liquid, surreal feeling that runs through *Pray for Haiti*, a sense of touching solid ground only to leave it just as fast. Between the bars of Newark rapper Mach-Hommy\'s dusty, fragmented beats (many courtesy of the production regulars of Griselda Records), he glimpses thousand-dollar brunches (“Au Revoir”), bloodshed (“Folie Á Deux”), and the ghosts of his ancestors (“Kriminel”) with spectral detachment—not uncaring so much as stoic, the oracle at the outskirts who moves silently through a crowd. He likes it grimy (“Magnum Band,” “Makrel Jaxon”) and isn’t above materialism or punchlines (“Watch out, I ain’t pulling no punches/So real I make Meghan Markle hop out and get the Dutches”), but is, above all, a spiritualist, driven by history (like a lot of his albums, this one is peppered with Haitian Creole), feel, and a quiet ability to turn street rap into meditation. “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and Ebonics,” he raps on “The 26th Letter”—a joke because he knows it’s not that simple, and a flex because, for him, it is.
On 2020’s *Changes*, the newly married pop star extolled the healing powers of love and faith, serving up sensual, clear-eyed R&B ballads about devotion, commitment, and inner peace. Justin Bieber’s sixth album *Justice* continues that narrative, but finds inspiration in something arguably even more novel for one of the world’s most in-demand pop stars: downtime. Like all of us, Bieber spent 2020 holed up in lockdown, unable to travel or tour due to the global pandemic. But rather than doom-scrolling social media, he embraced the relative quiet: He got rid of his cell phone, dedicated himself to therapy, and cut off work at 6 pm each night to hang out with his wife Hailey. The change proved to be nothing short of transformative, and the resulting songs—a mix of soft-focus romantic reverie that recalls ’80s pop (“Deserve You,” “Anyone”) and reflective, confessional ballads about searching for forgiveness (“Hold On,” “Lonely”)—exude the contentment of someone who’s come out on the other side. Bieber tends to use his marriage as a symbol of all his blessings, but these feel like more than wide-eyed love songs; he could be singing about any number of things—religion, perspective, peace and quiet—that ultimately brought him back from the brink. (In a 2020 documentary, he confessed to having endured a mental health crisis in which he felt, in his words, “really suicidal.”) Now, overflowing with gratitude and modesty, he sounds acutely aware of his good fortune. “Never know when my mind\'s gonna turn on me/But you\'re the one I call for security,” he sings on “Unstable,” a contemplative duet with The Kid LAROI. “Through everything you’ve been my rock/I think you\'re the only thing I didn\'t get wrong.” In track after track of heart-on-sleeve pop songs—with Khalid (“As I Am”), Dominic Fike (“Die for You”), BEAM (“Love You Different”), and Burna Boy (“Loved by You”)—he apologizes for acting selfishly and promises to do better. “I still relive the second I met my biggest blessing,” he sings on “2 Much.” “Prayed for you/And look what God has done.”
Rod Wave knows exactly who he is. “I got skills in other things, but rich off rapping pain,” he admits in the title track from his third album, *SoulFly*. That title contains multitudes in that Wave’s music obviously comes from his soul, and he is objectively fly, and then there is the fact that he’s continuously singing about the time after his eventual passing when his soul can *actually* fly free. In fact, Wave is remarkably productive for someone who’d have you believe he’s constantly in the throes of anguish. (The singer has released at least one project a year since 2016’s *Hunger Games*, amassing a fanbase whose penchant for making jokes about the glumness of his music is dwarfed only by their dedication to streaming it.) “If you can’t feel my pain, this ain’t for you anyways,” Wave sings on “Don’t Forget.” You’d think that the hard times he saw as a child, the constant betrayals he’d know as an adult, or the pressure he’s under as his family’s breadwinner might actually come close to breaking him, but Wave sounds like he is in a better space than he’s been in a long time. “I just be telling ’bout my pain,” he says on “Calling.” “I just be thinking, reminiscing ’bout that shit/I numb the pain with the money/I don’t feel pain, too much money.”
When it’s all said and done, there’s no telling how COVID-19 will have affected the artistry of some of our favorite music-makers—except in the case of Moneybagg Yo, who tells Apple Music very plainly that it made him a more focused MC. “I just feel like a lot of my old music the fans didn\'t accept how I wanted them to accept it,” he says. “I just was in a different stage of my life and I was moving around a lot. The COVID situation had to happen, and by that happening, I sat down and thought about everything and I made the biggest songs of my career—of my life—in the pandemic.” Here, Yo might be referring to the lead single from his fourth album *A Gangsta’s Pain*, the Future collaboration and instantaneous smash hit “Hard for the Next.” Or maybe he’s referring to an altogether trippy exploration of relationships through the eyes of a lean addict called “Wockesha.” Maybe he’s just that proud of the hard-charging “Shottas,” where he debuts a completely new flow. But regardless of which songs he’s referring to, the M-town representer claims that the break in action the world was forced to observe showed him exactly who he is. “I feel like by me sitting down and just figuring it out, I\'m going to go back to the roots,” he says. “I\'m giving them everything they love about Moneybagg Yo.” Below, the Memphis MC breaks down how we got the best of him on his favorite tracks from *A Gangsta’s Pain*. **“Hard for the Next”** “Me and Future, every time we get in the kitchen, the chemistry is always there, so I feel like this kind of happened naturally. When he gets you in there, he\'s going to lock you in and play all of what he\'s been working on. So, he played me everything and he kept skipping by stuff. I’m like, \'Bruh, go back! Go back to that. You\'re trying to hide this joint from me.\' He was like, \'Nah, bruh, you can have whatever you want.\' So my engineer got the session, I went back and recorded it, sent it to him, and the rest was history.” **“GO!” feat. BIG30** “I felt like I got to do one of them songs on here to where like I\'m just giving it to them. I\'m just on it. I ain\'t let up off the beat, just tempo. I got to lace BIG30 up on it because that\'s my artist, I want to see him win.” **“Projects”** “I was going through like, ‘What am I missing?’ And then I get the call that Pharrell wants to lock in for two days straight, so I was a little— you know how it be. Then, I came to the studio and I just laced it.” **“Certified Neptunes” feat. Pharrell Williams** “Pharrell had the chorus already laced up when I walked in. And then he was like, ‘Look, this is how I do it. My stuff, when I cook up, it be like a skit, so this is where I want to go with it. Just go in and then we\'re going to draw around it.’ It\'s like the trap energy, gutter-type Pharrell on that one.” **“Change Da Subject”** “This the type of song, you go in the booth and you just close your eyes, and you think about everything. You think about everything like how it started, where you\'re trying to go, who you do it for; all your accomplishments. You probably heard me saying something like, \'No more pain and suffering.\' It\'s a good feeling to be there.” **“Wockesha”** “‘Wockesha’ was just was like one of them songs like, you rap about your habits, you rap about what you got going on in your personal life. Because you know, sometimes when you\'re in a relationship with a girl and you got stuff going on, it\'s like you be back and forth: You can say, ‘It\'s not gon\' be this,’ and it ends up being that again. It\'s like relapsing. And that\'s the same thing people do with drugs and other stuff. They\'ll say, \'I\'m through doing this, I\'m through doing that,\' but then they\'ll get back on it. So, I just went off the concept of that. I\'m just painting pictures.” **“One of Dem Nights”** “Jhené \[Aiko\] is one of my favorites. And then I was in the studio, the first beat that YC played, it was on point. I told him where I wanted to go, who I wanted to put on it. As soon as he went that way, it was crazy. I just started mumbling the words and I went in there and did it. I sent it to her, they sent it back. Real classic.” **“Shottas (Lala)”** “I was in the studio just joking around. It was me and the guys, we was just in there just kicking it and YC just comes in there playing beats. I was like, ‘Man, what the hell is this?’ This is one of them type of vibes you just—it don\'t matter what you say, just go in that joint and just say whatever comes to mind.”
Fayetteville singer Morray is here to help: “What don’t kill you make you stronger,” he says during the intro to “Trenches,” the second song from his debut mixtape, *Street Sermons*. “And what don’t break your pockets make your money longer.” The Apple Music Up Next alum’s project is packed with these kinds of platitudes, along with drawn-out testimonies of struggle, the singer recounting—track after track—the hardships he saw growing up poor and proud in the South. His flow is notably influenced by gospel harmonies, Morray having grown up around the church, but he’s got a unique command of the pocket, weaving in and out in the 808-heavy production he favors to sing about faith (“That’s On God”), being wary of the people close to him (“Big Decisions”), and also of romantic interests gone awry (“Nothing Now”). If Morray is anything throughout *Street Sermons*, he’s grateful, both for the life experience that informs his music and for the fact that sewing it into song has taken him this far. He’s only just begun, but if “Kingdom” is to be believed, he’s not far from obtaining the kind of stability that will really put his mind at ease: “I just want a kingdom for my queen/A castle for my team/Money for the baby’s college fund/Flat-out flexing on ’em, one on one.”
If Olivia Rodrigo has a superpower, it’s that, at 18, she already understands that adolescence spares no one. The heartbreak, the humiliation, the vertiginous weight of every lonesome thought and outsized feeling—none of that really leaves us, and exploring it honestly almost always makes for good pop songs. “I grew up listening to country music,” the California-born singer-songwriter (also an experienced actor and current star of Disney+’s *High School Musical: The Musical: The Series*) tells Apple Music. “And I think it’s so impactful and emotional because of how specific it is, how it really paints pictures of scenarios. I feel like a song is so much more special when you can visualize and picture it, even smell and taste all of the stuff that the songwriter\'s going through.” To listen to Rodrigo’s debut full-length is to know—on a very deep and almost uncomfortably familiar level—exactly what she was going through when she wrote it at 17. Anchored by the now-ubiquitous breakup ballad ‘drivers license’—an often harrowing, closely studied lead single that already felt like a lock for song-of-the-year honors the second it arrived in January 2021—*SOUR* combines the personal and universal to often devastating effect, folding diary-like candor and autobiographical detail into performances that recall the millennial pop of Taylor Swift (“favorite crime”) just as readily as the ’90s alt-rock of Elastica (“brutal”) and Alanis Morissette (“good 4 u”). It has the sound and feel of an instant classic, a *Jagged Little Pill* for Gen Z. “All the feelings that I was feeling were so intense,” Rodrigo says. “I called the record *SOUR* because it was this really sour period of my life—I remember being so sad, and so insecure, and so angry. I felt all those things, and they\'re still very real, but I\'m definitely not going through that as acutely as I used to. It’s nice to go back and see what I was feeling, and be like, ‘It all turned out all right. You\'re okay now.’” A little older and a lot wiser, Rodrigo shares the wisdom she learned channeling all of that into one of the most memorable debut albums in ages. **Let Your Mind Wander** “I took an AP psychology class in high school my junior year, and they said that you\'re the most creative when you\'re doing some type of menial task, because half of your brain is occupied with something and the other half is just left to roam. I find that I come up with really good ideas when I\'m driving for that same reason. I actually wrote the first verse and some of the chorus of **‘enough for you’** going on a walk around my neighborhood; I got the idea for **‘good 4 u’** in the shower. I think taking time to be out of the studio and to live your life is as productive—if not more—than just sitting in a room with your guitar trying to write songs. While making *SOUR*, there was maybe three weeks where I spent like six, seven days a week of 13 hours in the studio. I actually remember feeling so creatively dry, and the songs I was making weren\'t very good. I think that\'s a true testament to how productive rest can be. There\'s only so much you can write about when you\'re in the studio all day, just listening to your own stuff.” **Trust Your Instincts** “Before I met my collaborator, producer—and cowriter in many instances—Dan Nigro, I would just write songs in my bedroom, completely by myself. So it was a little bit of a learning curve, figuring out how to collaborate with other people and stick up for your ideas and be open to other people\'s. Sometimes it takes you a little while to gain the confidence to really remember that your gut feelings are super valid and what makes you a special musician. I struggled for a while with writing upbeat songs just because I thought in my head that I should write about happiness or love if I wanted to write a song that people could dance to. And **‘brutal’** is actually one of my favorite songs on *SOUR*, but it almost didn\'t make it on the record. Everyone was like, ‘You make it the first \[track\], people might turn it off as soon as they hear it.’ I think it\'s a great introduction to the world of *SOUR*.” **It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect** “I wrote this album when I was 17. There\'s sort of this feeling that goes along with putting out a record when you\'re that age, like, ‘Oh my god, this is not the best work that I\'ll ever be able to do. I could do better.’ So it was really important for me to learn that this album is a slice of my life and it doesn\'t have to be the best work that I\'ll ever do. Maybe my next record will be better, and maybe I\'ll grow. It\'s nice, I think, for listeners to go on that journey with songwriters and watch them refine their songwriting. It doesn\'t have to be perfect now—it’s the best that I can do when I\'m 17 years old, and that\'s enough and that\'s cool in its own right.” **Love What You Do** “I learned that I liked making songs a lot more than I like putting out songs, and that love of songwriting stayed the same for me throughout. I learned how to nurture it, instead of the, like, ‘Oh, I want to get a Top 40 hit!’-type thing. Honestly, when ‘drivers license’ came out, I was sort of worried that it was going to be the opposite and I was going to write all of my songs from the perspective of wanting it to chart. But I really just love writing songs, and I think that\'s a really cool position to be in.” **Find Your People** “I feel like the purpose of ‘yes’ people in your life is to make you feel secure. But whenever I\'m around people who think that everything I do is incredible, I feel so insecure for some reason; I think that everything is bad and they\'re just lying to me the whole time. So it\'s really awesome to have somebody who I really trust with me in the studio. That\'s Dan. He’ll tell me, ‘This is an amazing song. Let\'s do it.’ But I\'ll also play him a song that I really like and he’ll say, ‘You know what, I don\'t think this is your best song. I think you can write a better one.’ There\'s something so empowering and something so cool about that, about surrounding yourself with people who care enough about you to tell you when you can do better. Being a songwriter is sort of strange in that I feel like I\'ve written songs and said things, told people secrets through my songs that I don\'t even tell some people that I hang out with all the time. It\'s a sort of really super mega vulnerable thing to do. But then again, it\'s the people around me who really love me and care for me who gave me the confidence to sort of do that and show who I really am.” **You Really Never Know** “To me, ‘drivers license’ was never one of those songs that I would think: ‘It\'s a hit song.’ It\'s just a little slice of my heart, this really sad song. It was really cool for me to see evidence of how authenticity and vulnerability really connect with people. And everyone always says that, but you really never know. So many grown men will come up to me and be like, ‘Yo, I\'m happily married with three kids, but that song brought me back to my high school breakup.’ Which is so cool, to be able to affect not only people who are going through the same thing as you, but to bring them back to a time where they were going through the same thing as you are. That\'s just surreal, a songwriter\'s dream.”
“I’ve had a lot of controversies in my short period being an artist,” slowthai tells Apple Music. “But I always try making a statement.” In 2019, there was the Northampton rapper’s establishment-rattling appearance at the Mercury Prize ceremony, hoisting of an effigy of Boris Johnson’s severed head. A few months later, sexualized comments he made to comedian Katherine Ryan at the 2020 NME Awards caused a fierce Twitter backlash and prompted the Record Store Day 2020 campaign to withdraw an invitation for slowthai to be its UK ambassador. Ryan labeled their exchange “pantomime” but it led to a confrontation with an audience member and slowthai’s apology for his “shameful actions.” Since releasing his 2019 debut *Nothing Great About Britain*, then, the artist born Tyron Frampton has known the unforgiving heat of public judgment. It’s helped forge *TYRON*, a follow-up demarcated into two seven-track sides. The first is brash, incendiary, and energized, continuing to draw a through line between punk and UK rap. The second is vulnerable and introspective, its beats more contemplative and searching. The overarching message is that there are two sides to every story, and even more to every human being. “We all have the side that we don’t show, and the side we show,” he says. “Living up to expectations—and then not giving a fuck and just being honest with yourself.” Featuring guests including Skepta, A$AP Rocky, James Blake, and Denzel Curry, these songs, he hopes, will offer help to others feeling penned in by judgment, stereotypes, or a lack of self-confidence. “I just want them to realize they’re not alone and can be themselves,” he says. “I know that when shit gets dark, you need a little bit of light.” Explore all of slowthai’s sides with his track-by-track guide. **45 SMOKE** “‘Rise and shine, let’s get it/Bumbaclart dickhead/Bumbaclart dickhead.’ It’s like the wake-up call for myself. It’s how you feel when you’re making constant mistakes, or you’re in a rut and you wake up like, ‘I really don’t want to wake up, I’d rather just sleep all day.’ It’s explaining where I’m from, and the same routine of doing this bullshit life that I don’t want to do—but I’m doing it just for the sake of doing it or because this is what’s expected of me.” **CANCELLED** “This song’s a fuck-you to the cancel culture, to people trying to tear you down and make it like you’re a bad person—because all I’ve done my whole life is try and escape that stereotype, and try and better myself. You can call me what you want, you can say what you think happened, but most of all I know myself. Through doing this, I’ve figured it out on a deeper level. When we made this, I was in a dark place because of everything going on. And Skep \[Skepta, co-MC on this track\] was guiding me out. He was saying, ‘Yo, man, this isn’t your defining moment. If anything, it pushes you to prove your point even more.’” **MAZZA** “Mazza is ‘mazzalean,’ which is my own word... It\'s just a mad thing. It’s for the people that have mad ADHD \[slowthai lives with the disorder\], ADD, and can’t focus on something—like how everything comes and it’s so quick, and it’s a rush. It’s where my head was at—be it that I was drinking a lot, or traveling a lot, and seeing a lot of things and doing a lot of dumb shit. Mad time. As soon as I made it, I FaceTimed \[A$AP\] Rocky because I was that gassed. We’d been working here and there, doing little bits. He was like, ‘This is hard. Come link up.’ He was in London and I went down there and \[we\] just patterned it out.” **VEX** “It’s just about being angry at social media, at the fakeness, how everyone’s trying to be someone they’re not and showing the good parts of their lives. You just end up feeling shit, because even if your life’s the best it could be, it just puts in your head that, ‘Ah, it could always be better.’ Most of these people aren’t even happy—that’s why they\'re looking for validation on the internet.” **WOT** “I met Pop Smoke, and that night I recorded this song. It was the night he passed. The next morning, I woke up at 6 am to go to the Disclosure video shoot \[for ‘My High’\] and saw the news. I was just mad overwhelmed. Initially, I’d linked up with Rocky, making another tune, but he didn’t finish his bit. \[slowthai’s part\] felt like it summed it up the energies—it was like \[Pop Smoke’s\] energy, just good vibes. I felt like I wouldn\'t make it any longer because it’s straight to the point. As soon as it starts, you know that it’s on.” **DEAD** “We say ‘That’s dead’ as in it’s not good, it’s shit. So I was like, ‘Yo, every one of these things is dead to me.’ There’s a line, ‘People change for money/What’s money with no time?’ That’s aimed at people saying I changed because I gained success. It’s not that I’ve changed, but I’ve grown or grown out of certain things. It’s not the money that changed me, it’s understanding that doing certain things is not making me any better. If I’m spending all my time working on bettering myself and trying to better my craft, the money’s irrelevant. I don’t even have the time to spend it. So it’s just like saying everything’s dead. I’m focusing on living forever through my music and my art.” **PLAY WITH FIRE** “Even though we want to move far away from situations and circumstances, we keep toying with the idea \[of them\]. It plays on your mind that you want to be in that position. ‘PLAY WITH FIRE’ is the letting go as well as trying to hold on to these things. When it goes into \[next track\] ‘i tried,’ it’s like, ‘I tried to do all these things, live up to these expectations and be this person, but it wasn’t working for me.’ And on the other foot, I *tried* all these things. I can’t die saying I didn’t. You have to love everything for how it is to understand it, and try and move on. You’ve got to understand something for the negative before you can really understand the positive.” **i tried** “‘Long road/Tumble down this black hole/Stuck in Sunday league/But I’m on levels with Ronaldo.’ It’s saying it’s been a struggle to get here. And even still, I feel like I’m traveling into a void. You feel like you’re sinking into yourself—be it through taking too many drugs or drinking too much and burying yourself in a hole, just being on autopilot. It’s coming to that understanding, and dealing with those problems. It’s \[about\] boosting my confidence and my true self: ‘Yo, man, you’re the best. If this was football, you’d be the Ballon d’Or winner.’ We always look at what we think we should be like. We never actually look at who we are, and what our qualities are. ‘I’ve got a sickness/And I’m dealing with it.’ I’m trying. I\'m trying every avenue, and with a bit of hope and a bit of luck, I can become who I want to be.” **focus** “From the beginning, even though I’m in this pocket of people and this way of life, I’ve always known to go against that grain. I didn’t ever want to end up in jail. You either get a trade or you end doing shit and potentially you end in jail. A lot of people around me, they’re still in that cycle. And this is me saying, ‘Focus on some other shit.’ I come from the shit, and I pushed and I got there. And it was through maintaining that focus.” **terms** “It’s the terms and conditions that come with popularity and...fame. I don’t like that word. I hate words like ‘fad’ and ‘fame.’ They make me cringe so much. Maybe I’ve got something against words that begin with F. But it’s just dealing with what comes with it and how it’s not what you expected it to be. The headache of being judged for being a human being. Once you get any recognition for your art, you’re no longer a human—you’re a product. Dominic \[Fike, guest vocalist\] sums it up beautifully in the hook.” **push** “‘Push’ is an acronym for ‘praying until something happens.’ When you’re in a corner, you’ve got to keep pushing. Even when you’re at your lowest. That’s all life is, right? It’s a push. Being pulled is the easy route, but when you’re pushing for something, the hard work conditions your mind, strengthens you physically and spiritually, and you come out on top. I used to be religious—when my brother passed, when I was young. I asked for a Bible for my birthday, which was some weird shit. Through this project…it’s not faith in God, but my faith in people, it’s been kind of restored, my faith in myself. Everyone I work with on this, they’re my friends, and they’re all people that have helped me through something. And Deb \[Never, guest vocalist\]—we call each other twins. She’s my sister that I’ve known my whole life but I haven’t known my whole life.” **nhs** “It’s all about appreciation. The NHS—something that’s been doing work for generations, to save people—it’s been so taken for granted. It’s a place where everyone’s equal and everyone’s treated the same. It takes this \[pandemic\] for us to applaud people who have been giving their lives to help others. They should have constant applause at the end of every shift. We’re out here complaining and always wanting more. I don’t know if it’s a human defect or just consumerism, but you get one thing and then you always want the next best thing. I do it a lot. And there’s never a best one, because there’s always another one. Just be happy with what you’ve got. You\'ll end up having an aneurysm.” **feel away** “Dom \[Maker, co-producer and one half of Mount Kimbie\] works with James \[Blake\] a lot. They record a bunch of stuff, chop it up and create loops. I was going through all these loops, and I was like, ‘This one’s the one.’ As soon as we played it, I had lyrics and recorded my bit. I’ve loved James from when I was a kid at school and was like, ‘We should get James.’ We sent it to him, and in my head, I was like, ‘Ah, he’s not going to record on it.’ But the next day, we had the tune. I was just so gassed. I dedicated it to my brother passing. But it’s about putting yourself in your partner’s shoes, because through experiences, be it from my mum or friends, I’ve learnt that in a lot of relationships, when a woman’s pregnant, the man tends to leave the woman. The woman usually is all alone to deal with all these problems. I wanted it to be the other way around—the woman leaves the man. He’s got to go through all that pain to get to the better side, the beauty of it.” **adhd** “When I was really young, my mum and people around me didn’t really believe in \[ADHD\]—like, ‘It’s a hyperactive kid, they just want attention.’ They didn’t ever see it as a disorder. And I think this is my way of summarizing the whole album: This is something that I’ve dealt with, and people around me have dealt with. It’s hard for people to understand because they don’t get why it’s the impulses, or how it might just be a reaction to something that you can’t control. You try to, but it’s embedded in you. It’s just my conclusion—like at the end of the book, when you get to the bit where everything starts making sense. I feel like this is the most connected I’ve been to a song. It’s the clearest depiction of what my voice naturally sounds like, without me pushing it out, or projecting it in any way, or being aggressive. It’s just softly spoken, and then it gets to that anger at the end. And then a kiss—just to sweeten it all up.”
If it wasn’t already clear from her soul-baring 2018 debut album *Lost & Found*, then perhaps her 2019 single “Be Honest” made it extra clear: Jorja Smith is, amongst others things, incredibly truthful where her music is concerned. “I was actually going to call this *This Is Not My Second Album*,” the singer-songwriter tells Apple Music of the EP *Be Right Back*. “Because these are songs that I love and I\'ve written in the past two years, but I\'m not yet ready to do \'the album.\' When it’s time, I want to tour that album. And also: I know that there\'s another level that I can get to—musically, creatively, and all other aspects.” The British singer-songwriter has, of course, previous experience when it comes to non-album material making a splash. Her silky, soulful appearances on Drake’s *More Life* “playlist” are arguably what opened her up to a global audience, while a slew of post-*Lost & Found* collaborations with artists including Brent Faiyaz, Popcaan, and ENNY mean Rihanna-style anticipation for an eventual album two. This eight-track set of evocative ballads—a self-described sonic “waiting room”—finds Smith continuing to thoughtfully navigate her way through a changing world. “Music\'s great,” she says. “It’s a little escape, and that\'s why I gave the project this title. I just wanted to dip in and dip out. But I want it to be a safe escape for my fans—for right now—because I know they miss me.” Perhaps fittingly, then, it’s a striking and spare collection of moods and moments. “Bussdown” is gorgeous: a sultry hookup with UK rapper Shaybo that recalls Smith’s “Blue Lights” in potent storytelling. The bracingly direct “Addicted” glides over guitar licks that wouldn’t be out of place on *In Rainbows*, while “Gone” memorializes the tragic loss of a friend. “Anyone who listens will hear it differently to what it actually means in the first place,” she says of the track. “That’s what I love.” Elsewhere, “Home” feels like chancing on Smith at an open mic night with a diary entry, and “Weekend” brings us to a dreamlike, considered climax. Smith’s falsetto on this track, by the way, has never sounded so angelic. The minimalist makeup of this music—notably trekking free of the soul and jazz borders of *Lost & Found*—hint at fresh, exciting levels to come. After being cued up as the UK’s next R&B/pop powerhouse, *Be Right Back* is the sound of an artist taking a breath before her next play. “I only dropped my first album three years ago,” she says. “And now I’ve been able to take in everything I\'ve done in the last three years. I’m actually able to look at \[plaques and records on\] my walls like, ‘Oh my god, I did this.’ I appreciate everything, but I miss my fans, and I miss \[doing\] shows. The last year and this year has been so tough. I wanted to give them something.”
The most accurate distillation of Pooh Shiesty’s mission on debut mixtape *Shiesty Season* comes from one of the project’s guests. “I don’t wanna rap about nothing but gunplay,” 21 Savage deadpans on “Box of Churches.” Savage appears on the tape alongside fellow street-rap heavyweights Gucci Mane and Lil Durk, as well as a handful of lesser-known MCs like BIG30, Choppa Wop, and Lil Hank. If they have a single thing in common, it’s an affinity for high-powered weaponry. But it is Pooh Shiesty, of course, who set the tone. Across *Shiesty Season*’s 17 tracks, the MC consistently details, in that readily identifiable Memphis drawl, the importance of guns in his life on songs like “Back in Blood,” “50 Shots,” “Take a Life,” and “Choppa Way.” Deviations from the theme are few and far between, even on songs like the one named for pioneering musical entrepreneur and Dirty South hip-hop legend Master P (“One shot to the head, may he rest in peace/I’m the reason doctors hooked him up, I feel like Master P”). And lest you think a song called “Twerksum” was an attempt at appeasing the fairer sex, Shiesty is simply offering fair warning that the “choppa get to shaking like it twerk or something.”
When the more recognizable voices of Young Stoner Life’s *Slime Language 2* compilation ring out—Drake, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Kid Cudi, et al.—they bring about something of an energy shift. This isn’t to say that YSL MCs like Yak Gotti, Lil Duke, T-Shyne, Lil Keed, and Strick aren’t holding their own, because they absolutely are, but there are so many guests on *Slime Language 2* that the album plays less like a YSL roster showcase than an audio scrapbook of all of the talent Thug and Gunna keep company with. Here, that means verses from still-ascending YSL family members (Unfoonk, HiDoraah, and FN DaDealer, to name a few) but then also certified hip-hop superstars like Big Sean, Future, Skepta, Meek Mill, and NAV. This kind of after-party VIP-section gathering of personalities reflects positively on just about everyone involved: The lesser-known talents prove themselves capable of running with the big dogs, the established stars are able to stay in touch with the streets, and Thug and Gunna remind us how beloved they are as frontpersons for one of the most talented rap collectives to come out of Atlanta since the Grand Hustle.
The posthumous album is a tough thing to get right. If nothing else, it can be hard for fans to ascertain what’s really representative of an artist’s vision versus what was completed after death to the sometimes less than exacting specifications of the stewards of said estate. In the case of dearly departed hip-hop legend DMX, however, the Dog-loving faithful had nothing to worry about. “All of the songs was finished,” longtime friend, collaborator, and executive producer of his *Exodus* album Swizz Beatz tells Apple Music. “This album was done while he was living. I know they’re saying ‘the album after he\'s gone,’ but really he did the album before he was gone.” Pop Smoke was initially slated to appear on “Money Money Money,” but a leak forced Swizz to switch up the plan and bring on Moneybagg Yo. Otherwise, though, *Exodus* is exactly how X designed it—one of hip-hop’s most impactful MCs making space for the voices he revered, while staying true to a career-long practice of baring his soul on record. “He gave people real shit,” Swizz says. “He gave you a front-row seat into his life, because he loved his fans, he loved his people, and it\'s where he was at. He was comfortable, and I think that every artist should get to that level one day, to where they’re not capping and they’re saying real things that are happening in their life and that they’re going through. And it should be uncut, like Dog did on this record.” Below, Swizz talks us through—track by track—the last musical testament of friend and icon DMX. **“That’s My Dog” (feat. The LOX & Swizz Beatz)** “Setting the tone was very important. This is a real curated body of work, and me and X hadn\'t been in the studio like this for 12 years. The first rapper you hear on the album is Jadakiss, so that\'s letting you know the tone right there for where we going. This is not play-around.” **“Bath Salts” (feat. JAY-Z & Nas)** “Out the gate, we just wanted to put pressure on everybody—and then take them on this journey at the same time. With Hov and Nas, people know what they getting, you know what I’m saying?” **“Dogs Out” (feat. Lil Wayne & Swizz Beatz)** “Wayne always spoke highly of X—when he was living *and* when he passed. If you go and you look at YouTube, you see Wayne bringing out X at \[Miami Beach nightclub\] LIV. His concert I was at, he did a whole tribute about X. They went crazy \[here\].” **“Money Money Money” (feat. Moneybagg Yo)** “I didn\'t want the album just to be artists from when X first came out. I wanted it—and he wanted it—to be energy from today, which is why Pop Smoke originally had this slot. I actually made the beat for Pop Smoke. Pop Smoke was like, \'I want something that sound like X.\' And then I think by mistake or whatever, the verses got out, and they was put on different songs, so we had to change it at the last minute. The song is called \'Money Money Money,\' so I felt like Moneybagg Yo was perfect for it, and I actually like him as an artist. The beat reminded me of \'Stop Being Greedy\' a little bit when I was doing it. It put me in that old X vibe.” **“Hold Me Down” (feat. Alicia Keys)** “‘Hold Me Down’ is one of my favorite records, not only because of my wife on it, but because the way that DMX opens up about his life. If you listen to the record, he starts off, ‘I\'m pulled in opposite directions, my life\'s in conflict/That’s why I spit words that depict a convict.’ And to have a simple chorus that\'s just saying, \'Hold me down\'—’cause that\'s all X wanted. He wanted the people that loved him to hold him down. That\'s what he cared about.” **“Skyscrapers” (feat. Bono)** “Bono is like family to me, and I had \[an early version of the track\]. I asked for his permission to give it to my brother because I felt that he deserved it more, especially with the body of work that we was working on. As soon as X heard it, he automatically went in. And then it was crazy, ’cause Bono was writing him saying, ‘Man, it\'s an honor to have my voice next to yours.’ He drew him a drawing and wrote X a poem and everything right before he passed. It was pretty deep.” **“Stick Up Skit” (feat. Cross, Infrared & Icepick)** “This is the late, great Icepick Jay, who passed away \[in 2017\]. He did all the skits, so that was kind of like paying homage. It just fit, and we can\'t have an album with no skits.” **“Hood Blues” (feat. Westside Gunn, Benny the Butcher & Conway the Machine)** “\[Griselda and DMX\], they was both fans of each other. X liked them cause they was super hard. And they was a fan of X, so that was pretty easy. X kind of did this one on his own, to be honest. I just sent the beat and they did they thing.” **“Take Control” (feat. Snoop Dogg)** “\[Snoop and DMX\], they knew they wanted to do something after Verzuz. We did the song and it was like, ‘Yo, you know what? Snoop would sound good on this.’ That’s Marvin Gaye and that\'s \'Sexual Healing,\' so you know we had to do the right thing. I love that record. It shows you the \'How\'s It Goin\' Down\' vibe.” **“Walking in the Rain” (feat. Nas, Exodus Simmons & Denaun)** “\[DMX’s son\] Exodus was in the studio with us for a lot of \[the album\]. He was loving ‘Walking in the Rain’ and he just started singing it and he was on beat and everything. It was a beautiful sight to see.\" **“Letter to My Son (Call Your Father)” (feat. Usher & Brian King Joseph)** “\[DMX\] pulled me in the corner and was like, ‘I\'m going to let you hear this.’ I kept it acoustic so you could hear every word, and then felt like it needed something else. Then Usher came into the studio and did what he did to it. I left it to where the music had some space for people to reflect instead of it being a whole bunch of words, ’cause X didn\'t put a whole bunch of words on a record. He said what he said. And it was beautiful.” **“Prayer”** “This was live at Kanye\'s Sunday Service. It was his latest prayer. That\'s why we put that one on there. He did another one where he was rapping, but this one feels more like what it should be. He was the master of prayers, for sure.”
Lil Tjay had a mission going into the release of his second album, *Destined 2 Win*. “A lot of people get to their first album and a lot of the esteem be off one song, or their new artist phase,” he tells Apple Music. “And I feel like now that I’m settling in, I just want to show that I’m here to stay.” *Destined 2 Win*, which follows 2020’s drill-focused *State of Emergency* EP, is 21 tracks of New York City slick talk, the Bronx-born MC giving us double-bicep flexing (“Gang Gang,” “Headshot”), warm-weather macking (“Move,” “Slow Down”), and, of course, the all-too-familiar pain of losing friends to the streets (“Nuf Said,” “Losses”). You can hear the progression from Tjay’s debut, 2019’s *True 2 Myself*, in *Destined 2 Win*’s content and melodies, something Tjay says likely came from waiting to release it until the time felt absolutely right. “I got a lot of music, \[*Destined 2 Win*\] coulda been done,” he says. “I just felt the energy in the air, like it was ready. It’s my time to come.” Below, Lil Tjay goes into detail about what was on his mind when he was cooking up the album’s key tracks. **“Born 2 Be Great”** “I just always felt like I was born to be great and born to be something special, so I just felt like to start it off with that just felt right.” **“Hood Rich”** “‘Hood Rich’ is me rapping about wanting to be bigger than what I am, or where I was. It is damn near like a Tjay classic, though, ’cause I had this song for a little while and I just never dropped it. I just wanted to hold it for a sec.” **“Headshot”** “This was just a turnt night, it was a little bit of liquor in the system, the beat was thumping, it was aggressive. So that’s just how we was feeling in the studio, together.” **“Move”** “Me and Tyga was in the studio that day and it was a little vibe. I had a little liquor in the system, a couple ladies there. I could imagine people listening to this on a yacht or a boat. It gave me that vibe from jump.” **“Love Hurts”** “It does! If that shit ain’t working right and it’s a lot of miscommunication and real feelings is in it, it could hurt.” **“Run It Up”** “I fuck with Moneybagg shit, he keeps the bitches moving. His shit got the clubs pumping and shit. That was the goal for ‘Run It Up,’ that vibe. Offset is on there, too.” **“Part of the Plan”** “I done been in some rough situations. And no matter what the situation was, I never folded. So I just feel like everybody should be the same \[way\].” **“Life Changed”** “I don’t really be in the same places too much. Where I’m popping out, everybody can’t get next to me. Life got more comfortable—my whole environment, my aura. I’m a different person right now. I leveled up.” **“Nuf Said”** “The calls I need to take, I take them. With people that’s locked up, I just try to speak to my guys and make sure they time goes by fast, hope they get into a better situation soon. I don’t be as available, but they understand that ’cause now I can do more for them.”
In 2019, BROCKHAMPTON delivered one of their most commercially successful singles in “SUGAR,” a cut from their fifth album, *GINGER*. They were riding high on the wave of its momentum when the pandemic hit, sending the band\'s members into their own bubbles of isolation even as they remained productive, releasing a handful of singles and video content. The fruits of their labor culminate with *ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE*, which brims with both the political and personal tension of the time and stands out as their most clear-eyed and collaborative release to date. In addition to consulting with legendary producers RZA and Rick Rubin, the band finds complementary counterparts in rappers like Danny Brown (“BUZZCUT”) and JPEGMAFIA (“CHAIN ON”), with whom they share a similar kind of eccentric creativity. On their own, though, the sprawling group is flush with a multitude of talent that they thoughtfully showcase without sacrificing cohesion. Decidedly roused and rap-oriented tracks like “WINDOWS” and “DON\'T SHOOT UP THE PARTY” slot nicely alongside more soulful, R&B-leaning songs like “I\'LL TAKE YOU ON” and the gorgeously somber “DEAR LORD.” Together, they make a multihued collage that embodies the spirited fluidity of BROCKHAMPTON. Ahead of its release, Kevin Abstract announced on Twitter that *ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE* would be the band\'s penultimate album. If that proves true, with this release, they will exit having left few stones unturned—evolution is an infinite process, but BROCKHAMPTON\'s (near) final form still resembles actualization.
“There are two Mykes—the commercial artist and the rapper,” Myke Towers tells Apple Music’s La Fórmula host El Guru. “And this is an album for the streets.” Having broadened considerably beyond his long-standing reputation as a credible trapero in recent years, with successful forays into reggaetón and other popwise sounds, the now massively popular Puerto Rican artist returns to the style he made his name in with *LYKE MIKE*. The gunfire opening “BALAS LOCAS” makes crystal clear that this album is a marked shift away from predecessor *Easy Money Baby*’s glossier and romantic moments. “This goes back to the Myke that used to rap bars,” he explains. “I don’t want to tell pretty stories, but my story.” Unfiltered standouts like “MÍRENME AHORA” and the Ñengo Flow-assisted “BURBERRY” reaffirm Towers’ deep affinity for, and demonstrable proficiency in, trap music in all its aggressive glory. With its 23 tracks (an unsubtle homage to basketball great Michael Jordan), *LYKE MIKE* exudes everything his day-one fans hoped he’d come back to, even as his arc towards global superstardom has become undeniable. “I keep my feet on the ground,” he says, “but I know I was born to do this.”
“New traditions!!” began an April 2021 tweet from Saweetie, accompanied by her signature snowflake emoji. “Every summer I’m sharing my platform and dropping a fly-ass playlist featuring artists who are up next. This is season 1.” On her seven-song *Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1*, Saweetie has elected to share her platform with up-and-comers Bbyafricka, Kendra Jae, Loui, Lourdiz, and one of the most revered voices in contemporary LA street rap, Drakeo the Ruler. The guest voices are wholly complementary to the Icy Gang president, helping Saweetie deliver a roughly 20-minute set that would work in just about any pool party playlist. With vibes as disparate as the sexed-up summer fling “Back Seat,” the bewitching but menacing “Baby Mama Coochie,” and the Miami-bass-inspired “Sweat Check,” the Santa Clara, California, MC’s voice is really the tie that binds; Saweetie seemingly handpicked her collaborators based on how their music works in the warmer months. “It’s gonna become a tradition,” Saweetie tells Apple Music of the project. “As long as I’m living I’m gonna pop off summer the right way with this Pretty Summer Playlist, and I’m a summer baby anyway; the summer has always been my season.” Below, the MC takes us through *Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1* track by track, detailing how all of its collaborations came to be. **“Risky” feat. Drakeo the Ruler** “I was listening to Drakeo in college. He been around for a while and I been a fan of his music for a minute. I’ve never really tapped in with another LA rapper, so I wanted to get in with him. When I created the concept I was like, it’s ’bout to be the summertime, people ’bout to be out here acting crazy, so what is that feeling you get when you about to wild out? It’s risky.” **Bbyafricka feat. Saweetie, “Baby Mama Coochie”** “I was following Bbyafricka on Twitter and I thought her tweets were funny. One day she kept tweeting the same line over and over again, it was like ‘Baby mama coochie, I ain’t even gotta’—something like that. I talked about it in the Issa Rae interview \[*Issa\'s Raedio Show*, Episode 4\], and after the clip went viral she DM’d me and was like, \'Are you tryna hop on the song?\' And I was like, sure! I was already hopping on a lot of underground rappers\' songs, so I was like, why don’t I just hop on one of my favorite songs.” **Kendra Jae feat. Saweetie, “See Saw”** “I actually met Kendra when I was 16. And what’s crazy is she’s always wanted to do music but her hustle was dancing—she’s danced with Beyoncé, she’s danced with Drake, she’s danced with a plethora of respected artists—but before she went to be an artist, she was actually dancing for me. I respected that, and I think it’s important to take a chance for yourself. I love all her music, but ‘See Saw’ was the song I saw me getting on.” **“Pretty & Rich”** “‘Pretty & Rich’ is just a simple braggadocious record. I was just ready to pop some shit. I like doing it in a fun way, I like doing it in a boss way, that’s why my voice is deep—it’s a big boss move, that’s what I call it.” **“Back Seat” feat. Lourdiz** “This song was brought to me with the chorus already and they had two people in mind, two other female artists, and I was like, ‘I wanna keep \[Lourdiz\] on the song.’ They were like, ‘Well, you know the song will do much better if we have a bigger artist on it.’ But the song is gonna do what it has to do, ’cause it’s a great song already. Her voice is so unique. I didn’t want to compromise the integrity of the song just for a bigger name.” **Loui feat. Saweetie, “Talkin Bout”** “This song was big on TikTok and I immediately fell in love with it. It was an opportunity to play with my flow because the beat is just so fun. Shoutout to King Loui, we actually shot a video for it.” **“Sweat Check”** “My project was already turned in and I was like, ‘You know what, we’re missing a high-energy twerk anthem.’ Not only is it a twerk anthem, it’s a gym anthem. I work out and I pop off my sweatband, and my fans recognize that melody because I’ve been saying ‘It’s time for sweat check’ throughout this whole quarantine.”
