DJBooth's 75 Best Hip-Hop and R&B Albums of 2019

From the outset of his fame—or, in his earliest years as an artist, infamy—Tyler, The Creator made no secret of his idolization of Pharrell, citing the work the singer-rapper-producer did as a member of N.E.R.D as one of his biggest musical influences. The impression Skateboard P left on Tyler was palpable from the very beginning, but nowhere is it more prevalent than on his fifth official solo album, *IGOR*. Within it, Tyler is almost completely untethered from the rabble-rousing (and preternaturally gifted) MC he broke out as, instead pushing his singing voice further than ever to sound off on love as a life-altering experience over some synth-heavy backdrops. The revelations here are mostly literal. “I think I’m falling in love/This time I think it\'s for real,” goes the chorus of the pop-funk ditty “I THINK,” while Tyler can be found trying to \"make you love me” on the R&B-tinged “RUNNING OUT OF TIME.” The sludgy “NEW MAGIC WAND” has him begging, “Please don’t leave me now,” and the album’s final song asks, “ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?” but it’s hardly a completely mopey affair. “IGOR\'S THEME,” the aforementioned “I THINK,” and “WHAT\'S GOOD” are some of Tyler’s most danceable songs to date, featuring elements of jazz, funk, and even gospel. *IGOR*\'s guests include Playboi Carti, Charlie Wilson, and Kanye West, whose voices are all distorted ever so slightly to help them fit into Tyler\'s ever-experimental, N.E.R.D-honoring vision of love.

There’s nothing all that subtle about Jamila Woods naming each of these all-caps tracks after a notable person of color. Still, that’s the point with *LEGACY! LEGACY!*—homage as overt as it is original. True to her own revolutionary spirit, the Chicago native takes this influential baker’s dozen of songs and masterfully transmutes their power for her purposes, delivering an engrossingly personal and deftly poetic follow-up to her formidable 2016 breakthrough *HEAVN*. She draws on African American icons like Miles Davis and Eartha Kitt as she coos and commands through each namesake cut, sparking flames for the bluesy rap groove of “MUDDY” and giving flowers to a legend on the electro-laced funk of “OCTAVIA.”

In the clip of an older Eartha Kitt that everyone kicks around the internet, her cheekbones are still as pronounced as many would remember them from her glory days on Broadway, and her eyes are still piercing and inviting. She sips from a metal cup. The wind blows the flowers behind her until those flowers crane their stems toward her face, and the petals tilt upward, forcing out a smile. A dog barks in the background. In the best part of the clip, Kitt throws her head back and feigns a large, sky-rattling laugh upon being asked by her interviewer whether or not she’d compromise parts of herself if a man came into her life. When the laugh dies down, Kitt insists on the same, rhetorical statement. “Compromise!?!?” she flings. “For what?” She repeats “For what?” until it grows more fierce, more unanswerable. Until it holds the very answer itself. On the hook to the song “Eartha,” Jamila Woods sings “I don’t want to compromise / can we make it through the night” and as an album, Legacy! Legacy! stakes itself on the uncompromising nature of its creator, and the histories honored within its many layers. There is a lot of talk about black people in America and lineage, and who will tell the stories of our ancestors and their ancestors and the ones before them. But there is significantly less talk about the actions taken to uphold that lineage in a country obsessed with forgetting. There are hands who built the corners of ourselves we love most, and it is good to shout something sweet at those hands from time to time. Woods, a Chicago-born poet, organizer, and consistent glory merchant, seeks to honor black people first, always. And so, Legacy! Legacy! A song for Zora! Zora, who gave so much to a culture before she died alone and longing. A song for Octavia and her huge and savage conscience! A song for Miles! One for Jean-Michel and one for my man Jimmy Baldwin! More than just giving the song titles the names of historical black and brown icons of literature, art, and music, Jamila Woods builds a sonic and lyrical monument to the various modes of how these icons tried to push beyond the margins a country had assigned to them. On “Sun Ra,” Woods sings “I just gotta get away from this earth, man / this marble was doomed from the start” and that type of dreaming and vision honors not only the legacy of Sun Ra, but the idea that there is a better future, and in it, there will still be black people. Jamila Woods has a voice and lyrical sensibility that transcends generations, and so it makes sense to have this lush and layered album that bounces seamlessly from one sonic aesthetic to another. This was the case on 2016’s HEAVN, which found Woods hopeful and exploratory, looking along the edges resilience and exhaustion for some measures of joy. Legacy! Legacy! is the logical conclusion to that looking. From the airy boom-bap of “Giovanni” to the psychedelic flourishes of “Sonia,” the instrument which ties the musical threads together is the ability of Woods to find her pockets in the waves of instrumentation, stretching syllables and vowels over the harmony of noise until each puzzle piece has a home. The whimsical and malleable nature of sonic delights also grants a path for collaborators to flourish: the sparkling flows of Nitty Scott on “Sonia” and Saba on “Basquiat,” or the bloom of Nico Segal’s horns on “Baldwin.” Soul music did not just appear in America, and soul does not just mean music. Rather, soul is what gold can be dug from the depths of ruin, and refashioned by those who have true vision. True soul lives in the pages of a worn novel that no one talks about anymore, or a painting that sits in a gallery for a while but then in an attic forever. Soul is all the things a country tries to force itself into forgetting. Soul is all of those things come back to claim what is theirs. Jamila Woods is a singular soul singer who, in voice, holds the rhetorical demand. The knowing that there is no compromise for someone with vision this endless. That the revolution must take many forms, and it sometimes starts with songs like these. Songs that feel like the sun on your face and the wind pushing flowers against your back while you kick your head to the heavens and laugh at how foolish the world seems.

An eccentric like Madlib and a straightforward guy like Freddie Gibbs—how could it possibly work? If 2014’s *Piñata* proved that the pairing—offbeat producer, no-frills street rapper—sounded better and more natural than it looked on paper, *Bandana* proves *Piñata* wasn’t a fluke. The common ground is approachability: Even at their most cinematic (the noisy soul of “Flat Tummy Tea,” the horror-movie trap of “Half Manne Half Cocaine”), Madlib’s beats remain funny, strange, decidedly at human scale, while Gibbs prefers to keep things so real he barely uses metaphor. In other words, it’s remarkable music made by artists who never pretend to be anything other than ordinary. And even when the guest spots are good (Yasiin Bey and Black Thought on “Education” especially), the core of the album is the chemistry between Gibbs and Madlib: vivid, dreamy, serious, and just a little supernatural.

The more music Dave makes, the more out of step his prosaic stage name seems. The richness and daring of his songwriting has already been granted an Ivor Novello Award—for “Question Time,” 2017’s searing address to British politicians—and on his debut album he gets deeper, bolder, and more ambitious. Pitched as excerpts from a year-long course of therapy, these 11 songs show the South Londoner examining the human condition and his own complex wiring. Confession and self-reflection may be nothing new in rap, but they’ve rarely been done with such skill and imagination. Dave’s riveting and poetic at all times, documenting his experience as a young British black man (“Black”) and pulling back the curtain on the realities of fame (“Environment”). With a literary sense of detail and drama, “Lesley”—a cautionary, 11-minute account of abuse and tragedy—is as much a short story as a song: “Touched her destination/Way faster than the cab driver\'s estimation/She put the key in the door/She couldn\'t believe what she see on the floor.” His words are carried by equally stirring music. Strings, harps, and the aching melodies of Dave’s own piano-playing mingle with trap beats and brooding bass in incisive expressions of pain and stress, as well as flashes of optimism and triumph. It may be drawn from an intensely personal place, but *Psychodrama* promises to have a much broader impact, setting dizzying new standards for UK rap.

“A real-ass n\*gga from the 305/I was raised off of Trina, Trick, Rick, and Plies,” Denzel Curry says on “CAROLMART.” Since his days as a member of Raider Klan, the Miami MC has made it a point to forge a path distinct from the influences he shouts out here. But with *ZUU*, Curry’s fourth studio album, he returns to the well from which he sprang. The album is conspicuously street-life-oriented; Curry paints a picture of a Miami he certainly grew up in, but also one rap fans may not have associated him with previously. Within *ZUU*, there are references to the city’s storied history as a drug haven (“BIRDZ”), odes to Curry’s family (“RICKY”), and retellings of his personal come-up (“AUTOMATIC”), along with a unique exhibition of Miami slang on “YOO.” Across it all, Curry is the verbose, motormouthed MC he made his name as, a profile that is especially recognizable on the album closer “P.A.T.,” where he dips in and out of a bevy of flows over the kind of scuzzy, lo-fi production that set the table for another generation of South Florida rap stars.

Hiding Places is a collaborative album from Brooklyn-based rapper billy woods and Los Angeles beat scene veteran Kenny Segal, set for release by Backwoodz Studioz on March 29, 2019. On its face, it seems an unlikely pairing; woods—who moonlights as ½ of dissonant rap duo Armand Hammer—is a chaotic force, the warped relic of an NY indie-rap wave that never happened. Meanwhile, Segal has been in L.A. for twenty years; from paying dues with Project Blowed to pushing the culture forward with Busdriver and Milo. All the while, his soulful, dreamlike production precariously tethered to earth by the right drums or rumbling bass. But look closer and it makes more sense. After all, Segal lent his production to a couple of songs on Paraffin, Armand Hammer’s critically-acclaimed opus, and the two veterans have more than a few shared collaborators: Open Mike Eagle, ELUCID, and Hemlock Ernst amongst them. Hiding Places finds both artists deep in the labyrinth. Segal’s lush soundscapes have a new edge, woods’ writing is, paradoxically, at its most direct. Hiding Places is a child’s game: funny and cruel, as brutal as a fairy tale. The album features contributions from both artists’ well of collaborators with ELUCID, Self-Jupiter, and MOTHERMARY making appearances.

Look past its futurist textures and careful obfuscations, and there’s something deeply human about FKA twigs’ 21st-century R&B. On her second full-length, the 31-year-old British singer-songwriter connects our current climate to that of Mary Magdalene, a healer whose close personal relationship with Christ brought her scorn from those who would ultimately write her story: men. “I\'m of a generation that was brought up without options in love,” she tells Apple Music. “I was told that as a woman, I should be looked after. It\'s not whether I choose somebody, but whether somebody chooses me.” Written and produced by twigs, with major contributions from Nicolas Jaar, *MAGDALENE* is a feminist meditation on the ways in which we relate to one another and ourselves—emotionally, sexually, universally—set to sounds that are at once modern and ancient. “Now it’s like, ‘Can you stand up in my holy terrain?’” she says, referencing the titular lyric from her mid-album collaboration with Future. “‘How are we going to be equals in this? Spiritually, am I growing? Do you make me want to be a better person?’ I’m definitely still figuring it out.” Here, she walks us through the album track by track. **thousand eyes** “All the songs I write are autobiographical. Anyone that\'s been in a relationship for a long time, you\'re meshed together. But unmeshing is painful, because you have the same friends or your families know each other. No matter who you are, the idea of leaving is not only a heart trauma, but it\'s also a social trauma, because all of a sudden, you don\'t all go to that pub that you went to together. The line \[\'If I walk out the door/A thousand eyes\'\] is a reference to that. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Gregorian music. I’d started really getting into medieval chords before that, and I\'d found some musicians that play medieval music and done a couple sessions with them. Even on \[2014\'s\] *LP1*, I had ‘Closer,’ which is essentially a hymn. I spent a lot of time in choir as a child and I went to Sunday school, so it’s part of who I am at this stage.” **home with you** “I find things like that interesting in the studio, just to play around and bring together two completely different genres—like Elton John chords and a hip-hop riff. That’s what ‘home with you’ was for me: It’s a ballad and it\'s sad, but then it\'s a bop as well, even though it doesn\'t quite ever give you what you need. It’s about feeling pulled in all directions: as a daughter, or as a friend, or as a girlfriend, or as a lover. Everyone wanting a piece of you, but not expressing it properly, so you feel like you\'re not meeting the mark.” **sad day** “It’s like, ‘Will you take another chance with me? Can we escape the mundane? Can we escape the cyclical motion of life and be in love together and try something that\'s dangerous and exhilarating? Yeah, I know I’ve made you sad before, but will you give me another chance?\' I wrote this song with benny blanco and Koreless. I love to set myself challenges, and it was really exciting to me, the challenge of retaining my sound while working with a really broad group of people. I was lucky working with Benny, in the fact that he creates an environment where, as an artist, you feel really comfortable to be yourself. To me, that\'s almost the old-school definition of a producer: They don\'t have to be all up in your grill, telling you what to do. They just need to lay a really beautiful, fertile soil, so that you can grow to be the best you in the moment.” **holy terrain** “I’m saying that I want to find a man that can stand up next to me, in all of my brilliance, and not feel intimidated. To me, Future’s saying, ‘Hey, I fucked up. I filled you with poison. I’ve done things to make you jealous. Can you heal me? Can you tell me how to be a better man? I need the guidance, of a woman, to show me how to do that.’ I don\'t think that there are many rappers that can go there, and just put their cards on the table like that. I didn\'t know 100%, once I met Future, that it would be right. But we spoke on the phone and I played him the album and I told him what it was about: ‘It’s a very female-positive, femme-positive record.’ And he was just like, ‘Yeah. Say no more. I\'ve got this.’ And he did. He crushed it. To have somebody who\'s got patriarchal energy come through and say that, wanting to stand up and be there for a woman, wanting to have a woman that\'s an equal—that\'s real.” **mary magdalene** “Let’s just imagine for one second: Say Jesus and Mary Magdalene are really close, they\'re together all the time. She\'s his right-hand woman, she’s his confidante, she\'s healing people with him and a mystic in her own right. So, at that point, any man and woman that are spending that much time together, they\'re likely to be what? Lovers. Okay, cool. So, if Mary had Jesus\' children, that basically debunks the whole of history. Now, I\'m not saying that happened. What I\'m saying is that the idea of people thinking that might happen is potentially really dangerous. It’s easier to call her a whore, because as soon as you call a woman a whore, it devalues her. I see her as Jesus Christ\'s equal. She’s a male projection and, I think, the beginning of the patriarchy taking control of the narrative of women. Any woman that\'s done anything can be subject to that; I’ve been subject to that. It felt like an apt time to be talking about it.” **fallen alien** “When you\'re with someone, and they\'re sleeping, and you look at them, and you just think, \'No.\' For me, it’s that line, \[\'When the lights are on, I know you/When you fall asleep, I’ll kick you down/By the way you fell, I know you/Now you’re on your knees\'\]. You\'re just so sick of somebody\'s bullshit, you\'re just taking it all day, and then you\'re in bed next to them, and you\'re just like, ‘I can\'t take this anymore.’” **mirrored heart** “People always say, ‘Whoever you\'re with, they should be a reflection of yourself.’ So, if you\'re looking at someone and you think, ‘You\'re a shitbag,’ then you have to think about why it was that person, at that time, and what\'s connecting you both. What is the reflection? For others that have found a love that is a true reflection of themselves, they just remind me that I don\'t have that, a mirrored heart.” **daybed** “Have you ever forgotten how to spell a really simple word? To me, depression\'s a bit like that: Everything\'s quite abstract, and even slightly dizzy, but not in a happy way. It\'s like a very slow circus. Suddenly the fruit flies seem friendly, everything in the room just starts having a different meaning and you even have a different relationship with the way the sofa cushions smell. \[Masturbation\] is something to raise your endorphins, isn\'t it? It’s either that or try and go to the gym, or try and eat something good. You almost can\'t put it into words, but we\'ve all been there. I sing, \'Active are my fingers/Faux, my cunnilingus\': You\'re imagining someone going down on you, but they\'re actually not. You open your eyes, and you\'re just there, still on your sofa, still watching daytime TV.” **cellophane** “It\'s just raw, isn\'t it? It didn\'t need a thing. The vocal take that\'s on the record is the demo take. I had a Lyft arrive outside the studio and I’d just started playing the piano chords. I was like, ‘Hey, can you just give me like 20, 25 minutes?’ And I recorded it as is. I remember feeling like I wanted to cry, but I just didn\'t feel like it was that suitable to cry at a studio session. I often want everything to be really intricate and gilded, and I want to chip away at everything, and sculpt it, and mold it, and add layers. The thing I\'ve learned on *MAGDALENE* is that you don\'t need to do that all the time, and just because you can do something, it doesn\'t mean you should. That\'s been a real growing experience for me—as a musician, as a producer, as a singer, even as a dancer. Something in its most simple form is beautiful.”

There aren’t many rappers who can claim to have the stylistic influence that Young Thug has had—a fact that may or may not have slowed the once prolific artist’s rate of output. Never lacking in feature work, the majority of Thug’s career saw him release multiple projects annually before dropping the Future collaboration *SUPER SLIMEY* and the YSL Records showcase *Slime Language* in 2017 and 2018, respectively. A little more than halfway through 2019, Thugger awards his fans’ patience with *So Much Fun*, an album that not only reminds us what we’d been missing, but one whose title seems to speak directly to the experience of creating it. Thug sounds elated to be making music across *So Much Fun*, unloading quirky stream-of-consciousness bars like rounds from one of the many guns he so often cites. “I put on my brothers, I put on my bitch/Had to wear the dress, ’cause I had a stick,” he raps on “Just How It Is.” He gets explicit on “Lil Baby,” telling us, “She put my cum in her cup like it was shake/I’ll never fuck this bitch again, it was a mistake,” but also proclaims via “Ecstasy,” “I don’t wanna talk about no hoes with my dad.” Fair. The production on *So Much Fun*, along with the way Thug processes it, is based in trap but equally indebted to video game scoring and some unplaceable fantasy world. Frequent collaborators like Wheezy and Southside, as well as friend and former tourmate J. Cole, have pushed themselves to their weirdest in attempts to keep up with Thug’s vocal experiments. Here, they include playing with British slang (“Sup Mate”), aping Louis Armstrong’s singing voice (“Cartier Gucci Scarf”), and punctuating bars with Michael Jackson-reminiscent ad-libs (“Light It Up”). The MC is very clearly in his bag on *So Much Fun*, something that we might attribute to the peace he may have found as one of rap’s most revered innovators. He alludes to this himself on “Jumped Out the Window,” rapping, “I been in the top room at Tootsie’s, they ain’t stunt me/They know I got money, and I don’t want nothing.”

Houston\'s status as a fertile and influential rap mecca is still thriving as the rest of the world continues to catch up with the city\'s historically insular greatness. So consider Megan Thee Stallion an ambassador of what’s happening there now. From the blaxploitation vibes of its cover art to its loaded contents, her proper debut album builds upon the filthy flows that made her preceding *Tina Snow* project and its breakout single “Big Ole Freak” such an essential listen. Over live-wire beats informed less by purple drank and slab cars than by Cash Money and Hypnotize Minds, she doles out sex positivity and hustles wisdom about female empowerment in anthems like \"Dance\" and \"Money Good.\" Boasting a rare and deadly approach both lyrical and diabolical, she clowns hopeless imitators on “Realer” and provides ample ratchet motivation on the bassbin ruiner “Shake That.” Academy Award winner Juicy J, who produced three of *Fever*\'s cuts, doles out his legendary cosign with Southern pride, dropping a few raw bars himself on “Simon Says” alongside Megan’s characteristically raw ones.

If there is an overarching concept behind *uknowhatimsayin¿*, Danny Brown’s fifth full-length, it’s that it simply doesn’t have one. “Half the time, when black people say, ‘You know what I\'m sayin\',’ they’re never saying nothing,” Danny Brown tells Apple Music. “This is just songs. You don\'t have to listen to it backwards. You don\'t have to mix it a certain way. You like it, or you don’t.” Over the last decade, Brown has become one of rap’s most distinct voices—known as much for his hair and high register as for his taste for Adderall and idiosyncratic production. But with *uknowhatimsayin¿*, Brown wants the focus to lie solely on the quality of his music. For help, he reached out to Q-Tip—a personal hero and longtime supporter—to executive produce. “I used to hate it when people were like, ‘I love Danny Brown, but I can\'t understand what he\'s saying half the time,’” Brown says. “Do you know what I\'m saying now? I\'m talking to you. This isn\'t the Danny that parties and jumps around. No, this the one that\'s going to give you some game and teach you and train you. I\'ve been through it so you don\'t have to. I\'m Uncle Danny now.” Here, Uncle Danny tells you the story behind every song on the album. **Change Up** “‘Change Up’ was a song that I recorded while trying to learn how to record. I had just started to build the studio in my basement. I didn\'t know how to use Pro Tools or anything. It was really me just making a song to record. But I played it for Q-Tip and he lost his mind over it. Maybe he heard the potential in it, because now it\'s one of my favorite songs on the album as well. At first, I wasn\'t thinking too crazy about it, but to him, he was like, \'No, you have to jump the album off like this.\' It\'s hard not to trust him. He’s fuckin’ Q-Tip!” **Theme Song** “I made ‘Theme Song’ when I was touring for \[2016’s\] *Atrocity Exhibition*. My homeboy Curt, he’s a barber too, and I took him on tour with me to cut my hair, but he also makes beats. He brought his machine and he was just making beats on the bus. And then one day I just heard that beat and was like, ‘What you got going on?’ In our downtime, I was just writing lyrics to it. I played that for Q-Tip and he really liked that song, but he didn\'t like the hook, he didn\'t like the performance of the vocals. He couldn\'t really explain to me what he wanted. In the three years that we\'ve been working on this album, I think I recorded it over 300 times. I had A$AP Ferg on it from a time he was hanging out at my house when he was on tour. We did a song called \'Deadbeat\' but it wasn\'t too good. I just kept his ad libs and wrote a few lyrics, and then wrote a whole new song, actually.” **Dirty Laundry** “The original song was part of a Samiyam beat. He lives in LA, but every time he visits back home in Michigan he always stops over at my house and hangs out. And he was going through beats and he played me three seconds of that beat, and I guess it was the look on my face. He was like, \'You like that?\' and I was like, \'Yeah!\' I had to reform the way the song was written because the beats were so different from each other. Q-Tip guided me through the entire song: \'Say this line like this…\' or \'Pause right there...\' He pretty much just coached me through the whole thing. Couldn\'t ask for anybody better.” **3 Tearz (feat. Run the Jewels)** “I’m a huge fan of Peggy. We got each other\'s number and then we talked on the phone. I was like, \'Man, you should just come out to Detroit for like a week and let’s hang out and see what we do.\' He left a bunch of beats at my studio, and that was just one. I put a verse on, never even finished it. I was hanging out with EL-P and I was playing him stuff. I played that for him and he lost his mind. El got Mike on it and they laced it. Then Q-Tip heard it and he\'s like, \'Aww, man!\' He kind of resequenced the beat and added the organs. That was tight to see Tip back there jamming out to organs.” **Belly of the Beast (feat. Obongjayar)** “I probably had that beat since \[2011’s\] *XXX*. That actual rap I wrote for \[2013’s\] *Old*, but it was to a different beat. Maybe it was just one of those dry times. I set it to that beat kind of just playing around. Then Steven \[Umoh\] heard that—it was totally unfinished, but he was like, ‘Yo, just give it to me.’ He took it and then he went back to London and he got Obongjayar down there on it. The rest was history.” **Savage Nomad** “Actually, Q-Tip wanted the name of the album to be *Savage Nomad*. Sometimes you just make songs to try to keep your pen sharp, you know? I think I was just rapping for 50 bars straight on that beat, didn\'t have any direction. But Q-Tip resequenced it. I think Tip likes that type of stuff, when you\'re just barring out.” **Best Life** “That was when me and Q-Tip found our flip. We were making songs together, but nothing really stood out yet. I recorded the first verse but I didn\'t have anything else for it, and I sent Tip a video of me playing it and he called me back immediately like, \'What the fuck? You have to come out here this weekend.\' Once we got together, I would say he kind of helped me with writing a little bit, too. I ended up recording another version with him, but then he wanted to use the original version that I did. He said it sounded rawer to him.” **uknowhatimsayin¿ (feat. Obongjayar)** “A lot of time you put so much effort when you try too hard to say cool shit and to be extra lyrical. But that song just made itself one day. I really can\'t take no credit because I feel like it came from a higher power. Literally, I put the beat on and then next thing I know I probably had that song done at five minutes. I loved it so much I had to fight for it. I can\'t just be battle-rapping the entire album. You have to give the listeners a break, man.” **Negro Spiritual (feat. JPEGMAFIA)** “That was when Peggy was at my house in Detroit, that was one of the songs we had recorded together. I played it for Flying Lotus. He’s like, \'Man, you got to use this,\' and I was like, \'Hey, if you can get Q-Tip to like it, then I guess.\' At the end of the day, it\'s really not on me to say what I\'m going to use, what I\'m not going to use. I didn\'t even know it was going to be on the album. When we started mixing the album, and I looked, he had like a mood board with all the songs, and \'Negro Spiritual\' was up there. I was like, \'Are we using that?\'” **Shine (feat. Blood Orange)** “The most down-to-earth one. I made it and I didn\'t have the Blood Orange hook, though. Shout out to Steven again. He went and worked his magic. Again, I was like, \'Hey, you\'re going to have to convince Q-Tip about this song.\' Because before Blood Orange was on it, I don\'t think he was messing with it too much. But then once Blood Orange got on it, he was like, \'All right, I see the vision.\'” **Combat** “Literally my favorite song on the album, almost like an extra lap around a track kind of thing. Q-Tip told me this story of when he was back in the late ’80s: They\'d play this Stetsasonic song in the Latin Quarter and people would just go crazy and get to fighting. He said one time somebody starts cutting this guy, cutting his goose coat with a razor, and \[Tip\] was like, \'You could just see the feathers flying all over the air, people still dancing.\' So we always had this thing like, we have to make some shit that\'s going to make some goose feathers go up in the air. That was the one right there. That was our whole goal for that, and once we made it, we really danced around to that song. We just hyped up to that song for like three days. You couldn\'t stop playing it.”

On April 14, 2018, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter etched her name even deeper into the history books with a transcendent, career-spanning Coachella performance. The show was the first of two headlining sets—the second taking place the following weekend—with Bey making it a point to call out the fact that she was the festival\'s first-ever Black female headliner. The whole thing, in fact, was a year behind schedule: Beyoncé was originally slated to headline in 2017 in the wake of her ultra-personal *Lemonade*, but postponed after announcing she was pregnant. So in 2018, some 10 months after delivering Sir and Rumi, Beyoncé got up on one of the biggest stages in the world, in front of millions collectively freaking out during the livestream, and delivered one of the most memorable live performances in the history of that festival or any other. Her set—presented in full on *HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM*—which included highlights from the whole of her catalog dating back to her Destiny’s Child days, spoke directly to her moment as historymaker, synthesizing generations (and regions) of Black musicality through the filter of an HBCU-style marching band (members of DrumLine Live, performing here as Queen Bey’s “The Bzzzz”). In the American college tradition, she called the performance “Homecoming,” packing it over the course of nearly 40 songs with the sounds of brass-heavy New Orleans second-line bands (“Single Ladies \[Put a Ring on It\]”); reggaetón (“Mi Gente”); bounce music (“Formation”); Washington, DC’s go-go (“Love On Top”); her native Houston’s chopped and screwed music (“I Been On”); dancehall reggae (“Baby Boy”); and the Dirty South hip-hop she grew up on (“Crazy In Love,” “Diva”). For good measure, there\'s also a duet with her husband (“Deja Vu”), a Destiny\'s Child reunion (“Say My Name,” “Soldier”), and as an added bonus at the end of the album, a backyard-barbecue-ready studio rendition of Maze featuring Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go” that also interpolates Cameo’s “Candy.” You can hear the voice of Malcolm X on “Don\'t Hurt Yourself,” and there\'s an a cappella version of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known colloquially as the “Black National Anthem”—beyond blockbuster production values and expert musicianship, it remains an earnest tribute to her experience as a young Black woman working to contribute to the rich musical legacy that inspires her. And according to her mother, this was the plan from the beginning: In an Instagram post the week of the first Coachella performance, Tina Knowles wrote that her daughter told her, “I have worked very hard to get to the point where I have a true voice. And at this point in my life and my career I have a responsibility to do what\'s best for the world and not what is most popular.” But the two are far from mutually exclusive, and that performance—and this vital document of it—is proof.

Where do you go after you’re nominated for a Grammy for what is only your second proper album? If you’re celebrated North Carolina MC Rapsody, you go only wherever your heart desires—for her, that was down a path forged by historic black women before her. “When I think of why I am who I am, it\'s because I\'m inspired by so many dope women,” Rapsody tells Apple Music. “Dope men, too, but mostly dope women.” The MC’s third album *Eve* (named for that biblical mother of humanity) is a series of dedications to these women—some literal, others figurative, and still others simply named for individuals who embody ideals the artist felt compelled to extol. “It was easy once I had a concept,” she says. “All these women have different energies and they represent different things to me. And the bars just connected on their own, to be honest. Once you have the idea, the basis of what you want to write, everything else is just freedom and truth.” Lead single “Ibtihaj” (as in Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first Muslim American woman to wear a hijab while competing for the United States in the Olympics) features a sample of GZA’s “Liquid Swords” along with guest spots from D’Angelo and The Genius himself. Elsewhere, the voices of rising New York MC Leikeli47, Los Angeles singer K. Roosevelt, and the legendary Queen Latifah ring out to help Rapsody tell the tales of “Oprah,” “Maya,” and “Hatshepsut,” respectively. *Eve* also features fellow generational talent and early Rapsody supporter J. Cole, who, during the sessions for “Sojourner,” helped distill his and Rapsody’s shared purpose as educators. “That whole song came from a two-, three-hour conversation that myself, J. Cole, and Ninth Wonder had in the studio,” Rapsody explains. “We were talking about Ninth’s generation versus me and Cole\'s. Everything is on the internet; they don\'t have to go and talk to each other face to face. In school they don\'t learn about all our black heroes. Some of them don\'t even want to know who Malcolm X is, who Betty Shabazz is. So that turned into: What is our responsibility as artists? We teach through our music. We should have fun, we should vibe out, but we have a responsibility to be reporting and talk about what\'s going on.” What that means for *Eve* is that the MC gets to honor some of her biggest inspirations as she earns a place among them.

EARTHGANG’s third proper album, *Mirrorland*, comes just two short months after their label Dreamville’s much-celebrated *Revenge of the Dreamers III* compilation. The recording sessions for that project, as documented by the camp themselves, seemed more like friends hanging out than MCs going to work. For *Mirrorland*, however, the duo is all business, reclaiming the space they once made for labelmates and collaborators to deliver a more concentrated storyline of their lives as young hip-hop outcasts. “Everybody’s trapping/Everybody’s hard/Everybody’s fucking/Everybody’s broad,” they declare with audible boredom on “LaLa Challenge.” On “UP,” they revel in finding success while moving outside of typical hip-hop circles, and then they come back around to offer fans an alternative to the status quo on “This Side.” They’ve tapped just a handful of guests to help tell the tale, most notably Young Thug, T-Pain, and Kehlani—artists whose voices are similarly distinctive—all while making music under a name that declares them to be proudly of this world.

Little Brother's first album in nine years, saw Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh reunite after a surprise reunion show in late 2018. Boasting production from frequent Little Brother collaborators such as Nottz, Khrysis, and Focus... as well as features from Carlitta Durand, Darien Brockington, and new comer Blakk Soul. Executive produced by Little Brother and released through their respective labels in conjunction with Empire, "May The Lord Watch" became Little Brother's first album to reach a number one by debuting at number one on Apple Music.

A song about your inability to communicate with a lover is an odd choice for a rap album’s lead single, but Compton MC Boogie has long made it a point to differentiate himself from the gangland posturing his hood is renowned for. “Silent Ride” is half-sung, half-rapped, showing range in both delivery and persona as he confronts an issue plaguing so many relationships. “I can\'t lie, I\'m detached, I need guidance,” he confesses. Boogie’s *Everythings for Sale* album comes three years after *Thirst 48, Pt. II*, making good on the promise he’d shown over the course of a celebrated mixtape run that culminated with his signing to Shady Records in 2017. The album is steeped in vulnerability, opener “Tired/Reflections” a mix of spoken word, rapping, and intense introspection. “I’m tired of questioning if God real, I wanna get murdered already,” Boogie says at one point. On “Swap Meet,” a song about how his relationship has proved to be the best deal, he sings in the way a father would to try and settle an infant child. There is plenty barring up here as well, Boogie talking industry woes alongside JID on “Soho,” and cashing in on an appearance from label boss Eminem on “Rainy Days.” But whereas that Em feature might have once validated the MC’s mettle, in the case of *Everythings for Sale*, it’s a chance for Em to verify that he still knows a game-changing MC when he hears one.

“Walker Texas Ranger,” the standout single from DaBaby’s 2018 *Blank Blank* album, is also present on *Baby on Baby*. It\'s a stellar example of the Charlotte native’s appeal—the rapper’s husky delivery weaves in and out of paced bell chimes while rapping about his affinity for guns, his disdain for women with little to offer him besides their bodies, and a newfound potential for stardom. “It ain’t like Atlanta, I came out of Charlotte, that s\*\*t took me some time,” he raps. DaBaby once went by Baby Jesus, and the fact that he doesn’t take himself all that seriously is evident. Throughout a healthy stream of threats and braggadocio on “Suge,” you can hear the smirk on his face when he raps, “You disrespect me and I’ll beat your ass up all in front of your partners and children.” His choice of guests and their varying levels of fame (Offset, Rich Homie Quan, Stunna 4 Vegas) likewise says a great deal about what he values in a collaborator: MCs with energy that matches his own, and who can rap well, of course, but who also make it a point to laugh at their haters.

Born to Iranian parents in Sweden and now based in LA, Snoh Aalegra represents the hopeful global face of R&B. Early cosigns from both Prince and Drake (who sampled her song “Time” for his *More Life* track “Do Not Disturb”) gave her 2017 debut album *Feels* extra eyes and ears. Her second album, humorously titled *- Ugh, Those Feels Again*, digs deeper into the groove she created. Her satin voice doesn’t need gimmicky production, so producers like NO I.D., D-Mile, and Doctor O create an open canvas for Aalegra to attack. And does she ever, rising above relationship woes with sculpted grace (“I Want You Around,” “Love Like That,” “Situationship”). She works abdominals with the body-roller “Toronto,” while “Nothing to Me” raises both heat and BPMs.

The cover of Polo G’s *Die a Legend* features pictures of dearly departed friends and relatives looking on from heaven, their legacies front and center as he embarks upon the next, largest step of his career. The album is a timestamp for the MC, who recently relocated from Chicago to Los Angeles to escape the tragic cycle of street violence he often sings about. He’s come a long way, refining the drill music sonics of his earliest work into the more melodic and playlist-friendly delivery of songs like “Finer Things,” released nearly a year before *Die a Legend*. The tow of his former life is ever-present, though, and celebrations of success are often inseparable from pain. “Couldn\'t leave my brother in them trenches, told him come and stay with me/We gon\' live like kings for all them nights ain\'t have no place to sleep/N\*ggas watched us starve and never offered us a plate to eat/Took off, now they mad, but I know that they won’t wait for me,” he raps on “Through da Storm.” His bars can come across as catharsis, but there are constant warnings that Polo is still very much of the environment he left. On “Lost Files” he talks about being anointed for success by God, and then, in the same verse, details a remorseless revenge killing. Songs like “A King’s Nightmare” serve as warnings to the generation behind him, while “Dyin Breed,” “Pop Out,” and “Last Strike” all paint him as someone not to be toyed with. On the whole, *Die a Legend* is a portrait of an artist trapped between the plight that informs a great deal of his work and what lies beyond the determination to escape that trauma. Fortunately for Polo G, he’s singing about the experiences he’s already had as opposed to the ones yet to come.

Ari Lennox is Dreamville’s resident singer-songwriter, rounding out the label\'s hip-hop-heavy lineup with rich, midtempo soul birthed from basslines, melody, wind instruments, and supreme heartbreak. “I never thought I\'d make money off of soul music,” the Washington, DC-based singer told Beats 1’s Ebro. “I always thought I\'d have to be this pop artist or make this super hit, but no.” Lennox was discovered after putting her music up online, signing with Dreamville in 2015. She\'s contributed “Shea Butter Baby” to the *Creed II* soundtrack and released the 2016 EP *Pho*. The positive response to tracks like “Backseat” showed that her retro R&B fits well in contemporary times. “There\'s so many opportunities that come to me,” she said. “And I\'m just like, ‘You guys like soul and R&B that much? That\'s awesome.’ I didn\'t know it could ever happen again, because I knew it was really booming in the ’90s and the early 2000s, and then it felt like people stopped caring.” On her debut full-length, her voice is strengthened and emboldened by both breakup and “u up?” texts. She celebrates independence (“New Apartment”) and processes pain (“Speak to Me,” “I Been,” “Pop”) with equal parts frankness and freedom. Cameos by JID (“Broke”) and J. Cole (“Shea Butter Baby”) and a classy Galt MacDermot “Space” sample on “BMO” give the album its pronounced bump. “It’s soul,” she told Ebro. “There’s no gimmicks. It’s feeling.”

On his new album Terror Management, billy woods weaves past, present and future into a dark tableau as hilarious as it is macabre. This is a place where skeletons spill from closets, lead pours from faucets and the punchline is the whole joke. This is the sound of the police not coming, of garbage trucks in reverse, of glaciers shearing off into a black ocean. But these are also tales of perseverance, compassion and love, however quixotic. Of snatching one’s humanity from the fires that rage all about us. Terror Management features production from Preservation, Blockhead, Willie Green, Messiah Muzik, Small Pro, ELUCID, Child Actor, Steel Tipped Dove, Uncommon Nasa, Jeff Markey and Shape. Together they create a backdrop of seamless fragmentation perfectly suited to these times—this era of cognitive dissonance. Mach Hommy, Fielded, Pink Siifu, Akai Solo, Lauren Kelly Benson (fka L’Wren) and The Funs all make guest appearances.

The most punk moment of 2019 is Rico Nasty screaming “Kennyyyyyy!” in a voice like a revved-up chainsaw. The DMV rapper reestablished her signature sound with producer Kenny Beats in 2018 through an alter ego called Trap Lavigne, recalibrating the “sugar trap” style of her early hits into devil-horns missives shouted over heavy metal beats. *Anger Management* is Rico and Kenny’s first full-length collaboration, and it begins in sheer chaos: “Cold” and “Cheat Code” sound like primal screams from the soul. But the mood mellows out over the course of nine bite-sized tracks—a conceptual journey of catharsis from two of the most inventive names in rap right now. It’s like a therapy session, if your therapist was prone to hollering, “I got bitches on my dick and I ain’t even got a dick!” over JAY-Z samples.

In the three years since her seminal album *A Seat at the Table*, Solange has broadened her artistic reach, expanding her work to museum installations, unconventional live performances, and striking videos. With her fourth album, *When I Get Home*, the singer continues to push her vision forward with an exploration of roots and their lifelong influence. In Solange\'s case, that’s the culturally rich Houston of her childhood. Some will know these references — candy paint, the late legend DJ Screw — via the city’s mid-aughts hip-hop explosion, but through Solange’s lens, these same touchstones are elevated to high art. A diverse group of musicians was tapped to contribute to *When I Get Home*, including Tyler, the Creator, Chassol, Playboi Carti, Standing on the Corner, Panda Bear, Devin the Dude, The-Dream, and more. There are samples from the works of under-heralded H-town legends: choreographer Debbie Allen, actress Phylicia Rashad, poet Pat Parker, even the rapper Scarface. The result is a picture of a particular Houston experience as only Solange could have painted it — the familiar reframed as fantastic.

Ahead of the release of his official full-length debut album, DC rapper GoldLink launched his Beats 1 show IFFY FM, describing it as “a carefully curated journey through sound touching many corners of the world” and “home to the sound of the black diaspora.” The show exists as a companion piece to the album, shining a light on the MC’s many divergent inspirations, including artists from the UK, Canada, Colombia, Nigeria, and, of course, his native DMV area. The album is these same musical ideas realized, with GoldLink running his own unique brand of future bounce through the filters of Afrobeats, dancehall, street rap, and UK pop (among others), seasoning it all with the rumble of post-trap sonics. (There is also the curiously titled “Spanish Song,” where GoldLink has buried any semblance of ethnic identifiers deep into warm and cascading synth lines.) The list of collaborators on *Diaspora* is equally diverse, with features from LA antihero Tyler, The Creator, British-Nigerian producer Maleek Berry, American pop crooner Khalid, Afrobeats superstar Wizkid, and hip-hop bully Pusha T, to name a few. GoldLink has managed to make sense of plenty of voices here, and if *Diaspora*’s relationship to IFFY FM proves nothing else, it’s that he’s making the exact kind of music he wants to be listening to.

With powerhouse pipes, razor-sharp wit, and a tireless commitment to self-love and self-care, Lizzo is the fearless pop star we needed. Born Melissa Jefferson in Detroit, the singer and classically trained flautist discovered an early gift for music (“It chose me,” she tells Apple Music) and began recording in Minneapolis shortly after high school. But her trademark self-confidence came less naturally. “I had to look deep down inside myself to a really dark place to discover it,” she says. Perhaps that’s why her third album, *Cuz I Love You*, sounds so triumphant, with explosive horns (“Cuz I Love You”), club drums (“Tempo” featuring Missy Elliott), and swaggering diva attitude (“No, I\'m not a snack at all/Look, baby, I’m the whole damn meal,” she howls on the instant hit “Juice\"). But her brand is about more than mic-drop zingers and big-budget features. On songs like “Better in Color”—a stomping, woke plea for people of all stripes to get together—she offers an important message: It’s not enough to love ourselves, we also have to love each other. Read on for Lizzo’s thoughts on each of these blockbuster songs. **“Cuz I Love You”** \"I start every project I do with a big, brassy orchestral moment. And I do mean *moment*. It’s my way of saying, ‘Stand the fuck up, y’all, Lizzo’s here!’ This is just one of those songs that gets you amped from the jump. The moment you hear it, you’re like, ‘Okay, it’s on.’ It’s a great fucking way to start an album.\" **“Like a Girl”** \"We wanted take the old cliché and flip it on its head, shaking out all the negative connotations and replacing them with something empowering. Serena Williams plays like a girl and she’s the greatest athlete on the planet, you know? And what if crying was empowering instead of something that makes you weak? When we got to the bridge, I realized there was an important piece missing: What if you identify as female but aren\'t gender-assigned that at birth? Or what if you\'re male but in touch with your feminine side? What about my gay boys? What about my drag queens? So I decided to say, ‘If you feel like a girl/Then you real like a girl,\' and that\'s my favorite lyric on the whole album.\" **“Juice”** \"If you only listen to one song from *Cuz I Love You*, let it be this. It’s a banger, obviously, but it’s also a state of mind. At the end of the day, I want my music to make people feel good, I want it to help people love themselves. This song is about looking in the mirror, loving what you see, and letting everyone know. It was the second to last song that I wrote for the album, right before ‘Soulmate,\' but to me, this is everything I’m about. I wrote it with Ricky Reed, and he is a genius.” **“Soulmate”** \"I have a relationship with loneliness that is not very healthy, so I’ve been going to therapy to work on it. And I don’t mean loneliness in the \'Oh, I don\'t got a man\' type of loneliness, I mean it more on the depressive side, like an actual manic emotion that I struggle with. One day, I was like, \'I need a song to remind me that I\'m not lonely and to describe the type of person I *want* to be.\' I also wanted a New Orleans bounce song, \'cause you know I grew up listening to DJ Jubilee and twerking in the club. The fact that l got to combine both is wild.” **“Jerome”** \"This was my first song with the X Ambassadors, and \[lead singer\] Sam Harris is something else. It was one of those days where you walk into the studio with no expectations and leave glowing because you did the damn thing. The thing that I love about this song is that it’s modern. It’s about fuccboi love. There aren’t enough songs about that. There are so many songs about fairytale love and unrequited love, but there aren’t a lot of songs about fuccboi love. About when you’re in a situationship. That story needed to be told.” **“Cry Baby”** “This is one of the most musical moments on a very musical album, and it’s got that Minneapolis sound. Plus, it’s almost a power ballad, which I love. The lyrics are a direct anecdote from my life: I was sitting in a car with a guy—in a little red Corvette from the ’80s, and no, it wasn\'t Prince—and I was crying. But it wasn’t because I was sad, it was because I loved him. It was a different field of emotion. The song starts with \'Pull this car over, boy/Don\'t pretend like you don\'t know,’ and that really happened. He pulled the car over and I sat there and cried and told him everything I felt.” **“Tempo”** “‘Tempo\' almost didn\'t make the album, because for so long, I didn’t think it fit. The album has so much guitar and big, brassy instrumentation, but ‘Tempo’ was a club record. I kept it off. When the project was finished and we had a listening session with the label, I played the album straight through. Then, at the end, I asked my team if there were any honorable mentions they thought I should play—and mind you, I had my girls there, we were drinking and dancing—and they said, ‘Tempo! Just play it. Just see how people react.’ So I did. No joke, everybody in the room looked at me like, ‘Are you crazy? If you don\'t put this song on the album, you\'re insane.’ Then we got Missy and the rest is history.” **“Exactly How I Feel”** “Way back when I first started writing the song, I had a line that goes, ‘All my feelings is Gucci.’ I just thought it was funny. Months and months later, I played it at Atlantic \[Records\], and when that part came up, I joked, ‘Thanks for the Gucci feature, guys!\' And this executive says, ‘We can get Gucci if you want.\' And I was like, ‘Well, why the fuck not?\' I love Gucci Mane. In my book, he\'s unproblematic, he does a good job, he adds swag to it. It doesn’t go much deeper than that, to be honest. The rest of the song has plenty of meaning: It’s an ode to being proud of your emotions, not feeling like you have to hide them or fake them, all that. But the Gucci feature was just fun.” **“Better in Color”** “This is the nerdiest song I have ever written, for real. But I love it so much. I wanted to talk about love, attraction, and sex *without* talking about the boxes we put those things in—who we feel like we’re allowed to be in love with, you know? It shouldn’t be about that. It shouldn’t be about gender or sexual orientation or skin color or economic background, because who the fuck cares? Spice it up, man. Love *is* better in color. I don’t want to see love in black and white.\" **“Heaven Help Me”** \"When I made the album, I thought: If Aretha made a rap album, what would that sound like? ‘Heaven Help Me’ is the most Aretha to me. That piano? She would\'ve smashed that. The song is about a person who’s confident and does a good job of self-care—a.k.a. me—but who has a moment of being pissed the fuck off and goes back to their defensive ways. It’s a journey through the full spectrum of my romantic emotions. It starts out like, \'I\'m too cute for you, boo, get the fuck away from me,’ to \'What\'s wrong with me? Why do I drive boys away?’ And then, finally, vulnerability, like, \'I\'m crying and I\'ve been thinking about you.’ I always say, if anyone wants to date me, they just gotta listen to this song to know what they’re getting into.\" **“Lingerie”** “I’ve never really written sexy songs before, so this was new for me. The lyrics literally made me blush. I had to just let go and let God. It’s about one of my fantasies, and it has three different chord changes, so let me tell you, it was not easy to sing. It was very ‘Love On Top’ by Beyoncé of me. Plus, you don’t expect the album to end on this note. It leaves you wanting more.”

slowthai knew the title of his album long before he wrote a single bar of it. He knew he wanted the record to speak candidly about his upbringing on the council estates of Northampton, and for it to advocate for community in a country increasingly mired in fear and insularity. Three years since the phrase first appeared in his breakout track ‘Jiggle’, Tyron Frampton presents his incendiary debut ‘Nothing Great About Britain’. Harnessing the experiences of his challenging upbringing, slowthai doesn’t dwell in self-pity. From the album’s title track he sets about systematically dismantling the stereotypes of British culture, bating the Royals and lampooning the jingoistic bluster that has ultimately led to Brexit and a surge in nationalism. “Tea, biscuits, the roads: everything we associate with being British isn’t British,” he cries today. “What’s so great about Britain? The fact we were an empire based off of raping and pillaging and killing, and taking other people’s culture and making it our own?” ‘Nothing Great About Britain’ serves up a succession of candid snapshots of modern day British life; drugs, disaffection, depression and the threat of violence all loom in slowthai’s visceral verses, but so too does hope, love and defiance. Standing alongside righteous anger and hard truths, it’s this willingness to appear vulnerable that makes slowthai such a compelling storyteller, and this debut a vital cultural document, testament to the healing power of music. As slowthai himself explains, “Music to me is the biggest connector of people. It don’t matter what social circle you’re from, it bonds people across divides. And that’s why I do music: to bridge the gap and bring people together.”

Late into the evening of February 1, 2019, 2 Chainz and LeBron James were talking music. James was serving as A&R to 2 Chainz’s fifth studio album, *Rap or Go to the League*, and footage from that evening’s studio session features the Lakers star playing the role to a T—taking notes as the music plays, offering suggestions about where to include features, and scrunching up his face in reaction to some of the harder-hitting production. It’s hard to distinguish where exactly his fingerprints lie within the finished product, but as collaborator on a hip-hop album referencing two of the most visible (if unlikely) paths for young Black men in America to conquer generational poverty, LeBron is, in fact, the perfect teammate. But the story is 2 Chainz’s to tell. *Rap or Go to the League* is autobiographical in a way that has little to do with career aspirations. “I done some things I ain’t proud of/Like sold my mom drugs,” he confesses on “Threat 2 Society.” On “Forgiven” he recounts the pain of hearing that friend and collaborator Lil Fate\'s son had been murdered, and then he delivers a detailed list of crimes he may or may not have once committed on “Statute of Limitations.” “NCAA” carries the album’s overt parallel of street life and sport with its chorus: “N-C-double-A/We the young and dangerous/We be balling hard/I just want some paper.” Just like on the court, however, there is plenty of fun to be had. 2 Chainz, who has his own signature model Versace shoe, raps about it alongside a particularly animated Young Thug on “High Top Versace.” “Rule the World” and “Girl’s Best Friend,” featuring Ariana Grande and Ty Dolla $ign respectively, are love songs, throwbacks to the rapper’s 2017 *Pretty Girls Like Trap Music* brand of game-spitting. Full-fledged rap-offs appear in the form of “Momma I Hit a Lick” with Kendrick Lamar and “2 Dollar Bill” with E-40 and Lil Wayne. Rounded out with features from Chance the Rapper and Kodak Black on “I’m Not Crazy, Life Is,” *Rap or Go to the League* makes it clear that at this point in his career, 2 Chainz is only interested in running with the best in the game. His pairing up with LeBron—though not without unique benefit to the superstar athlete in the process of growing his media empire—is further testament to this. And like *Rap or Go to the League*’s A&R, 2 Chainz is a veteran forcing his peers to understand that he’s still very much at the top of his game.

*While We Wait* serves as a tasty amuse-bouche before Kehlani’s follow-up to *SweetSexySavage*. The Oakland R&B singer sounds refreshed and fed up with the games—taking lazy lovers to task on “RPG” and “Nights Like This” (6LACK and Ty Dolla $ign, respectively, provide stinging rebuttals). Moments of levity appear in “Nunya,” which takes on exes who can’t mind their business. And “Morning Glory” is like a peak TLC track with Kehlani playing all the roles; she presents the too-real image of herself without makeup, nails, or hair done, asking: Would you still ride? *While We Wait* possesses equal measures of moxie and vulnerability, framing Kehlani as a wise young woman navigating love and life, eager to leave the past behind.

“I have always wanted to release an album, but I never had the opportunity,” Bad Bunny tells Apple Music of his long-awaited debut LP. “Now I feel completely free as an artist and as a person. I feel good about showing people something different.” It’s hard to imagine that in a little under three years, Benito Martínez Ocasio went from working in a grocery store to amassing a fervent worldwide following on the back of massive singles and high-profile guest features. On Noche Buena 2018, Bad Bunny finally delivered his much-anticipated full-length debut, *X 100PRE*—an engulfing breakup album that doesn’t merely justify the long wait, but also redefines música urbana. *X 100PRE* has everything you’d expect from the reigning king of Latin trap. The songs seamlessly flow into one another and cross genres freely, creating a narrative fueled by trap, reggaetón, dream-pop, pop-punk/emo, and Dominican dembow. The album opens with “NI BIEN NI MAL,” in which he promises that no matter how tempted he may be, he won’t cave in and call an ex (“Pase lo que pase no te voy a llamar”). His declaration that without his former lover, he’s neither happy nor sad, speaks to a place many have been after a pivotal relationship: stuck in the middle, waiting for closure. “Solo de Mí” goes from emo-perreo to trap-reggaetón heater, and in it Bad Bunny reaffirms his agency as an individual after accepting the dissolution of his relationship. It’s one of the strongest tracks on the album and was recorded just a couple of weeks before its release. “I was going into the studio in Miami to listen to all of the songs and see what was missing,” he says. “I went to take a shower and started singing, ‘No me vuelvas…’ I kept going: ‘No soy tuyo...solo de mí.’ I rushed out of the shower and didn’t even dry myself off. I just laid down some tones with my voice and said, ‘Give me a click track so I can record in time,’ and I recorded the chorus. Everything happened really fast.” The album is surprisingly light on guests, and those who are here highlight Bad Bunny’s own strengths. On “200 MPH,” Diplo offers a minimalist but effective trap number, while the Drake-featuring global smash “MIA” has the Canadian superstar singing in Spanish and Bad Bunny delivering one of his most clever lines to date: “Yo soy tu Romeo pero no Santo” (“I’m your Romeo but I’m no saint”), a reference to bachata star Romeo Santos. “La Romana,” named for the Dominican city where the song was recorded with El Alfa, kicks off with an infectious “trapchata” foundation, before changing gears and clobbering listeners with a full-force Dominican dembow banger. “Otra Noche en Miami” invokes M83-style dream-pop perfect for a night drive, and on “Tenemos Que Hablar,” Bad Bunny and longtime producer Tainy expertly interweave pop-punk with a trap foundation, making this heart-wrenching breakup song a contender for 2018’s emo anthem. The ease with which he navigates these disparate genres while telling a cohesive story shows that we’re in a new era of música urbana; even an anthem like “Estamos Bien,” which was released in June 2018 and has already amassed millions of streams, feels new within the context of the album—it’s about both Puerto Rico’s survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and Bad Bunny’s personal survival. For anyone who ever wondered why Bad Bunny took his time releasing a proper album, this is it. So sit back and join him in his hazy quest for answers.

After releasing 2016’s *The Colour in Anything*, James Blake moved from London to Los Angeles, where he found himself busier than ever. “I’ve been doing a lot of production work, a lot of writing for other people and projects,” he tells Apple Music. “I think the constant process of having a mirror held up to your music in the form of other people’s music, and other people, helped me cross something. A shiny new thing.” That thing—his fourth album, *Assume Form*—is his least abstract and most grounded, revealing and romantic album to date. Here, Blake pulls back the curtain and explains the themes, stories and collaborations behind each track. **“Assume Form”** “I\'m saying, ‘The plan is to become reachable, to assume material form, to leave my head and join the world.’ It seems like quite a modern, Western idea that you just get lost. These slight feelings of repression lead to this feeling of *I’m not in my body, I’m not really experiencing life through first-person. It’s like I’m looking at it from above*. Which is a phenomenon a lot of people describe when they talk about depression.” **“Mile High” (feat. Metro Boomin & Travis Scott)** “Travis is just exceptionally talented at melodies; the ones he wrote on that track are brilliant. And it was made possible by Metro—the beat is a huge part of why that track feels the way it does.” **“Tell Them” (feat. Metro Boomin & Moses Sumney)** “Moses came on tour with me a couple years ago. I watched him get a standing ovation every night, and that was when he was a support act. For me, it’s a monologue on a one-night stand: There’s fear, there’s not wanting to be too close to anybody. Just sort of a self-analysis, really.” **“Into the Red”** “‘Into the Red’ is about a woman in my life who was very giving—someone who put me before themselves, and spent the last of their money on something for me. It was just a really beautiful sentiment—especially the antithesis of the idea that the man pays. I just liked that idea of equal footing.” **“Barefoot in the Park” (feat. ROSALÍA)** “My manager played me \[ROSALÍA’s 2017 debut\] *Los Ángeles*, and I honestly hadn’t heard anything so vulnerable and raw and devastating in quite a while. She came to the studio, and within a day we’d made two or three things. I loved the sound of our voices together.” **“Can’t Believe the Way We Flow”** “It’s a pure love song, really. It’s just about the ease of coexisting that I feel with my girlfriend. It’s fairly simple in its message and in its delivery, hopefully. Romance is a very commercialized subject, but sometimes it can just be a peaceful moment of ease and something even mundane—just the flow between days and somebody making it feel like the days are just going by, and that’s a great thing.” **“Are You in Love?”** “I like the idea of that moment where neither of you know whether you’re in love yet, but there’s this need for someone to just say they are: ‘Give me assurance that this is good and that we’re good, and that you’re in love with me. I’m in love with you.’ The words might mean more in that moment, but that’s not necessarily gonna make it okay.” **“Where’s the Catch?” (feat. André 3000)** “I was, and remain, inspired by Outkast. Catching him now is maybe even *more* special to me, because the way he writes is just so good! I love the way he balances slight abstraction with this feeling of paranoia. The line ‘Like I know I’m eight, and I know I ain’t’—anxiety bringing you back to being a child, but knowing that you’re supposed to feel strong and stable because you’re an adult now. That’s just so beautifully put.” **“I’ll Come Too”** “It’s a real story: When you fall in love, the practical things go out the window, a little bit. And you just want to go to wherever they are.” **“Power On”** “It’s about being in a relationship, and being someone who gets something wrong. If you can swallow your ego a little bit and accept that you aren’t always to know everything, that this person can actually teach you a lot, the better it is for everyone. Once I’ve taken accountability, it’s time to power on—that’s the only way I can be worthy of somebody’s love and affection and time.” **“Don’t Miss It”** “Coming at the end of the album was a choice. I think it kind of sums up the mission statement in some ways: Yes, there are millions of things that I could fixate on, and I have lost years and years and years to anxiety. There are big chunks of my life I can’t remember—moments I didn’t enjoy when I should have. Loves I wasn’t a part of. Heroes I met that I can’t really remember the feeling of meeting. Because I was so wrapped up in myself. And I think that’s what this is—the inner monologue of an egomaniac.” **“Lullaby for My Insomniac”** “I literally wrote it to help someone sleep. This is just me trying to calm the waters so you can just drift off. It does what it says on the tin.”

Every time a shooting makes the news talking heads pop up in small boxes and make loud arguments about how we shouldn’t rush to politicize what just happened. After all, the heads argue, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But how true is that? Are the tools we use simply tools, innocuous until we give them meaning? Or are the things we surround ourselves with –– the things in our arsenal –– begging to be weaponized, for good or for evil? Guns, the new album from the critically acclaimed rapper and producer Quelle Chris, is a careful study of all these questions, an urgent record for urgent times. “Guns is an arsenal of both sounds, styles, and subjects, Quelle says, taking a thorough look at “the words we say, what we fear, how we love, how we live, what we ingest, what we believe in, who we idolize, shit like that.” To this end, the New York by-way-of Detroit savant attacks his topics from multiple angles: there’s the jagged, minimal “Obamacare,” which plays like a confrontation, but there’s also “Wild Minks,” where Quelle and the enigmatic New Jersey rapper Mach-Hommy spin silk out of the softest textures in their parents’ record collections. In the service of examining big ideas with grave consequences, we get to hear a master technician deploying every piece of ammo he has. In times that are often beyond parody, Quelle has never been a writer to shy away from the absurd. But Guns is dotted with references to the very real, painfully ordinary fates that might befall us –– be they getting gunned down in church on a Sunday or simply being forgotten by our friends after we’re gone. In preparation for both, Quelle lays his psyche bare. Maybe his identity is best summed up by the three-word descriptor he gives himself toward the record’s end: “handsome, black, and headstrong.” Quelle handles the vast majority of production duties himself, with assists coming from Dane and Chris Keys. Guns covers sonic ground quickly: it opens with the skeletal creep of “Spray & Pray” and closes with “WYRM,” which is sweeping and contemplative. In between there are detours to the lush and playful (“PSA Drugfest 2003”) and to the grim and digital (“Mind Ya Bidness”). As always, Quelle delivers music that’s innovative and idiosyncratic without sacrificing the gut-punch of more commercial releases; in fact, there are moments when Guns rattles trunks like few rap LPs in recent memory. Slated for release via Mello Music Group on March 29, Guns is Quelle’s third studio album in three years: each Quelle Chris album is distinct and fully-realized: see 2017’s Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often, an off-kilter probe into the ways we see ourselves, or see last year’s collaboration with Jean Grae, Everything’s Fine, which was biting satire for the dawn of a new dystopia –– and which was adored by critics, being named to ‘best album of the year’ lists by countless publications, including Pitchfork, The Wire, and Bandcamp, who dubbed it the best album of 2018. Guns is not content to rest on those laurels. “My goal with this and all albums is to create pieces people can enjoy, start to finish, for decades to come,” Quelle notes, fully aware that in a fractured, streaming ecosystem, any shard of your identity released into the world might be the lone artifact that survives. This is a record that is constantly aware of the peril all around us, but instead of shrinking in the face of that knowledge, it reasserts its creator’s identity. Aided by excellent guest turns from the likes of Jean Grae, Denmark Vessey, Cavalier, Mach-Hommy, Bilal Salaam, and more, Quelle Chris has delivered perhaps the most pointed, most personal, and all-together perfectly crafted album of his career.

SuperFuture. Fire Marshal Future. Astronaut Kid. Pluto. Hndrxx. These are just a few alter egos of the MC born Nayvadius Wilburn, taken up across a decade-long career as one of Atlanta’s most prolific and inventive voices. As a presentation of yet another identity, *Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD*—the rapper’s seventh solo album—is less a wholly separate Future than one highlighting elements of them all. Future reaches back into his own catalog from the outset: “Tryna run a billion up until my ankle pop” line from opening track “Never Stop” recalls 2011’s “Championship Music,” where he raps, “Money coming in from every angle/Paper chasing, running to it tryna break my ankle.” Over the woozy, Tay Keith-produced “Temptation,” he alternates between a conversational flow and the R&B vocal runs he leaned into on 2012’s *Astronaut Status* mixtape. “Call the Coroner” and “Stick to the Models” are as dark as they are celebratory, chock-full of the unabashed nihilism that made 2014’s *Monster* so powerful. On the Wheezy-produced “Krazy but True,” Future alludes to the rationale behind continuously refining his style: “I’m God to you n\*\*\*\*s/I work too hard just to spoil you n\*\*\*\*s/You need to pay me my respect/Your socks, rings, and your lean/The way you drop your mixtapes, ad-libs, and everything.” It’s a very gentle ear-flick to the many MCs who’ve borrowed styles and ideas from a man who identifies as The WIZRD. Fortunately, his *Future Hndrxx Presents: The WIZRD* project includes only original, homegrown ingredients.

New Orleans’ Lucky Daye was brought up in a religious cult that forbade secular music; it wasn’t until later in life that he became enamored with classic R&B, from The Gap Band to Chaka Khan to Prince. (That “e” at the end of Daye is an homage to Marvin Gaye’s subtle name change.) You may have already been introduced to the bulk of the golden-voiced singer’s long-teased debut album, *Painted*: Daye released most of its tracks over the course of two previous EPs, both of which have since disappeared into the digital ether. But the songs are all the more striking presented in full, a lush, impeccably produced arc from feel-good funk (“Late Night”) to slinky Ginuwine interpolations (“Karma”) to ravaged ballads that compare turbulent relationships to natural disasters—no small statement from a guy who survived Hurricane Katrina. Very little on *Painted* sounds like the R&B you’ll hear on the radio, which is exactly why it’s one of 2019’s most interesting debuts.

Baby Rose has an absolute stunner of a voice: It\'s dusky, soulful, and seems to have emotional texture simply built in. The old-school qualities of her singing have drawn comparisons to icons like Nina Simone—who she cites as one of her favorite artists of all time—and Amy Winehouse, but her musical interests run the gamut from instrumental and jazz albums to rap and psychedelia. The footprints of such assorted sounds all show up on her debut album, *To Myself*. The singer, who grew up in Washington, D.C., and Fayetteville, North Carolina, says the project was an exercise in release. “It was really just going in and not holding back on doing the coolest shit that we could think of—even if it didn\'t sound sonically on center with the music that\'s out right now,” she tells Apple Music. “It was just leaning into that, leaning into all the things that make me different and really just pushing the vulnerability and emotions out.” *To Myself* traces the intricate constellation of a relationship, from moments of confusion and disillusion to those of bliss and blinding love; the lyrics coupled with Baby Rose\'s arresting voice capture each tangled phase in a manner that feels urgent and diaristic. “I\'m definitely a lot more dramatic as an artist as far as the things that I write about, how angry I get—it\'s not that deep,” she admits. “In real life, I\'m very chill and I\'m very much nonconfrontational in a lot of ways—I like to just keep the peace and find the solution. As an artist, I really get to pour all of the shit that maybe I\'ve restrained into my work.” But the stakes were much higher than trying to make something grand out of a broken heart. “Even though it was helping me get over a hardship in my life and it was helping me mitigate through all of my emotions, for everyone else \[I was working with\] and for me as well, it was like, \'Okay, this is my shot,\'” she says. “I have studio time. I have a little money in my account. I have no excuse. I have to go for this—this is it.” Here\'s a track-by-track guide to the project from Baby Rose herself. **Sold Out** “It\'s such a fairy-tale arrangement, the way the production is with the strings and the Mellotron. It was just kind of floating. And then what I\'m talking about is very anti-that. It\'s very \'No, I\'m over this shit.\' I just love juxtaposition, so I thought that would be a really good way to introduce who I am if there was one record. I love the sound design because it immediately puts you in a world—that getting in a car and just leaving somebody\'s place or leaving wherever. It feels really real and really cinematic, which I loved to open \[the album\].” **Borderline** “‘Borderline’ is definitely about indecision. That was actually the original name. It\'s about me also kind of finding somebody new or falling for somebody new in the midst of all of the BS, because we were on a break, and so it\'s just like, now there\'s someone else, wait, there\'s more!” **Ragrets** “We were really just kind of going for like a sampled Muscle Shoals, really gritty type of sound with the record, because it was really talking about something that was very gritty and dark. ‘Ragrets’ is about all of the things that I don\'t let other people see or that I was really hiding from my significant other. And it\'s like, \'Damn, you are getting to live in bliss as you put me through all of this bullshit and I have to hold in all of these secrets and deal with all of these emotions that you\'ll never know.\' I was really just kind of tired of holding back and hiding things. It was hurting me a lot more than it would ever hurt him.” **Pressure** “I was really deep in this world when I wrote that song—I think I had a cold. I was in an apartment with pink lights, drinking wine and smoking cloves and really just in a vibe. That song was really an ode to the juxtaposition between what I put out on Instagram and what a lot of people put out on Instagram versus what the reality is in the present moment. I have a lot of shit that no one knows for real for real because I don\'t want to show that, but there\'s a lot of pressure that holds me back, and I\'m trying to deal with it. And so it\'s kind of like the influencers\' anthem that they sing to themselves to get through. It\'s one of two really rare moments in the album where it\'s not me putting the blame on anybody else. It\'s more of me just looking at myself like, \'What have I done to make me feel so bad? What have I done?\' Because it has to be an internal thing. There has to be some type of autonomy in this decision. I can\'t just allow people to make me feel like this—it\'s really me.” **Mortal** “It\'s a dual meaning. For one, there\'s this side of me that I originally wrote from, which is like when you love someone so much—they\'re bigger than just another person to you. It almost seems like you\'re looking up to them. You\'re just really drawn to somebody, almost like they\'re a god, and you just feel like you surrender. So there\'s that one part, which is heavy, and then there\'s the other side—I kind of realized this meaning after I created it—which is like a gospel song. Instead of that person being another person, it\'s more like God: \'I pick the pieces up and come back running every time/You make it easy.\' Even when I\'m fucking up, God is there with open arms to understand the human condition and just be there for you. So there\'s two meanings, depending on the night or the day that you listen to it.” **All to Myself** “‘All to Myself’ was written, produced, and recorded within two to three hours. After the Dreamville sessions, people started doing their own camps to keep up the momentum, and so I was at a camp. We made this song after watching this video of Sam Cooke perform. Tim \[Maxey\] just started playing chords, and Vincent \[Berry II\], who is an amazing songwriter, was just like, ‘What would you write if there was a refrain, if there was something repeated like how they used to do back in the day?’ And then that\'s when—\'I guess I keep it all to myself.\' And I went to go test the mic in the booth, but low-key, I had already been writing some shit. I go in there and I just did it in one take. It was just an energy. We cleaned up, and I punched in where I was fucking up words, but the whole song itself is just one continuous take. That was the last song to get on the album, because we made it after the album was already done, after I had already shown it to everyone. But then it was like, \'Nah, I have another one.\' That was the song where I really knew this shit is anointed for sure. I usually go crazy with backgrounds and stuff to fill in something that\'s lacking almost, so I bring in choral backgrounds, but this didn\'t need anything. It was the bare minimum of just a piano, a bass, and an organ and my voice—it held it down. I\'d never done a song like that before. Even though it gave me gospel vibes, it also gave me a traditional, classic vibe. I was like, \'Nah, this shit is bigger than me.\'” **In Your Arms** “A few years ago, shit was not really sweet, and I was staying at my mom\'s apartment. She had a one-bedroom apartment. I was really sad, and I had a laptop, and so I just started making beats. One of the beats was the one for \'In Your Arms.\' I had wrote that song on my mom\'s living room floor and just being sad and just very much like praying—it was like a prayer. I felt like that song is really just—rather than \[being\] for another person in love, it was more like, \'I\'ve been led astray so many times and with the best intentions. All I want to do is be able to do my purpose, and I\'ve gotten so far, but then it\'s like two steps forward, five steps back every time.\' So it\'s like to God I was just kind of proclaiming, \'You show me. You give me the way rather than me trying to find it in other people or go through all of this shit again. Can you just be there and show me what it is that you want to show me?\'” **Artifacts** “I engineered it myself. I figured out—rather, I discovered the doubler effect. I really am into psychedelic music and stuff like that, especially modern psychedelic. I love what\'s going on with Tame Impala and just all the weird tints, the weird vocal effects. Shit like that really makes me happy. I hate a very clean vocal for some reason—it just doesn\'t resonate with me—so I was just trying some shit. \'Artifacts\' is definitely one of those songs that I love to perform, because it has this gritty type of I-don\'t-give-a-fuck energy, and I really fall into that when I perform. And it\'s just about realizing that somebody is no longer meant for your present moment. They\'re an artifact, like, \'This is not even what it was, this is not hitting the same as it was, so I\'m out.\'” **Over** “If ‘Artifacts’ was the party, like I don\'t care, \'Over\' is like after the party, \[when\] you\'re at home and you\'re like, \'Damn, this person just posted on their story that they\'re with another girl, and now, all of a sudden, I\'m mad all over again. I was over it and now I\'m mad because I don\'t want to be over, but you just completely disrespected the fuck out of me.\' That\'s \'Over.\' It gets to a point where it\'s like, \'Why am I feeling like this? I don\'t want to feel like I have to be with you or I feel alone. There\'s plenty of people, but I\'m just drawn to you—you have this effect on me\' type of thing.” **Show You** “In every bar, there\'s a back and forth, like, you know you want me like this. You want me to be fucked up over you, but I\'m still doing really well for myself without you: \'There\'s so many things I have to say, but I want to show you.\' The song itself, for me, is the perfect conclusion because it still ends on uncertainty—a confident uncertainty, but still an uncertainty of what is there in the future. What will come of this? Because I\'m still hurt, and I still feel the scars, but I definitely am doing everything that I\'ve always wanted to do now that I\'ve gone and we\'ve kind of fell apart. \'Show You\' is all those things. You miss certain things about a person and about a relationship, but overall, it\'s needed. That time is ultimately needed for you to grow—for both of y\'all to grow.”

There was an element of coffeehouse intimacy to the independent EPs that Marian Mereba released in the mid-2010s, reflecting the bohemian spaces where the singer-songwriter did her early performing in Atlanta. There’s still plenty of conversational intimacy on her major-label debut album, *The Jungle Is the Only Way Out*, during sung, rapped, and spoken-word passages alike, but the songs now seem to arrive from a dreamily meditative place. Mereba and Sam Hoffman, her core writing and production collaborator, shroud her languid vocal cadences in wafting, wordless harmonies and submerge them in reverb. They rely on delicately precise synth and guitar parts more than beats to give the tracks rhythmic motion. The approach adds melancholy dimensions to Mereba’s depictions of close identification (“Kinfolk”), romantic affection (“My One”), sexual forwardness (“Planet U”), and defiance in the face of oppression (“dodging the devil”).

Before he made music as Kemba, the Bronx MC born Matthew Jefferson cut his teeth in the New York City rap underground, releasing projects as YC the Cynic. The eventual name change was meant to reflect a creative freedom he’d been unable to embrace as a bar-focused young rapper, and with *Gilda*, his second project as Kemba, he seems fully comfortable in service of this new voice. The album is named for his mother, who he lost to a stroke in 2017, and is a diary of sorts, reflecting on who Kemba’s become in the absence of one of his biggest inspirations. “I am not a finished product/Only judge me when I’m done/Young and black and from the projects/Got a lot to overcome,” he says on “Work in Progress.” Though’s he’s clearly still ascending rap’s notoriety ladder, he’s forthright about what moves him, admitting on “Exhale,” “I feel more pressure from my moms than from the blogs/I feel more pressure from my n\*ggas than the critics.” When Kemba sings, as he does for those aforementioned bars, he does so gently, as if the words he delivers in melody need to be handled with extra care. The raps, though, are likewise sharp and affecting. “If your Corn Pops never had a roach in it, you probably won’t get it,” he starts in on “Captain Planet,” a song that attempts to rectify an undying self-doubt with dreams of overcoming the poverty he grew up in. On “What a Day,” he painstakingly details familial dysfunction, and then he faces down some voices of self-hatred on “Dysfunction” itself. There are brighter moments on *Gilda*—most notably “Alive,” where in remembrance of his mother Kemba makes a fairly compelling case for God as a black woman, but the scriptures here are rooted overwhelmingly in the harshness that has marked his path to date. It’s a rough trade-off, but it’s this very experience that has fostered art that will outlast any amount of rebrands.

Hip-hop owes so much to Houston—its legacy of chopped/screwed aesthetics and narcotized themes continues to inspire new generations of rappers beyond the city limits, and within its sometimes factional wards, fresh talent still thrives. Beloved as an independent artist, lyrical dynamo Maxo Kream makes his major-label debut with *Brandon Banks*, an instantly engrossing album that addresses the relatable reality of the struggles preceding his come-up as well as those that persist today. As hinted at by the cover art, his relationship with his oft-incarcerated father looms over the project, unspooled honestly on “Bissonnet” (“Locked up my pops and took my brother/So my daddy was my mother”) and juxtaposed with his own complicated criminal history on “Pray 2 the Dope.” Eyes wide open, he speaks brutal truths about trap money on “8 Figures” (“You ain’t really got cash ’til you got eight figures/I been gettin’ street money ever since I was little”) while exposing the snakes in his own midst on “Change.” For the less grave fare of “She Live” and “The Relays,” Maxo taps prominent locals Megan Thee Stallion and Travis Scott for a party vibe.

In 2017, Wu-Tang Clan\'s Raekwon took the mic during a Griselda Records showcase at New York’s Webster Hall, and hailed the Buffalo rap crew for “carrying the torch.” That historical moment marked an early hip-hop coronation for the Buffalo, New York, label/collective, who have since signed to Eminem\'s Shady Records. Following wave after wave of gritty independently released street-savvy mixtapes and coveted merch drops from BENNY THE BUTCHER and brothers Conway the Machine and Westside Gunn, the crew\'s core trio deliver on their promise with their Shady Records debut. Lest there be any concern that Shady’s major-label shine would somehow diminish Griselda\'s presence or dull their menace, *WWCD* revels in some of the darkest corners of the crew’s classic East Coast rap aesthetic, as evidenced by the murky atmospheres and ice-cold rhythms of “Chef Dreds” and “Moselle.” On the virtual cipher “Scotties,” they trade off relentlessly every few bars, with Benny launching memorable lines like \"I remember listening to the Wu in ’95/Got my first strap from Conway in ’99.\" Narrative moments like the bloody “Freddie HotSpot” tether Griselda to the lyrical crime-spree glories of the 1990s rap canon, while a guest verse by 50 Cent on “City on the Map” and an essential, full-circle intro from Raekwon himself only further establish their bona fides.

“I imagine if me and a stripper got married, we\'d play this at our wedding reception,” SAINt JHN tells Apple Music. “And then at the wedding reception, and after the divorce, at the signing of the paperwork.” The Brooklyn-raised singer and MC is explaining the premise behind *Ghetto Lenny’s Love Songs*, just his second project after 2018’s *Collection One*. Fans who’ve heard “Trap”—the first single from *Ghetto Lenny’s*, featuring Lil Baby—might be inclined to lump him in with an ever-evolving class of MCs using melody to convey the emotions they get from street life. But as the album reveals, “Trap” is just the tip of the iceberg: As he explains track by track below, SAINt JHN is merely a vessel for his experiences, be they street-inspired or otherwise. He doesn’t make music for any one audience, because his purview is too big for that. “Genre? That\'s muddy,” he says. “Who I\'m talking to, how I\'m talking to them? All of that is muddy. I make the music I want to make.” **“Wedding Day”** “I\'m not sure anybody else might see their wedding day like this, but this is how I saw mine and it\'s in my language. It’s in my tongue, in the words that I\'ve been given. So I\'m giving it to you like that, and I\'m glad that it relates. I guess I just have a couple of moments in my life that have intersected with other people\'s, and by a couple of them I mean a whole fucking lot.” **“Anything Can Happen”** “Meek was a no-brainer. We have such a good relationship that we just went in the studio in New York and we did it. I played that and a couple other ideas for Meek and he was just excited about it right away. I didn\'t tell him what to do or what direction he should go in, he’s just an artist. He was inspired, so he went off.” **“Trap”** “Lil Baby is incredible, and his experiences are similar to things that I\'ve witnessed, things that I\'ve been doing myself. So even if our styles were different, our truths were the same, and that made it easy. He believes in melody and he believed the language and he believed in telling his story. Those are all things that I believe in.” **“5 Thousand Singles”** “If you take every bit of music from this collection and listen to the words—read it like poetry or read it like a script—you understand exactly how well-built the language is. I speak using words and melody. Those are two separate languages. So if you get past the top language, the melody, and you only focused on the second one, you understand the really profound moments. I think melody disguises it, so you hear it a little bit more when you hear ‘5 Thousand Singles’. The melody is out the way, you just hear me talking my shit.” **“Who Do You Blame”** “I\'m just talking to a girl, it\'s a conversation to me—\'Love him for what?/Fuck that, you levelling up.\' Because I imagine there has to be, or there had to be, people that have felt this way about me. I\'m sure I\'ve hurt women before in the past, emotionally. You can\'t go through this planet not having affected people in a good way or sometimes in a negative way. This is an ode to that, or anybody that has ever gone through that.” **“94 Bentley”** “I grew up listening to JAY-Z and Roc-A-Fella. I remember Jay on the cover of those albums with that Bentley and I remember no matter what I had, that had to feel like that. I didn\'t have a car for years and years and years, so when I got my first car, it was a 1994 BMW. I got it in the late 2000s. You ain’t have money, we ain\'t had no new whips. You couldn\'t do that. But it was a foreign and it was a \'94. So that \'94 BM was my \'94 Bentley.” **“I Can Fvcking Tell”** “All I\'m ever trying to do when I walk into a studio is find something about myself that I love more than the last thing I found. I\'m in my space. If you listen to the language of what I\'m articulating or you just strip it down and look at the words, you\'ll get the poetry every time. Like, \'I don\'t believe in a wedding bell, I don\'t believe in laws/She don\'t believe in the fairy tales, she don\'t believe in God.\' If you tie a rock around flowers or rose petals, people might misunderstand that based on the packaging. So all I do is tie the rose petals around the rocks. You still get the weight of it, but it\'s beautiful.” **“Borders”** “\[Lenny Kravitz\] is one of the realest people in the planet. He\'s one of the coolest people I\'ve ever met. I come from an incredible lineage of people that raised me from a distance. And the impression that he left on this planet, on music, helped give me my legs—same thing for Jay, same thing for Beenie Man. It\'s hard to put it into words, because it felt like me and a family member, getting together at the picnic. But the picnic was in Paris, and the picnic table was made by Saint Laurent.” **“Call Me After You Hear This”** “I\'m just trying to make shit I love. I\'m not trying to change the channel constantly. I\'m not trying to be confusing. I\'m not trying to be overly poetic. All I want to do is make the shit that I want to listen to. You hear *Ghetto Lenny\'s Love Songs* and when I tell you it\'s like if me and a stripper got married, that’s the romantic picture I\'m painting. Everything that happens within that world can\'t purely be romantic. Even when it\'s just romance, it has its own friction. I’m just doing what\'s true for me.” **“Trophies”** “When you hear ‘Trophies’, it\'s observational. I\'m saying, ‘We all want trophies.’ We all want something beautiful and majestic and magical, even when it\'s bad for us. So here\'s an unspecific woman on this course I\'m talking about, and she wants trophies. But she don\'t even believe in herself. But she still want a trophy even if she don\'t believe she is one.” **“All I Want Is a Yacht”** “I\'m ignorant as fuck. I don\'t hide it, I don\'t make no bones about it, I don\'t make any apologies about it. I just make sure I wear silk when I do it. \'All I Want Is a Yacht\' is that. I\'m not driven by money, but I am driven by moments. And the moment where you see me pull up on my yacht with a marble deck, you know I\'ve done something. That\'s enough hope to feed a billion people. So all I want is a yacht because that\'s what we should all want. Not money, but that access.” **“Monica Lewinsky”** “A Boogie is a super cool dude. And we had a relationship. So I just made some calls, like, ‘Yo, Boogie, I need you on this record,’ and we went and did it in Vegas. I heard his voice and I let the music lead me.” **“High School Reunion”** “‘High School Reunion’ felt like I was going back \[to high school\], but I was going back with the blue mink on this time. When you listen to it, tell me it don\'t remind you of your high school prom but going back like, ‘I\'m who I\'m supposed to be.’ Everything I believe in has come true.” **“Cult4Ever”** \"I\'m the same guy in every scenario that you present to me, I just think the camera catches different angles. If I beat a n\*gga up at night and I go hug my girl in the afternoon, it\'s not like I’m a different human. That morning he had a fight, this afternoon he was romantic. So \'Cult4Ever\' is just me telling that story: \'I could love you like forever/You can be my n\*gga until the day we both die.\' And I say it in such a casual way, because that\'s what it feels like. If it\'s forever for me, it doesn\'t have to be overdramatised.”

At 2018’s Coachella festival, Kevin Abstract (performing as a member of BROCKHAMPTON) wore a bulletproof vest with the word “f\*ggot” emblazoned across the front. The same word appears frequently on *ARIZONA BABY*, the rapper’s third proper solo project; according to Abstract, who frequently raps about being gay, the word was leveled at him often growing up in Texas. He lays bare some of that backstory on the ultra-confessional “Corpus Christi,” while also addressing the stresses of life as a burgeoning rap/pop star. “None of my boys know how to cope with this shit,” he raps over the soft guitar plucks that open the song. “We was on tour in Europe, I tried coke with this kid/See, I need anything that make me feel less lonely/I get called a snake, a liar, a f\*ggot, and a phony.” But Abstract gets the last laugh on his bullies: The main thing he\'ll surely be called after *ARIZONA BABY* is a truly gifted rapper. Former BROCKHAMPTON member Ameer Vann (who gets a shout-out on the aforementioned “Corpus Christi”) was often touted by fans and critics as the group\'s strongest MC, but here Abstract bests much of his bandmates\' previous work—as well as his own—in detailing what it’s like growing up young, gifted, Black, and gay. Rapper, however, is maybe too confining a title for Abstract, whose vocal inspirations leapfrog from *ATLiens*-era André 3000 (“Big Wheels”) to Prince (“Baby Boy”) to Frank Ocean (“Crumble”). Acclaimed songwriter and arranger Jack Antonoff produced *ARIZONA BABY*, and his influence is most apparent in the wealth of live instrumentation. The one clearly audible sample (New Jersey Mass Choir’s “The Harvest Is Ripe”) comes by way of “Use Me,” a song in which Abstract gives testimony about his life and “generational trauma” before assuring himself that “everything gon’ be OK.” With *ARIZONA BABY* as a testament to how far he\'s come, it’s hard not to believe him.

In the middle of writing his sixth album *Flamagra*, Steven Ellison—the experimental electronic producer known as Flying Lotus—took up piano lessons. “It’s never too late!” the 35-year-old tells Apple Music. “It\'s always nice to have someone checking your technique and calling you on your bullshit.” For the past decade, Ellison’s primary tool has been his laptop, but for this album, he committed to learning each instrument. “It actually made me faster,” says the artist, who is a product of LA’s beat scene and the grandnephew of John and Alice Coltrane. “Suddenly, I could hear every part.” Inspired by the destructive wildfires that swept California\'s coastline and the deadly 2016 Ghost Ship fire, which broke out at a warehouse in Oakland, *Flamagra*—a jazzy, psychedelic concept album that spans 27 tracks—imagines a world in which Los Angeles was lit by an eternal flame. “One that was contained, and good,” he says. “How would we *use* it?\'\" To explore that heady framework, he tapped some of pop culture\'s most out-of-the-box thinkers, including George Clinton, David Lynch, Anderson .Paak, and Solange—all visionary artists with specific points of view who, Ellison knows, rarely do guest features. \"The fact is, most of these artists are my friends,\" he says. \"I like to do things organically. That\'s the only way it feels right.\" Read on for the story behind each collaboration. **Anderson .Paak, \"More\"** \"I first met Andy a long time ago. He\'s a drummer and grew up around Thundercat and Ronald Bruner Jr., two amazing musicians Andy was probably inspired by. So I chased him down and we recorded the demo to \'More.\' It was dope, but it was never done. There were things both of us wanted to change. For years I\'d run into him at parties where he\'d be like, \'What\'s up with the song, man? Is it done yet? Why ain\'t it done yet?\' It became this running joke with his big ol\' toothy smile. Then, finally, we got it done. And now we don\'t have nothin\' to talk about.\" **George Clinton, \"Burning Down the House\"** \"I made this beat while I was in a big Parliament phase. One day, George came through and I threw it on. We sat next to each other working on it—the lyrics, the arrangements. And even though he\'s so brilliant, I was able to help fill in little gaps that made it work with the album\'s concept, so it was truly collaborative. It also gave me more confidence writing lyrics, which isn\'t something I normally do that often.\" **Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon, \"Spontaneous\"** \"I\'d been trying to work with Little Dragon for forever. We\'ve always been playing similar shows, passing each other at festivals, being like, \'We gotta do something! We gotta do something!\' Finally I was like, \'I\'ma reach out and get this poppin\'.\' The song was actually one of the last to get added onto the album.\" **Tierra Whack, \"Yellow Belly\"** \"Honestly, I was just a fan of hers from SoundCloud. Then, one day, Lil Dicky came over to play some music and brought her along. He didn\'t really give her the proper introduction. He was just like, \'This is my friend Tierra, she makes music.\' She didn\'t say much, but she was cool and we were vibing out. A couple hours later, Dicky was like, \'Okay, wanna listen to some of this Tierra Whack music?\' I was like, \'Wait a second, you mean, you\'re the—oh my god! I know all your songs. I mean, you\'ve only got two of them, but I know \'em both!\' I super-fanned out.\" **Denzel Curry, \"Black Balloons\"** \"The thing I love about Denzel is that he\'s got so much to prove. He\'s got a fiery spirit. He wants to show the world that he\'s the greatest rapper right now. I love that. But the difference is that he actually comes back better every time I hear him. He\'s putting in the work, not just talking shit. He cares about the craft and is such a thoughtful human. So there\'s an interesting duality there. He\'s got the turn-up spirit, but he\'s very conscious and very smart.\" **David Lynch, \"Fire Is Coming\"** \"This album has a middle point—like a chapter break moment—and David Lynch couldn\'t have been more perfect to introduce it. You know, initially I thought it should be a sound design thing, something weird and narrative and unexpected. I wasn\'t thinking about chopping David Lynch on the beat. But when I sent them a version that was basically atonal jazz—you know, weird sounds—they hit me back like, \'Hey, so we think this would be so cool if it had that Flying Lotus beat!\' I was like, \'Oh, all right, okay, I got you.\'\" **Shabazz Palaces, \"Actually Virtual\"** \"This one is special to me. He came out to my house, stayed in my guest room, and we worked on songs for three days straight. And the truth is, we made so much stuff that we forgot about this track. When I found it later, randomly, I was like, \'What the fuck is this? It needs a little TLC, but man, it could really be something.\' After I spent some time on it and sent it back over to him, he just goes, \'That\'s hardbody.\' Such an East Coast line.\" **Thundercat, \"The Climb\"** \"The thing is, Thundercat is on every track. He\'s pretty much playing on 90 percent of the album. But this is the only one he\'s singing on. We started this song the way we start everything: frustrated and depressed about the world, knowing we want to make something that reminds people that most of the chaos out there is just noise. Be above all that shit. Be above the bullshit.\" **Toro y Moi, \"9 Carrots\"** \"Toro is the person I always wind up in vans with at festivals. Somehow, I always wind up in the van with Toro. We play a lot of the same shows, we get picked up from the same hotels, and he\'s just always in the van, or on the plane, things like that. Over time, I guess I started to feel a kindred spirit thing, even though he\'s someone I don\'t know too well. But finally we were like, \'We gotta make something happen.\'\" **Solange, \"Land of Honey\"** \"I\'d been trying to make this song happen for a long time. We initially started it for a documentary film that didn\'t pan out. But I really loved the song and always thought it was special, so I kept on it. I kept working on it, kept to trying to figure out how to tie it into the universe that I was building. Eventually, we recorded it here at the house and just felt really organic, really natural. She\'s someone I\'d definitely like to keep working with.\" **Honorable Mention: Mac Miller** \"A couple songs on the album, like \'Find Your Own Way Home\' and \'Thank U Malcolm,\' were inspired by Mac. \'Thank U Malcolm\' is special to me because it\'s my way of thanking him for all the inspiration he left behind in his passing, and for all the fire he inspired in me, Thundercat, and all of our friends. He made us want to be better, to let go of the bullshit. And now, you know, none of us are out here experimenting with drugs or anything. That\'s largely because of him. After he left us, everyone was like, \'You know what? Fuck all that shit.\' In a way, in his passing, he\'s got friends of mine clean. He\'ll always mean a lot to me.\"

YBN Cordae may be riding high off his inclusion in *XXL* magazine’s esteemed Freshman Class, but it’s not like he doesn’t know what it’s like to be down and out. “*The Lost Boy* represents anyone who hasn’t found their path or their calling yet,” he tells Apple Music of his debut album. “That’s kind of where I was at a point in my life, just lost.” He could be talking about his time as a struggling college student (during which he also held a job at a fast-casual restaurant), but ever since he released “Old N\*ggas,” a seething open-letter response track to J. Cole’s “1985,” life for the Maryland-raised MC has meant an increasingly large crowd patiently awaiting his next verse. With *The Lost Boy*, YBN Cordae’s mission is twofold: to tell the story of his own rise to purpose, complete with details of familial hurdles (“Family Matters”), the pressures facing his generation specifically (“Thousand Words”), and the power of perseverance (“Way Back Home”)—and to do so as cleverly as possible. Guests include MCs with a similar appreciation for complex wordplay (Chance the Rapper, Meek Mill, Pusha T), and there’s even a track (“RNP”) produced by J. Cole himself, a onetime foil turned ally. If there’s anything lost in the vision of YBN Cordae’s first album, it’s just how far the MC will go.