As a lifelong fan of anime, Steven Ellison was struck by the lack of Black characters in the genre. So he decided to do something about it, signing on as an executive producer of *Yasuke*, a Netflix series from creator LeSean Thomas about a Black samurai in feudal Japan. Naturally, Ellison—aka Flying Lotus—scored the series too. An extension of the genre-free experiments of his solo catalog, his soundtrack for the show doubles as an ambitious act of world-building. Produced under the kinds of deadlines that don’t normally apply to his sprawling albums, this one moves quickly through different moods and styles: “War at the Door” pairs traces of trap and footwork with blockbuster-grade drums; “Your Lord” plants its flag halfway between easy listening and John Carpenter; the ambient “Shoreline Sus” negotiates a truce between ’70s Berlin and ’80s Japan. Soft tendrils of synthesizer, reminiscent of Vangelis’ *Blade Runner* soundtrack, serve as a through line for the album, highlighting its sci-fi glow, though a few tracks, like the jazz-funk “Crust,” wouldn’t sound out of place on one of FlyLo’s studio LPs. And while the music is largely instrumental, a few standout vocal tracks rank among the musician’s most affecting songwriting. “Hiding in the Shadows,” featuring Niki Randa, is a quietly operatic lullaby set to Japanese strings; “Black Gold,” the protagonist’s theme song, makes the most of Thundercat’s wistful falsetto. And a feature from Denzel Curry helps turn “African Samurai” into a minimalist masterpiece. A pulse-quickening showdown between blippy electronic beats and Curry’s lightning-fast flow, it’s the musical equivalent of blades slicing through air.
“I used to hear speculation: I\'m not really keeping up in music,” Meek Mill told Zane Lowe ahead of the release of his fifth album. “That\'s why I\'m trying to bring my best music and really showcase my talent for the people that really give me my credit. Because I\'ve been in this game for 10 years, man. I felt like this is the year that I really want mine because I sit in the studio by myself with a producer and try to remain a top artist.” *Expensive Pain* is where Meek Mill\'s effort pays off. Long heralded as one of the most preternaturally talented MCs in rap, Meek is bars-up consistently across *Expensive Pain*, delivering the kind of endless couplets that people who rewatch Funkmaster Flex freestyles live for. But he’s also expanded his repertoire to include the kind of Auto-Tuned harmonizing (see “On My Soul,” “Love Train,” and “Love Money”) that dominates contemporary hip-hop playlists. Getting there, he admits, was no small task. “Through quarantine, I sat back—even through a big writer\'s block—just trying to learn melody for months and months until I got confident enough,” he says. “And when I got back into the studio, my confidence just took me in a way where I felt like I could do anything in the booth.” What he does across *Expensive Pain* is tell us what life is like for Meek Mill in 2021. “How would you feel/When you so lit that you can’t tell if the love real,” he asks on Lil Uzi Vert collaboration “Blue Notes 2.” In addition to Vert, he’s called on Lil Baby and Lil Durk, A$AP Ferg, Moneybagg Yo, Kehlani, Brent Faiyaz, and, maybe most notably, London MC Giggs, to help him talk about how being rich and famous isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. But while “mo money, mo problems” is a concept at least as old as the Notorious B.I.G. song, Meek also needs us to know that he’s never far from what made him. “I always try to stay close to my hood,” he says. “Not hang in the hood, because I can\'t, but just to get the feeling and the understanding of never forgetting where I come from and what the people go through, so when I deliver my music, it\'s still got real feel to it that people can actually feel inside instead of just dance to.”
“Fifth records are actually a lot of people’s best records,” James Blake tells Apple Music. “You’ve had all the practice of making albums, taken a few different directions, and by then have usually reached your thirties where you’ve got a bunch of stuff out of your system. So you finally decide to just be yourself. And suddenly, everyone’s thrilled.” *Friends That Break Your Heart* is Blake’s fifth album. While he’s too coy to personally anoint it his best work, the record does feel invigoratingly apart from the North London-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s first four. There’s the emotional payload of any Blake enterprise, but here he detonates through an earthier and more unguarded sonic arsenal. “It’s the most direct songwriting of anything I’ve done,” he says. “Whether it’s a sad song or an uplifting song, each emotion I’ve gone for is a more raw version of that thing on at least the last two records. I was working stuff out on those records, and I am here, too, but at 32, I’m starting to become more sure of myself in lots of ways. This record is very sure of itself.” The title here suggests a twist on a classic breakup album—a documentation of how we negotiate non-romantic partings. “There doesn’t seem to be a protocol for how to treat someone who’s breaking up with a friend,” he says. “We’re expected to move on pretty quick from deep lifelong friendships. But you can’t make old friends, as they say.” Can the COVID-inspired events of 2020 and 2021 take the blame for the demise of certain relationships? “I think what’s happened partly makes the topic of this album so pertinent,” he says. “We lost some of the parameters that kept friendships together. And it’s been a time for analyzing and reflecting what the qualities in friends that you actually need in your life are—and facing up to your own failings as one. Being an infantilized C-list pop star doesn’t really set you up to be the best friend in the world. But also, when I needed them and help most, I realized that most of those people just didn’t know what to do.” Blake has been candid about requiring that help in the past, and fortunately, the various COVID lockdowns proved beneficial to the creation of this record—which had a positive knock-on effect for his mental health. “I realized that I actually have a lot of control over my mental health,” he says. “What the lockdowns did was force me to say, ‘I can actually do this. I can actually block this out, and actually lift myself out of certain things.’ Previously I’d relied on other means. And I think that allows music to flow easier because being present and overcoming mental ill health is good for creativity.” Below, Blake takes us through his beautiful album, track by track. **“Famous Last Words”** “I don\'t agonize over tracklisting. I think it\'s like a DJ set, and a DJ set needs its peaks and troughs and moments of reflection. I spend so long writing the actual song and producing the song, by the time it comes to sequencing the tracklist, I\'m like, ‘Oh god, just put it in an order, man.’ This isn\'t a love song. But it is kind of a love song. It\'s kind of a breakup song. It\'s weird. I think it blurs the line between friendship and romance. With friendships, it’s not necessarily that the feelings are romantic, but you can genuinely love someone and it hurt like that.” **“Life Is Not the Same”** “You meet some people and they can just have an effect on you. It could be that they just sparkle, and you’ve got no idea why, but you’re doing things differently, or saying different stuff to impress them, and it doesn’t mean you’re weak or easily influenced—well, maybe it means you’re easily influenced a little bit—but it takes a special person to do that. I can take accountability for being willing to bend for someone. Certain people, for example, have taught me that I needed to develop a thicker skin and that I was too ready to give up control to someone else. I clearly needed to have more self-belief, because if I was so easily swayed then maybe I’d miscalculated my own self-worth.” **“Coming Back” (feat. SZA)** “I was doing a session with \[US artist and songwriter\] Starrah, who casually mentioned SZA was going to come by the studio. So I played her a bunch of stuff, she sang over it, and we hit it off straight away. It took a while to figure out how to produce what we landed on, though. Long story short: My production wasn’t hitting. You could hear that SZA and I sounded good together—but I hadn’t figured out how to best support her vocal because it was a song with no chorus. We are used to those structures as a society, so when you start taking apart those structures, you’ve really got to replace it properly. A bit like gluten-free bread. I realized I needed to put a donk on it, essentially. I just had to make it more banger-y. I tried doing the ambient thing, I tried making it really beautiful, and it didn’t work. I have it in my locker, and occasionally that power needs to be drawn upon.” **“Funeral”** “This song is all me, done on a very sunny but slightly miserable day. I was thinking about how it feels not to be heard, and to worry that people have given up on you. During lockdown I specifically felt that. It had been many years since I had really popped up and done forward-facing stuff like interviews.” **“Frozen” (feat. JID & SwaVay)** “Quite a spooky instrumental, and my vocals come in a little off-kilter, a little creepy. JID and SwaVay kill it over a beat I actually originally wrote for JID. It ended up not really fitting his record, which I found very lucky because secretly I wanted it for myself. It felt a bit like when you set someone up to cancel on you—my favorite feeling. Jameela \[Jamil, Blake’s partner and co-producer on the album\] suggested putting SwaVay on it because I’d been working with him for a couple of years. Totally right. Good A&R instincts.” **“I\'m So Blessed You\'re Mine”** “The album is sort of split between these Frankenstein’s monsters that were very exciting to put together and songs that happened very quickly. This was somewhere in the middle, and I got to work with some of my favorite people on it—Khushi, Dominic Maker, Josh Stadlen, Jameela. I want to get out of the way so we end up with the best piece of music we can make. And maybe have a nice chat about something before we start. There was no chatting back on album one, say, because I had way too much social anxiety.” **“Foot Forward”** “Metro Boomin is back! He knows I’m often into his more esoteric stuff so played me this piano sample he’d made on the MPC \[music production center\] that sounded like it was from the ’70s but had this Metro-y bounce on it. I started improvising in the studio, and I remember seeing him dancing in the booth because it sounded so up. It felt very anthemic. Eventually I turned it into a song with Frank Dukes and Ali Tamposi—another genius who wrote the chorus melody.” **“Show Me” (feat. Monica Martin)** “Monica is an incredible singer and incredible person—she’s fucking hilarious, and we’ve become friends. The song felt quite bare without her. It needed someone to step in, and it had to be exactly the right person, otherwise it’s not going to work. Again, Jameela made the suggestion. She came into the studio with Khushi and I, did the take in exactly the way I imagined, and it was glorious. I was just so excited, she was excited, it was a lovely moment.” **“Say What You Will”** “Ah, those those dreamy ’60s vibes. This is my favorite song I’ve written in years. It’s the song that carries the most meaning in terms of my overall life. It’s more representative of my headspace as a whole, and I like songs that have a wider commentary baked into them. I was pleased with the reaction to it because I really tried to communicate where I am right now in an authentic way. At this point in my career, it can’t be any other way. The formula to putting a song out has never changed. A good song will out in every single scenario. It needs to resonate with people, or it will disappear. And I know that feeling—I have released songs that for whatever reason have not resonated with people.” **“Lost Angel Nights”** “It’s about a lot of things, but primarily it’s about worrying that you’ve missed your shot. And *maybe* there’s a little bit of finger-pointing in there as well. The way people take your original essence, copy it and move on, really. I’ve been super lucky in my career, but I think there was a time where there was a lot of looking at what the shiny new thing is, doing that, then moving on. You don’t need them anymore. It happens to a lot of people, but you have to contend with being a permanent person, a permanent artist. I want to be here for as long as I can and be as naturalistic and true to myself as I can be, and what other people do doesn’t affect that.” **“Friends That Break Your Heart”** “Perhaps weirdly, it was album title first, then this song. I wrote the melody in the car on the way to meet \[US songwriter and producer\] Rick Nowels. There were a couple of others that we didn’t put onto the record, but this one was just standout right away. It was a really fun process, because he just played the keys and I was left to singer-songwriter duties for once. The line ‘I have haunted many photographs’ is something we can hopefully all relate to—well, hopefully not, actually, because that would be terrible, but I feel like that’s a common feeling.” **“If I\'m Insecure”** “I like to go out on something either where it’s all harmonies or it just feels huge. This is the latter. It’s an apocalyptic love song—the world is ending, but you’re in love, so it’s all right. Which maybe captures where we are as a society in 2021, so perhaps I’ll come to think of this record as one big externalization of my COVID experience, but that wasn’t the original intention. I make a load of music and then eventually realize, ‘Oh, yes, roughly, it was about this.’”
The 49-year-old Brownsville rapper cuts a mythic figure: Raised on the mean streets of ’70s Brooklyn, he now splits his time between being a NYC fire captain and crafting dense rap allegories that touch on Greek mythology and the code of the samurai. But on *A Martyr’s Reward*, Ka strips down everything—the mythology, the production—to tell his own story, unembellished, over hauntingly minimalist (and mostly self-produced) beats. But it isn’t just his story; it’s the story of surviving being Black in America—or, in the cases of too many of his friends, not surviving. And on “I Need All That,” he demands retribution: “I want back everything they took/My culture, my music, my look.”
Pop music is, by design, kaleidoscopic, and Doja Cat\'s third album takes full advantage of its fluidity. *Planet Her* is ushered in on the euphoric Afropop of “Woman” and moves seamlessly into the reggaetón-kissed “Naked,” the hip-hop-meets-hyperpop of “Payday,” and the whimsical ad-lib trap of “Get Into It (Yuh)”—and that\'s just the first four songs. Later, R&B ballads and club-ready anthems also materialize from the ether, encompassing the spectrum of contemporary capital-P Pop and also the multihued sounds that are simply just popular, even if only in their corners of the internet for now. This is Doja\'s strength. She\'s long understood how mainstream sensibility interacts with counterculture (or what\'s left of it anyway, for better and worse), and she\'s nimbly able to translate both. *Planet Her* checks all the right boxes and accentuates her talent for shape-shifting—she sounds just as comfortable rapping next to Young Thug or JID as she does crooning alongside The Weeknd or Ariana Grande—but it\'s so pristine, so in tune with the music of the moment that it almost verges on parody. Is this Doja\'s own reflection or her reflecting her fans back to themselves? Her brilliance lies in the fact that the answer doesn\'t much matter. The best pop music is nothing if not a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, its brightest stars so uniquely themselves and yet whatever else they need to be, too.
In 2019, Atlanta MC Grip was at a crossroads. He’d released two official projects, 2019’s *Snubnose* having been the latest, but was yet to see any of the spoils he’d worked towards as one of the most honest, observant, and technically proficient rappers in his state. Touring Europe with JID had exposed him to new listeners, but when the pandemic slowed the entertainment industry en masse, forcing Grip to consider some moneymaking schemes he’d long ago thought he’d graduated from, the MC began to take a good hard look at what music was *not* doing for him. “And then,” he tells Apple Music, “Eminem reached out.” The Shady Records head honcho had apparently loved *Snubnose*, and went on to offer Grip a deal exponentially more desirable than the ones he and musical partner Tu had been fielding as relative unknowns in the years prior. With the support of someone like Em—which included a guest verse for his Shady debut *I Died for This!?*—Grip’s passion for storytelling was born anew, allowing the MC to recount, for fans and newcomers alike, exactly what he’d gone through to get here. “I gave up damn near everything for this,” he says. “But part of you is also questioning everything that you gave up in order to get to this point and just being a totally different person than you were when you originally started the journey. Parts of me have died that I\'ll never get back. So yeah, I died for this.” Below, the MC takes us through the life-affirming project, track by track. **“And the Eulogy Read!?” (feat. Wiley From Atlanta)** “You know how a eulogy is somewhat a summary of your life up to that point? So what it was was a summary of everything that had been going on with me up until the album drops.” **“Hands Up!”** “This was one of the first tracks that I made with DJ Khalil. I remember listening to it in the car and when the hook portion comes on, it\'s just like, this shit just sounds like it was meant for a fucking concert, meant for people to react to. So the first thing that came to mind was how it is for me to interact with the crowd and how powerful that shit is. So then from there, I just dive into \'hands up\'—of course, like you would do that at a concert, but also like the cops said it. That\'s something that\'s always in the back of our minds as we navigate, as Black men.” **“IDFT!?”** “‘IDFT!?’, being the title track, represents the greenness or just being naive when you first get that rap check. It’s like that braggadocious feeling that you got as a n\*\*\*a who ain’t never had shit when you come across that first check. That\'s probably the biggest check he ever seen. It\'s kind of like, \'Yo, I went through hell for this. Like, I *died* for this.\' That\'s one of the ones that have the exclamation.” **“Momma Told Me!”** “It\'s just one of those tracks that\'s announcing myself as a presence in this game. Second verse, of course, is just lyrical showcase, bars and shit, but the hook, \'My momma told me don\'t mess with these messy lil hoes/Get a check, make it stretch and get more\'—it\'s just how we grew up. And just that those lessons die hard. You’re staying the same person in a sense, where you\'re still trying to keep what momma told you inside, but at the same time, you might bend her words a little bit and just use it as a flex. \'My momma told me\' is a flex. So yeah, another exclamation point.” **“Placebo” (feat. Royce da 5’9)** “This song was originally just one beat. We ended up adding one more beat and then Tu hit me with the idea, ‘Hey, let\'s do three beats.’ I thought about it and I\'m like, well, matter of fact, this shit can be art. Royce, he bodied it. Not necessarily a slight to other rappers, but just how all this other shit is hype. The shit ain\'t healing you, n\*\*\*a. It\'d be cool for the moment, but real music is here to last.” **“Gutter!” (feat. Wara)** “‘Gutter!’ was also one of the first songs that we made \[for the album\]. A lot of people didn\'t like the distortion, but coming off of *Snubnose*, we was looking to do some different shit. Outkast is my favorite group of all time; \'Da Art of Storytellin\', Pt. 2\' was one of the first tracks I heard with distortion. The song is pretty much just a \'fuck you\' to critics ahead of time.” **“JDDTTINT!?” (feat. Dead Cassettes)** “I had been listening to a lot of rock. ‘Human Sadness’ by Julian Casablancas and The Voidz is one of my favorite songs of the past few years. I just wanted to speak on pop culture and celebrity status and how it\'s demanded of the celebrities to just \'Take a pic, crack a smile/You owe it to the world every once in a while\' and just people being unaware of the pressures that come behind that shit. We\'ve lost so many of our icons—2Pac, the Kurt Cobains, the Pop Smokes—whether it was overdoses or violence and shit. It\'s an ode to everyone that\'s ever been in the limelight who has ever sacrificed to be in this position and died. And then me, as a father, I\'m a hero to my kids. It\'s like, hey, you\'re doing the same thing, but just don\'t die this time.” **“A Soldier’s Story?”** “I say, \'My hunger to be regarded as the best is what\'s starving me to death/Partially depressed, harboring regret, targeting success, bartering\'—that\'s how I felt at a certain point. I\'m reaching for this goal and we\'re doing this shit, and we\'re *kind of* getting noticed, but at the same time, nothing\'s changing. We had already dropped *Snubnose*. It was critically acclaimed and all this shit. I was just at a point like, maybe I was going too hard in this shit and maybe it\'s time to do something else. And then Eminem reached out.” **“Walkthrough!” (feat. Eminem)** “Originally, we weren\'t sure if we were going to be able to get Em on the album. But I knew I really wanted him on the shit. Me and Tu sit down and we didn\'t hear him on any of the songs. I said, \'Out of respect for the project and for the art, let\'s craft something from scratch.\' We end up flying to Detroit, playing the album for Em and the team, and before I even let Em know that this is the track I wanted him on, he\'s like, \'Damn, that hook was dope as fuck.\' I was like, \'I\'m glad you think so, because this is the track I wanted you on, brother.\'” **“The Lox!” (feat. Tate228)** “Shout-out to my guy Tate228. He\'s from Mississippi, but been in Atlanta. We actually went to high school together. He\'s got that real gritty, street but still intelligent shit. The first part of \'The Lox!\' is actually produced by Tedd Boyd. Tu killed the \[other part\]. But it\'s just another one of those tracks that can get the people going. My mind state at the time was \'I want it all: money, power, and respect.\'” **“Enem3?” (feat. Big Rube)** “This song, it\'s just pretty much about self-reflection and just facing the truth. When I first heard the beat, this shit made me think of some Phil Collins shit. I didn\'t want to rap on it. I didn\'t even have to give Rube too much of a description, because he\'s a fucking genius.” **“ConMan?” (feat. Ahyes)** “‘Con Man’ is a love song from the perspective of me realizing that I was a con man. And by the time I realized what it was, it wasn\'t no way to get out of it without somebody\'s heart being broken. Part of the point of view is selfish. Because I\'m blaming someone that I was in love with for the way that my career unfolded. \'I was too focused on you and I should\'ve been been more focused on rap when all my peers were, because now they\'re ahead of me. Because when they were focusing on rap, I was focusing on us.\' It\'s an apology. It\'s a love letter. It\'s growth for me.” **“Glenwood Freestyle!”** “Glenwood is a neighborhood on the east side, and back in the day, back when we were in high school and shit, everybody bring their old-schools out, motherfuckers cooking out, motherfuckers wilding out in the street playing their music loud. That naive state of mind, where you\'re just like, \'Gotta push that GLE \'fore I\'m pushin\' daisies.\' That shit\'s what\'s important at the time, because you ain\'t never had the shit.” **“At What Cost?”** “Yeah, I got to this point, but at what cost? What did I give up? It\'s not necessarily speaking on my situation with Shady. This is about the industry and how an artist can fall into that shit and have no other options and be forced to go through that cycle. It\'s just about the plight of the starving artist.” **“Patterns?”** “I was on a beach in LA late into the night. I had been listening to *Sgt. Pepper\'s Lonely Hearts Club Band*. And then me, Beat Butcha, and Willy Yanez made the song from scratch. I sat with it and just got in the mindset of wanting to speak on those sacrifices like missing your kids\' first steps and shit. And them being too young to even know that you let them down. Because my pops wasn\'t in my life. So it\'s like, \'I\'ll be damned if I\'m not in my kids\' life.\' I know I\'m not necessarily perfect at this point, because I\'m too busy chasing this shit. It’s still feeling like a dream, you ain\'t getting no respect, but you’re literally devoting time out of your life to this.” **“Pennies…Exit Stage Left!?” (feat. Kay Nellz & Kenny Mason)** “Early on when we started mapping out the album, thinking about what our influences were going to be, \[Outkast’s\] *Stankonia* was heavy. *Stankonia* broke a lot of sound barriers for hip-hop music, especially Southern hip-hop music. I wanted to tap into other genres on this album. I wanted to mesh everything, blend some shit.”
Few producers can make dance tracks as soulful and at the same time futuristic as KAYTRANADA. On the “Intimidated” single, the Montreal producer/DJ enlists a number of guests—as has been his MO for a while now—accentuating their strengths while keeping the vibe purely in his own pocket. The lead track, featuring H.E.R., bumps along gently, letting the singer glide over an easy house beat, KAYTRA’s signature drums sluggish but still slinky. “Be Careful” gives Thundercat’s silky falsetto an equally laidback, downtempo pulse. But the gem here just might be \"$payforhaiti,\" with the mysterious Griselda rapper Mach-Hommy. (Both he and KAYTRANADA have Haitian roots.) In a mix of Haitian Creole and English, Mach-Hommy drops lines like “I told my n\*\*\*a ‘pray for Haiti’ and he told me ‘take the R out.’” For KAYTRA, it’s a rare, fiery political turn—and low-slung hip-house perfection.
For an artist like The Weeknd, putting together a greatest hits compilation must be especially difficult; each era and microevolution of his career feels deserving unto itself. His second such collection, *The Highlights*, manages the task with ease, pulling together all of his, well, highlights, stretching all the way to the beginning to include two cuts from his 2011 debut *House of Balloons*. (*The Highlights*\' release only misses the 10-year anniversary mark by a month.) In a clever touch, the compilation doesn\'t unfold sequentially. Instead, it gets moodier and darker as it goes on. The bright keys and danceable Max Martin-produced \'80s pop that have defined the latter half of his career open the proceedings like the climb of an intensely euphoric high. Songs like “Save Your Tears” (from 2020\'s *After Hours*), “Can\'t Feel My Face” (from 2015\'s *Beauty Behind the Madness*), and “Starboy” (from 2016\'s *Starboy*) sound like neon club lights and the sins committed beneath them. Then it pivots, slowly but steadily, to the comedown, where the singer\'s self-loathing finds a natural match in hazier, muddier productions. By the time the run of songs that includes “Call Out My Name” (from 2018\'s *My Dear Melancholy,*), “Die for You” (*Starboy*), and “Earned It” (*Beauty*) arrives, it\'s all id and nothing to cut it. And where else to go from there but to the original blueprint of his wounded, bleeding heart—“Wicked Games” and “The Morning” (both from *House of Balloons*)—where the lines between pleasure and pain blur into oblivion.
If it wasn’t already clear from her soul-baring 2018 debut album *Lost & Found*, then perhaps her 2019 single “Be Honest” made it extra clear: Jorja Smith is, amongst others things, incredibly truthful where her music is concerned. “I was actually going to call this *This Is Not My Second Album*,” the singer-songwriter tells Apple Music of the EP *Be Right Back*. “Because these are songs that I love and I\'ve written in the past two years, but I\'m not yet ready to do \'the album.\' When it’s time, I want to tour that album. And also: I know that there\'s another level that I can get to—musically, creatively, and all other aspects.” The British singer-songwriter has, of course, previous experience when it comes to non-album material making a splash. Her silky, soulful appearances on Drake’s *More Life* “playlist” are arguably what opened her up to a global audience, while a slew of post-*Lost & Found* collaborations with artists including Brent Faiyaz, Popcaan, and ENNY mean Rihanna-style anticipation for an eventual album two. This eight-track set of evocative ballads—a self-described sonic “waiting room”—finds Smith continuing to thoughtfully navigate her way through a changing world. “Music\'s great,” she says. “It’s a little escape, and that\'s why I gave the project this title. I just wanted to dip in and dip out. But I want it to be a safe escape for my fans—for right now—because I know they miss me.” Perhaps fittingly, then, it’s a striking and spare collection of moods and moments. “Bussdown” is gorgeous: a sultry hookup with UK rapper Shaybo that recalls Smith’s “Blue Lights” in potent storytelling. The bracingly direct “Addicted” glides over guitar licks that wouldn’t be out of place on *In Rainbows*, while “Gone” memorializes the tragic loss of a friend. “Anyone who listens will hear it differently to what it actually means in the first place,” she says of the track. “That’s what I love.” Elsewhere, “Home” feels like chancing on Smith at an open mic night with a diary entry, and “Weekend” brings us to a dreamlike, considered climax. Smith’s falsetto on this track, by the way, has never sounded so angelic. The minimalist makeup of this music—notably trekking free of the soul and jazz borders of *Lost & Found*—hint at fresh, exciting levels to come. After being cued up as the UK’s next R&B/pop powerhouse, *Be Right Back* is the sound of an artist taking a breath before her next play. “I only dropped my first album three years ago,” she says. “And now I’ve been able to take in everything I\'ve done in the last three years. I’m actually able to look at \[plaques and records on\] my walls like, ‘Oh my god, I did this.’ I appreciate everything, but I miss my fans, and I miss \[doing\] shows. The last year and this year has been so tough. I wanted to give them something.”
Young Dolph and Key Glock had so much fun on their first collaborative album, 2019’s *Dum and Dummer*, that they went back in for a sequel. Add *Dum and Dummer 2* to the sparsely populated club of second editions that miraculously hold up to the original. Part 2 is a heaping 20 tracks deep and chock-full of the hilarious lifestyle quips that are easy work for Dolph, like on “Cheat Code” where he raps: “You a square-ass n\*\*\*a like Theo (Huxtable)/The money call, it’s time to G-O/My weed the same color as Dino (Flintstones)/Shooting dice with my 95-year-old grandmother at the casino.” Production is handled mostly by Bandplay, a producer whose ability to craft beats that are consistently trunk-rattling yet somehow sound nothing like each other is potentially the *dummest*.
In 2019, BROCKHAMPTON delivered one of their most commercially successful singles in “SUGAR,” a cut from their fifth album, *GINGER*. They were riding high on the wave of its momentum when the pandemic hit, sending the band\'s members into their own bubbles of isolation even as they remained productive, releasing a handful of singles and video content. The fruits of their labor culminate with *ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE*, which brims with both the political and personal tension of the time and stands out as their most clear-eyed and collaborative release to date. In addition to consulting with legendary producers RZA and Rick Rubin, the band finds complementary counterparts in rappers like Danny Brown (“BUZZCUT”) and JPEGMAFIA (“CHAIN ON”), with whom they share a similar kind of eccentric creativity. On their own, though, the sprawling group is flush with a multitude of talent that they thoughtfully showcase without sacrificing cohesion. Decidedly roused and rap-oriented tracks like “WINDOWS” and “DON\'T SHOOT UP THE PARTY” slot nicely alongside more soulful, R&B-leaning songs like “I\'LL TAKE YOU ON” and the gorgeously somber “DEAR LORD.” Together, they make a multihued collage that embodies the spirited fluidity of BROCKHAMPTON. This Plus Pack edition adds four new tracks that further display their kaleidoscopic approach: “PRESSURE / BOW WOW” moves from furious to melodic, while the pair of “JEREMIAH” tracks reveal how pitch changes can transform a song\'s aura. Ahead of its release, Kevin Abstract announced on Twitter that *ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE* would be the band\'s penultimate album. If that proves true, with this release, they will exit having left few stones unturned—evolution is an infinite process, but BROCKHAMPTON\'s (near) final form still resembles actualization.
Key Glock’s *Yellow Tape 2*—like its predecessor, 2020’s *Yellow Tape*, and the project that came between those two, 2020’s *Son of a Gun*—contains no credited features. Though Glock has played collaborator to artists like Project Pat and Gucci Mane and is the cousin and business partner of Young Dolph, the young Memphis MC wants his props to come from what he says in the booth and not who he can get to come to the studio. Dutifully, *Yellow Tape 2* is 20 tracks of Glock’s conspicuously well-enunciated South Memphis slick talk, sans the help of any of the numerous big dogs he’s been known to rub elbows with. Production here comes mainly from frequent collaborator Bandplay, who crafts a trap-heavy sound for him wholly reminiscent of mixtape-era Gucci Mane. Glock may not be releasing projects at the clip Gucci did during that period, but if the two share anything else in common, it’s that when all is said and done, they\'ll know exactly who was responsible for their success.
The Jet Life boss took a six-year hiatus between installments of his cult-favorite *Pilot Talk* series (the third one dropped in 2015). On the fourth chapter, Curren$y gives the people what they want: a 10-track suite of high-end stoner rap, lush with picturesque sunsets, speedboat rides to dinner, and cars you can’t find at the dealership, delivered over silky-smooth jazz and soul samples courtesy of producer Ski Beatz. As the world descends into chaos, the ever-mellow MC is, you know, chilling: “I’m in the vault, listening to vinyl, appreciating art/As the value appreciates on my 1975 Porsche,” he spits on the expensive-sounding “Workers and Bosses.” And for the first time in 11 years, he connects with the elusive Jay Electronica, on “AD6,” where the pair rep their hometown: “New Orleans, where we still makin’ heaven out of the ghetto.”
For hip-hop heads of a certain age, there’s an inescapable familiarity present throughout DJ Khaled’s 12th studio album, *KHALED KHALED*. Project opener “THANKFUL,” featuring Lil Wayne and Jeremih, borrows the flute line from JAY-Z’s “Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love).” Fans of dearly departed ATL hero Shawty Lo will recognize the horn charge from H.E.R./Migos collaboration “WE GOING CRAZY” as the one from “Dey Know.” A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Big Sean, Puff Daddy, and Rick Ross appear over an interpolation of the Notorious B.I.G. classic “Long Kiss Goodnight” for “THIS IS MY YEAR,” and then we get Justin Timberlake on “JUST BE” singing over a piano loop that Ghostface Killah made famous on “All That I Got Is You.” To be fair, though, these same touchstones of hip-hop past are in many cases samples themselves, with Khaled merely furthering the tradition he was born into—updating great music for a new generation of listeners. The sounds he’s engineered here are undeniable in that regard and will surely be as eyebrow-raising for the uninitiated as they are for those overcome with nostalgia. There’s a totally new energy in the odd-couple collab “LET IT GO” (featuring Justin Bieber and 21 Savage), a mountain-moving statement song that features both JAY-Z and Nas (“SORRY NOT SORRY”), and then a legends-only dancehall set called “WHERE YOU COME FROM” featuring Buju Banton, Capleton, and Bounty Killer. Oh, and two Drake songs!
One of the nicest things about Nicki Minaj bringing *Beam Me Up Scotty* to streaming 12 years after its initial 2009 release—and with three new songs and two mid-career singles—is that fans get to see clearly both the evolution and consistency of the Queens rapper. The additions are tacked on to the top of her classic mixtape, thus beginning with her present and moving backwards towards her early days; what\'s revealed is a compelling ascent that looks entirely inevitable. On “Seeing Green,” which opens the proceedings, she spars with her YMCMB family, proving that, as was the case then, she can not only effortlessly hang with some of the greatest, but bring the best out of them as well. “Fractions,” a la “Chi-Raq” just a couple songs later, is vintage Nicki—a showcase of hypnotic cadences and clever lyricism that never stops rewarding repeated listens. But the real magic begins with the still-stunning “Itty Bitty Piggy.” Atop Soulja Boy\'s “Donk” beat, she lets loose a barrage of inventive wordplay (“Flyer than a kite, I get higher than Rapunzel/Keep the Snow White, I could buy it by the bundle,” she spits at one point), breathless flows, and undeniable charisma that, even a decade-plus on, cements that Nicki was always a star. Elsewhere, more playful songs like “Slumber Party” (with early cosigner Gucci Mane) and “I Get Crazy” (with Lil Wayne) and mellower ones like “Can Anybody Hear Me?” and “Still I Rise” testify to the vision of versatility she\'s always had: a riveting combination of pop theatrics and quick-witted rhymes all pulled together by a personality she\'s never been afraid to hide. A few of the original tracks are missing here—“Mind on My Money,” “Handstand,” and “I Feel Free” among them—but the spirit of *Beam Me Up Scotty*, and the energy it brought to the rap landscape, remains fully intact. Much the way the tape doubled as Nicki’s claim to the throne in its time, in 2021, it\'s another excuse to adjust her crown.
From the very beginning, the only people who’d have been unable to identify the rock influences of Trippie Redd’s music were people who hadn’t heard it. With regard to his vocal delivery in particular, nu-metal, pop-punk, and goth metal have always informed what Trippie had to offer. With *NEON SHARK vs Pegasus (Deluxe: Presented by Travis Barker)*, the Canton, Ohio-hailing singer and MC has attached 14 new songs explicitly of a pop-punk origin to 2020’s already 26-song-long *Pegasus* project. Producer and blink-182 drummer Barker is co-credited on almost all of the new tracks, setting the table for guests like Deftones’ Chino Moreno (“GERONIMO”) as well as Machine Gun Kelly (“RED SKY,” “PILL BREAKER”) and blackbear (“PILL BREAKER”), a pair of vocalists whose music has likewise toed the line between their hip-hop and rock influences. For Trippie’s part, the vibes here are well familiar, both lovelorn and carefree, an artist at utmost peace in his own creative melancholy. Historically, to listen to Trippie Redd is to know what attempts at engaging in love have done to his psyche, and *NEON SHARK vs Pegasus* is dialed in to that same messaging. Barker is merely helping the singer lean just a bit further in to the aesthetic he’s long owned.