The wittier-than-thou rapper formerly known as Milo claims, on the second album under his new moniker, to “go a little deeper than the average MC.” To wit: Over *Scriptures*’ warm, blunted jazz beats, R.A.P. Ferreira (that’s Rory Allen Philip, in a mitzvah of hip-hop happenstance) spits deceptively casual tongue-twisters regarding hexadecimal patterns, pythons on leashes, critically acclaimed samurai flicks, and DMT—sorry, dimethyltryptamine. He keeps it calm on the surface, but there’s a madcap giddiness to his wordplay, a master technician bending language to his tripped-out will.
The Canadian singer’s third release of 2021 does what it says on the tin: This is music best-heard in a gymnasium beneath streamers and a disco ball (puffy sleeves and Aqua Net hairspray not required but recommended). Lanez pulls no punches when it comes to *Alone at Prom*’s ’80s theme, crooning ballads of broken hearts and speeding cars over productions that wouldn’t sound out of place in a John Hughes movie soundtrack, with song titles that ought to be written out in neon (“Pink Dolphin Sunset,” “Last Kiss of Nebulon”). The electro pulse and nihilist bent of night-drive anthems like “The Color Violet” may remind you, not so subtly, of a different R&B auteur from the Great White North (hint: it’s not The Weekday…), but hey, it’s just another excuse to wear your sunglasses at night.
Snoh Aalegra\'s songs about romantic love tend to feel at once sensual and wounded. But even in the most downtrodden moments of her third full-length album *TEMPORARY HIGHS IN THE VIOLET SKIES*, her voice still draws you closer even as the lyrics suggest pulling away. The singer continues to assert her presence on an R&B stage that welcomes both the soulful contours of her voice and the nuance of her lyrics.
In the five years between Shelley FKA DRAM\'s debut album, *Big Baby DRAM*, and its follow-up, *Shelley FKA DRAM*, the singer ascended through music\'s ranks (and the charts, thanks to smash hit “Broccoli”) with a radiant smile and a preternatural knack for levity in song, and then seemingly left as quickly as he\'d arrived. His rise also set off his spiral as he battled through addiction, largely going quiet after 2018, before getting sober in 2020. His rebrand from DRAM to Shelley was, at least in part, an effort to separate the bubbly demeanor that became his staple from the sensual lover that steers *Shelley FKA DRAM*. To that end, much of what has always made Shelley compelling remains intact here: His vocals are agile and opulent, slipping easily between buttery tones (as on “Something About Us”) and soaring falsettos (as on “Married Woman”), while his personality shines in moments of playful flirtation and earnest romance that especially come to life on the album\'s duets. There\'s a lushness to the instrumentation and arrangements that allows him to shine as not only a singer but a showman. The pacing of songs like “Exposure” or “Beautiful” has the improvisational feel of both a pulpit and a jazz lounge; others have spoken intros and outros as if recorded straight from the stage. It all combines to create an at once modern yet old-school collection—little innuendo is shrouded in abstraction, but he has a winking charm that calls to mind male R&B singers of the \'80s, whose ways of melding genuine sex appeal and lighthearted banter captured the era. It\'s a niche that few of his peers are capable of inhabiting (and certainly not with such conviction), and on *Shelley FKA DRAM*, he emphasizes the sublime style that\'s always been behind the smile.
A quarter-century is a milestone worth celebrating in any timeline, but for beloved Chicago MC G Herbo, age 25 hits different. “Where I come from, that\'s a big milestone for everybody,” he tells Apple Music. “A lot of my closest friends and family members didn\'t really see 25 years old. So it\'s bittersweet for me because I\'m here: I\'m at a point in my life where I reached my most success. And beating the system in a way where I\'m not a statistic, I\'m not in prison or my life wasn\'t cut short due to gun violence. We literally call n\*\*\*as OGs when they turn 25 years old. So I want my music to reflect that, to reflect my headspace and the mode that I\'m in.” *25* follows 2020’s *PTSD*, a project that stamped him as one of Chicago’s most impactful MCs and also one of the most revered voices in hip-hop. With *25*, Herbo continues to build his legacy, reflecting on art and life in a way he hopes will draw him closer to some of his biggest inspirations. “I just feel like I got in this to go down as somebody that\'s legendary,” Herbo says. “One of the artists that will be remembered for generations to come, like a Nas, like a JAY-Z, like a Kiss, like DMX, like a Wayne, Fab—those are the people who I looked up to. I work hard enough to feel like I\'m a star, but I feel like my ceiling is so much higher and I got so much further to go.” Below, the esteem-focused MC breaks down five tracks from *25* that show his range. **“I Don’t Wanna Die”** “I\'m a hip-hop artist, so my intro always got to feel like the hardest, one of the songs with the most substance of the whole project. And \'I Don\'t Wanna Die,\' for me, is how I explain the album in a whole, just becoming 25 years old and just beating the streets. It\'s about me reflecting on the gun violence and the killing in my city—not only from my perspective, but from a mother\'s perspective, from a child\'s perspective. It\'s one of those records where I\'m just going all the way in, there\'s no hook on it, I\'m just letting all my feelings and emotions come out.” **“Cry No More” (feat. Polo G & Lil Tjay)** \"Polo and TJ, they my dogs, both of them my boys. And they was just really speaking on the trauma and the stuff that we endure every day, and not wanting to feel that way no more. \[From\] being in the streets, or this industry, or dealing with life in general—I feel like a lot of people can relate to it, because it\'s been a lot of change dealing with the pandemic and a lot of the stuff that\'s going on. A lot of the trauma that I endured was from street violence, but we just talking about life in general on that song.” **“T.O.P.” (feat. 21 Savage)** “A lot of these records, the energy that you feel is because I\'m actually connecting with these people. I\'m connecting with the producers, I\'m connecting with my peers, we all together in the studio when we getting all this stuff done. For \'T.O.P.\' I was having fun in the studio with Hitmaka. It’s a record where I was letting my hair down in a sense. I always speak about my story and being in the streets, or what I deal with on a day-to-day basis, but I still have fun with my music, too.” **“You Can’t” (feat. The Kid LAROI & Gunna)** “I was in the studio with Turbo and we was just vibing. We recorded a bunch of songs, and that was actually the last song that we did before we left. He just played the beat, and the shit was so hard, I\'m like, I\'m about to just lay it right now. I didn\'t even really have no direction. I just got on the beat and started rapping. And that\'s why I come in first before the hook. And then LAROI, that\'s my little brother. He pulled up on me in the studio, and I just played that record like, \'Man, put a hook on this for me.\' I feel like it\'s one of those \'indexing records\' that\'s going to be on a bunch of playlists that I probably usually wouldn\'t be on.” **“Demands”** “‘Demands’ is one of those records where I feel like it\'s going to cause a little controversy. I always wanted to be known as a conscious rapper since I started. I came out doing music in the drill era, and I never really wanted to be known as that kind of artist. I’m talking about bringing change and shedding light on the situation by saying, \'Hey, this is what I feel we need to do to make a difference, and to put ourselves in a better position.\' I’m not pointing the finger at anyone. I’m holding us accountable as a people as well.”
File under “things that seem like they should’ve happened years ago, but somehow hadn’t until now”: *Garbology* is the first album-length collaboration between the two underground hip-hop veterans, despite the fact that they’ve known each other since college, and that Aesop’s biggest tracks to date have been Blockhead productions. Here, the latter’s beats are heady as ever; meanwhile, Aes has grown into the role of the curmudgeonly hermit, digging through the landfill of late-capitalist culture with no small amount of despair: “I hate praising net worth over legwork/I hate ceding all power to the extroverts/I find the current social architecture hell on earth,” he spits on “That Is Not a Wizard.” It isn’t easy making existential anguish sound this good.
“Take this opportunity to learn from my mistakes. You don’t have to guess if something is love. Love is shown through actions. Stop making excuses for people who don’t show up for you. Don’t ignore the red flags. And don’t think you have to stay somewhere ’cause you can’t find better—you can and you will. Don’t settle for less—you don’t deserve it and neither does your family.” —Summer Walker, in an exclusive message she provided to Apple Music about her second album
Before Gucci Mane was *Ice Daddy*, he was *the* Ice Daddy. Those unaware that Gucci\'s latest project is named for his youngest son are likely still well familiar with the prolific MC’s affinity for jewelry, something that once inspired a magazine listicle about his “greatest chains.” Rap spoils aside, Gucci himself has claimed to have “fathered” more rap careers than he’ll ever get credit for. *Ice Daddy* isn’t about much of any of that, though. Across the project, Gucci is mostly focused on bigging up the crew (“Posse on Bouldercrest,” “Like 34 & 8”), his continued financial success (“Never Runnin Out of Money,” “Fold Dat Money Up,” a new version of “Rich N\*\*\*a Shit”), and how he is still not to be played with (“Shit Crazy,” “Gucci Coming 4 You,” “Lately”). Along for the ride are Lil Baby, Lil Uzi Vert, Young Dolph, E-40, 2 Chainz, Project Pat, Peewee Longway, BIG30, Pooh Shiesty, BigWalkDog, and, maybe most interestingly, “Baby Got Back” MC Sir Mix-A-Lot. If *Ice Daddy* has anything to do with fatherhood specifically, it’s that it plays out kind of like a baby shower, Gucci passing cigars—or, more accurately, the microphone—to a bevy of friends who’ve all come out to celebrate his latest, greatest accomplishment.
It’s likely that Dave East was both ready and willing to lock in for a full-length Harry Fraud-produced album well before he heard Fraud’s work with Jim Jones (*The Fraud Department*) and Benny the Butcher (*The Plugs I Met 2*). But it’s just as likely that the synergy and flawless execution of those projects couldn’t have hurt East’s inclination. Fraud shows up for East on *HOFFA* the same way he did for Jones and Benny, finding a sturdy balance between moody synth lines, obscure rock samples, and ’90s-hip-hop drum patterns to act as an idyllic backdrop for East’s hand-to-hand street-life memories, basketball references, and straight-faced acknowledgment of the way drugs have affected his own family. Fellow barsmiths Jim Jones, G Herbo, Benny the Butcher, and Curren$y round out the features, but longtime Dave East fans might be most excited to hear a new verse from Kiing Shooter, the Queens-hailing Dave East associate who passed away in 2020 following complications from COVID-19.
That Bryson Tiller\'s *A N N I V E R S A R Y* got a release right as the Northern Hemisphere was easing into autumn feels fortuitous. The singer\'s third album, chilly and atmospheric, is ready-made for cool weather and the way the seasonal shift often brings relationships to the fore; its songs envelop the push-pull of romance and the mindsets that lead to ecstasy and turmoil in turns. Lead singles “Always Forever” and “Inhale” prefigured the mood, the nostalgic desire captured in their lyrics setting the mood that lingers throughout. Tiller, true to the style of the day, toes the perpetually blurry line between singing and rapping, with songs like “Things Change” and “Timeless Interlude” leaning towards the latter and “Sorrows” and “Next to You” towards the former. His depictions of romance also exist in infinite shades of gray, shifting from sexy come-ons to scornful kiss-offs, sometimes within the span of a single track. These kinds of middle grounds remain a powerful tool in his arsenal: When he and Drake (who shares a similar propensity for messy courtship) sing, “I still don\'t know why I still play into your palm/Even though I know what you want/I been twisted off you for so long,” as they do on “Outta Time,” it drives home the tension that makes their music so compelling. With each ego-stunted confession, Tiller reminds us that life and love happen not at the highest highs or the lowest lows but always somewhere in the possibilities of limbo. The deluxe edition builds on the original, adding five tracks of wounded confessions that hinge on throwback nostalgia and lush musicality. Samples abound on “Still Yours” and “Timeless Interlude Pt. II,” while a song like “7:00” envelops listeners in Tiller’s atmospherics. “I think \[‘7:00’\] shows off my love for harmonies and how much better I’ve gotten at putting them together,” Tiller tells Apple Music. “The thing I remember most about making this song was reminding myself to not be lazy and to add as many layers as I possibly could.” Each new addition further cements the singer’s proclivity for bringing the past to the present, and, ultimately, isn’t that the root of so much romantic strife?
In the official album trailer for Polo G’s *Hall of Fame 2.0*, where the Michael Jackson-sampling “Bad Man (Smooth Criminal)” plays in the background, Polo explains that the first *Hall of Fame* “was me beating my chest, really coming into my own as an artist and showing I’m here to stay.” He goes on to contextualize *2.0* as the closing of this same chapter while encouraging fans to “turn up this one more time.” It goes without saying that at this point in his young career, the self-proclaimed GOAT truly does have a catalog worth celebrating, but in the case of *Hall of Fame 2.0*, turning up is hardly the full story. Across *2.0*, Polo G is as lucid, thoughtful, and reflective as he’s ever been. This version of Polo is particularly concentrated within the project’s 14 new selections. He’s made time to have fun—as have guests Lil Baby, Moneybagg Yo, and Lil Tjay—but the meat of the new additions lies in Polo’s worldview, the rapper facing down survivor’s remorse (“Decisions”), unhealthy relationships (“Partin Ways”), prioritizing his mental health (“With You,” “Alright”), and the impossibility of the Black American experience (“Black Man in America”). *Hall of Fame 2.0* may have initially been billed as a deluxe version of its predecessor (it also features the 20 tracks of the original), but as a stand-alone collection of music, it makes yet another case for Polo’s jersey to one day hang from the rafters.
Calling an album by Dungeon Family forefathers Big Boi and Sleepy Brown *Big Sleepover* seems like kind of a no-brainer, but if you’re at all familiar with the ways of the mighty DF, you’ll understand that there’s a message in just about everything. “It\'s a double meaning,” Big Boi explained to Zane Lowe ahead of the album’s release. “*Big Sleepover*, we here to wake people up: The ‘big sleep’ is over. It\'s about awareness.” As one half of Outkast and one of the Dungeon Family’s most beloved writers and producers, respectively, if Big or Sleepy Brown were ever short on presence, it was by choice, the two having long ago cemented their impact in the game. In 2021, however, they’re able to release the endlessly funky, trend-eschewing Dirty South anthems they’ve always enjoyed making, and do so only when they feel like it. “All we really wanted to do was prove ourselves and show that Atlanta, Georgia, is a place of music and love and funk,” Sleepy says. “So for me, I\'m so happy to be a part of that.” The charm of Sleepy\'s modesty aside, *Big Sleepover* is inarguably one of the funkiest and most self-assured collections of grown-man rap in recent memory. Whether the two are ruminating on the role sex plays in their lives (“Animalz”), talking about the effect their presences continue to have on women (“Can’t Sleep,” “Baller”), or delivering the secret to maintaining peace of mind (“Sucka Free”), Big and Sleepy can only be themselves on record, proud elder statesmen with more than enough sauce to spare. Every track on *Big Sleepover* is a testament to how comfortable the OGs are in their own skin, and if you can’t hear it in the stories, let Sleepy tell you outright on “The Big Sleep Is Over”: “We have nothing else to prove.”
Samples have long been part of the lifeblood of Wale\'s catalog, but on *Folarin II*, they are prominent, offering insights about who and what has inspired the D.C. rapper. “I give flowers to my inspirations, my OGs, my contemporaries, my peers, and myself,” he tells Apple Music\'s Nadeska of the album, his seventh. The three lead singles were the first hint. “Angles,” “Down South,” and “Poke It Out” all are built around the familiarity of their samples: Diddy’s 2002 “I Need a Girl (Pt. 1),” Mike Jones\' 2004 “Still Tippin\',” and Q-Tip\'s 1999 “Vivrant Thing,” respectively. Each one is designed to play on nostalgia, while also spotlighting Wale\'s dexterity. Other gems include the regret-tinged “Dearly Beloved,” which features a dazzling loop of Jamie Foxx\'s performance on his eponymous TV show, and the flirtatious “Caramel,” which functions as an homage to legendary producer (and D.C. native) Chucky Thompson, who died in August of 2021 from COVID complications. “He produced the original \'Caramel Kisses\' by Faith \[Evans\],” Wale says. “I just want to send a special shout-out to him, because our last conversation was about that record and sampling it, so that\'s a special piece to the project for me.” But for as much as Wale (deservedly) places himself in dialogue with greats past and present, the thing that separates him remains his ability to bring the lively sound of his hometown to wider audiences. It\'s in the subtle go-go textures of “More Love” and the outright bounce beat of “Jump In,” as the rapper glides across the percussion. *Folarin II* may have been made as a way for Wale to dole out the respect he\'s craved for himself, but it\'s high time to give it back.
“I don’t have to practice how to sound like myself,” Lil Tecca tells Apple Music. “I got my own sound, so it’s easy.” The Queens-hailing MC’s sound is a byproduct of his personal taste and his actualization as a rapper who can speak both to and for New York City. His *We Love You Tecca 2*, which comes roughly a year after his debut album, *Virgo World*, is less a return to his story’s origin than to an energy he recognizes from when he’d first broken out. “*We Love You Tecca* represents a point of my life where I’m having fun and I’m just free and shit,” Tecca says. “And I feel like that’s exactly where I’m at in life again. So, I just wanted to come back to the theme.” Not unlike *Virgo World*, however, *We Love You Tecca 2* is rife with stories about his dealings with women, warnings about how protected he is as his circle’s breadwinner, and then also ruminations on how life has changed since rap stardom took hold. It’s enough to overwhelm probably any other 18-year-old, but luckily for Tecca, just doing his job is the answer to his problems. “Sometimes music is the only thing that can make me feel something,” he says. “Even after I blew up, I still didn’t know if I was *really* a music person. But there’ll be moments where I’m like, nothing has made me feel the way music does. And I just believe how I feel and don’t try to put logic behind it. I just trust my feelings.” Below, Lil Tecca goes a bit deeper into what he was feeling while creating some of the standout tracks from *We Love You Tecca 2*. **“MONEY ON ME”** “When I made this song, I was just in my head. I was just like, ‘Fuck everything. Everything’s getting me mad now.’ I’m in the studio—you could look at me a type of way, I might get a little upset. Everything made me furious.” **“REPEAT IT” (feat. Gunna)** “That’s definitely the biggest flex song on the whole project, and that was needed. I needed something I could just talk on, just let the swag flourish. No one got swag like people from New York. No one talks like us, no one walks like us. So, being from here, it just makes it easier to do everything I want to do.” **“CAUTION”** “I don’t know why, but when I made this song, I was really low-key uncomfortable in the studio. But I knew I had something, so I was just like, ‘I’m going to finish the song.’ There was a few times while recording that song that I was going to stop, but I just kept going. I’m not a person that relies on motivation or inspiration to work. So, if I feel like I need to record or make music, that’s what I’ma do.” **“YOU DON’T NEED ME NO MORE”** “I fuck with this one so hard. Honestly, it’s just a relatable song. Like the beat was really just telling me what to say the whole time. It isn’t anything that personally happened to me.” **“CHOPPA SHOOT THE LOUDEST” (feat. Trippie Redd)** “So, me and Trippie recorded this shit in the studio to a whole ’nother beat. And then we was tryna figure out who to put on it. But then Taz Taylor sends me the song on a whole ’nother beat, which is what it is now. And Chief Keef hopped on that version. I can’t lie—he snapped.” **“BANK TELLER” (feat. Lil Yachty)** “When me and Yachty recorded this, we did 11 songs that day. I think this was probably the second one or the first one we recorded. We just go in the booth and get a whole song done in, like, 25 minutes. And if we want to take extra time, it is what it is, but we just be snapping.” **“ABOUT YOU” (feat. NAV)** “You know when you distance yourself from people, they might take it personal or whatever? But my personal decisions are basically—I’m just saying it’s not directed towards anyone. I just maneuver how I want to.” **“INVESTIGATION”** “Besides the fame or whatever, everyone has that point where they’re just waiting on being the best version of themself, like the version of their self they envision in their head. I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s almost like a butterfly effect, like just waiting to evolve into exactly who I see myself as. And who I see myself as, I’m still figuring that out. So, that’s why I’m just being me. No expectations about anything.”
If you’d been wondering where Canadian MC Belly was since he dropped one of the most impactful projects of his career, 2018’s *IMMIGRANT*, the answer was: not in the greatest of headspaces. “I took like a heavy break, in terms of making my own music,” he tells Apple Music. “And it wasn\'t voluntary, at first. I was in a bad place, dealing with different mental struggles.” He’ll politely decline to detail the specific events that knocked him off his square, but as he began making music again, roughly a year and a half ahead of what would become his third proper album *See You Next Wednesday*, he saw a parallel in the backstory of one of America’s beloved movie directors. “*See You Next Wednesday* is paying homage to John Landis. That phrase was kind of like an Easter egg that he would drop in all of his movies. Even in ‘Thriller,’ when MJ\'s walking out of the theater, you hear somebody whisper, \'See you next Wednesday.\' The reason why is because I believe it was like the first script that he wrote—and he just never made the movie. So there was parts of this process where I felt like this might be the album that never sees the light of day. Just based on me trying to find myself again.” Luckily for Belly fans, the MC bounced back in grand fashion, delivering a 15-song project that not only features The Weeknd, Young Thug, Moneybagg Yo, and Nas (to name a few), but also some of Belly’s most honest and impassioned rapping. Below, the MC gives us insight into each song on the album, explaining track by track how *See You Next Wednesday* came to be. **“Snakes & Ladders”** “‘Snakes & Ladders’ was a good way for me to set the tone and really let people know that I\'m back. I think not only to remind people, but also to remind myself, when the album kicks off, that this is what I do.” **“IYKYK”** “I think The ANMLS and DannyBoyStyles did a great job of just making this sound like a movie. I love when it almost sounds like there\'s a soundtrack behind me, as opposed to just a beat, that\'s like looping over and over. This was one of the songs that helped me come back around, too. Because it was one of the first times that I could really write deeply about things that were affecting me. I was writing this from a place of hurt. It was just me trying to be as honest as I could.” **“Better Believe” (feat. The Weeknd and Young Thug)** “Abel \[Tesfaye\] played me a version and we just went from there. I had DannyBoy and The ANMLS also put their touch on it. But Zaytoven, to me, is like such a musical dude. So it was like a team effort. Thug came right at the very end. I just felt like he matched the vibe so well.” **“Zero Love” (feat. Moneybagg Yo)** “I think when people hear the word ‘love,’ like they automatically think I\'m talking relationships and all that. Love is a complex thing. You know, we love so many different people, on so many different levels. So at that point, I had just zero love for all the fake fuck shit—everything that was affecting me negatively, that\'s when I was learning to push it out of my brain, and to really have no attention for it. And that\'s where \'Zero Love\' comes from—me not giving a fuck, really. I was trying to put a second verse on it, but every time my hook would end, I would be like, \'Man, I hear Moneybagg Yo on this shit.\' I just kept hearing his voice.” **“Moment of Silence”** “I was in Miami for ‘Moment of Silence.’ That was like one of the first trips I took since the hiatus. I linked up with Infamous and Ben Billions and I remember just hearing that beat and just wanting to talk my shit on it. I was just starting to find the confidence again. By the time I finished rapping on it, I was like, ‘We can\'t do no more on this. We\'ve got to give these rappers a moment of silence.’” **“Flowers”** “I say this all the time: If you\'re underrated, you\'ve got to put blame on yourself to a certain degree. There must have been times when you could have did more. And I do feel that way. I do feel like I could have done more, certain times. And I could have been more. But at the same time, I feel like you\'ve got to know when you\'re not getting your due. My reaction will always be to work harder. Nobody owes me shit—but I deserve more. And that\'s where I\'m at with it.” **“Razor” (feat. Gunna & PnB Rock)** “I’ve known PnB Rock for a long time. And we always linked up and made vibes together. This is just the first one we ended up putting on something. He\'s somebody that\'s super talented and I\'ve always like really fucked with his sound. This is the first time me and Gunna have done something, but again, that\'s somebody I feel is extended family. When I was in Atlanta running around, he pulled up and always showed love.” **“Die for It” (feat. Nas)** “I went through certain stuff that affected my ideology. A lot of it stemmed from incidents that I can\'t really talk about due to legal stuff. You know when you grow up and you spend most of your adult life even believing something? And then there\'s events that can shake the way you think or believe in something? Coming back from that for me was pretty tough. Now it\'s not something that even affects me negatively anymore. I think about it, and I\'m just happy that I made it through something as extensive as I did.” **“Requiem” (feat. NAV)** “‘Requiem’ is complex. I wanted it to be more of a feeling, like a mood. A lot of the lyrics in it are obviously self-explanatory. Especially in the verse, in terms of like relationships—situations, or things that I\'ve waited for and never got. I think the hook is more of like a mood. In the verses, I get into that feeling of almost like FOMO: the fear of missing out. I think that\'s what the verse kind of represents. And of course my brother NAV went in on it. I think his verse is like 24 bars.” **“Two Tone” (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)** “That was like a one-take freestyle. And at first it was hard for me to take the song serious. I was like, \'This is just some cool shit we could just listen to.\' And the homies were like, \'Bro, you\'re bugging. You\'ve got to fucking put this on the album. We\'ve got to put Uzi on this.\' And then I remember playing it for Abel and Abel was like, \'Oh nah, this shit is out of here. You need to definitely work on this.\'” **“Wu-Tang”** “When I say ‘Wu-Tang, C.R.E.A.M., wrist Dairy Queen,’ the shit\'s blinging, my shit\'s colorful. My shit is flicking. I love to pay homage to Wu-Tang, too. Because *36 Chambers* is one of the albums that made me look at themed albums differently. It made me like appreciate and love that somebody can make something so cohesive, and make something that sounded like it had a heartbeat, all the way throughout. So it felt good paying homage to one of the best rap groups, you know, if not the best rap group, of all time.” **“Sucker”** “I use the word ‘bitch’ a lot. I think ‘bitch,’ to me, is a word that goes both ways. Like when I say ‘bitch,’ it could just as well mean a guy. Now when I\'m saying \'sucker,\' I\'m talking about one specific type of woman: the kind that catches, let\'s say, the more docile type of man. And she\'s able to take advantage of such a person. And the thing is, who do you blame at the end of the day? Do you blame the guy that allowed it to happen? Or do you blame the person that did it? It could go both ways.” **“Scary Sight” (feat. Big Sean)** “Big Sean is one of the most talented people I think I\'ve seen in a session, in terms of how he approaches records. His shit just sounds like he sat for hours writing it, dope punchlines and dope bars, but he\'s really coming off the top of his head. So I think that\'s where that free-form feeling of that song came from. And I just picked up where he left off.” **“Money on the Table” (feat. Benny the Butcher)** “Shout-out to Benny the Butcher. You can\'t be a rapper—that like enjoys the sport of rap—and not be inspired by what Benny\'s doing. If you actually love this shit, you\'ve got to feel something when you hear Benny. Just to see the progression of him rapping his ass off and getting the due that he deserves, all of that to me is inspirational, motivational.” **“Can You Feel It”** “I was in the studio with The ANMLS and my boy Faris was playing just songs off of YouTube. He came across this band Bedstudy and I was like, ‘Yo, we\'ve gotta sample this. This is special right here.’ We created the beat out of that. And it took me to a place. It made me want to be a little introspective. It made me want to bare my bones on the record. So that\'s really what I did.”
*HARAM!*, GoldLink’s second studio album, is unlike anything he put out before it. “I wanted to challenge myself,” the Washington, D.C., rapper, singer, and songwriter tells Apple Music. “I wanted to almost make an album that was an antonym to what GoldLink was perceived to be.” Here, the dance-floor grooves and soulful funk that jetted him to stardom have been swapped for bone-crunching distortion and seething, noisy rage—a reflection of GoldLink’s mood at a time when George Floyd’s murder was still a raw, open wound. Work began on *HARAM!* in early 2020, then continued between cities and lockdowns, from Malibu to Paris—where riots in reaction to global police brutality sparked everything that plays out through the album—to Amsterdam and then, finally, London. There, the rapper—real name D’Anthony William Carlos—collaborated with the cream of UK talent, including legendary producer, songwriter, and engineer Paul Epworth, Skepta collaborator LukeyWorld, Fire, Newham rhymer Rizloski, and Santigold. But *HARAM!* also sees GoldLink take it right back to the D.C. neighborhood that raised him. “I\'m not normally as personal on my records,” he says. “I don\'t really talk about the things I\'ve been through when it comes to the streets, about shooting people and drug dealing and death. I try not to glorify that, but on this album, I had to embrace that.” Read on as GoldLink walks us through his dizzying second full-length, one track at a time. **“Extra Clip” (feat. NLE Choppa)** “The first song we made, in Paris during the riots. I turned up the distortion filter as much as you possibly can and it just kind of just screeched. You can hear rumbling in the background and I started yelling. It was really just a track of our emotion. And I didn\'t want to finish it. I didn\'t want to add words to it. I thought that the feeling was enough.” **“202”** “I\'m from D.C., so this is an ode to the punk and go-go scenes. When my dad was going to these go-go shows that were predominantly rock, it started changing the sound palette in the city. It sounded like the smell of the streets of D.C. So I named it just ‘202,’ which is the area code.” **“White Walls”** “Kind of an extension of ‘202.’ Every time we were mapping out the \[order of the\] album, we never took those two \[songs\] away from each other. I was studying cults at the time. Because I wanted to figure out what a cult is, what a cult leader is and what defines a cult. And I really feel America is a cult. This is from the standpoint of culture—breaking down what the word ‘culture’ means.” **“Spit on It” (feat. Rizloski)** “A lot of the mysticism of GoldLink comes from the streets. Being in the streets, it\'s about survival. The less you allow people to know, the more control you have. When I make a song like this, there’s so much information inside it. I\'m talking about my boy Fire beating his case and, if he needed it, I have a $100K stash for him right here. I\'m talking about white bitches, Black bitches. It’s just very anti-PC.” **“Terrordome”** “\[US producer and songwriter\] Tyler Johnson wanted to do a session. He’d been making the Harry Styles album, and I thought, ‘Right, he\'s going to fucking hate this.’ He didn\'t. We ended up making ‘Terrordome,’ which is, to me, a pop record that stands the test of time.” **“Evian” (feat. PinkPantheress, Rizloski & Rax)** “A friend of mine had sent me a record from PinkPantheress on SoundCloud and I said, ‘Who the fuck is this girl?’ We got in a session and I\'m just cutting a bunch of records and testing out different sounds. From there, I kind of Quincy Jones-ed the whole thing where I wanted her here. I really wanted to recreate this kind of UK garage sound that we\'ve been missing for years now, but modernize it.” **“Raindrops” (feat. Flo Milli)** “I wrote this about my ex at the time, because I was frustrated with her. Even though I was almost dissing her, I wanted her to sing. She did it, then I threw it in a pile and forgot about it. Anyway, we got to Paris and one of the A&Rs ends up hearing it. I decided it needed a new, raw vocal. I thought of Flo Milli. She knocked it out of the park.” **“Twin” (feat. Rich The Kid)** “This is something that Rich The Kid had sent over and I thought it was fucked. The concept was already there, and I was very impressed by the route that Rich wanted to go through. There’s this entire beautiful orchestra bit at the end and I thought it was incredible. It elevated the song to another level.” **“Girl Pacino” (feat. Deji Okeze)** “I\'m a fan of Kintaro \[Jameel Bruner, former member of The Internet\]. We\'ve been friends for about six years. He\'s so weird, in the best way possible. I heard the song on his SoundCloud and hit him up. He\'s like, ‘Do you like it? You can have it, I just don\'t have the stems.’ I was like, ‘Whatever, man, just send it.’ And every time I hear it, I think of him saying, ‘This is going to go diamond!’” **“Thump Chronicles Vol. 1” (feat. Pressa & Dan Diggerz)** “I was in Mexico at the beginning of 2020 for a festival and I went back home and did a session. I talked about personal things. Dan Diggerz came in and he was perfect; he has a voice that could command a room. We sat on that part for a long time and I kept thinking about how I wanted a different voice that stood out over the record and the jumpiness of the beat. I went through a few options, and Pressa was the perfect one.” **“Culture Clash” (feat. Fire)** “This is an American brother from LA interpreting the UK sound, making something that is low-key similar, but nothing like what the UK sound is. The BPM is there for a faster rap, but it\'s not a drill song. I wanted Fire to introduce it and tell his story, because I wanted it to be as raw as possible. It’s like cultures clashing.” **“Wayne Perry” (feat. LukeyWorld)** “Lukey did 11 years in jail and he\'s my age, so he has a story to tell. When I met him, I didn\'t know he could rap. I was like, ‘Go in the booth.’ And he just kept rapping, and I didn’t let him stop. We named it ‘Wayne Perry’ ’cause it\'s an ode to this guy who was a notorious D.C. gangster who happens to be my uncle. He’s a very big positive influence in my life. He changed his life and he’s Muslim now.” **“Wild and Lethal Trash!” (feat Fire and Santigold)** “I named this ‘Wild and Lethal Trash!’ because my favorite designer is Walter Van Beirendonck, from Antwerp. \[Scottish musician and producer\] Sam Gellaitry made the beat. I told him, ‘I just want it to sound expensive.’ I wanted the palette to be grand. Whatever you think *Watch the Throne* sounds like, that\'s the way I want it to sound.” **“Don\'t Cry Over Spilled Milk” (feat. Jesse Boykins III)** “I was working on this in Malibu with \[US singer-songwriter and producer\] Gwen Bunn. She had sent this over, almost as a completed idea of what she thought this album sounded like. But it was a skeleton of a song and I started filling in the lanes. It was a very back-and-forth type of email situation, but we had been working together for two, three years and had so much synergy at this point, we didn\'t need to do too much.” **“Cindy’s Daughter” (feat. Maleek Berry and Bibi Bourelly)** “It’s ironic, this is the last track I recorded for the album. \[German producer and songwriter\] Rascal and I are very close—we’ve been working together since my 2015 mixtape \[*And After That, We Didn’t Talk*\]. He sent me a demo that he did with Bibi. I\'ve known her for four or five years and I love her to death. Even though she was born in Berlin, we\'re from the same hometown and she went to school there. I heard the demo she wrote and I loved it, and Rascal loved it too.”
When Tinashe parted ways with her label in 2019, she welcomed the opportunity to take full control of her creative output. First came *Songs for You*, an acclaimed album that found the singer basking in her newfound liberation. *333* follows suit, as she bends and blurs lines to meld pop and R&B with electronic and hip-hop elements. In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, she points to the stunning title track, a shape-shifting adventure that morphs from a stripped bed of harmonies into an orchestral dreamscape, as an example of her genre-busting pursuits. “I\'ve always been inspired by James Blake and his use of silence, so I wanted to incorporate that on this project,” she explains. “I think that song is a perfect example of— to me, it doesn\'t fit like a particular genre at all. That\'s why I love it, is because it\'s just a sonic experience.” Elsewhere, songs like “Let Me Down Slowly” or “Bouncin’, Pt. 2” further highlight her experimental streak, playing with tempos and atmosphere. Such moments stand in contrast to the album’s more constrained moments, but taken together, they all create a collage of both Tinashe’s inspirations and aspirations. “I\'m really proud of myself with this project because I just feel like I took all of the things that I learned about what I didn\'t want to do, about how I didn\'t want to move, about like what doesn\'t feel right,” she says. “It\'s really helped me develop just a much more centered idea of what my art and my project and my purpose is.”
The most accurate distillation of Pooh Shiesty’s mission on debut mixtape *Shiesty Season* comes from one of the project’s guests. “I don’t wanna rap about nothing but gunplay,” 21 Savage deadpans on “Box of Churches.” Savage appears on the tape alongside fellow street-rap heavyweights Gucci Mane and Lil Durk, as well as a handful of lesser-known MCs like BIG30, Choppa Wop, and Lil Hank. If they have a single thing in common, it’s an affinity for high-powered weaponry. But it is Pooh Shiesty, of course, who set the tone. Across *Shiesty Season*’s 17 tracks, the MC consistently details, in that readily identifiable Memphis drawl, the importance of guns in his life on songs like “Back in Blood,” “50 Shots,” “Take a Life,” and “Choppa Way.” Deviations from the theme are few and far between, even on songs like the one named for pioneering musical entrepreneur and Dirty South hip-hop legend Master P (“One shot to the head, may he rest in peace/I’m the reason doctors hooked him up, I feel like Master P”). And lest you think a song called “Twerksum” was an attempt at appeasing the fairer sex, Shiesty is simply offering fair warning that the “choppa get to shaking like it twerk or something.”
Lil Tjay had a mission going into the release of his second album, *Destined 2 Win*. “A lot of people get to their first album and a lot of the esteem be off one song, or their new artist phase,” he tells Apple Music. “And I feel like now that I’m settling in, I just want to show that I’m here to stay.” *Destined 2 Win*, which follows 2020’s drill-focused *State of Emergency* EP, is 21 tracks of New York City slick talk, the Bronx-born MC giving us double-bicep flexing (“Gang Gang,” “Headshot”), warm-weather macking (“Move,” “Slow Down”), and, of course, the all-too-familiar pain of losing friends to the streets (“Nuf Said,” “Losses”). You can hear the progression from Tjay’s debut, 2019’s *True 2 Myself*, in *Destined 2 Win*’s content and melodies, something Tjay says likely came from waiting to release it until the time felt absolutely right. “I got a lot of music, \[*Destined 2 Win*\] coulda been done,” he says. “I just felt the energy in the air, like it was ready. It’s my time to come.” Below, Lil Tjay goes into detail about what was on his mind when he was cooking up the album’s key tracks. **“Born 2 Be Great”** “I just always felt like I was born to be great and born to be something special, so I just felt like to start it off with that just felt right.” **“Hood Rich”** “‘Hood Rich’ is me rapping about wanting to be bigger than what I am, or where I was. It is damn near like a Tjay classic, though, ’cause I had this song for a little while and I just never dropped it. I just wanted to hold it for a sec.” **“Headshot”** “This was just a turnt night, it was a little bit of liquor in the system, the beat was thumping, it was aggressive. So that’s just how we was feeling in the studio, together.” **“Move”** “Me and Tyga was in the studio that day and it was a little vibe. I had a little liquor in the system, a couple ladies there. I could imagine people listening to this on a yacht or a boat. It gave me that vibe from jump.” **“Love Hurts”** “It does! If that shit ain’t working right and it’s a lot of miscommunication and real feelings is in it, it could hurt.” **“Run It Up”** “I fuck with Moneybagg shit, he keeps the bitches moving. His shit got the clubs pumping and shit. That was the goal for ‘Run It Up,’ that vibe. Offset is on there, too.” **“Part of the Plan”** “I done been in some rough situations. And no matter what the situation was, I never folded. So I just feel like everybody should be the same \[way\].” **“Life Changed”** “I don’t really be in the same places too much. Where I’m popping out, everybody can’t get next to me. Life got more comfortable—my whole environment, my aura. I’m a different person right now. I leveled up.” **“Nuf Said”** “The calls I need to take, I take them. With people that’s locked up, I just try to speak to my guys and make sure they time goes by fast, hope they get into a better situation soon. I don’t be as available, but they understand that ’cause now I can do more for them.”
Lil Tjay had a mission going into the release of his second album, *Destined 2 Win*. “A lot of people get to their first album and a lot of the esteem be off one song, or their new artist phase,” he tells Apple Music. “And I feel like now that I’m settling in, I just want to show that I’m here to stay.” *Destined 2 Win*, which follows 2020’s drill-focused *State of Emergency* EP, is 21 tracks of New York City slick talk, the Bronx-born MC giving us double-bicep flexing (“Gang Gang,” “Headshot”), warm-weather macking (“Move,” “Slow Down”), and, of course, the all-too-familiar pain of losing friends to the streets (“Nuf Said,” “Losses”). You can hear the progression from Tjay’s debut, 2019’s *True 2 Myself*, in *Destined 2 Win*’s content and melodies, something Tjay says likely came from waiting to release it until the time felt absolutely right. “I got a lot of music, \[*Destined 2 Win*\] coulda been done,” he says. “I just felt the energy in the air, like it was ready. It’s my time to come.” Below, Lil Tjay goes into detail about what was on his mind when he was cooking up the album’s key tracks. **“Born 2 Be Great”** “I just always felt like I was born to be great and born to be something special, so I just felt like to start it off with that just felt right.” **“Hood Rich”** “‘Hood Rich’ is me rapping about wanting to be bigger than what I am, or where I was. It is damn near like a Tjay classic, though, ’cause I had this song for a little while and I just never dropped it. I just wanted to hold it for a sec.” **“Headshot”** “This was just a turnt night, it was a little bit of liquor in the system, the beat was thumping, it was aggressive. So that’s just how we was feeling in the studio, together.” **“Move”** “Me and Tyga was in the studio that day and it was a little vibe. I had a little liquor in the system, a couple ladies there. I could imagine people listening to this on a yacht or a boat. It gave me that vibe from jump.” **“Love Hurts”** “It does! If that s\*\*t ain’t working right and it’s a lot of miscommunication and real feelings is in it, it could hurt.” **“Run It Up”** “I f\*\*k with Moneybagg s\*\*t, he keeps the b\*\*\*hes moving. His s\*\*t got the clubs pumping and s\*\*t. That was the goal for ‘Run It Up,’ that vibe. Offset is on there, too.” **“Part of the Plan”** “I done been in some rough situations. And no matter what the situation was, I never folded. So I just feel like everybody should be the same \[way\].” **“Life Changed”** “I don’t really be in the same places too much. Where I’m popping out, everybody can’t get next to me. Life got more comfortable—my whole environment, my aura. I’m a different person right now. I leveled up.” **“Nuf Said”** “The calls I need to take, I take them. With people that’s locked up, I just try to speak to my guys and make sure they time goes by fast, hope they get into a better situation soon. I don’t be as available, but they understand that ’cause now I can do more for them.”