May 5, 2025, will stand now as a historic benchmark for André 3000. Famously elusive since the split of his iconic Southern hip-hop duo, Outkast, André arrived at the Met Gala—a celebration of Black dandyism that raised a record-setting $31 million—with a massive model of a piano strapped across his back. Beneath a red cap and round glasses, he beamed for red-carpet cameras. The night represented not only the surprising relaunch of his erstwhile fashion line, Benji Bixby, but also the surprising release of *7 piano sketches*, his first full project since his surprise 2023 entry into serene spiritual jazz, *New Blue Sun*. *7 piano sketches* began to take shape a decade ago, when André and his son temporarily lived in a Houston house with spartan furnishings—some TVs, some beds, a piano. Around the time of the final shows of the most-recent Outkast reunion, he began recording little piano pieces and even pondered releasing several as *The Best Worst Rap Album in History*. The liner notes were set to read, “It’s the free-est emotionally and best I’ve felt personally.” But he shelved them, leading first to lingering questions about when he would return to music and, ultimately, to *New Blue Sun*, a stunning break with expectations for one of hip-hop’s best-ever minds. These little pieces—seven tracks, 16 total minutes—perpetuate that break. After a voice offers the track number and title, André feels his way through a theme and variations. Where opener “bluffing in the snow” is a refracted and pensive blues, “hotel lobby pianos” drifts into a confident midtempo stride as voices drift in the background. The record ultimately points toward new directions. After he dances through a smiling melody for a while, “off rhythm laughter” blooms into an exquisite drone. And on closer “i spend all day waiting for the night,” he improvises around a drum machine’s languid march, his sunken-world piano rising to meet the rhythm in the middle. André 3000 continues to push hip-hop expectations off his back, this time with the actual piano strapped to it.
What makes the darkness of billy woods’ raps bearable is that you’re always a step or two away from a good joke or decent meal—a real-world, life-goes-on resilience that has been the bedrock of hip-hop from the beginning. That said, *GOLLIWOG* is probably the most out-and-out unsettling album he’s made yet, a smear of synth rumbles, creaky pianos, and horror-movie strings whose dissonances amplify scenes of otherwise ordinary dread, whether it’s the Black artist trying to charm the boardroom of white executives on “Cold Sweat” or prolonged eviction scene of “BLK XMAS.” Now in his mid-forties, woods is confident enough in his critique to make you squirm in it and has a rolodex of some of the best producers in underground rap to back him up, including Kenny Segal, El-P, Conductor Williams, and DJ Haram. Spoiler alert: The real monsters are human.
The Portland rapper broke through in 2016 with the carefree “Caroline” as an eager student of André 3000 and Tyler, The Creator, then spent the next almost-decade finding his own voice: witty but searching, with a penchant for bright, bubbly beats. Now 31, Aminé is ready for a long, five-star vacation on his third studio album, *13 Months of Sunshine*, his first since 2020’s existential *Limbo*. (In the years between, he dabbled in hyperpop on 2021’s *TWOPOINTFIVE* and collaborated with Kaytranada on 2023’s *KAYTRAMINÉ*.) He’s in his deep-house bag on “Familiar” and “Vacay,” on which he finds himself two spritzes deep, “out of office” email in effect, draped in a hotel robe, “on my Dua Lipa.” He jets across the pond on “Arc de Triomphe,” skating over a UK garage shuffle that samples The Streets. But it’s not all affogatos and plunge pools: On Leon Thomas duet “New Flower!” he recalls his days as an intern for Complex and Def Jam, remembering being sent to fetch sandwiches for Big Sean. And after a beat switch on Afrobeats bop “13MOS,” he dives deep into his Ethiopian and Eritrean family legacy: “I was named after my grandfather/So, I can’t put shame to the name I’m proud of.”
There’s a short list of things South Memphis rapper Key Glock never finds himself without: Money. Jewelry. A pistol. The arm of the most beautiful woman in the room. The envy of haters everywhere. We know as much because he tells us over and over again across his wildly fun fifth album, *Glockaveli*. Longtime fans know Glock as a onetime protégé of dearly departed fellow Memphis native Young Dolph. But in the wake of the Paper Route Empire mogul’s death in 2021, Glizzock carved a lane for himself that would have had Dolph smiling big enough to show off the whole of his signature blue-diamond grill. To be specific, Key Glock is having his way across the 18 tracks of *Glockaveli*, never losing sight of the ultimate mission: “I’ma go and get that money, like Dolph told me to,” he raps on “Hallelujah.”
What’s in a name? In the case of Yung Lean, what initially registered as a sardonic take on post-ironic internet rap tropes was, in fact, a riff on the Swedish rapper’s given name: Jonatan Leandoer Håstad. In the decade-plus since he broke through with 2013’s “Ginseng Strip 2002,” Lean has evolved past his position as Scandinavia’s foremost cloud-rap interpreter, embracing sincerity, transparency, and, more recently, post-punk. (On 2024’s *Psykos*, his first full-length collaboration with Drain Gang CEO Bladee, they channeled Joy Division and The Cure for songs about psychosis and ego death.) The title of his fifth solo album says it all: *Jonatan* is Lean at his rawest, a homecoming after a long, dark night of the soul. Lead single “Forever Yung” plays out like a funeral for his former self: Phoenixes rise from the ashes, masks are taken off, a rickety one-note bassline rattles ahead. A handful of bruised love songs crackle with manic energy and magical-realist details: On “Paranoid Paparazzi,” he raps about pills and lullabies in a voice that sounds like he’s just rolled out of bed, and “Babyface Maniacs” could be the theme song of a future *Badlands* remake: “Infamous murderous couple ridin’ through the drylands/Sugarcane kisses and shotguns, candy cane violence.” But at the emotional crux of *Jonatan* are heavy yet hopeful ballads that put chaos in the rearview—like “Swan Song,” on which Lean singsongs, “I wanna know what it feels like to come down from the trip of a lifetime.”
It was a big deal when #KushandOrangeJuice became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter upon the release of the eighth Wiz Khalifa mixtape in April 2010, back when “hashtags” and “trending topics” were cutting-edge promotional tools. Back then, it was practically unheard of for a rapper with no major-label deal to be making such big waves (he’d left his former label, Warner Bros., in 2009). But there was something comforting about the red-eyed Pittsburgh rapper’s laidback mode of rapping about the staples of college dorm-room chatter: weed, women, cars, parties… Did we mention weed? Today, *Kush & Orange Juice* is considered a “blog era” classic—a throwback to a chiller, simpler time. Almost exactly 15 years later, its sequel arrives like a visit from a friend from long ago who’s grown up and gotten richer, but otherwise mostly stayed the same. The 23 terminally chill tracks of *Kush + Orange Juice 2* feature more of the Taylor Gang touchstones you know and love: jet-ski races, beach picnics, fat joints, drop-tops, crab rolls, hot-boxing Ferrari F8s. He’s joined by a loaded roster of guests who haven’t changed much in the past decade and change, either: Curren$y, Smoke DZA, Chevy Woods, Terrace Martin. “I been doing the same thing since I was 19,” Khalifa crows on “I Might Be,” which might be tragic were those things not so timelessly appealing. Throughout the tape, a radio DJ (broadcasting on a station known as W-E-E-D) offers salient advice: “Don’t stay in the house, man. Jump in the car. Ride around with the homies and the homegirls, and put on some of that Wiz Khalifa, y’all.”
From fostering major stars like Kendrick Lamar and SZA to generating rap hitmakers such as Doechii and ScHoolboy Q, Top Dawg Entertainment bears no small responsibility for shaping our current cultural moment in hip-hop and R&B. Given that track record, any TDE signee warrants at least some attention, especially if that artist happens to be from Los Angeles. Long Beach native Ray Vaughn certainly makes as strong a case as possible for his come-up on *The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu*, his substantial debut mixtape for the acclaimed label. On the piano-driven opener “FLOCKER’S remorse,” he sets listeners on a whirlwind tour of his hardscrabble past, one explored in further graphic detail on “XXXL Tee.” Hunger is a well-established lyrical metaphor in rap, for literal and figurative means, but Vaughn makes it as resonant as ever on the shapeshifting “DOLLAR menu.” The troubling reveals of “3PM @ DAIRY’S” will hit like shockwaves for some, while others may find comfort or at least relatability in his contemplative assessments of generational trauma. Yet even when he’s scheming for a way out or at least a way forward, it’s hard not to bounce along when it sounds as danceable as “KLOWN dance” or “LOOK @ GOD.” Skits and segues, including one particularly profane maternal voicemail, somewhat remind of the ones that dotted *good kid, m.A.A.d city*, yet the comparatively looser mixtape feel here allows the rising rapper more flexibility and freedom as he maneuvers through his oft-difficult subject matter. Still, the rather personal nature of songs like “FLAT shasta” and “JANKY moral COMPASS” aligns the rapper with some of his TDE colleagues, past and present. To Vaughn’s credit, though, he avoids relying on flashy features for what amounts to a proper introduction to his boisterous-yet-confessional style. So when labelmate Isaiah Rashad rolls up for “EAST CHATT.” it makes that internal team-up all the more meaningful. By the time the tape wraps up with “SUBURBAN KIDZ,” a thought-provoking summation that touches on themes of addiction and faith, Vaughn’s proverbial star seems well worth ascending.
Like its 2024 predecessor *Pinball*, part of the appeal of *Pinball II* is hearing MIKE step out of the fog of his own introspection and do something a little more sociable. Make no mistake: This is not straightforward rap music. But where *tears of joy*-era MIKE (age 20) sounded hell-bent on unburdening his soul, here he seems not only content with rapping for rap’s sake but resplendent in it. He pulls together West Coast breeziness (“Splat!”), Detroit bounce (“#74,” “WYC4”), weird Cubist R&B (“Dolemite”), and DMV dreamscapes (the Niontay feature “Shaq & Kobe”) with a free-associative joy that manages to be both fun and totally nonlinear. As for his collaborator, you guess he picked the name because of how hard he bubbles.
When Rico Nasty proclaims, “I don’t sound like anyone, these bitches sound like me” on *LETHAL* highlight “BUTTERFLY KISSES,” she has a point. She’s one of the earliest luminaries of the rap-meets-metal marriage that has surfaced over the last decade-plus, and she’s arguably the best at merging those worlds too. The Prince George’s County, Maryland, native has blended a unique variety of chaotic rage-rap since her entry into the music industry in the mid-2010s, and she backs it up with mosh-heavy live shows, mercurial hairdos, and eccentric fashion sense. But since feeling restricted by her persona after the release of 2022’s *Las Ruinas*, she switched things up: She left the major-label system, signed to indie outfit Fueled by Ramen (the label that exalted bands like Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco), and enlisted Imad Royal (The Chainsmokers, Panic! At the Disco) as the executive producer for her next record. Many of her fans already associate her with creating on her own terms, but *LETHAL*<> is even more freewheeling than usual. “SOUL SNATCHER” finds her mutating between a half-dozen rap voices while boasting about her sexual prowess, “SMOKE BREAK” is full of guttural metal screams, “PINK” glows with bubbly femininity, and “CRASH” is a catchy pop-rock cut. The album is sonically unpredictable, but her unbridled confidence and chameleonic versatility hold everything together. Rico Nasty takes time for reflection as well: “SMILE” is a tender ode to her teenage son, and “YOU COULD NEVER” is a career retrospective that shows her earnestly proud of all she’s persevered. “When I reflect back, I know I’m blessed/I’ma be myself, you could be the rest,” she says on the latter. It’s an approach that’s proven effective for Rico, time and time again.
Since he signed to Def Jam at the end of 2021, Benny’s projects have been a mix of underground grit and mainstream appeal—a tough line to walk, but one he walks in style. At seven tracks in 20 minutes, *Excelsior* captures the gruff thrills of the equally brief *The Plugs I Met* series, pairing him with a marquee’s worth of midtempo, heritage-coded, narco-rap heroes including *Plugs* producer Harry Fraud (“Sign Language”), Styles P (“Toxic”), and Boldy James (the exceptionally titled “Duffel Bag Hottie’s Revenge”). You know what they say: You can take the boy out of the street, but…
A broken clock is right twice a day, and a new Boldy James album comes twice a month. Well, not quite, but few rappers have ever been on a run as prolific as the Detroit MC has been in 2025. What makes the barrage of releases so special, however, is the high-quality raps he serves up again and again. On his May 2025 release with LA producer Real Bad Man, *Conversational Pieces*, he keeps the good times rolling like the luxury whips he loves to rap about. Much like the duo’s 2020 collaboration, *Real Bad Boldy*, James and Real Bad Man have an almost telepathic chemistry on *Conversational Pieces*. Whether spitting about cruising the streets late at night on “Tap the Brakes Twice” or luxury vacations on “Aspen,” Boldy floats atop stripped-down beats. It’s a fine line the artists effortlessly walk, balancing minimalism and charisma with an intoxicating nonchalance. It’s a personality Boldy has embodied on this generational run, and lord knows he’s had the practice.
“I’ve been realizing that I really made the album that I needed to heal myself,” Kali Uchis tells Apple Music about *Sincerely,* perhaps her most liberating work yet. The Colombian American singer-songwriter’s catalog has never felt slight or frivolous, whether in English or in Spanish. Yet this full-length follow-up to her 2024 *ORQUÍDEAS* dyad presents as something truly unique, arriving roughly a decade after her promising EP debut *Por Vida*. The majority of the songs here began simply as voice notes, fortuitously captured in inspired moments outside of the confines or pressures of a studio setting. “Messages would just feel like they were directly coming through me, and I just had to get them out,” she says. Given such natural creative origins, it should come as little surprise that the actual process behind the album eschewed industry norms altogether, favoring home recording and unconventional settings. And despite the demonstrated level of guest vocal talent at her fingertips, she opted out of features, too. “When you’re making emotional music, you have to actually dig into difficult subjects,” she says, marking a clear distinction between this piece and its star-powered predecessor. As a result, *Sincerely,* feels disarmingly intimate for what is ostensibly a pop album, even one from as consistently adventurous an artist as Uchis. The evocative moments of opener “Heaven Is a Home…” and closer “ILYSMIH” speak on love in grand and sweeping gestures, the passing of her mother and the birth of her son making understandably profound impacts on the work. Influences like Cocteau Twins and Fiona Apple can be felt in all that comes between those bookends. “There’s a lot of grief, but there’s a lot of joy,” she says, describing what seeps through the veil of “Silk Lingerie,” or the vamps of “Territorial.” Excess punctuation on titles like “Lose My Cool,” and “For: You” hint at the flowing prose of her lyrics as it contributes to an even greater whole. “I think it is a celebration of life in its own way,” she says, “in the sense of finding beauty in the pain and taking the good.”
When you have a voice as pure as Cleo Sol’s, you can sing about nearly anything and have it sound otherworldly. Sol, however, doesn’t take lightly the responsibility of her instrument, treating each opportunity—both in and outside of her role as lead vocalist for Sault—as an opportunity to spread joy, foster hope, and offer up praise to the most high. Sault’s mission across *10*—actually their 12th full-length project—lies squarely inside those ramparts, with Sol working alongside the group’s production engine, Inflo, alongside a slew of other collaborators (dancehall singjay Chronixx, legendary bassist Pino Palladino, rising pianist NIJE) to offer a balm for increasingly trying times. The titles alone—“The Healing,” “Know That You Will Survive,” “We Are Living”—telegraph their psalmic intention. So does Sol’s voice, which sails over Ohio funk in “Power,” recalls the radiance of disco queen Donna Summer on “Real Love,” and anchors uptempo jazz on “The Sound of Healing,” breathing life into relentless optimism. Sault has been nothing if not celebrated over the course of their elusive career, but that adulation notwithstanding, *10* reminds us there’s still hope for us all.
SAILORR, aka Jacksonville, Florida-raised Kayla Le, has built a world that is equal parts vulnerable and protected—sacred but open for visitors. On her full-length debut, she bridges these conflicting tendencies with ease, placing her diaristic songwriting and hilarious social commentary against a backdrop of smooth R&B and alt-pop. She moves from delicate croons that touch on her refusal to shave her legs for a bum partner to a Florida-inspired rap flow about soft-girl summers. Highs, lows, and seemingly every emotion in between: SAILORR owns them all on *FROM FLORIDA’S FINEST*. Her ability to convey these feelings so honestly and relatably comes from her unique perspective as a cultural commentator. “I think that, in general, memes play a large role in how we communicate with others,” she tells Apple Music. “It\'s a very universal thing. I really, really love just being able to be vulnerable with what I’m saying, but also kind of mask it with comedy.” Many of the lowest points of the album find SAILORR employing this “laugh to keep from crying” mentality. “That’s just how I deal with my own emotions. And so, if I can find a fun way to say something, I’ll do that,” she explains. SAILORR is never one to wallow in her despair, though, even on tracks like “DOWN BAD.” “I feel like genuinely that song just perfectly encapsulates what real love will do to a person,” she says. Despite the ecstasy of love, it was a real challenge for her to embody this mindset, which helps illustrate just how much SAILORR has grown since her emergence in 2023: “It’s actually so much easier to write a heartbreak song over a love song. I feel like it’s so much harder to be vulnerable in that way, to be like, ‘Oh, I’m in love, and I’m happy now.’”
After a prodigious 2024 run, which included a late-in-the-year joint project with Kalan.FrFr, Sacramento rap star Mozzy took only a few short months before putting out his next full-length. Not unlike his reflective 2022 album *Survivor’s Guilt*, the 18-track *INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS* doesn’t shy away from the trials and tribulations that drive some of his most memorable recordings. On cuts like the unfiltered “UNDER OATH,” he doles out truths on his own terms, laying waste to those who fail to live by the hood code or, perhaps worse, flaunt it without regard. He dismisses pocket watchers and cautions the opps on the ominous “KATTA CLIPS,” proudly standing on his principles for the existentially broader “KEEP CALLIN MY NAME.” That clear commitment to street-level ethics extends to some of his invited guests too, namely EST Gee on “DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR” and Polo G on “WHO WANT WAR.” As locked in with his contemporaries as he is, Mozzy also recognizes the Californian hip-hop lineage that precedes him on “PAC PROUD” and “HELLA HYPHY.”
As the first woman to sign to Drake’s OVO Sound label, Dutch singer-songwriter Naomi Sharon wasted no time in matching the high expectations set for her debut album, *Obsidian*, released in 2023. With her EP *The Only Love We Know*, Sharon aims to exceed them, diving into the emotional complexity of moving on from experiences that no longer serve your happiness. Jordan Ullman (of R&B duo Majid Jordan fame) helms production with assists from talent such as Alex Lustig (Drake, Lil Wayne) and hitmaker Justin Tranter—who applies their polished pop pen to “Can We Do This Over”—crafting a solid base of intricate but spacious instrumentals for Sharon’s spotless vocals to build on. “Bittersweet” calls for her to echo and boom with rich reverb; with “Soft Like Dawn” she allows it to float and drift over a haunting bassline sweetened by soothing guitar riffs. Sharon saves the best for last, powering the dynamic energy of the title track with stacked choral harmonies that soar above the steady, linear percussion of the otherwise unobtrusive beat. *The Only Love We Know* may deal in the language of letting go, but Sharon’s arresting performances compel the listener to stick around for more.
“First Day Out” may have thrust Tee Grizzley into breakout rap stardom, but his subsequent eight years of work and dedication have kept him in the conversation. A key and respected part of the contemporary Detroit hip-hop vanguard with some commercial hits under his belt, he brings both confidence and gravity to *Forever My Moment*. As the opening title track shifts from him spitting raw and a cappella to going in on a bone-chilling Helluva beat, he begins reflecting on how fresh money changed his situation and relationships. This lay-of-the-land purview pervades much of the project’s runtime, with Grizzley shaking his head at both the state of the game and its players on “Jalen Hurtski” and “Rick Jameski.” On the provocatively titled (though in no way political) “They Shot at Trump,” he cautions bros and opps alike that anybody can get touched in these streets. Should anyone unaware question Grizzley’s credibility, real moments like “Stash-house in Dearborn” and “Robbery 9” will quell any and all dissent.
Música mexicana superstars Fuerza Regida took their sound in an ambitious new direction on 2024’s *PERO NO TE ENAMORES*. Empowered by the success of their prior Marshmello team-up “HARLEY QUINN,” group leader Jesus Ortiz Paz (aka JOP) and his cohorts embraced the opportunity to infuse their style with seemingly disparate genres like Jersey club, resulting in a risk-taking album that will forever stand out in their high-quality discography. Yet not long thereafter came *MALA MÍA*, a surprise joint-EP release with Grupo Frontera that inherently hinted at a potential pivot away from the dance-floor thump. By the time the riveting corrido “Por Esos Ojos” arrived a couple months later, it became clear that JOP intended for their next project to change course once more. That said, anyone who’d dare presume that *111XPANTIA* is somehow backtracking or retreating from the boldness of *PERO NO TE ENAMORES* simply fails to understand the breadth of Fuerza Regida’s artistry. While the self-described Jersey corridos side of their work is conspicuously absent here, what remains are a dozen tracks that burst and blossom with fearless lyricism and intricate arrangements. Evoking the iconically cinematic Nino Rota score, opener “GodFather” distills mafioso-epic intensity into an unapologetically sordid account of luxe hedonism. JOP sounds arguably more profane than ever on the riveting crime-story corrido “ayy weyy” and the sexually explicit “peliculiando.” Electronic elements play a subtler role than before, present as a warming drone at the start of “caperuza” and via synth bass swells underneath the lush “Nocturno.”
