Hiphopheads Best of 2023

Part of what makes Danny Brown and JPEGMAFIA such a natural pair is that they stick out in similar ways. They’re too weird for the mainstream but too confrontational for the subtle or self-consciously progressive set. And while neither of them would be mistaken for traditionalists, the sample-scrambling chaos of tracks like “Burfict!” and “Shut Yo Bitch Ass Up/Muddy Waters” situate them in a lineage of Black music that runs through the comedic ultraviolence of the Wu-Tang Clan back through the Bomb Squad to Funkadelic, who proved just because you were trippy didn’t mean you couldn’t be militant, too.

A great deal obviously occurred in the five years between *ASTROWORLD* and *UTOPIA*, Travis Scott’s third and fourth solo studio albums, respectively. Still, looking at hip-hop and rap music specifically, few could deny the extraordinary impact his music had on a young generation of emerging artists, their radical vocal and production style choices so overtly informed by his own vision. His commercial success at least partially hinged on the futuristic, otherworldly sound and image he cultivated, with listeners tuning in just to hear what fresh level of the game he’d unlocked. Thus the collective anticipation for *UTOPIA* could not have been higher. Without fail, Scott delivers something only he could have delivered, a thoroughly riveting album that transmutes star power and experimental artistry into a marvelous musical monument. The opening boom-bap bombast of “HYAENA,” the funkadelic crunch of “MODERN JAM,” and the proggy thump of “CIRCUS MAXIMUS” are just a few examples of how he has so lavishly expanded his sonic universe with this record. He now seems to enjoy a certain austerity, as on “I KNOW ?” and “LOST FOREVER,” but remains incapable of completely escaping the maximalist thrills of his past. The deliberately concealed guest list contains quite a few stars and superstars, and shrewd listeners may enjoy trying to identify them all without a cheat sheet. Drake’s unmistakable baritone leads the shape-shifting “MELTDOWN,” while Playboi Carti unspools his magnificent mumble over the buzzy “FE!N.” But when Beyoncé arrives for “DELRESTO (ECHOES),” its muted club contents echoing her own dance music renaissance, she provides a big diva energy that luxuriates amid Scott’s cutting edge.

*Pink Tape* feels like the first time we’ve heard everything Lil Uzi Vert can be in one place. Club music (“Just Wanna Rock”) and trap metal (“Suicide Doors,” “Werewolf”), pop hybrids (“Pluto to Mars,” the Nicki Minaj-featuring “Endless Fashion”) and pure menace (“Aye,” “Fire Alarm”). The melodies pour out of them like water (“x2,” “Mama, I’m Sorry”) and their cadence, flow, and energy can be astonishing—they make rapping sound like a physical feat (“Flooded the Face”). Like *Eternal Atake*, the prospect of taking it all in at once can seem totally overwhelming, but in a way, that’s the point: While they can be exacting about details (some of these tracks have been under construction since 2017), the experience of their music is like standing in a big bath of neon light—a cumulative approach that puts them in a growing tradition of mood-first rappers like Future and Young Thug. And while they’ve got some eccentricities, they’re not half as weird as hip-hop’s conservative wing might have you think. Do they think big? Yeah. Listen broadly? That, too. They just want to cram all the stuff they love into one place no matter how little it seems to fit together, from *Dragon Ball Z* to Marilyn Manson to jewelers most civilians have never heard of. Who are you to yuck their yum?

The first song on Lil Yachty’s *Let’s Start Here.* is nearly seven minutes long and features breathy singing from Yachty, a freewheeling guitar solo, and a mostly instrumental second half that calls to mind TV depictions of astral projecting. “the BLACK seminole.” is an extremely fulfilling listen, but is this the same guy who just a few months earlier delivered the beautifully off-kilter and instantly viral “Poland”? Better yet, is this the guy who not long before that embedded himself with Detroit hip-hop culture to the point of a soft rebrand as *Michigan Boy Boat*? Sure is. It’s just that, as he puts it on “the BLACK seminole.,” he’s got “No time to joke around/The kid is now a man/And the silence is filled with remarkable sounds.” We could call the silence he’s referring to the years since his last studio album, 2020’s *Lil Boat 3*, but he’s only been slightly less visible than we’re used to, having released the aforementioned *Michigan Boy Boat* mixtape while also lending his discerning production ear to Drake and 21 Savage’s ground-shaking album *Her Loss*. Collaboration, though, is the name of the game across *Let’s Start Here.*, an album deeply indebted to some as yet undisclosed psych-rock influences, with repeated production contributions from onetime blog-rock darlings Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson and Patrick Wimberly, as well as multiple appearances from Diana Gordon, a Queens, New York-hailing singer who made a noise during the earliest parts of her career as Wynter Gordon. Also present are R&B singer Fousheé and Beaumont, Texas, rap weirdo Teezo Touchdown, though rapping is infrequent. In fact, none of what Yachty presents here—which includes dalliances with Parliament-indebted acid funk (“running out of time”), ’80s synthwave (“sAy sOMETHINg,” “paint THE sky”), disco (“drive ME crazy!”), symphonic prog rock (“REACH THE SUNSHINE.”), and a heady monologue called “:(failure(:”—is in any way reflective of any of Yachty’s previous output. Which begs the question, where did all of this come from? You needn’t worry about that, says Yachty on the “the ride-,” singing sternly: “Don’t ask no questions on the ride.”

Hip-hop free spirits Aminé and KAYTRANADA broke through around the same time, their respective mid-2010s album debuts having dropped within roughly a year of one another. As such, few should be all that surprised to see their amalgamated KAYTRAMINÉ come to fruition. The sweet soul sensations and razor-sharpened verbiage of initial singles “Rebuke” and the Pharrell-assisted “4EVA” accurately previewed their full-length’s scenic purview, a POV of a righteous escapade through the post-Neptunes/post-Timbaland lineage. Hyper sexual exploits, luxury smackdowns, and much more await listeners on “letstalkaboutit” and “Ugh Ugh,” as well as the aggressively funky cuts “STFU3” and “Who He Iz.” Formidable rapper guests Big Sean and Freddie Gibbs raise the pressure considerably, while Snoop Dogg himself brings his experience in similar sonic spaces to the sparse and synthy “Eye.”

“Warning: no bars,” reads a label on the packaging of the first-ever solo album from André 3000. The idea of such a thing has haunted hip-hop fandom’s collective consciousness for nearly two decades: a full-length solo effort from Outkast’s Gemini counterpart, not counting his half of *Speakerboxxx/The Love Below*. In the Outkast years, André was known as the far-out yin to Big Boi’s earthier yang, and while the latter pursued a solo career following the duo’s 2006 hiatus, Three Stacks forged a less orthodox path. He designed clothes, produced a cartoon series, and took on a handful of acting roles, popping up every so often to rap a guest verse for Frank Ocean or Beyoncé. Meanwhile, he walked around playing the flute—a habit that, when caught on camera, was something of a meme, but had privately become a passion. The title of the first track on *New Blue Sun*, whose 87 minutes of cosmic flute experimentation are entirely wordless, is at once a caveat and a mission statement: “I Swear, I Really Wanted to Make a \'Rap\' Album But This Is Literally the Way the Wind Blew Me This Time.” In a poetic sense, it’s also a truth: The instruments he and his collaborators play here (contrabass flutes, Mayan flutes, bamboo flutes) are powered by wind, or, rather, breath. And it’s reflective of the kismet which guided the album into existence: He hadn’t intended to release his flute music until a chance Erewhon run-in with Carlos Niño, the Los Angeles percussionist and producer of spiritually oriented jazz. Basement jam sessions with Niño became the series of improvised compositions that make up the eight tracks of *New Blue Sun*, along with a community of like-minded players, including guitarist Nate Mercereau and keyboardist Surya Botofasina. From the players’ deepening chemistry, transcendent songs materialized—not unlike the bonds that once inspired the Dungeon Family from which Outkast emerged in early-’90s Atlanta. And though its meandering and meditative (though often hysterically titled) compositions exist in the tradition of Alice Coltrane, Laraaji, and Yusef Lateef more than anything conceivably hip-hop-adjacent, they’re animated by a similar spirit to that which made Outkast’s music stand apart: a dauntless dedication to one’s own vision, alongside a belief in the power of creative communion. In that sense, it’s the André 3000 album we’d been waiting for all along.

It’s not easy being ahead of your time: You have to wait years for the world to catch up. Such was the case when an 18-year-old Chief Keef followed up his anthemic major-label debut (2012’s *Finally Rich*) with a pair of self-released 2013 mixtapes (August’s *Bang, Pt. 2* and October’s *Almighty So*) that sounded obscure in comparison, prompting many a claim that he’d fallen off as quickly as he’d gotten on. These days, you can hear echoes of both projects everywhere, in particular *Almighty So*, the better of the two. You might argue that the slurry, intuitive style which has dominated the past decade of rap began here. Eleven long years later, the project’s sequel arrives after a half decade of teasing. (Keef previewed *Almighty So 2*’s initial cover art way back in 2019.) Hip-hop’s reinvented itself a dozen times over in that time span, perhaps the only constant being Keef’s enduring influence. On *Almighty So 2*, the 28-year-old veteran sounds as if he’s well aware of just how tall his legacy looms. “I done been through so much smoke to where I couldn’t even see myself,” he raps in his oft-copied swing on “Treat Myself” before busting out a classic Sosa-ism: “Diamonds shining off my charm, I think I Christmas tree’d myself!” He spits fire and brimstone over sinister church choirs on “Jesus,” puffs out his chest on the soulful “Runner,” and offers up the most demented Scarface impression since Future circa 2011 on “Tony Montana Flow.” And on “Believe,” the former teenage phenom is now a man who’s done some soul-searching in his time off from shaping the sound of modern rap.

*Just because I been on a run doesn\'t mean I don\'t know how to walk away I\'ll let you get your bars off over text but don\'t forget you\'re talking to Drake Personality Morality Immeasurable salary 100 dollar bills that I\'m counting like a calorie Shells for the peanut gallery Probably better off with Mallory or Valerie You tearing up and sniffling while reacting like some allergies Saying what I mean isn\'t mean if you\'re really listening - it\'s reality* — Drake In the dog days of summer 2023, Drake did a very Drake thing: Just before embarking on tour, he revealed that he’d written a poetry book called *Titles Ruin Everything*. To spread the news, he took out ads in several major newspapers. On them was a QR code which led to another announcement: “I made an album to go with the book. They say they miss the old Drake girl don’t tempt me. FOR ALL THE DOGS.” The “old Drake” line, as real heads know, is a reference to “Headlines,” a song from the early days of Champagne Papi’s rise from Canadian curiosity to global superstar. The old Drake was an underdog, a former child actor and Lil Wayne protégé who blended hip-hop and R&B in a way that would indelibly change both. And the new Drake? He’s a 36-year-old father of one who’s responsible for a not-small percentage of Toronto’s annual tourist economy and who, with the release of “Slime You Out,” is one No. 1 single away from tying Michael Jackson on the all-time list. If there’s anything Old Drake and New Drake can agree on, it’s hour-and-a-half-long blockbuster albums that master the fine art of score-settling. (Speaking of fine art, that’s a drawing from his five-year-old son Adonis on the cover.) Drizzy’s gone through plenty of phases in his 15 years in the running as one of hip-hop’s GOATs: albums full of wintry grime and drill, or breezy dance albums for the baddies to turn up to on girls’ night. *For All the Dogs*, his eighth studio album, has more in common with 2011’s *Take Care*, the star-making opus loaded with luxuriant beats and big-name features. But instead of drunk-dialing his exes, Drake’s…well, he’s still doing that every now and again. Mostly, though, he’s with his dogs. The album’s loose framework is a late-night local radio program: BARK Radio, live from Chapel Hill, whose hosts include Teezo Touchdown, Drake’s crush/idol Sade, and the occasional chorus of hounds. This particular broadcast is a sumptuous banquet of classically Drake techniques, starting with the smirking fake-out that is intro track “Virginia Beach.” (If you know, you know.) There’s the requisite Houston worship on “Screw the World,” the new jack swing peacocking of “Amen,” and the swanky-sounding “Bahamas Promises,” which opens with a couplet only Drizzy could pull off: “Broken pinkie promises/You fucked up our Bahamas trip.” He’s scoffing at rap’s NPCs with J. Cole on “First Person Shooter” and taking relationship advice from Future on “What Would Pluto Do.” On “BBL Love,” he drops an all-timer for the “that’s so Drake” archives, musing, “They say love’s like a BBL, you won’t know if it’s real until you feel one,” as if anyone has ever said such a thing whose name isn’t Aubrey Drake Graham. But it isn’t officially a Drake album till you get to the song with the city name and timestamp in the title. On “8am in Charlotte,” over a boom-bap beat from Conductor Williams, Drake presides over his dogs like a coach before the big game, initiates breakups at five-star restaurants, and unleashes a barrage of knee-slappers you can imagine him deploying 20 years from now at his eventual Vegas residency. In the video, the most successful rapper of his generation wears a hoodie emblazoned with “HATE SURVIVOR.” Never change, Drake, never change.

No one could accuse Sonny Moore of being unmotivated in the years following 2014’s *Recess*—the electronic maverick better known as Skrillex kept up a seemingly endless stream of singles, remixes, high-profile collabs (Justin Bieber, Travis Scott), and co-signs of rising artists—but the lack of a follow-up album was nevertheless conspicuous. Nine years later, with *Quest for Fire*, he more than makes up for lost time. At once sprawling and punchy, the 15-track LP offers the fullest picture yet of the visionary producer’s range. Skrillex’s fondness for bass is well-represented: Virtually every track is flooded with voluminous low-end frequencies, typically in the form of stonking FM patches that glisten like oil slicks. The opening “Leave Me Like This” rides a wriggly riff straight out of the UK style known simply as bassline; “Tears,” a collaboration with UK producer Joker and Sleepnet, an artist from Noisia’s orbit, pays tribute to old-school South London bass music. Yet dubstep, for all its importance to Skrillex’s origins, is little more than a footnote on *Quest for Fire*. Stylistically, the album covers lush, melodic garage (“Butterflies,” with Starrah and Four Tet), Middle Eastern club (“XENA,” with Palestinian singer/composer Nai Barghouti), futuristic dancehall (the gargantuan “Rumble,” with Fred again.. and Flowdan), and more. What it all has in common, beyond the seismic undertow, are Skrillex’s filigreed vocal chops and intricate drum programming, which continue to unlock new levels of hyperkinetic energy. Skrillex has always tended to pack the studio with pals, and *Quest for Fire* is his most collaborative effort yet, stuffed with names both big and small. Missy Elliott drops new verses (and a clever interpolation of “Work It”) on the hip-house anthem “RATATA.” Rave dreamweaver Porter Robinson and hitmaker Bibi Bourelly add emotional uplift to “Still Here (with the ones that I came with),” a teary-eyed garage banger. The most surprising cameo might come from Eli Keszler, an experimental percussionist better known for working with avant-garde figures like Laurel Halo. Sometimes, the collaborators help lead Skrillex to some unexpected places: Who knows what kind of alchemy resulted in “TOO BIZARRE (juked),” in which rapper Swae Lee, post-everything producer Siiickbrain, and bass musician Posij come together in an unprecedented fusion of R&B, juke, pop punk, and screamo. Yet no matter who ends up in the booth with Moore, there’s no mistaking who’s behind the boards. Simply put, nobody else sounds like Skrillex, and no matter how far he roams, his sound is always unequivocally his.

Is there anyone who loves making music more than Sonny Moore? Long after Skrillex had graduated to some of the world’s biggest festival stages, he could still be found DJing pretty much anywhere: basement clubs, house parties, hotel rooms—if there was a set of decks, chances are he’d be jumping on it. So perhaps it’s no surprise that just a day after unveiling *Quest for Fire*, his long-awaited follow-up to his 2014 debut album, *Recess*, he surprise-released *Don’t Get Too Close*, adding 12 more wildly varied tracks to *Quest*’s already deeply diverse 15. Only “Way Back,” a cottony jungle tune featuring PinkPantheress and Trippie Redd, and the title song, a melancholy collaboration with Norwegian producer Lido and German Haitian hitmaker Bibi Bourelly, were released before the album dropped. Their shared softness turns out to have been a harbinger of what to expect: *Don’t Get Too Close* is a largely low-key companion to the resolutely banging *Quest for Fire*. The beats are smoother, favoring slinky house, garage, and trap over hard-charging bass music, and Skrillex’s featured vocalists lean toward cloudy R&B and emo-rap vibes. It’s an altogether more muted affair than its immediate predecessor. There are still plenty of surprises in store. The BEAM collaboration “Selecta” sounds like a deep-house dispatch from the OVO universe. Plucked harp gives the 2-stepping “Ceremony,” featuring sweetly glum verses from Yung Lean and Bladee, a feel akin to Craig David’s Y2K-era UKG. And a triptych of sentimental trap ballads—“Summertime,” “Bad for Me,” and “3am”—sets up a sumptuous R&B song featuring Justin Bieber at his pleadingest. But the secret heart of the album is its title track. Performed on what sounds like steel pans, it’s nearly ambient, and the softest thing Skrillex has ever done; it turns out to be the most personal, too. Bourelly sings first, sketching a picture of teenage depression and musical salvation; then it’s Skrillex’s turn. “I’m on my PC/I see famous people/I think they’re like me/So why aren’t we equal?” he sings, before joining Bourelly on the chorus: “Don’t get too close/You don’t even know me.” After this profoundly unguarded song, the capstone of two albums featuring the most ambitious work of Moore’s career, it feels like we know him a lot better.

The new album 'DON’T GET TOO CLOSE' out now iTunes : apple.co/3SeYXMe Spotify : spoti.fi/3XHh8vi Amazon : amzn.to/3XHdlhC

*“These ideologies are haunting.”* —Drake In the dog days of summer 2023, Drake did a very Drake thing: Just before embarking on tour, he revealed that he’d written a poetry book called *Titles Ruin Everything*. To spread the news, he took out ads in several major newspapers. On them was a QR code which led to another announcement: “I made an album to go with the book. They say they miss the old Drake girl don’t tempt me. FOR ALL THE DOGS.” The “old Drake” line, as real heads know, is a reference to “Headlines,” a song from the early days of Champagne Papi’s rise from Canadian curiosity to global superstar. The old Drake was an underdog, a former child actor and Lil Wayne protégé who blended hip-hop and R&B in a way that would indelibly change both. And the new Drake? He’s a 36-year-old father of one who’s responsible for a not-small percentage of Toronto’s annual tourist economy and who, with the release of “Slime You Out,” is one No. 1 single away from tying Michael Jackson on the all-time list. (By the time his Scary Hours version dropped six weeks later, he’d tied it.) If there’s anything Old Drake and New Drake can agree on, it’s hour-and-a-half-long blockbuster albums that master the fine art of score-settling. Drizzy’s gone through plenty of phases in his 15 years in the running as one of hip-hop’s GOATs: albums full of wintry grime and drill, or breezy dance albums for the baddies to turn up to on girls’ night. *For All the Dogs*, his eighth studio album, has more in common with 2011’s *Take Care*, the star-making opus loaded with luxuriant beats and big-name features. But instead of drunk-dialing his exes, Drake’s…well, he’s still doing that every now and again. Mostly, though, he’s with his dogs. The album’s loose framework is a late-night local radio program: BARK Radio, live from Chapel Hill, whose hosts include Teezo Touchdown, Drake’s crush/idol Sade, and the occasional chorus of hounds. This particular broadcast is a sumptuous banquet of classically Drake techniques, starting with the smirking fake-out that is intro track “Virginia Beach.” (If you know, you know.) There’s the requisite Houston worship on “Screw the World,” the new jack swing peacocking of “Amen,” and the swanky-sounding “Bahamas Promises,” which opens with a couplet only Drizzy could pull off: “Broken pinkie promises/You fucked up our Bahamas trip.” He’s scoffing at rap’s NPCs with J. Cole on “First Person Shooter” and taking relationship advice from Future on “What Would Pluto Do.” On “BBL Love,” he drops an all-timer for the “that’s so Drake” archives, musing, “They say love’s like a BBL, you won’t know if it’s real until you feel one,” as if anyone has ever said such a thing whose name isn’t Aubrey Drake Graham. But it isn’t officially a Drake album till you get to the song with the city name and timestamp in the title. On “8am in Charlotte,” over a boom-bap beat from Conductor Williams, Drake presides over his dogs like a coach before the big game, initiates breakups at five-star restaurants, and unleashes a barrage of knee-slappers you can imagine him deploying 20 years from now at his eventual Vegas residency. In the video, the most successful rapper of his generation wears a hoodie emblazoned with “HATE SURVIVOR.” Six weeks later he returned via Instagram teaser, dressed like Humphrey Bogart, with a pinot noir in hand and an announcement: Rather than rest on his laurels, he’d recorded the third entry in his Scary Hours series in a spontaneous five-day blitz. “It’s like a storm before the calm—we’ll get to the vacation later,” he raps on “Stories About My Brother,” a song made to be played in high-dollar LA supper clubs. There’s a lot of action packed into the project’s six additional tracks: a Yeezy mention in “Red Button,” a refutation of Old Drake’s romantic ways on the scathing “The Shoe Fits,” a second J. Cole verse on “Evil Ways,” and a rousing chorus of “Fuck my ex” over a beat with all the pomp and circumstance of a graduation anthem on closer “You Broke My Heart.”

If, at any point over the past three decades, Nas’ status was ever in question, his 2020s run with Hit-Boy shut down any and all such speculation. The Queensbridge-bred rapper earned his spot in the GOAT debate well before the critically acclaimed and award-winning *King’s Disease* dropped in 2020, and the full-length sequels to that album only strengthened his position, not to mention his already legendary pen. Yet when *Magic* dropped on Christmas Eve 2021, listeners felt the difference. This was Nasir Jones operating on a decidedly different vibe, rapping for the love of it for a half hour straight over some of his go-to producer’s most gratifying beats. A sort of modern-day parallel to his archival *Lost Tapes* compilation, *Magic 2* serves his fans with a veteran’s ear and a dexterous flow. “Abracadabra” offers a rigorous recap of this era of his career, nodding back to his past while marveling at it all. He pulls off a Queens coup with the homegrown “Office Hours,” reuniting with 50 Cent on record for the first time in some 20 years. Hit-Boy’s instrumentals vary between the understated chill of “Black Magic” and the melodic boom-bap revival of “Pistols on Your Album Cover.” The closing bonus of “One Mic, One Gun” with 21 Savage feels less like a victory lap than a leveling up.

One of the first things Bad Bunny fans will notice about *nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana* is its conspicuous lack of reggaetón. Following the vibey highs of the preceding *Un Verano Sin Ti*, which included some of the biggest songs he’s ever done within the genre, some might have anticipated more in the vein of “Me Porto Bonito” or “Moscow Mule.” Yet limiting his reggaetón exposure to a mere two tracks here, “PERRO NEGRO” and the closing “UN PREVIEW,” marks one of many deliberate decisions made by the Puerto Rican superstar on his fifth proper album. If fans haven’t quite figured it out just yet, El Conejo Malo does whatever he wants. (This is, after all, the same artist who named his 2020 album *Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana*.) He speaks rather directly to his unwillingness to compromise or change for anyone else on “NO ME QUIERO CASAR,” which compounds its throwback nods so adroitly that one might miss the subtle Yandel sample near the end. More often than not, *nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana* finds him getting things off his chest, beginning with the unapologetically direct opener “NADIE SABE.” Those who’ve been with Bad Bunny since the days of “Soy Peor” and “Chambea” will welcome this overt return to his bold trapero roots, something that echoes through “MONACO,” “VOU 787,” and the especially cutting “GRACIAS POR NADA.” Yet there’s more to *nadie sabe lo que va a pasar mañana* than some rapper rebound. Far from the beach-based pop that peppered *Un Verano Sin Ti*, here he embraces more nocturnal styles on the thumping tech-house cut “HIBIKI” and the frenetic Jersey club variant “WHERE SHE GOES.” He even ventures into the Latin drill fray for “THUNDER Y LIGHTNING,” with lyrics that demand a rewind, before indulging in some Voltio y Notch nostalgia with the triumphant “ACHO PR.” Both of those songs, and several others, include some rather stellar vocal guests, but Bad Bunny would rather his listeners experience those features in real time. To borrow a sentiment from the album’s title, nobody knows what tomorrow brings, so we might as well live—and listen—in the moment.

slowthai says that *UGLY* is the record he’s always wanted to make but he never previously had the tools to do it. In the aftermath of the grueling self-examination of 2021’s *TYRON*, the rapper born Tyron Frampton found himself disoriented and depressed. “I was quiet and down and wasn’t finding anything exciting. I wasn’t feeling myself,” he tells Apple Music. “Delving into this gave me that freedom again. I felt inspired. I wanted to do something new and challenge myself, rather than just doing what’s expected of me.” Drawing on the bands he loved as a teenager, Nirvana and Radiohead among them, slowthai worked with producers Dan Carey, Kwes Darko, Sega Bodega, and Zach Nahome to assemble a crack team of players around him, including multi-instrumentalist Ethan P. Flynn, beabadoobee guitarist Jacob Bugden, Shygirl, Jockstrap’s Taylor Skye, and drummer Liam Toon as well as his pals Fontaines D.C. The idea, says Frampton, was to move away from the writing processes of his first two records and build these songs from jams then record them live. “I wanted to find the song naturally without it being like, ‘This sound and this sound and this sound,’ and it’s all in the computer,” he says. What’s emerged is slowthai’s most dynamic and inventive album yet—a record that takes in pulverizing electro beats, wiry post-punk grooves, thumping indie, neo-soul ballads, and widescreen rock but still sounds like part of the same whole. That’s mainly down to Frampton’s front-and-center delivery, his creative reset coinciding with a period of contemplation. “It’s about finding the love within yourself, taking time to be the best version of yourself,” he says. “It’s reflecting on life, on your journey, and also going back to being the kid, being free rather than chained to a genre.” *UGLY* is the sound of slowthai liberated. He talks us through it, track by track. **“Yum”** “This was a track that I didn\'t even think was going to be on the album. We’d been jamming, and Dan loves that modular stuff. I was like, ‘Let\'s make something fucking hard.’ We started jamming and I was taking the piss, saying stuff that I wouldn\'t normally say, stuff where I’d usually be like, ‘Oh no, I can\'t say that,’ and then that\'s how it came. It entails being pulled into two different directions—fatherhood and growing up and maturing as a person and then being pulled to friendship and all the things we take part in and indulge in.” **“Selfish”** “The title is self-explanatory. It’s about doing more for yourself, how you’ve got to love yourself and before you do that you can’t love anyone else, taking time for you and doing what you need rather than what\'s expected of you or what people think is right, removing all that shit. At the end of the day, it\'s your world and you’re the one in the driving seat. No one else is going to do that. No one is there other than your mum when you\'re born, and no one\'s there when you die. It\'s just you, so you’ve got to make sure you are number one.” **“Sooner”** “This is about the journey to get to where you get to realize you didn\'t need to go anywhere in the first place, how all the realizations I\'m having, I already knew at the beginning. I\'ve gone on this journey of being lost to get back to being young and carefree and not giving a fuck and doing stuff because I want to try it, rather than being like, ‘Oh, that\'s not what I like.’ Just being a kid again, driving around in the 306 feeling lovesick, not giving a fuck about anything and no worries. That\'s when I was at my happiest, when I was living for living and I didn\'t have the responsibilities, the ideals of that and the outlook at that time. That\'s what it means to me, that I wish I got there sooner.” **“Feel Good”** “When I made this, I didn\'t feel good, I felt like shit. This is my way of having a mantra. Everyone\'s got a song that they put on when they\'re sad to make them feel good, or they might have a song they just want to cry to, but I wanted to make a song for when I feel shit so I could just get up and be, ‘No, I feel good!’ I also wanted to make a song that was like a really repetitive pop song—like a pop song that\'s not a pop song.” **“Never Again”** “For me, this is like *West Side Story*, where there’s a kid who goes and follows his dreams, he had a relationship when he was young, goes and lives his life, comes back to his home, he\'s achieved what he wants to achieve, and then the girl that was his childhood sweetheart has gone and fallen in love with some other guy, had a family, the other guy is a wrong’un, then at the end it’s a tragedy because he doesn’t get the girl ’cause she couldn’t be saved. The whole point of it is, ‘Never again, I’ll never be consumed by chasing these things to leave behind something when I could have saved someone.’ It’s the love story.” **“Fuck It Puppet”** “I refer to the therapist in the first song, and the therapist told me about the ‘fuck-it puppet,’ like when you go to the pub with your mates and it\'s like, ‘Yeah, just link up with the boys,’ and they\'re like, ‘Have a drink!’ and you’re like, ‘Nah,’ then you get this little man or this little crow or whatever it is—everyone’s got one—and it goes, ‘Go on, bruv, just have one,’ and you\'re like, ‘No, man!’ and he’s like, ‘Go on, have one!’ so you have one, and then you have two and he\'s like, ‘Go on, have another!’ Then you\'re like, ‘No, I\'m going to go yard,’ and he\'s like, ‘No, you\'re good, you\'re good, come on, bruv,’ and the next minute you’re 20 deep, mashed up. It’s that voice that\'s in all of us that tells us it\'s a good idea when we all know it\'s a bad one.” **“HAPPY”** “This is the anthem of the album. It\'s saying that everything that you do, none of it is worth more than happiness, how I\'ll give it all up in a heartbeat just to smile and just to have the true feeling of happiness and to see other people happy. That\'s the journey, realizing none of this shit matters but the only thing that does is feeling good and being happy.” **“UGLY”** “It’s based on when the war between Russia and Ukraine started. It made me reflect on the patriarchy and how people fight other people\'s wars, how we’re sold this dream, society tells us that we should be a part of this thing. People tell you all these things, like the sun shines out your arsehole, just to get you to do certain things but their intentions necessarily aren’t for the good. That\'s why it\'s U-G-L-Y—an acronym that stands for ‘You\'ve got to love yourself/You can\'t be part of anything else.’ The first title for the album was \'Wotz Funny,\' but I didn\'t feel like it captured it enough. Then I loved ‘UGLY,’ I love the sentiment of it and it going against the norm.” **“Falling”** “When I was making this, I was imagining a monkey in an astronaut suit floating through space, floating endlessly, and he’s not going anywhere and he’s not got anywhere to be. The message of it is feeling like you’re a shell of yourself, you’re falling deeper into the abyss in your mind and you’re in autopilot through your life, floating through every day and not present in any moment. It’s falling out of love, falling out of life.” **“Wotz Funny”** “In life, when you’ve come from a different place and you\'ve had a different upbringing—like I didn\'t have the picket fence, family, mum and dad together, I wasn’t raised in that way, so my normality is different to the people that had that and who were cotton-wooled and sheltered, so the things that are funny to me and funny to a mass majority of people in the world, some people can\'t understand and we’re judged for it. Here I’m stating all the things that ain’t funny that people tend to laugh at—the junkie teacher that becomes homeless on the street, the single mum that\'s working hard, the geezer who’s a drunk who bullies all his mates up and he’s the hard nut on the estate. The irony of all these things is that it’s not funny at all but that\'s what tends to be funny to a lot of people.” **“Tourniquet”** “This is about cutting pieces of yourself away in order to grow, similar to \'Dead Leaves\' on *Nothing Great About Britain*. It’s about burning all the bridges and things that we\'re connected to, all these thoughts and theories of what is right and what\'s wrong and moving past it and just getting to a new place, amputating them pieces of ourselves in order to move forward. It\'s like, if you were trapped under a bus and you had to cut your legs off or die, what would you do? You\'d cut them off, wouldn\'t you?” **“25% Club”** “This was the song I wrote before ‘Yum.’ They’re twins, like Harry Potter and Voldemort’s wands. It’s about how every person has something in them that\'s missing that we\'re all in search of—that question of ‘why am I here?’ that we are never going to understand. It\'s a thing of wanting and longing, and I don\'t think you\'ll ever find that missing piece. It\'s always going to be 25% missing. The 25% Club is the club where we all reside and you find the person or the thing or whatever it is that makes up that other 25% to make you 100%, to make you complete. I think in a world where we long to be complete, it\'s a myth, it\'s a delusion of grandeur that you\'re going to get this missing piece of yourself and it\'s going to make you feel whole.”

slowthai’s third album may show a side of him that people haven’t heard before but he sees it as the fullest picture yet. “The first album was the sound of where I’m from and everything I thought I knew,” he says. “The second album is what was relevant to me at that moment in time, the present. And this album is completely me — about how I feel and what I want to be… it’s everything I’ve been leading up to.”

Two of hip-hop’s most prolific contemporary artists, laidback rapper Larry June and production vet The Alchemist, seem to have plotted *The Great Escape* for some time. If prior co-credited appearances on projects by mutuals Curren$y and Jay Worthy signaled their clear studio chemistry, 2022’s *Spaceships on the Blade* standout “Breakfast in Monaco” left little to no doubt that the two absolutely needed to drop a proper album together. Following the anticipatory loosie teases of “60 Days” and “89 Earthquake,” this 15-track effort exceeds expectations by formally bringing June’s entrepreneurial ethos of health and wealth into ALC’s unparalleled sonic world-building. Visions of luxury cars, presidential suites, and, of course, fresh-squeezed orange juice run through June lyrics over the grind dates “Porsches in Spanish” and “Turkish Cotton.” The pair’s no-expense-spared journey takes them to Detroit, where Boldy James spits confidently through a perpetual snarl on “Art Talk” and Big Sean speaks on the long game with unapologetic frankness on “Palisades, CA.” Elsewhere, East Coast renaissance man Action Bronson drops a dizzyingly reference-heavy verse on the jazz-infused “Solid Plan,” while Wiz Khalifa elucidates his core values on the psychedelic soul-powered “What Happened to the World?”

The question of whether you want an MC like Earl Sweatshirt and a producer like The Alchemist to test each other’s limits is on some level an existential one: Like, isn’t the fact that the dreamlike flights of *VOIR DIRE* feel like comfort food a testament to how much they’ve already stretched our conception of hip-hop? Ten years out from his first “real” album (2013’s *Doris*), Earl sounds grateful, fulfilled, and yet no less enigmatic than when he was a kid, holding space for a history of Black diasporic art from Martinican poet Aimé Césaire to the Swazi-Xhosa South African pop legend Miriam Makeba without sacrificing the hermetic quality that made him so appealing in the first place. In Vince Staples, he continues to find the straight-talking foil he needs (“The Caliphate,” “Mancala”), and in Al a producer who can nudge him just a little closer to the hallelujahs he’s either too cool or evasive to embrace (“Mancala”). And at 26 minutes, the whole thing easily asks to be played again.

For a time, Kid Cudi was bracing for the worst. Back in 2022, the renowned artist—whose discography touches everything from hip-hop and R&B to alt-rock and beyond—made some statements suggesting a retirement from music. The award-winning animated feature *Entergalactic* and its corresponding soundtrack didn’t quite seem like the last we’d hear from The Chosen One, yet its success indicated that his creative pursuits were ever-expanding. While there’s no definitive statement indicating that this, his ninth album, would close out his catalog, its scope and sound certainly make it feel like the end of an era for one of the most compelling musical artists of our time. On the cusp of his 40th birthday—some 16 years after breakout single “Day ’n’ Nite” first dropped—*INSANO* proves that nothing about Cudi has diminished with age. Spanning just over an hour, the 21-track effort kicks off with a characteristically boisterous DJ Drama introduction, “OFTEN, I HAVE THESE DREAMZ,” that transitions into the gnarly, distorted maximalism of “KEEP BOUNCIN’.” His distinct vocal range and rubbery cadences add buoyancy to “GETCHA GONE” and the pugnacious “A TALE OF A KNIGHT.” On tracks like “PORSCHE TOPLESS” and the Ace of Base-interpolating “ELECTROWAVEBABY,” it’s hard not to hear how much fun he’s having. Beyond Drama’s repeat drop-ins, the short yet significant guest list here reflects Cudi’s tenure as much as his influences. A$AP Rocky, who featured opposite him over a decade ago on *Indicud*, reunites with his “Brothers” cohort for the larger than life “WOW.” Frequent collaborator Travis Scott remains his finest foil, evident on their shared “GET OFF ME.” Elsewhere, Lil Wayne lends his veteran voice and punchline prowess to “SEVEN,” while Pharrell Williams takes the mic to start the booming “AT THE PARTY.” A younger generation gets a few nods as well, with Lil Yachty’s playful “TOO DAMN HIGH” verse and a posthumous appearance from XXXTENTACION on the “X & CUD.”

Nas’ career boasts so many peaks that it’s futile even trying to spot valleys. Even so, the Queensbridge-bred rap luminary’s run with producer Hit-Boy in the 2020s rivals, if not outright tops, many of those prior high points. Timed to release on his 50th birthday—and in hip-hop’s 50th anniversary year, no less—*Magic 3* seeks to close out this particular chapter in his vast and storied rhyme book. Though one naturally hopes these two artists will one day reunite, the sixth project from this fan-friendly team-up makes for one thrilling finale. From the emboldened opening bars of “Fever” to the closing victory lap “1-800-Nas&Hit,” Hit-Boy provides Nas with a supreme soundtrack for the cinematic sonic franchise, with standouts like “I Love This Feeling” and “Superhero Status” exemplifying the potency of their fortuitous collaboration. As a lyricist and performer, Nas remains righteously in the GOAT debate, a fact reinforced by several of these 15 tracks via showing more than telling. That knack for compelling, street-level storytelling continues on the two-part “Based on True Events,” while the ironically titled “Speechless, Pt. 2” confirms his effortlessly ruthless approach to rapping for the love of rapping. On the lighter side, he’s still out here playing the field, as “Pretty Young Girl” romantically lays out a mature proposal befitting his status and refined interests. Given the luxe flexes he exhibits on “Blue Bentley,” it’s an offer definitely worth considering. Though he has nothing left to prove, Nas insists on setting the record straight for anyone unclear or misinformed. On “TSK,” he scolds disingenuous critics and keyboard warriors while staking his rightful claim to hip-hop’s living history. On the aforementioned “I Love This Feeling,” he casually mentions that he’s quietly retired from the game more than once, making *Magic 3* an even more auspicious affair. And though Nas could’ve invited just about anyone to this wrap party, the sole credited feature belongs to Lil Wayne, who brings his own cocksure, veteran flows to “Never Die.”

On his Mercury Prize-winning debut album, 2017’s *Process*, Sampha Sisay often cut an isolated figure. As the Londoner’s songs contended with loss—particularly the passing of his parents—and anxieties about his health and relationships, a sense of insularity and detachment haunted his poignant, experimental electro-soul. Arriving six years later, this follow-up presents a man reestablishing and strengthening connections. Lifted by warm synths and strings, songs are energized by the busy rhythms of jungle, broken beat, and West African Wassoulou music. Images of flight dominate as Sampha zooms out from everyday preoccupations to take a bird’s-eye view of the world and his place in it as a father, a friend, a brother, a son. “I feel sometimes making an album is like a manifesto for how I should be living, or that all the answers are in what I’m saying,” he tells Apple Music. “I don’t necessarily *live* by what I’m saying but there’s times where I recognize that I need to reconnect to family and friends—times where I can really lose connection by being too busy with my own things.” So where *Process* ended with Sampha ruefully noting, “I should visit my brother/But I haven’t been there in months/I’ve lost connection, signal/To how we were” on “What Shouldn’t I Be?” *Lahai* concludes in the fireside glow of “Rose Tint,” a song celebrating the salve of good company: “I’m needy, don’t you know?/But the fam beside me/Is what I needed most.” Before then, *Lahai* examines Sampha’s sense of self and his relationships through his interests in science, time, therapy, spirituality, and philosophy. “I became more confident with being OK with what I’m interested in, and not feeling like I have to be an expert,” he says. “So even if it comes off as pretentious at times, I was more comfortable with putting things out there. That’s an important process: Even in the political sphere, a lot of people don’t speak about things because they’re worried about how people will react or that they’re not expert enough to talk on certain things. I’m into my science, my sci-fi, my philosophy. Even if I’m not an expert, I could still share my feelings and thoughts and let that become a source of dialogue that will hopefully improve my understanding of those things.” Started in 2019 and gradually brought together as Sampha negotiated the restrictions of the pandemic and the demands and joys of fatherhood, the songs, he says, present “a photograph of my mental, spiritual, physical state.” Read on for his track-by-track guide. **“Stereo Colour Cloud (Shaman’s Dream)”** “I wanted to make something that felt like animation and so the instrumentation is quite colorful. What started it off was me experimenting with new kinds of production. I was using a mechanical, MIDI-controlled acoustic piano and playing over it. Same thing with the drums—I built a robotic acoustic drummer to build these jungle breaks. So, it’s all these acoustic instruments that I programmed via MIDI, and also playing over them with humans, with myself.” **“Spirit 2.0”** “It’s a song I started in my bedroom, a song I wrote walking through parks in solitude, a song I wrote at a time I felt I needed to hear for myself. It took probably a year from start to finish for that song to come together. I had the chords and the modular synths going for a while and then eventually I wrote a melody. Then I had an idea for the drums and I recorded the drums. It was also influenced by West African folk music, Wassoulou music. I guess that isn’t maybe quite obvious to everyone, but I’ve made quite a thing of talking about it—it’s influenced the way I write rhythmically.” **“Dancing Circles”** “This also came from this kind of acoustic/MIDI jamming. I wrote this pulsing, slightly clash-y metronomic piano and wrote over and jammed over it. I put the song together with a producer called Pablo Díaz-Reixa \[Spanish artist/producer El Guincho\], who helped arrange the song. I sort of freestyled some lyrics and came up with the dancing refrain, and then had this idea of someone having a conversation with someone they hadn’t seen in a long time, and just remembering how good it is, how good it felt to dance with them.” **“Suspended”** “I feel like a lot of what I’ve written goes between this dreamlike state and me drawing on real-life scenarios. This is a song about someone who’s reminiscing again, but also feeling like they’re kind of going in and out of different time periods. I guess it was inspired by thinking about all the people, and all the women especially, in my life that I’ve been lifted up by, even though I frame it as if I’m speaking about one person. The feeling behind it is me recognizing how supported I’ve been by people, even if it’s not been always an easy or straightforward journey.” **“Satellite Business”** “This feels like the midpoint of the record. I guess in this record I was interrogating spirituality and recognizing I hadn’t really codified, or been able to put my finger on, any sort of metaphysical experience, per se—me somewhat trying to connect to life via a different view. The song is about me recognizing my own finitude and thinking about the people I’ve lost and recognizing, through becoming a father myself, that not all is done and I’m part of a journey and I can see my parents or even my brothers, my daughter. \[It’s\] about connection—to the past and to the future and to the present. Any existential crisis I was having about myself has now been offloaded to me thinking about how long I’m going to be around to see and protect and help guide someone else.” **“Jonathan L. Seagull”** “I speak a lot about flying \[on the album\] and I actually mention \[Richard Bach’s novella\] *Jonathan Livingston Seagull* in ‘Spirit 2.0.’ For me, the question was sometimes thinking about limits, the search for perfection. I don’t agree with everything in *Jonathan Livingston Seagull* as a book, it was more a bit of a memory to me \[Sampha’s brother read the story to him when he was a child\], the feeling of memory as opposed to the actual details of the book. I guess throughout the record, I talk about relationships in my own slightly zoomed-out way. I had this question in my mind, ‘Oh, how high can you actually go?’ Just thinking about limits and thinking sometimes that can be comforting and sometimes it can be scary.” **“Inclination Compass (Tenderness)”** “Birds, like butterflies, use the Earth’s magnetic field to migrate, to be able to navigate themselves to where they need to get to \[this internal compass is known as an inclination compass\]. I feel that there’s times where love can be simpler than I let it be. As you grow up, sometimes you might get into an argument with someone and you’re really stubborn, you might just need to hug it out and then everything is fine—say something nice or let something go. Anger’s a complicated emotion, and there’s lots of different thoughts and theories about how you should deal with it. For me personally, this is leaning into the fact that sometimes it’s OK to switch to a bit more of an understanding or empathetic stance—and I can sometimes tend to not do that.” **“Only”** “It’s probably the song that sticks out the most in the record in terms of the sonic aesthetic. It’s probably less impressionistic than the rest of the record. I think because of that it felt like it was something to share \[as the second single\]. Thematically as well, it just felt relevant to me in terms of trying to follow the beat of my own drum or finding a place where you’re confident in yourself—recognizing that other people are important but that I can also help myself. It’s a bit of a juxtaposition because there’s times where it feels like it’s only you who can really change yourself, but at the same time, you’re not alone.” **“Time Piece”** “Time is just an interesting concept because there’s so many different theories. And does it even exist? \[The lyrics translate as ‘Time does not exist/A time machine.’\] But we’re really tied to it, it’s such an important facet of our lives, how we measure things. It was just an interesting tie into the next song.” **“Can’t Go Back”** “I feel like there’s a lot of times I just step over my clothes instead of pick them up. I’m so preoccupied with thinking about something else or thinking about the future, there’s times where I could have actually just been a bit more present at certain moments or just, ‘It’s OK to just do simple things, doing the dishes.’ The amount \[of\] my life \[in\] which I’m just so preoccupied in my mind…Not to say that there isn’t space for that, there’s space for all of it, but this is just a reminder that there’s times where I could just take a moment out, five to 10 minutes to do something. And it can feel so difficult to spend such short periods of time without a device or without thinking about what you’re going to do tomorrow. This is just a reminder of that kind of practice.” **“Evidence”** “I think there’s times where it just feels like I have ‘sliding door’ moments or glimpses or feelings. This is hinting \[at\] that. Again, the feeling of maybe not having that metaphysical connection, but then feeling some sort of connection to the physical world, whatever that might be.” **“Wave Therapy”** “I recorded a bit of extra strings for ‘Spirit 2.0,’ which I wanted to use as an interlude after that, but then I ended up reversing the strings that \[Canadian composer and violinist\] Owen Pallett helped arrange. I called it ‘Wave Therapy’ because, for some of the record, I went out to Miami for a week to work with El Guincho and before each session, I’d go to the beach and listen to what we had done the day before and that was therapeutic.” **“What if You Hypnotise Me?” (feat. Léa Sen)** “I was having a conversation with someone about therapy and then they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t even do talking therapy, I just get hypnotized, I haven’t got time for that.’ I thought that was an interesting perspective, so I wrote a song about hypnotizing, just to get over some of these things that I’m preoccupied with. I guess it’s about being in that place, recognizing I need something. Therapy can be part of that. As I say, nothing has a 100 percent success rate. You need a bit of everything.” **“Rose Tint”** “Sometimes I get preoccupied with my own hurt, my own emotions, and sometimes connecting to love is so complicated, yet so simple. It’s easy to call someone up really and truly, but there’s all these psychological barriers that you put up and this kind of headspace you feel like you don’t have. Family and friends or just people—I feel like there’s just connection to people. You can be more supported than you think at times, because there’s times where it feels like a problem shared can feel like a problem doubled, so you can kind of keep things in. But I do think it can be the other way round.”

“I needed my audience to see that Killer Mike is something that this nine-year-old kid created to be fierce and badass and protect him from any ill,” the artist born Michael Render tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “This is my come-home moment musically. It is gospel, it is soul, it is funk, it is hip-hop. And from a moral standpoint, I was taught morality through the Black Southern Christian church, which gave us the civil rights movement, the abolitionist movement, which gave us some of the most beautiful music ever. And I feel like I\'m honoring that and I finally figured out my place.” Released 10 years after Run The Jewels transformed Killer Mike from a workaday regional rapper to the kind of guy holding public court with national politicians, *MICHAEL* is, on some level, a celebration of just how far he has come. But it’s also an exploration of the complex personality that got him there: the son of a drug dealer who needs to mourn his childhood but struggles to let his guard down (“MOTHERLESS”), the community leader trying to elevate youth while snapping back at the perceived narrowness of their politics (“TALK’N THAT SHIT!”), the middle-aged man finally reckoning with the collateral PTSD of Black life in America (“RUN”). “My mother and grandmother left me,” he says. “‘MOTHERLESS’ is about that and about the emptiness you feel, and as a human I feel like I\'ve lost something. But if all the electricity left tomorrow, there\'d still be trees moving, there\'d still be wind grooving, and that\'s all we return to. When you close your eyes, you listen to this record, this device ain\'t how you are hearing this song. These vibrations are how you\'re hearing this song.” There’s also “SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS,” which features fellow Atlanta legends Future and André 3000. “Artists love and respect one another,” he says. “The what, who\'s done what, it\'s literally the style. You just waiting to hear your partner\'s next style.” And on a production level, the sustained mix of slow-and-steady trap beats with gospel choirs and soaking-wet organs evokes both the humidity of his Atlanta summers and the blend of sacred and profane that has characterized Black pop from Sam Cooke to Kanye West. If he weren’t so smart and soulful, you might call him a crank. But he’s both.

The Chicago MC isn’t afraid to go deep, and his raps often center on the hard work required to become a better, more self-aware man. Jenkins has given earlier releases titles like *The Anxious* and *The Frustration*, and he devotes his fourth studio album to a virtue he finds similarly vexing. Patience, he suggests, is the part of your journey where you are no longer in control. Over beats that are jazzy, unhurried, and slightly unsettled, Jenkins plays tricky word games as he ruminates on outgrowing old friends (“Show & Tell”) and cracks wry half-jokes about peers who only talk about money (“Guapanese”). He’s joined by a few thoughtfully selected guests (Freddie Gibbs, Benny the Butcher, JID), but on album highlight “007” he holds it down alone, flipping a catchphrase to his advantage: “We fucked around and found a way out.”

If 2021’s *Life of a DON* gave us any insight into then newly minted rap star Don Toliver, it was that his lifestyle was both costly and the center of his music’s inspiration. For *Life of a DON*’s follow-up, *Love Sick*, Toliver leans into one of life’s more priceless experiences, delivering ruminations on love and ways he’s experienced it. From chasing unrequited love on “Let Her Go” to falling in love on the dance floor on “Leave the Club” to declaring an undying love on “4 Me” to love through the lens of a Houston native on “Company Pt. 3,” *Love Sick* is the MC’s adventures in courtship. He’s assisted in his storytelling by James Blake, GloRilla, and real-life girlfriend Kali Uchis, who, if nothing else, must love what they and Toliver were able to do here.

Convenient though it may be, sometimes you have to give in and accept the metaphor. *Gumbo*, the engrossing fourth album from Atlanta’s Young Nudy, is what it says on its packaging: a collection of painstakingly crafted component parts (“Okra,” “Duck Meat,” “Shrimp,” “Portabella”) simmered together to become more than their mere sum, an alchemic blend of flavors and textures. And as with the titular dish, a mere recitation of ingredients would give an imitator little insight into how the real thing is made—the secret ingredients, of course, are proprietary. To shift to another culinary metaphor, there’s a use-every-part-of-the-animal ethos at play on *Gumbo*. Even the most mundane parts of the recording process become opportunities for innovation: Where many rappers use punch-ins to lay verses that are difficult to land in a single take, Nudy uses this technique to achieve a hallucinatory effect. See the opener “Brussel Sprout,” which comes to sound more like a lullaby than the opening salvo to a rap record with such punishing low ends. Rather than feeling stitched together, the takes overlap like blankets falling onto one another; the listener has to track whether Nudy in each subsequent layer is underlining what was said before, or subverting it. Produced in large part by Coupe (with an assist from Nudy’s longtime collaborator Pi’erre Bourne on the Key Glock-featuring “Pot Roast”), *Gumbo* is a heavy, percussive album, its punishing bass and yawning negative space giving the rapper ample room to deploy the most fluid flows of his career to this point. Nudy is a chameleonic rapper, able to dance through complicated patterns or communicate via monosyllables through sheer charisma. On *Gumbo*, those and other approaches are used in precise measures—as the recipe demands.

“I have a hard time talking to people about shit—that\'s why music is so cathartic and so special,” Post Malone tells Apple Music. The genre-bending, soul-baring hitmaker\'s fifth album is the first he\'s recorded since the May 2022 birth of his daughter, and it expands on his emotion-heavy sound in surprising ways, whether through power-pop hooks or sparse sonics. “Having a baby really put a lot into perspective, and it\'s really slowed me down a lot party-wise, going out and being crazy,” he said. “But it\'s the most beautiful thing.” He and his family have relocated to Salt Lake City, which has allowed Post to more fully appreciate the wild ride he\'s been on since the 2015 release of his debut single “White Iverson.” “I never really got to stop and smell the roses,” he says. “I never really got time or had the bandwidth to experience the journey to its fullest, so I guess that\'s what I\'m trying to do now.” Post, who largely worked on *AUSTIN* with pop tunesmith Andrew Watt and his frequent collaborator Louis Bell, wrote songs in a more organic way this time out, “sit\[ting\] there cross-legged with the cans on and so much reverb” while working out chord progressions with his collaborators. “It was a really eye-opening experience for me in how I could write music, and how I could make music,” he says. “There are so many different ways. A song is there; you just got to find it.” “Green Thumb” might reach a new frontier—not just in his songwriting, but in pop songwriting as a whole. “I think it\'s the only breakup song where you talk to plants,” Post says of the spare guitar ballad, in which he despairs over an ex who\'s left her garden behind for greener romantic pastures. Songs that describe those moments where partying gets out of control—like the anthemic “Enough Is Enough”—were written from a place of after-the-fact self-reflection. “Writing that song was not about current experiences; it\'s not like I can\'t go to Vegas,” he says. “It\'s super cathartic to be able to tell your story and then reach out to people who maybe have gone or are going through it, \[to\] at least bring joy through music.”

The partnership between the pair of rap veterans predates even the name “2 Chainz.” In 2007, when the Georgia native still rapped as Tity Boi, his duo Playaz Circle released their debut single “Duffle Bag Boy”—a great song made even better by a guest verse from Wayne in his prime. Since then, the rappers’ paths have remained entwined: the 2010s are littered with joint tracks from the two, including *ColleGrove*, the 2016 collaborative album that mashed together their hometowns. (That’s College Park, Georgia, for 2 Chainz and Hollygrove, Louisiana, for Wayne.) Seven years later, the forty-something rappers still sound inspired by one another, trading scene-stealing moments for 21 tracks. (It isn’t a contest, but let’s say it is: 2 Chainz excels on minimalist productions like Bangladesh’s “Presha,” whereas Wayne dominates “Shame” in spite of Chainz’ pitch-perfect Ol’ Dirty Bastard impression.) The project is also loaded with more Easter eggs than a Marvel movie; the pair’s verses are riddled with nods to Southern rap greats: Wayne shouts out Fabo on “Long Story Short,” a track that samples Project Pat and channels UGK’s “International Players Anthem (I Choose You).” And on “Big Diamonds,” they take it back to 2000 with a classic Mannie Fresh beat, over which Wayne proclaims: “Me and 2 Chainz, bitch, we’re the new Big Tymers.”

“No, I\'m not the same/I think I done changed,” Janelle Monáe raps with a swagger on “Float,” the opener for her fourth LP, *The Age of Pleasure*. Over powerful brass—courtesy of Seun Kuti and Egypt 80—and heavy-lidded 808s, the singer-songwriter introduces listeners to another side of herself where she embraces the present. “Those lyrics for \'Float,\' I was like, I have to put this out now,” she tells Apple Music. “This is exactly, how do I honor how I\'m feeling and who I am now. I\'m not thinking about the future, but right now, because this is all we have right now.” Where Monáe\'s previous records were character-driven—set in a complex futuristic world filled with androids—and explored themes about power, race, and humanity, *The Age of Pleasure* highlights a new era of liberation that sheds her Afrofuturist persona in favor of an unmasked exploration of her own sensuality and deservedness to feel good above all else. Monáe creates a safe space within the album\'s 14 tracks where people can relax into themselves and express their queer identities, sexuality, and unapologetic Blackness. “We had an Everyday People Wondaland party, and I was like, *Oh, this is who I want to make music for*,” she says. “This moment right here, I want to make the soundtrack to this lifestyle. They get it. This is what we fight to protect. All of my work that centers around protecting my communities that I\'m a part of, from the LGBTQIA+ communities to being Black to all of that.” *The Age of Pleasure* is a love letter to the Pan-African diaspora. Monáe trades in her previous albums\' New Wave indie-electronic beats for an effortless fusion of jazz, dancehall, reggae, trap, and Afrobeats. The first half features tightly produced jazz- and funk-inspired tempos and rhythms over which she flexes her accomplishments (“Champagne Shit”) and proudly celebrates herself (“Float,” “Phenomenal,” “Haute”). The album\'s second half switches gears with midtempo, reggae-influenced sounds and Monáe indulging her carnal desires. “I like lipstick on my neck/Hands around my waist so you know what\'s coming next/I wanna feel your lips on mine/I just wanna feel/A little tongue, we don\'t have a long time,” she sings on “Lipstick Lover,” a seductive, summery groove that is a joyous celebration of queer Black sexual liberation. She uses water metaphors to underscore her euphoric pleasure-seeking on “The Rush” and “Water Slide,” while “Only Have Eyes 42” is an ode to polyamory, with more than one lover at the center of Monáe\'s affections. Ultimately, on *The Age of Pleasure*, Monáe taps into her “free-ass motherfucking spirit,” as she calls it, and delivers an album that honors the space that she\'s currently in—unabashed and proud of who she is. “My friends have gotten an opportunity to see a different side of me that nobody gets to see, and this album, this moment that I\'m having, I\'m allowing myself to show that version of Janelle that friends get to see all the time,” she says. “I want to own all of me and be all of me.”

For a certain kind of rap fan, the sound of an Australian woman giggling, “What is this? I like this Maybach Music…” is like hearing from an old friend. In the early 2010s, Rick Ross’ MMG label was a serious contender for the hottest squad in hip-hop. While the Teflon Don barked about Big Meech over earth-shaking Lex Luger beats, Meek Mill was bellowing fire-and-brimstone missives in all caps. In the decade since, the two have traded the occasional guest verse, but when they hinted at a full-length collaboration in the fall of 2023, it seemed, well, too good to be true. (To be fair, the project was written in the stars, Meek’s real name being Robert Williams and Rozay’s William Roberts II.) There are a few hints across *Too Good to Be True* signaling that the year is not, in fact, 2012: “This bandemic infectious,” the Jamaican singer BEAM warbles on the Tears for Fears-sampling “Go to Hell,” a sentiment that might be lost on early-2010s time travelers. But for the most part, it’s a glorious return to peak form. Meek sounds as hungry as ever, though these days the former Philly battle rapper is power-lunching with Tom Brady. (“Talking ’bout his girl problems—I can’t lie, I related.”) As for Rozay, he’s as iconically ostentatious as he was in his prime, sailing over grown-and-sexy beats like a mega-yacht on Biscayne Bay and boasting about his pet buffaloes. (No, seriously, look it up.) Thunderous anthems like the French Montana-featuring “Millionaire Row” and Future collab “In Luv With the Money” are direct portals to the strip club circa 2012. But the bosses’ biggest coup is the remix of lead single “SHAQ & KOBE,” which tags in Dame D.O.L.L.A., the rap alter ego of the Bucks’ Damian Lillard, and snags a verse from fellow NBA rap G.O.A.T. Shaq Diesel where he promises to “bring the drama ’til he’s with the Mamba.”

For decades Wayne’s made a habit of dropping mixtapes to tide over fans while they wait for the latest installment of his beloved *Tha Carter* album series, from his free *Da Drought* downloads throughout the 2000s to the *Sorry 4 the Wait* tapes in the 2010s. There’s no telling when he might drop the long-awaited *Tha Carter VI*, but 10 new tracks from the Louisiana legend are a small consolation in the meantime. With Wayne the highs are always high (like “Kat Food,” an interpolation of Missy Elliott’s “Work It” that finds dozens of new ways to express his favorite subject, the joy of cunnilingus), and the not-so-highs are fascinating: His “Tity Boi” bars rise and fall like arpeggios before exploding into an absurdly horny EDM rager. Then again, it sometimes takes a few years for the rest of us to catch up to Wayne’s vision: People thought he was crazy for *Rebirth*, his 2010 rock record that predicted the emo-rap renaissance to come. Following guest spots on pop-punk blockbusters from the likes of Machine Gun Kelly in recent years, the rap-rock hybrid “Tuxedo” has Wayne sounding vindicated, dropping trademark zingers like “Don’t know who these rappers are, that shit sound like salad bars.”

The initial plan, according to a tweet posted by Offset in September 2022, was for his second solo album to drop in November of that year. But on November 1, his fellow Migo and brother-in-arms Takeoff was murdered outside of a Houston bowling alley. The tragedy hit Offset hard; the trio of Takeoff, Offset, and Quavo had become the preeminent rap group of the 2010s through the sheer force of their chemistry, lifelong friends and relatives whose respective talents kept each other on their toes. If Quavo was the showman and Takeoff the glue, Offset was the wild card of the bunch, introduced to the world by the “Free Offset” T-shirts his partners wore in early videos while he served time in Georgia’s DeKalb County Jail for a probation violation. He could also be a scene-stealer, the lyrical force behind the group’s first and only No. 1 hit, “Bad and Boujee.” Four years after his debut solo album, 2019’s *FATHER OF 4*, *SET IT OFF* is a portrait of a rapper who has challenged himself to evolve rather than rest on his laurels. “My whole mission for this album was to not get caught up in ‘I’m that guy,’” Offset told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I feel like sometimes when you get caught up in that, you create the same thing because you’re comfortable in that element.” By now he’s a father of five, healing from the loss of his friend and bandmate while navigating a solo career and the stressors that come with his high-profile marriage to Cardi B. (She appears twice on the album, stealing the show on the Three 6 Mafia-sampling “JEALOUSY” to spit, “Bitches don’t wanna go Birkin for Birkin/Bitches ain’t got enough hits for a Verzuz.”) There’s the requisite odes to exorbitant flexing with help from Future, Latto, and Chlöe, where Offset’s voice is as sharp and percussive as ever over beats from Boi-1da and Vinylz—producers he’d yet to work with before now—alongside the usual suspects like Southside and Metro Boomin. “I use the A&Rs to \[my\] advantage,” he told Lowe. “I feel like a lot of people talk down on the A&Rs, like you don’t need them. But they bring you another element that you wouldn’t have thought of.” The album’s standout moments happen when the rapper lets his guard down. “Keeping all of this to myself ain’t healthy,” he warbles on the understated “HEALTHY,” and on “SAY MY GRACE” he wonders: “Ask God why I didn’t get an answer/Why I lose my brother to bullets?/Why I lose my grandma to cancer?” Much ink has been spilled over what appears to be the end of the Migos in the aftermath of Takeoff’s death, a subject Offset addressed poignantly. “It can’t be a group, because our main member is missing,” he said to Lowe. “It’s just like, for us, we can’t continue that way. But even on my own journey, I still feel his presence and his energy, like, ‘Bro, we got to go hard. This ain’t the end of it.’ I just keep that in my mind and just keep pushing.”

“I never learned to superstar from a textbook,” Doja Cat snarls towards the end of “Attention,” a song that’s all at once a boom-bap showcase, an R&B slow-burner, and a canny summary of her against-the-odds success. Those who remember Doja’s breakthrough (a viral 2018 joke song, “Mooo!”, whose DIY video had her shoving french fries in her nose in front of a homemade green screen) probably wouldn’t have predicted that a few years later, the girl in the cow suit would be a household name. But for Doja, being an internet goofball and a multiplatinum pop star aren’t just compatible, they’re complementary—a duality attuned to her audience’s craving for realness. With her fourth album, *Scarlet*, the maverick adds “formidable rapper” to her growing list of distinctions. In since-deleted tweets from April 2023, Doja made a pledge: “no more pop,” she wrote, following up with a vow to prove wrong the naysayers doubting her rap skills. *Scarlet* makes good on that promise, particularly its first half, a far cry from the sugary bops on 2021’s star-making *Planet Her*. Instead she hops between hard-edged beats that evoke NYC in ’94 or Chicago in 2012, crowing over the spoils of her mainstream success while playfully rejecting its terms. “I’m a puppet, I’m a sheep, I’m a cash cow/I’m the fastest-growing bitch on all your apps now,” she deadpans on “Demons,” thumbing her nose at anyone who conflates glowing up with selling out. And on “97,” the album’s best pure rap performance, she embraces the troll’s mantra that all clicks are good clicks, spitting, “That’s a comment, that’s a view, and that’s a rating/That’s some hating, and that’s engagement I could use.” Behind the provocations, though, is an artist with the idiosyncratic chops to back them up. That’s as true in *Scarlet*’s lusty midsection as it is on its gulliest rap tracks: No one else would interrupt a dreamy love song (“Agora Hills”) to giggle in Valley Girl vocal fry, “Sorry, just taking a sip of my root beer!” (No one, that is, but Nicki Minaj, Doja’s clearest influence, who paved the way for women who juggle art-pop with hip-hop bona fides.) As catchy as it is contrarian, *Scarlet* offers a suggestion: Maybe it’s Doja’s willingness to reject the premise of being a pop star that makes her such a compelling one. On the album’s sweetest track, “Love Life,” she takes in her view from the top—still the weirdo her fans met in a cow suit but more confident in her contradictions. “They love when I embrace my flaws/I love it when they doin’ the same,” she raps softly. “I love it when my fans love change/That’s how we change the game.”

Conway the Machine’s path towards rap stardom never meant hopping on trends or diluting his style in the service of others. His successes, in Griselda and otherwise, rarely translate to the hip-hop mainstream, instead demonstrating growth through authenticity and bars on mixtapes and albums like 2022’s gritty Shady Records bow *God Don’t Make Mistakes*. And while *WON’T HE DO IT* doesn’t deviate from that course, the New York rapper has hardly settled into some midlife artistic complacency. For an artist who has steadfastly refused to take a conventionally commercial route, he nonetheless sounds perfectly at home over glistening J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League productions like “The Chosen” and the introspective motivational “Kanye.” Based on song titles like “Water to Wine,” one might misinterpret *WON’T HE DO IT* as a religious record, though in fairness he’s never concealed his personal Rap God complex. He undeniably sees the face of divine power in the streets, admiring his self-described immaculate run on “Flesh of My Flesh” and dubbing himself The Almighty on the segue “Kill Judas.” Rest assured, Conway hasn’t gone gospel, his presence as profane as ever. The coke rap that endeared him to a certain sector of hip-hop fandom persists on the abruptly launched opener “Quarters” and the ruthless “Brick Fare.” Furthermore, rumors of disharmony among the core Buffalo trio remain unfounded, disproven by Westside Gunn’s extended feature on the atmospheric “Brucifix” and Benny the Butcher’s menacingly mesmeric verse on “Brooklyn Chop House.”

“I think that for this project and for these songs, I made it a priority to take care of myself first,” 6LACK tells Apple Music. “And now that I’ve been prioritizing that, I just feel inspired in a different way than I was in the past.” Every album 6LACK releases feels like a journal filled with entries about his personal experiences navigating life’s highs, lows, and everything in between. The singer-songwriter popped on the scene with his moody 2016 debut, *FREE 6LACK*, which touched on his shady first record deal and the turmoil and toxicity of past relationships. His vulnerability, honest lyrics, and dark, atmospheric beats made him the first artist inducted into Apple Music’s Up Next program. On his sophomore LP, *East Atlanta Love Letter*, 6LACK explored the trials and tribulations of his rising fame, relationships, and fatherhood, including how it led him to reevaluate his life. His highly anticipated third album, *Since I Have a Lover*, comes after a long-needed break and finds him in a much better headspace than before. Throughout the album’s 19 tracks, the Atlanta crooner showcases the other side of his heart by embracing love and finding joy (“Since I Have a Lover,” “wunna dem,” “B4L”) while acknowledging the growth and healing he has undergone to appreciate the lover in his life (“Spirited Away,” “Inwood Hill Park”). However, not every song on the project is about his newfound love; 6LACK confesses about his mental health struggles that forced him to seek therapy (“Talk”) and the life lessons he’s learned along the way to where he is now (“Talkback”). 6LACK’s growth is evident not just in lyrics but in sound as well. *Since I Have a Lover* leaves behind the dark, melodramatic production that listeners have grown to love from him and replaces it with more acoustic guitars and alternative, midtempo beats reflective of his current mindset.

*Hall & Nash 2* plays sequel to the rare early release that diehards everywhere associate with the beginnings of Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine’s Griselda Records. On its follow-up, the Buffalo-bred brothers show just how much they’ve leveled up by recruiting legendary producer The Alchemist to handle all the beats. The surprise drop once again finds the duo paying homage to WWF wrestlers Razor Ramon and Diesel, who together called themselves The Outsiders and were celebrated for their unwavering loyalty. Westside and Conway mirror this devotion, showcasing their almost telepathic abilities on cuts like the dusty, soul-sampling “Ray Mysterio” and the ScHoolboy Q-assisted “Fork in the Pot.” Throughout the project, the duo recount the highs and lows that come with making it out of the streets and onto the charts, like on the aptly titled “Judas,” where Conway the Machine raps, “They just wanna squeeze and leave you deceased, at least a paraplegic/Hit in my head and walked out of the hospital, please believe it.”

As the headquarters of a producer/songwriter who’s won Grammys for his work with Adele, Beck, Foo Fighters, and more, Greg Kurstin’s LA studio is well appointed. “It’s a museum of ’80s synths and weird instruments,” Kurstin tells Apple Music. “Everything’s patched in and ready to go.” Damon Albarn discovered as much when he arrived during a trip to meet prospective producers for the eighth Gorillaz album. Tired and, by his own admission, uncertain about recruiting a “pop” producer, Albarn quietly explored the equipment, occasionally unfurling melodies on the piano which Kurstin would join in with on his Mellotron—two musicians feeling each other out, seeking moments of creative accord. After two or three hours, Kurstin felt happy enough, but Albarn’s manager was concerned. “She goes, ‘Damon just likes to float around. He’s not going to tell you to start doing something, you should just start recording,’” says Kurstin. “That gave me a kick to get down to business.” He opened up the input and added drums while Albarn built a synth part. Before the day was done, they had “Silent Running.” “Damon seemed energized,” says Kurstin. “He was excited about how the song progressed from the demo. I was thrilled too. He gave me a big hug and that was it: We were off and running.” Discovering a mutual love for The Clash, The Specials, De La Soul, and ’80s synth-pop, the pair took just 11 days during early 2022 to craft an album from Albarn’s iPad demos (give or take Bad Bunny collaboration “Tormenta,” which had already been recorded with long-standing Gorillaz producer Remi Kabaka Jr.). They valued spontaneity over preplanning and discussion, forging hydraulic disco-funk (the Thundercat-starring “Cracker Island”) and yearning synth-pop (“Oil” with Stevie Nicks), plus—in the short space of “Skinny Ape”—folk, electro, and punk. As with so much of Albarn’s best music, it’s all anchored to absorbing wistfulness. “I gravitate towards the melancholy, even in a fun song,” says Kurstin. “And Damon really brings that in his ideas. When I first heard Gorillaz, I was thinking, ‘Oh, he gets me and all the music that I love.’ I always felt that connection. It’s what you look for—your people.” Here, Kurstin talks us through several of the songs they created together. **“Cracker Island” (feat. Thundercat)** “Bringing in Thundercat was a really fun flavor to bring to the album. This wild, sort of uptempo disco song. I had just been working with Thundercat and we had become friends. I texted him and he said, ‘Yes, definitely, I’ll do it.’ It was very fun to watch him work on it and to hear him write his melody parts. He sang a lot of what Damon sang and then added his own thing and the harmonies. It’s always fun to witness him play, because he’s absolutely amazing on the bass.” **“Oil” (feat. Stevie Nicks)** “That contrast of hearing Stevie’s voice over a Gorillaz track is amazing. I think my wife, who’s also my manager, had come up with the idea. We’d have these conversations with Damon: Who could we bring in to this project? Who does he know? Who do I know? I had been working with Stevie and become really good friends with her. Damon was very excited, he couldn’t even believe that was a possibility. I think Stevie was just very moved by it. She loved the lyrics and she took it very seriously, really wanted to do the best job. Stevie’s just so cool. She’s always listening to new music, she’s in touch with everything that’s happening and just so brilliant as a person. I love her dearly.” **“Silent Running” (feat. Adeleye Omotayo)** “‘Silent Running’ really was the North Star for me, might’ve been for Damon, too. It just started the whole process for us: ‘Here’s the bar, this is what we can do, and let’s try to see if we can even beat it.’ I think we knocked out ‘Silent Running’ in two or three hours. That was the fun part about it, just this whirlwind of throwing things against the wall and then recording them—and I’m kind of mixing as I’m going as well. By the end of the day, it sounded like the finished product did.” **“New Gold” (feat. Bootie Brown & Tame Impala)** “Kevin Parker’s just great. I was really excited to be involved with something that he was involved with. Damon had started this with Kevin and was a bit stuck, mostly because it was in an odd time signature, this kind of 6/4. It’s a little bit of a twisted and lopsided groove. It was sort of put off forever and maybe nothing was going to happen with it. It needed Damon to get in there and get excited about it. I think he liked how it was started, but finishing it was just too overwhelming. I thought, ‘OK, let me just try to piece this together in the form of a song that is very clear.’ That sort of started the ball rolling again. Damon heard it and then he worked on it a bit and evened out the time signature.” **“Baby Queen”** “Only Damon could come up with such a wild concept for a song. \[In Bangkok in 1997, Albarn met a crown princess who crowd-surfed at a Blur gig; while writing songs for *Cracker Island*, he dreamed about meeting her as she is today.\] When I heard the demo, it was just brilliant. I loved it. As a producer, I was just trying to bring in this kind of dreamy feel to the track. It has a floating quality, and that’s something I was leaning into, trying to put a soundtrack to that dream.” **“Skinny Ape”** “There’s something mad and crazy about ‘Skinny Ape,’ how it took shape. I felt on the edge of my seat, out of control. I didn’t know what was happening and how it was going to evolve. It was a lot of happy accidents, like throwing the weirdest, wildest sound at the track and then muting four other things and then all of a sudden, ‘Wow, that’s a cool texture.’ Playing drums in that sort of double-time punk rock section was really fun, and Damon was excited watching me play that part. That feeling of being out of control when I’m working is exciting because it’s very unpredictable and brings out things of myself I never would have imagined I would’ve done.” **“Possession Island” (feat. Beck)** “I feel like the best of me when I work with Beck, and I feel the same with Damon. I feel pushed by their presence and their body of work, searching into places that I never looked before—deep, dark corners, sonically. What can I do that’s different than I might do with most people? It’s very easy to fall into comfort zones and what’s easy when you’re making music. Working with Damon really awakened some creative part of my brain that was sleeping a little bit. I need to work with these people to keep these things going. Damon had been playing that piano part during his shows \[*The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows* tour\]. That melody was something he would play every time he’d sit down. I started playing the nylon string guitar, and then it became a little bit more of a flamenco influence, and even a mariachi sound with the Mellotron trumpet. I love hearing Damon and Beck singing and interacting with each other that way, these Walker Brothers-sounding harmonies.”

Brimming with astrological fervor and unbridled emotionality, *Red Moon in Venus* finds the Colombian American sensation zeroing in on love. From the proud promises behind “Endlessly” to the sweet little profundities of “Love Between...,” the album plays with genre without losing cohesion or connection. On the guest front, Don Toliver matches her R&B potency amid the polyrhythmic blur of “Fantasy,” while Omar Apollo brings his own certain charm to the sumptuous duet “Worth the Wait.” Yet most of the album keeps the spotlight rightfully on her, leading to breathtaking moments like “I Wish You Roses” and the Sade-esque “Blue.” And while *Red Moon in Venus* returns the artist to a primarily English-language mode, she hasn’t dispatched entirely with the approach taken on 2020’s *Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞*. She brings bilingual lyricism alongside orchestral accents for “Como Te Quiero Yo” and retro grooves for “Hasta Cuando.”