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.
Between Comedy Central’s *The New Negroes*, his Stony Island Audio podcast fiefdom, and countless hours of livestreaming, Open Mike Eagle has got plenty of media experience. For *Neighborhood Gods Unlimited*, he proffers a conceptually inventive take on imagined cable network Dark Comedy Television, with barely enough budget for an hour’s worth of programming. That translates to one of the indie-rap mainstay’s more diverse offerings thematically and, with help from underground producers like Child Actor and Ialive, sonically. On the sitcom-esque “me and aquil stealing stuff from work,” he and his buddy AQ both toil and loaf around like quintessential mall rats. His unabashedly nerdy tastes come through as he nods to *Adventure Time*’s wintry wizard on “contraband (the plug has bags of me)” and non-canonically mixes heterogenous comic book and cartoon lore on “michigan j. wonder.” Longtime cohorts R.A.P. Ferreira and Previous Industries’ Video Dave appear as fourth-wall-winking guest stars in sweeps-week fashion, but nobody upstages Mr. Number 1 on the Call Sheet.
For Benny the Butcher, feeding the streets is more than just a business strategy. As the Buffalo rapper builds his Black Soprano Family brand, he concurrently makes clear his determined aspirations towards earning a spot in the top-five-dead-or-alive vanguard of elite MCs. With the release of *Summertime Butch 2*, a sequel to his well-received 2024 project, he adds another audio document to the growing dossier comprising his craft. After letting Griselda comrade Westside Gunn get a few Flygod bars off on “Jasmine’s,” he proceeds to lay into the current state of rap music, lambasting the lyrical laziness and pop aspirations of a mercifully unnamed cluster of subpar artists. On “Told You So,” he deflects criticism from those who overvalue mainstream chart placements while cruising down his personalized path to hip-hop greatness. Later, he reaffirms both his dope-boy bona fides and his underground classics on “77 Club,” demonstrating a linkage with the past criminality that now thematically fuels his creativity. Guests like Bruiser Wolf and OT The Real operate at a high level alongside a never-complacent Benny on the Daringer-produced “Hood on Fire” and Nickel Plated’s “Gold Plated Leica,” respectively. Other collabs like the booming “In the Wall” with Bun B and “Why Would I” with G Herbo take him out of his well-established trap-house comfort zone, yet he adapts his knowledgeably streetwise flows with sweat-free dexterity over those beats. Naturally, he shows love for his BSF insiders, making space for Elcamino and Duckman on the cinematic “Pandoras.”
The Chicago drill superstar’s eighth studio album, 2023’s *Almost Healed*, was devoted to the concept of recovering from trauma—a theme that’s haunted Lil Durk’s music, either implicitly or explicitly, since his emergence in the early 2010s as the most melodically gifted of the genre’s rising stars. Its March 2025 follow-up, *Deep Thoughts*, was slated for release in October 2024. But that same month, Durk was arrested (along with several affiliates of his record label and collective, Only the Family) in connection to a murder-for-hire case against a rival rapper. The rapper born Durk Banks has maintained his innocence, but was denied bail on the grounds of being a flight risk. If convicted of the charges, the 32-year-old faces life in prison. This changes the gravity of his long-awaited ninth album, which was delayed four times since the 2024 arrest. But the tracklist of *Deep Thoughts* seems to reflect a different lifetime, with pre-arrest singles like “Turn Up a Notch” and a suite of lusty ballads like the benny blanco-produced Jhene Aiko duet, “Can’t Hide It.” The resounding pathos of Durk’s work remains—most potently on “Keep on Sippin’,” whose candid bars detail the vicious cycle of addiction. But the stakes have changed, and it’s hard not to wonder what the Lil Durk of the past year might have to get off his chest instead. Still, an offhand line from “They Want to Be You,” a melancholy Future collab about the expectations of fame, hits even harder now: “All the kids rap, they wanna be just like you.”
“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.”
It could be difficult for the casual fan to believe that, a full three decades in the game, Brother Ali is still improving as an MC. But on *Satisfied Soul*, the follow-up to 2024’s *Love & Service*, he’s rapping like he has something to prove. “Broadcasting live from the world tour with Muhammed my man/I hope that y’all understand, conquering land ain’t part of my plan,” he starts in on “The Counts.” “Put my forehead all on your sand/I put my heart in the palm of your hand/I make art and they call it a jam/You play it loud in your car and they call you a fan/Carve it in your skin, now you’re a Stan/I arrived with a wandering band that climbed out of a van/And held the mic like a wand in my dominant hand…” The Brother is, very intentionally, still nice with his. But *Satisfied Soul* isn’t just about lyrical dexterity. The project is produced by Ant (the production half of Minneapolis underground hip-hop heroes Atmosphere), whose long-standing collaborative relationship with Ali dates at least as far back as Ali’s second album, *Shadows in the Sun*. In interviews, Ali has been consistently gracious about what Ant’s production is able to draw out of him. On *Satisfied Soul*, this is the freedom to talk about everything from complicated family relationships (“Deep Cuts,” “Mysterious Things,” “Better But Us”) to Ali’s path to greatness as an MC (“D.R.U.M.”) to the unhoused (“Under the Stars”) to the time in 2008 when he kicked Justin Timberlake offstage for attempting to surprise him with an impromptu beatboxing effort (“Two Dudes”). As the project’s title implies, Ali sounds more comfortable in his skin than he’s ever been. He seems to have a great life—now residing full-time in Istanbul, and releasing music through Arizona-based Mello Music Group—and he can’t wait for you to hear about it.
If anyone knows something about *FESTIVAL SEASON*, it’s SAINt JHN, the Brooklyn-hailing singer and MC whose “Roses (Imanbek Remix)” has been tearing down electro festivals since its release back in 2018. JHN, though, is an artist whose creative practice extends way beyond single genre. He shows off his range on *FESTIVAL SEASON*, singing and rapping over rage-rap production (“Body on Me,” “4 the Gangsters”), ATL-centric trap music (“Stones!!!,” “Poppin,” “Real Hustler”), pop punk (“Who’s Ex Wife Is This”), pool-party techno (“Glitching”), soca-influenced house (“Loneliness”)—and, because even the greatest parties need a breather, a power ballad (“Never Met Superman”). It’s almost as if it doesn’t matter which festival you choose to attend: SAINt JHN is going to be there.
GIVĒON has been working on his craft these past few years, and the fruits of his labor are resplendent on *BELOVED*, a love letter to R&B that has the timeless feel of ’70s soul sides while possessing a distinctly 21st-century sensibility. “There’s that element where I’m doing this because it’s in my DNA,” GIVĒON tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I didn’t choose music. I tell people all the time, ‘I didn’t choose it. It chose me.’ But I care about rhythm and blues. It means a lot to me.” *BELOVED* starts off in a big way: Surging strings create a high-drama atmosphere that sets the mood for “MUD,” a poison-pen letter to an ex that’s given a cushion by GIVĒON\'s supple croon and the sonic splendor surrounding it. Not only does the song send a message to the person who did GIVĒON wrong, it lets listeners know that the singer-songwriter has leveled up in the years since his last album, 2022’s *Give or Take*. “I think I grew as an artist exponentially,” he says. “There’s a leap in my knowing how to articulate what I feel, or what I have a taste for.” On *BELOVED*, GIVĒON showcases his evolution in a way that’s dazzling without being showy—the longing “I CAN TELL” frames his vulnerable vocals in rhythmic snaps and dry horns, while on the slow-burning “KEEPER” he fully throws himself into his plea to a lover he’s missing. Much of *BELOVED* came out of GIVĒON and his collaborators jamming in the studio, and its grooves possess the sort of loose yet locked-in feel that characterizes the most sublime soul. Despite growing up in Southern California, GIVĒON was raised on East Coast R&B, and he studied records by the likes of Teddy Pendergrass, as well as the productions of Philadelphia soul architects Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, to get properly inspired for *BELOVED*. He also got better at fully tuning in to his artistic desires and curiosity. “I know what artist I am,” he says. “I understand my process. I understand how to evolve as well.”
In the course of making his fourth album, Loyle Carner came to the conclusion that perhaps it was time to lighten up a little. “I needed to not take myself so seriously,” he tells Apple Music. “I think I’m learning how to do that slowly.” One thing that has undoubtedly helped iron out that furrowed brow is just how much the South London rapper, songwriter, spoken-word artist, and now actor, born Ben Coyle-Larner, is reveling in fatherhood. “My son was in the studio so much, we were just in a place of living in the moment,” he explains. “When you’re around kids, that’s the only thing that exists to them. There’s no present or past or future or whatever.” That sense of savoring the here and now runs right through *hopefully !*. It’s an album that shakes off the contemplative turmoil of 2022’s *hugo*, where he explored his relationship with his own father, with these songs possessing a reassuring warmth. An airy, elegant hip-hop record from an artist who sounds totally at ease with himself, *hopefully !* has a cover that serves as the perfect snapshot for its themes of paternal love. “It always happens that my son just decides to draw on my face,” he says. “My partner captured the moment. What’s so nice is you can’t tell in that photo if he’s supporting me or comforting me or if I’m comforting him. I think that’s true of our relationship. It’s quite ambiguous, who’s looking after who?” Let Loyle Carner guide through the soothing sounds of *hopefully !*, track by track. **“feel at home”** “This was made with a friend of mine called Zach Nahome. I went to his house and we made it quite quickly. I was trying really hard to not write too many words down. Then, when I brought it back to the studio with my friends that I was working on the rest of the album with, I played them a little voice note I had on my phone of my son playing wind chimes in the park and it just happened to be in the perfect key with the song. Literally, he was kind of playing along with the song. It had to be at the start of the song and everyone around me was like, ‘It has to be the opener.’” **“in my mind”** “If ‘feel at home’ is the opening credits then ‘in my mind’ is the first scene. This was actually the first song we made together as a band and the first song for this album. We were in the studio in between sessions on tour and we had two days in the studio. It was a totally clean slate. I was listening to a lot more music from my childhood, The Smiths, The Cure, Bob Dylan, Stevie Smith, Elliott Smith—a lot of Smiths!—and new stuff too like Fontaines D.C.. Trying to get back to the stuff I listened to before I was told what I should listen to. That was feeding into it a lot.” **“all i need”** “This is one of my favorites. I wrote it in the car park of a Big Yellow Self Storage in East London. I was struck with how many things people keep, all the stuff that they hold onto. I wish that we had less stuff as people. I was thinking about all the emotional baggage that you don’t see that people carry around. I wish you could put that in a Big Yellow Self Storage instead.” **“lyin”** “This was written just before my daughter was born. It was about not being sure if she was going to make it or not. Birth and pregnancy is so complicated, and it doesn’t always work out. I was thinking about who she would be and hoping that she makes it. Also, putting my son to bed and thinking about how that’s my favorite time and how scared I was the first time around I was having a kid and how light and chill I was the second time because I knew it was easier than I thought.” **“time to go”** “‘time to go’’s days were numbered on the album for a long time. I was trying to get it to fit into the palette of the rest of the music, it was cool but it sounded so big and I wanted it to feel small. Then we went around the houses, tried to take everything away from it and, in the end, we decided that it was meant to be what it was and we couldn’t change it. We left it how it was and gave it a chance. We knew that there was something about it that made us feel good. We were like, ‘Look, if we can’t figure out how to change it, but we want it to come out, it’s going to have to be what it is.’” **“horcrux”** “I was thinking about my son and my daughter. In Harry Potter, Voldemort has the Horcruxes, where he takes a piece of his soul and puts it somewhere else. Someone had said to me, ‘You only get out of life alive through your kids. They’re the ones who get you out of life alive.’ I thought it was such a funny saying but I thought about it a lot because all of the best bits of me, I’ve taken them and tried to put them into my kids.” **“strangers”** “I made this with the intention of passing it over to someone I’m a big fan of: Adrianne Lenker. I really wanted her to sing it. I thought she could sing better than me, but she wasn’t around or whatever, so it fell back to me. At first, I was going to put it in the bin, and then I was like, ‘Actually, maybe this has got a chance.’ Other people started saying to me, ‘Please don’t lose this song. I really love it,’ so I gave it a shot, and here it is. Singing is fucking scary, if I’m honest. I didn’t think it through until it was too late. Obviously, it’s easy in front of no one. Then, the more people who started to come into touch with it and start to listen to it, it’s been a bit more scary. I’m trying to roll with it, trying to brave it.” **“hopefully” (with Benjamin Zephaniah)** “This features Benjamin Zephaniah. I was trying to be a little bit more coded in my language and be abstract a bit more to protect my kids, it’s so hard to express my love for them, literally. The echo you can hear is me and my son underneath a bridge on our bike. Every time we cycle underneath a bridge, he says, ‘Echo,’ because he likes the way it sounds, and so do I. I’ve recorded loads of those. Then, Benjamin Zephaniah, at the end, I had watched this documentary the day before and I heard that excerpt, and I was like, ‘That sums up what I’m saying in a more literal and pointed way.’” **“purpose” (with Navy Blue)** “This features Navy Blue. That was a dream come true, to collab with him. It came about really easily. We had been texting a bit. I texted him on a whim and was like, ‘I made this song, I think you’ll like it.’ He was sat on a beach in Jamaica and he wrote to it then and there and sent it back the next day.” **“don’t fix it” (with Nick Hakim)** “This is me and the main man, Nick Hakim. It was the last song we made for the album. It was in the studio at his in New York. It was quite a profound day for me to watch him. I’m a big fan of Nick Hakim. He wasn’t singing because obviously it’s a hard thing to part with when it’s so special to you. Then he got hunched up into the corner, put the mic to his lips, and spoke this little chorus into the mic. It was a privilege to watch someone do the thing they’re meant to do in your presence.” **“about time”** “It had to be at the end of the album because of my son, ’cause it sounds like he’s telling me to stop making music and focus on being a dad. I wanted it to be quite close to the beginning so it didn’t get lost but then it couldn’t be anywhere else. It was made to be there.”
As much as his Griselda affiliation connects him with a Buffalo, NY state of mind, Boldy James remains a Detroit rapper through and through. Coming amid a fast-and-furious run of new releases from the prodigious spitter, *Hommage* rightfully centers him in his hometown both physically and sonically. With the help of Antt Beatz, producer behind favorites by 42 Dugg and Icewear Vezzo, he shares his astutely local vision of the city on cuts like “Concrete Connie” and “Super Mario.” Even the track titles themselves reflect the rapper’s clever brand of lyricism, as cuts like the exultant “Brick James” and “Himothy Mcveigh” contain his all-but-patented blend of narco knowledge drops and street king statements. As expected, the guest list is rightfully restricted to residents, with Baby Money giving nothing but straight talk on the booming “Off the Richter” and BandGang Lonnie Bands trading tight verses off with Boldy on the melancholic “Met Me.”
Last year, the Baton Rouge rapper’s relative silence spoke volumes. After a staggeringly prolific run in the previous years (one album and six mixtapes in 2022, two albums and two mixtapes in 2023), YoungBoy released just one record in 2024. Days before the intended release of his seventh album, *I Just Got a Lot on My Shoulders*, he was arrested on a number of charges, and he spent much of that year in a Utah county jail before receiving a 27-month prison sentence after accepting a plea deal in a federal gun case that had been ongoing for years. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of setbacks for the rapper, whose “Legal issues” section on Wikipedia is nearly as long as the one for “Career.” YoungBoy’s 2025 has so far been much brighter, beginning with his release on probation in April after years of house arrest. Then, on May 28, he was granted a presidential pardon, ending the lengthy legal battle that had hampered his career for half a decade. This explains the newfound swell of patriotism at play in the title of his eighth studio album, *MASA* (short for *Make America Slime Again*), as well as in the triumphant “XXX,” which opens with “The Star-Spangled Banner” wailed on electric guitar before YB crows: “The police watching, but they ain’t gonna stop me!” The album’s 30 tracks are brighter than its world-weary predecessor, veering between bouncy Louisiana street rap (“Diesel”) and power ballads (“Cold World”). But he finds room here and there for a bit of introspection regarding his recent years: “Never knew how hard it’d get/Never knew it’d come to this,” he singsongs on “Where I Been” before concluding: “After all, I’m amazed that I conquered it.”
CMG’s Louisville connect EST Gee made the shift from mixtape marvel to certified hitmaker with seeming ease. Linking with the likes of 42 Dugg, Future, and Jack Harlow, he’s impacted the charts without having to compromise his core strengths and the experiences in which those were forged. That hood-borne integrity continues on *I Aint Feeling You*, its title yet another variant on his discography’s prevailing theme. Such ruthlessness dominates his verses, both when taking calculated aim on \"Slime” and in showing love for his environs on “The Streets.” Recognizing that trap-house politics and personal matters invariably intertwine in the lifestyle, he turns baby-mama drama into opportunities on “Crash” and surveys a veritable war zone from his particular point of view on the vengeful “RIP LU MIKE.” A genuine love for Southern rap helps to rightfully secure Gee’s own place within its legacy. To that end, he nods to regional hip-hop greatness on “Plug Motivation” and reconnects with Lil Baby for “Houstonatlantaville,” with no less than Travis Scott representing the first part of that tri-city trifecta. Drawing direct inspiration from a Lil Scrappy hit, “Do My Own Stunts” showcases Gee’s defiant individualistic streak via a string of flexes and threats. An auspicious reunion with his “5500 Degrees” cohort Rylo Rodriguez out of Alabama, the Veeze-infused “My Love” sets unflinchingly real-life storytelling against a snappy, soulful beat. That reflectively confessional approach carries through to the album’s “Outro,” a clear-eyed accounting of his imperfections and mistakes that makes him even more relatable.
Like a fine wine, soul diva Mariah Carey matured into a classic vintage with the release of 2005’s *The Emancipation of Mimi*. The songs reflect a newfound intimacy and humor, while exploring gospel, hip-hop, and live band influences. The airy, then yearning vocals of “We Belong Together” are offset by the harmony-packed head-nodder “It’s Like That.” Meanwhile, blingtastic club bangers with Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams will start a party in your heart.
