NPR Music's 50 Best Albums of 2021

There\'s power in reclamation, and Jazmine Sullivan leans into every bit of it on *Heaux Tales*. The project, her fourth overall and first in six years, takes the content and casual candor of a group chat and unpacks them across songs and narrative, laying waste to the patriarchal good girl/bad girl dichotomy in the process. It\'s as much about “hoes” as it is the people who both benefit from and are harmed by the notion. Pleasure takes center stage from the very beginning; “Bodies” captures the inner monologue of the moments immediately after a drunken hookup with—well, does it really matter? The who is irrelevant to the why, as Sullivan searches her mirror for accountability. “I keep on piling on bodies on bodies on bodies, yeah, you getting sloppy, girl, I gotta stop getting fucked up.” The theme reemerges throughout, each time towards a different end, as short spoken interludes thread it all together. “Put It Down” offers praise for the men who only seem to be worthy of it in the bedroom (because who among us hasn\'t indulged in or even enabled the carnal delights of those who offer little else beyond?), while “On It,” a pearl-clutching duet with Ari Lennox, unfolds like a three-minute sext sung by two absolute vocal powerhouses. Later, she cleverly inverts the sentiment but maintains the artistic dynamism on a duet with H.E.R., replacing the sexual confidence with a missive about how “it ain\'t right how these hoes be winning.” The singing is breathtaking—textbooks could be filled on the way Sullivan brings emotionality into the tone and texture of voice, as on the devastating lead single “Lost One”—but it\'d be erroneous to ignore the lyrics and what these intra- and interpersonal dialogues expose. *Heaux Tales* not only highlights the multitudes of many women, it suggests the multitudes that can exist within a single woman, how virtue and vulnerability thrive next to ravenous desire and indomitability. It stands up as a portrait of a woman, painted by the brushes of several, who is, at the end of it all, simply doing the best she can—trying to love and protect herself despite a world that would prefer she do neither.

“Sometimes I’ll be in my own space, my own company, and that’s when I\'m really content,” Little Simz tells Apple Music. “It\'s all love, though. There’s nothing against anyone else; that\'s just how I am. I like doing my own thing and making my art.” The lockdowns of 2020, then, proved fruitful for the North London MC, singer, and actor. She wrestled writer’s block, revived her cult *Drop* EP series (explore the razor-sharp and diaristic *Drop 6* immediately), and laid grand plans for her fourth studio album. Songwriter/producer Inflo, co-architect of Simz’s 2019 Mercury-nominated, Ivor Novello Award-winning *GREY Area*, was tapped and the hard work began. “It was straight boot camp,” she says of the *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert* sessions in London and Los Angeles. “We got things done pronto, especially with the pace that me and Flo move at. We’re quite impulsive: When we\'re ready to go, it’s time to go.” Months of final touches followed—and a collision between rap and TV royalty. An interest in *The Crown* led Simz to approach Emma Corrin (who gave an award-winning portrayal of Princess Diana in the drama). She uses her Diana accent to offer breathless, regal addresses that punctuate the 19-track album. “It was a reach,” Simz says of inviting Corrin’s participation. “I’m not sure what I expected, but I enjoyed watching her performance, and wrote most of her words whilst I was watching her.” Corrin’s speeches add to the record’s sense of grandeur. It pairs turbocharged UK rap with Simz at her most vulnerable and ambitious. There are meditations on coming of age in the spotlight (“Standing Ovation”), a reunion with fellow Sault collaborator Cleo Sol on the glorious “Woman,” and, in “Point and Kill,” a cleansing, polyrhythmic jam session with Nigerian artist Obongjayar that confirms the record’s dazzling sonic palette. Here, Simz talks us through *Sometimes I Might Be Introvert*, track by track. **“Introvert”** “This was always going to intro the album from the moment it was made. It feels like a battle cry, a rebirth. And with the title, you wouldn\'t expect this to sound so huge. But I’m finding the power within my introversion to breathe new meaning into the word.” **“Woman” (feat. Cleo Sol)** “This was made to uplift and celebrate women. To my peers, my family, my friends, close women in my life, as well as women all over the world: I want them to know I’ve got their back. Linking up with Cleo is always fun; we have such great musical chemistry, and I can’t imagine anyone else bringing what she did to the song. Her voice is beautiful, but I think it\'s her spirit and her intention that comes through when she sings.” **“Two Worlds Apart”** “Firstly, I love this sample; it’s ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’ by Smokey Robinson, and Flo’s chopped it up really cool. This is my moment to flex. You had the opener, followed by a nice, smoother vibe, but this is like, ‘Hey, you’re listening to a *rap* album.’” **“I Love You, I Hate You”** “This wasn’t the easiest song for me to write, but I\'m super proud that I did. It’s an opportunity for me to lay bare my feelings on how that \[family\] situation affected me, growing up. And where I\'m at now—at peace with it and moving on.” **“Little Q, Pt. 1 (Interlude)”** “Little Q is my cousin, Qudus, on my dad\'s side. We grew up together, but then there was a stage where we didn\'t really talk for some years. No bad blood, just doing different things, so when we reconnected, we had a real heart-to-heart—and I heard about all he’d been through. It made me feel like, ‘Damn, this is a blood relative, and he almost lost his life.’ I thank God he didn’t, but I thought of others like him. And I felt it was important that his story was heard and shared. So, I’m speaking from his perspective.” **“Little Q, Pt. 2”** “I grew up in North London and \[Little Q\] was raised in South, and as much as we both grew up in endz, his experience was obviously different to mine. Being a product of an environment or system that isn\'t really for you, it’s tough trying to navigate that.” **“Gems (Interlude)”** “This is another turning point, reminding myself to take time: ‘Breathe…you\'re human. Give what you can give, but don\'t burn out for anyone. Put yourself first.’ Just little gems that everyone needs to hear once in a while.” **“Speed”** “This track sends another reminder: ‘This game is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself!’ I know where I\'m headed, and I\'m taking my time, with little breaks here and there. Now I know when to really hit the gas and also when to come off a bit.” **“Standing Ovation”** “I take some time to reflect here, like, ‘Wow, you\'re still here and still going. It’s been a slow burn, but you can afford to give yourself a pat on the back.’ But as well as being in the limelight, let\'s also acknowledge the people on the ground doing real amazing work: our key workers, our healers, teachers, cleaners. If you go to a toilet and it\'s dirty, people go in from 9 to 5 and make sure that shit is spotless for you, so let\'s also say thank you.” **“I See You”** “This is a really beautiful and poetic song on love. Sometimes as artists we tend to draw from traumatic times for great art, we’re hurt or in pain, but it was nice for me to be able to draw from a place of real joy in my life for this song. Even where it sits \[on the album\]: right in the center, the heart.” **“The Rapper That Came to Tea (Interlude)”** “This title is a play on \[Judith Kerr’s\] children\'s book *The Tiger Who Came to Tea*, and this is about me better understanding my introversion. I’m just posing questions to myself—I might not necessarily have answers for them, I think it\'s good to throw them out there and get the brain working a bit.” **“Rollin Stone”** “This cut reminds me somewhat of ’09 Simz, spitting with rapidness and being witty. And I’m also finding new ways to use my voice on the second half here, letting my evil twin have her time.” **“Protect My Energy”** “This is one of the songs I\'m really looking forward to performing live. It’s a stepper, and it got me really wanting to sing, to be honest. I very much enjoy being around good company, but these days I enjoy my personal space and I want to protect that.” **“Never Make Promises (Interlude)”** “This one is self-explanatory—nothing is promised at all. It’s a short intermission to lead to the next one, but at one point it was nearly the album intro.” **“Point and Kill” (feat. Obongjayar)** “This is a big vibe! It feels very much like Nigeria to me, and Obongjayar is one of my favorites at the moment. We recorded this in my living room on a whim—and I\'m very, very grateful that he graced this song. The title comes from a phrase used in Nigeria to pick out fish at the market, or a store. You point, they kill. But also metaphorically, whatever I want, I\'m going to get in the same way, essentially.” **“Fear No Man”** “This track continues the same vibe, even more so. It declares: ‘I\'m here. I\'m unapologetically me and I fear no one here. I\'m not shook of anyone in this rap game.’” **“The Garden (Interlude)”** “This track is just amazing musically. It’s about nurturing the seeds you plant. Nurture those relationships, and everything around you that\'s holding you down.” **“How Did You Get Here”** “I want everyone to know *how* I got here; from the jump, school days, to my rap group, Space Age. We were just figuring it out, being persistent. I cried whilst recording this song; it all hit me, like, ‘I\'m actually recording my fourth album.’ Sometimes I sit and I wonder if this is all really true.” **“Miss Understood”** “This is the perfect closer. I could have ended on the last track, easily, but, I don\'t know, it\'s kind of like doing 99 reps. You\'ve done 99, that\'s amazing, but you can do one more to just make it 100, you can. And for me it was like, ‘I\'m going to get this one in there.’”

Lucy Dacus’ favorite songs are “the ones that take 15 minutes to write,” she tells Apple Music. “I\'m easily convinced that the song is like a unit when it comes out in one burst. In many ways, I feel out of control, like it\'s not my decision what I write.” On her third LP, the Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter surrenders to autobiography with a set of spare and intimate indie rock that combines her memory of growing up in Richmond, Virginia, with details she pulled from journals she’s kept since she was 7, much of it shaped by her religious upbringing. It’s as much about what we remember as how and why we remember it. “The record was me looking at my past, but now when I hear them it\'s almost like the songs are a part of the past, like a memory about memory,” she says. “This must be what I was ready to do, and I have to trust that. There\'s probably stuff that has happened to me that I\'m still not ready to look at and I just have to wait for the day that I am.” Here, she tells us the story behind every song on the album. **“Hot & Heavy”** “My first big tour in 2016—after my first record came out—was two and a half months, and at the very end of it, I broke up with my partner at the time. I came back to Richmond after being gone for the longest I\'d ever been away and everything felt different: people’s perception of me; my friend group; my living situation. I was, for the first time, not comfortable in Richmond, and I felt really sad about that because I had planned on being here my whole life. This song is about returning to where you grew up—or where you spent any of your past—and being hit with an onslaught of memories. I think of my past self as a separate person, so the song is me speaking to me. It’s realizing that at one point in my life, everything was ahead of me and my life could\'ve ended up however. It still can, but it\'s like now I know the secret.” **“Christine”** “It starts with a scene that really happened. Me and my friend were sitting in the backseat and she\'s asleep on my shoulder. We’re coming home from a sermon that was about how humans are evil and children especially need to be guided or else they\'ll fall into the hands of the devil. She was dating this guy who at the time was just not treating her right, and I played her the song. I was like, ‘I just want you to hear this once. I\'ll put it away, but you should know that I would not support you if you get married. I don\'t think that this is the best you could do.’ She took it to heart, but she didn\'t actually break up with the guy. They\'re still together and he\'s changed and they\'ve changed and I don\'t feel that way anymore. I feel like they\'re in a better place, but at the time it felt very urgent to me that she get out of that situation.” **“First Time”** “I was on a kind of fast-paced walk and I started singing to myself, which is how I write most of my songs. I had all this energy and I started jogging for no reason, which, if you know me, is super not me—I would not electively jog. I started writing about that feeling when you\'re in love for the first time and all you think about is the one person and how you find access to yourself through them. I paused for a second because I was like, ‘Do I really want to talk about early sexual experiences? No, just do it. If you don\'t like it, don\'t share it.’ It’s about discovery: your body and your emotional capacity and how you\'re never going to feel it that way you did the first time again. At the time, I was very worried that I\'d never feel that way again. The truth was, I haven’t—but I have felt other wonderful things.” **“VBS”** “I don\'t want my identity to be that I used to believe in God because I didn\'t even choose that, but it\'s inextricable to who I am and my upbringing. I like that in the song, the setting is \[Vacation Bible School\], but the core of the song is about a relationship. My first boyfriend, who I met at VBS, used to snort nutmeg. He was a Slayer fan and it was contentious in our relationship because he loved Slayer even more than God and I got into Slayer thinking, ‘Oh, maybe he\'ll get into God.’ He was one of the kids that went to church but wasn\'t super into it, whereas I was defining my whole life by it. But I’ve got to thank him for introducing me to Slayer and The Cure, which had the biggest impact on me.” **“Cartwheel”** “I was taking a walk with \[producer\] Collin \[Pastore\] and as we passed by his school, I remembered all of the times that I was forced to play dodgeball, and how the heat in Richmond would get so bad that it would melt your shoes. That memory ended up turning into this song, about how all my girlfriends at that age were starting to get into boys before I wanted to and I felt so panicked. Why are we sneaking boys into the sleepover? They\'re not even talking. We were having fun and now no one is playing with me anymore. When my best friend told me when she had sex for the first time, I felt so betrayed. I blamed it on God, but really it was personal, because I knew that our friendship was over as I knew it, and it was.” **“Thumbs”** “I was in the car on the way to dinner in Nashville. We were going to a Thai restaurant, meeting up with some friends, and I just had my notepad out. Didn\'t notice it was happening, and then wrote the last line, ‘You don\'t owe him shit,’ and then I wrote it down a second time because I needed to hear it for myself. My birth father is somebody that doesn\'t really understand boundaries, and I guess I didn\'t know that I believed that, that I didn\'t owe him anything, until I said it out loud. When we got to the restaurant, I felt like I was going to throw up, and so they all went into the restaurant, got a table, and I just sat there and cried. Then I gathered myself and had some pad thai.” **“Going Going Gone”** “I stayed up until like 1:00 am writing this cute little song on the little travel guitar that I bring on tour. I thought for sure I\'d never put it on a record because it\'s so campfire-ish. I never thought that it would fit tonally on anything, but I like the meaning of it. It\'s about the cycle of boys and girls, then men and women, and then fathers and daughters, and how fathers are protective of their daughters potentially because as young men they either witnessed or perpetrated abuse. Or just that men who would casually assault women know that their daughters are in danger of that, and that\'s maybe why they\'re so protective. I like it right after ‘Thumbs’ because it\'s like a reprieve after the heaviest point on the record.” **“Partner in Crime”** “I tried to sing a regular take and I was just sounding bad that day. We did Auto-Tune temporarily, but then we loved it so much we just kept it. I liked that it was a choice. The meaning of the song is about this relationship I had when I was a teenager with somebody who was older than me, and how I tried to act really adult in order to relate or get that person\'s respect. So Auto-Tune fits because it falsifies your voice in order to be technically more perfect or maybe more attractive.” **“Brando”** “I really started to know about older movies in high school, when I met this one friend who the song is about. I feel like he was attracted to anything that could give him superiority—he was a self-proclaimed anarchist punk, which just meant that he knew more and knew better than everyone. He used to tell me that he knew me better than everyone else, but really that could not have been true because I hardly ever talked about myself and he was never satisfied with who I was.” **“Please Stay”** “I wrote it in September of 2019, after we recorded most of the record. I had been circling around this role that I have played throughout my life, where I am trying to convince somebody that I love very much that their life is worth living. The song is about me just feeling helpless but trying to do anything I can to offer any sort of way in to life, instead of a way out. One day at a time is the right pace to aim for.” **“Triple Dog Dare”** “In high school I was friends with this girl and we would spend all our time together. Neither of us were out, but I think that her mom saw that there was romantic potential, even though I wouldn\'t come out to myself for many years later. The first verses of the song are true: Her mom kept us apart, our friendship didn\'t last. But the ending of the song is this fictitious alternative where the characters actually do prioritize each other and get out from under the thumbs of their parents and they steal a boat and they run away and it\'s sort of left to anyone\'s interpretation whether or not they succeed at that or if they die at sea. There’s no such thing as nonfiction. I felt empowered by finding out that I could just do that, like no one was making me tell the truth in that scenario. Songwriting doesn\'t have to be reporting.”

Allison Russell has long been a fixture of the roots scene, crafting melodic roots-pop as part of the duo Birds of Chicago and inventive, socially conscious folk with the acclaimed supergroup Our Native Daughters. The Nashville-based, Montreal-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist steps out on her own on her debut album, an expertly rendered and powerfully delivered collection that proves Russell to be just as adept a solo artist as she is a collaborator. (Though, in the spirit of collaboration, Russell invites friends and fellow musicians like Yola, Erin Rae, and the McCrary Sisters to join her.) Thematically, *Outside Child* navigates difficult terrain—such as abuse, neglect, and racism—though it does so with an undercurrent of healing, transformation, and compassion. In an album full of standout moments, it’s hard not to point to “4th Day Prayer,” a brutally frank recollection of Russell’s sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive father, built atop a soulful, gospel-adjacent arrangement that suggests empowerment rather than victimhood. Russell is one of roots music’s finest musicians in any form, but with *Outside Child*, she stakes her claim as one of its finest visionaries too.

The jazz great Pharoah Sanders was sitting in a car in 2015 when by chance he heard Floating Points’ *Elaenia*, a bewitching set of flickering synthesizer etudes. Sanders, born in 1940, declared that he would like to meet the album’s creator, aka the British electronic musician Sam Shepherd, 46 years his junior. *Promises*, the fruit of their eventual collaboration, represents a quietly gripping meeting of the two minds. Composed by Shepherd and performed upon a dozen keyboard instruments, plus the strings of the London Symphony Orchestra, *Promises* is nevertheless primarily a showcase for Sanders’ horn. In the ’60s, Sanders could blow as fiercely as any of his avant-garde brethren, but *Promises* catches him in a tender, lyrical mode. The mood is wistful and elegiac; early on, there’s a fleeting nod to “People Make the World Go Round,” a doleful 1971 song by The Stylistics, and throughout, Sanders’ playing has more in keeping with the expressiveness of R&B than the mountain-scaling acrobatics of free jazz. His tone is transcendent; his quietest moments have a gently raspy quality that bristles with harmonics. Billed as “a continuous piece of music in nine movements,” *Promises* takes the form of one long extended fantasia. Toward the middle, it swells to an ecstatic climax that’s reminiscent of Alice Coltrane’s spiritual-jazz epics, but for the most part, it is minimalist in form and measured in tone; Shepherd restrains himself to a searching seven-note phrase that repeats as naturally as deep breathing for almost the full 46-minute expanse of the piece. For long stretches you could be forgiven for forgetting that this is a Floating Points project at all; there’s very little that’s overtly electronic about it, save for the occasional curlicue of analog synth. Ultimately, the music’s abiding stillness leads to a profound atmosphere of spiritual questing—one that makes the final coda, following more than a minute of silence at the end, feel all the more rewarding.

The Pakistani musician began writing her second album, and then her younger brother died. And so, instead of the dark, edgy dance record she’d intended on making, Aftab turned to the Urdu ghazals she grew up with—an ancient form of lyric poetry centered around loss and longing. On *Vulture Prince*, Aftab makes the art form her own, trading the traditional percussion-heavy instrumentation for heavenly string arrangements (harp, violin, upright bass); she even ventures into reggae territory on “Last Night,” a slinky rendition of a Rumi poem. She translates another poem, this time by Mirza Ghalib, on “Diya Hai,” the last song she performed for her brother Maher, and a haunting expression of all-encompassing grief.

“I don’t like to agonize over things,” Arlo Parks tells Apple Music. “It can tarnish the magic a little. Usually a song will take an hour or less from conception to end. If I listen back and it’s how I pictured it, I move on.” The West London poet-turned-songwriter is right to trust her “gut feeling.” *Collapsed in Sunbeams* is a debut album that crystallizes her talent for chronicling sadness and optimism in universally felt indie-pop confessionals. “I wanted a sense of balance,” she says. “The record had to face the difficult parts of life in a way that was unflinching but without feeling all-consuming and miserable. It also needed to carry that undertone of hope, without feeling naive. It had to reflect the bittersweet quality of being alive.” *Collapsed in Sunbeams* achieves all this, scrapbooking adolescent milestones and Parks’ own sonic evolution to form something quite spectacular. Here, she talks us through her work, track by track. **Collapsed in Sunbeams** “I knew that I wanted poetry in the album, but I wasn\'t quite sure where it was going to sit. This spoken-word piece is actually the last thing that I did for the album, and I recorded it in my bedroom. I liked the idea of speaking to the listener in a way that felt intimate—I wanted to acknowledge the fact that even though the stories in the album are about me, my life and my world, I\'m also embarking on this journey with listeners. I wanted to create an avalanche of imagery. I’ve always gravitated towards very sensory writers—people like Zadie Smith or Eileen Myles who hone in on those little details. I also wanted to explore the idea of healing, growth, and making peace with yourself in a holistic way. Because this album is about those first times where I fell in love, where I felt pain, where I stood up for myself, and where I set boundaries.” **Hurt** “I was coming off the back of writer\'s block and feeling quite paralyzed by the idea of making an album. It felt quite daunting to me. Luca \[Buccellati, Parks’ co-producer and co-writer\] had just come over from LA, and it was January, and we hadn\'t seen each other in a while. I\'d been listening to plenty of Motown and The Supremes, plus a lot of Inflo\'s production and Cleo Sol\'s work. I wanted to create something that felt triumphant, and that you could dance to. The idea was for the song to expose how tough things can be but revolve around the idea of the possibility for joy in the future. There’s a quote by \[Caribbean American poet\] Audre Lorde that I really liked: ‘Pain will either change or end.’ That\'s what the song revolved around for me.” **Too Good** “I did this one with Paul Epworth in one of our first days of sessions. I showed him all the music that I was obsessed with at the time, from ’70s Zambian psychedelic rock to MF DOOM and the hip-hop that I love via Tame Impala and big ’90s throwback pop by TLC. From there, it was a whirlwind. Paul started playing this drumbeat, and then I was just running around for ages singing into mics and going off to do stuff on the guitar. I love some of the little details, like the bump on someone’s wrist and getting to name-drop Thom Yorke. It feels truly me.” **Hope** “This song is about a friend of mine—but also explores that universal idea of being stuck inside, feeling depressed, isolated, and alone, and being ashamed of feeling that way, too. It’s strange how serendipitous a lot of themes have proved as we go through the pandemic. That sense of shame is present in the verses, so I wanted the chorus to be this rallying cry. I imagined a room full of people at a show who maybe had felt alone at some point in their lives singing together as this collective cry so they could look around and realize they’re not alone. I wanted to also have the little spoken-word breakdown, just as a moment to bring me closer to the listener. As if I’m on the other side of a phone call.” **Caroline** “I wrote ‘Caroline’ and ‘For Violet’ on the same, very inspired day. I had my little £8 bottle of Casillero del Diablo. I was taken back to when I first started writing at seven or eight, where I would write these very observant and very character-based short stories. I recalled this argument that I’d seen taken place between a couple on Oxford Street. I only saw about 30 seconds of it, but I found myself wondering all these things. Why was their relationship exploding out in the open like that? What caused it? Did the relationship end right there and then? The idea of witnessing a relationship without context was really interesting to me, and so the lyrics just came out as a stream of consciousness, like I was relaying the story to a friend. The harmonies are also important on this song, and were inspired by this video I found of The Beatles performing ‘This Boy.’ The chorus feels like such an explosion—such a release—and harmonies can accentuate that.” **Black Dog** “A very special song to me. I wrote this about my best friend. I remember writing that song and feeling so confused and helpless trying to understand depression and what she was going through, and using music as a form of personal catharsis to work through things that felt impossible to work through. I recorded the vocals with this lump in my throat because it was so raw. Musically, I was harking back to songs like ‘Nude’ and ‘House of Cards’ on *In Rainbows*, plus music by Nick Drake and tracks from Sufjan Stevens’ *Carrie & Lowell*. I wanted something that felt stripped down.” **Green Eyes** “I was really inspired by Frank Ocean here—particularly ‘Futura Free’ \[from 2016’s *Blonde*\]. I was also listening to *Moon Safari* by Air, Stereolab, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Tirzah, Beach House, and a lot of that dreamy, nostalgic pop music that I love. It was important that the instrumental carry a warmth because the song explores quite painful places in the verses. I wanted to approach this topic of self-acceptance and self-discovery, plus people\'s parents not accepting them and the idea of sexuality. Understanding that you only need to focus on being yourself has been hard-won knowledge for me.” **Just Go** “A lot of the experiences I’ve had with toxic people distilled into one song. I wanted to talk about the idea of getting negative energy out of your life and how refreshed but also sad it leaves you feeling afterwards. That little twinge from missing someone, but knowing that you’re so much better off without them. I was thinking about those moments where you’re trying to solve conflict in a peaceful way, but there are all these explosions of drama. You end up realizing, ‘You haven’t changed, man.’ So I wanted a breakup song that said, simply, ‘No grudges, but please leave my life.’” **For Violet** “I imagined being in space, or being in a desert with everything silent and you’re alone with your thoughts. I was thinking about ‘Roads’ by Portishead, which gives me that similar feeling. It\'s minimal, it\'s dark, it\'s deep, it\'s gritty. The song covers those moments growing up when you realize that the world is a little bit heavier and darker than you first knew. I think everybody has that moment where their innocence is broken down a little bit. It’s a story about those big moments that you have to weather in friendships, and asking how you help somebody without over-challenging yourself. That\'s a balance that I talk about in the record a lot.” **Eugene** “Both ‘Black Dog’ and ‘Eugene’ represent a middle chapter between my earlier EPs and the record. I was pulling from all these different sonic places and trying to create a sound that felt warmer, and I was experimenting with lyrics that felt a little more surreal. I was talking a lot about dreams for the first time, and things that were incredibly personal. It felt like a real step forward in terms of my confidence as a writer, and to receive messages from people saying that the song has helped get them to a place where they’re more comfortable with themselves is incredible.” **Bluish** “I wanted it to feel very close. Very compact and with space in weird places. It needed to mimic the idea of feeling claustrophobic in a friendship. That feeling of being constantly asked to give more than you can and expected to be there in ways that you can’t. I wanted to explore the idea of setting boundaries. The Afrobeat-y beat was actually inspired by Radiohead’s ‘Identikit’ \[from 2016’s *A Moon Shaped Pool*\]. The lyrics are almost overflowing with imagery, which was something I loved about Adrianne Lenker’s *songs* album: She has these moments where she’s talking about all these different moments, and colors and senses, textures and emotions. This song needed to feel like an assault on the senses.” **Portra 400** “I wanted this song to feel like the end credits rolling down on one of those coming-of-age films, like *Dazed and Confused* or *The Breakfast Club*. Euphoric, but capturing the bittersweet sentiment of the record. Making rainbows out of something painful. Paul \[Epworth\] added so much warmth and muscularity that it feels like you’re ending on a high. The song’s partly inspired by *Just Kids* by Patti Smith, and that idea of relationships being dissolved and wrecked by people’s unhealthy coping mechanisms.”

Ahead of its release, Vince Staples told Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe that his eponymous album was a more personal work than those that came before. The Long Beach rapper has never shied away from bringing the fullness of his personality to his music—it\'s what makes him such a consistently entertaining listen—but *Vince Staples*, aided by Kenny Beats, who produced the project, is more clear-eyed than ever. Opener “ARE YOU WITH THAT?” is immediate: “Whenever I miss those days/Visit my Crips that lay/Under the ground, runnin\' around, we was them kids that played/All in the street, followin\' leads of n\*\*\*as who lost they ways,” he muses in the second verse, assessing the misguided aspirations that marked his childhood even as the threat of violence and death loomed. It\'s not that Staples hasn\'t broached these topics before—it\'s that he\'s rarely been this explicit regarding his own feelings about them. His sharp matter-of-factness and acerbic humor have often masked criticism in piercing barbs and commentary in unflinching bravado. Here, he\'s direct. The songs, like a series of vignettes that don\'t even reach the three-minute mark, feel intimately autobiographical. “SUNDOWN TOWN” reflects on the distrustful mentality that comes with taking losses and having the rug pulled out from under you one too many times (“When I see my fans, I\'m too paranoid to shake their hands”); “TAKE ME HOME” illuminates how the pull of the past, of “home,” can still linger even after you\'ve escaped it (“Been all across this atlas but keep coming back to this place \'cause it trapped us”). Some might call this an album of maturation, but it ultimately seems more like an invitation—Staples finally allowing his fans to know him just a bit more.

After two critically acclaimed albums about loss and mourning and a *New York Times* best-selling memoir, Michelle Zauner—the Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter known as Japanese Breakfast—wanted release. “I felt like I’d done the grief work for years and was ready for something new,” she tells Apple Music. “I was ready to celebrate *feeling*.” Her third album *Jubilee* is unguardedly joyful—neon synths, bubblegum-pop melodies, gusts of horns and strings—and delights in largesse; her arrangements are sweeping and intricate, her subjects complex. Occasionally, as on “Savage Good Boy” and “Kokomo, IN,” she uses fictional characters to illustrate meta-narratives around wealth, corruption, independence, and selfhood. “Album three is your chance to think big,” she says, pointing to Kate Bush and Björk, who released what she considers quintessential third albums: “Theatrical, ambitious, musical, surreal.” Below, Zauner explains how she reconciled her inner pop star with her desire to stay “extremely weird” and walks us through her new album track by track. **“Paprika”** “This song is the perfect thesis statement for the record because it’s a huge, ambitious monster of a song. We actually maxed out the number of tracks on the Pro Tools session because we used everything that could possibly be used on it. It\'s about reveling in the beauty of music.” **“Be Sweet”** “Back in 2018, I decided to try out writing sessions for the first time, and I was having a tough go of it. My publisher had set me up with Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing. What happens is they lie to you and say, ‘Jack loves your music and wants you to help him write his new record!’ And to him they’d say, ‘Michelle *loves* Wild Nothing, she wants to write together!’ Once we got together we were like, ‘I don\'t need help. I\'m not writing a record.’ So we decided we’d just write a pop song to sell and make some money. We didn’t have anyone specific in mind, we just knew it wasn’t going to be for either of us. Of course, once we started putting it together, I realized I really loved it. I think the distance of writing it for ‘someone else’ allowed me to take on this sassy \'80s women-of-the-night persona. To me, it almost feels like a Madonna, Whitney Houston, or Janet Jackson song.” **“Kokomo, IN”** “This is my favorite song off of the album. It’s sung from the perspective of a character I made up who’s this teenage boy in Kokomo, Indiana, and he’s saying goodbye to his high school sweetheart who is leaving. It\'s sort of got this ‘Wouldn\'t It Be Nice’ vibe, which I like, because Kokomo feels like a Beach Boys reference. Even though the song is rooted in classic teenage feelings, it\'s also very mature; he\'s like, ‘You have to go show the world all the parts of you that I fell so hard for.’ It’s about knowing that you\'re too young for this to be *it*, and that people aren’t meant to be kept by you. I was thinking back to how I felt when I was 18, when things were just so all-important. I personally was *not* that wise; I would’ve told someone to stay behind. So I guess this song is what I wish I would’ve said.” **“Slide Tackle”** “‘Slide Tackle’ was such a fussy bitch. I had a really hard time figuring out how to make it work. Eventually it devolved into, of all things, a series of solos, but I really love it. It started with a drumbeat that I\'d made in Ableton and a bassline I was trying to turn into a Future Islands-esque dance song. That sounded too simple, so I sent it to Ryan \[Galloway\] from Crying, who wrote all these crazy, math-y guitar parts. Then I got Adam Schatz, who plays in the band Landlady, to provide an amazing saxophone solo. After that, I stepped away from the song for like a year. When I finally relistened to it, it felt right. It’s about the way those of us who are predisposed to darker thoughts have to sometimes physically wrestle with our minds to feel joy.” **“Posing in Bondage”** “Jack Tatum helped me turn this song into this fraught, delicate ballad. The end of it reminds me of Drake\'s ‘Hold On, We\'re Going Home’; it has this drive-y, chill feeling. This song is about the bondage of controlled desire, and the bondage of monogamy—but in a good way.” **“Sit”** “This song is also about controlled desire, or our ability to lust for people and not act on it. Navigating monogamy and desire is difficult, but it’s also a normal human condition. Those feelings don’t contradict loyalty, you know? The song is shaped around this excellent keyboard line that \[bandmate\] Craig \[Hendrix\] came up with after listening to Tears for Fears. The chorus reminds me of heaven and the verses remind me of hell. After these dark and almost industrial bars, there\'s this angelic light that breaks through.” **“Savage Good Boy”** “This one was co-produced by Alex G, who is one of my favorite musicians of all time, and was inspired by a headline I’d read about billionaires buying bunkers. I wanted to write it from the perspective of a billionaire who’d bought one, and who was coaxing a woman to come live with him as the world burned around them. I wanted to capture what that level of self-validation looks like—that rationalization of hoarding wealth.” **“In Hell”** “This might be the saddest song I\'ve ever written. It\'s a companion song to ‘In Heaven’ off of *Psychopomp*, because it\'s about the same dog. But here, I\'m putting that dog down. It was actually written in the *Soft Sounds* era as a bonus track for the Japanese release, but I never felt like it got its due.” **“Tactics”** “I knew I wanted to make a beautiful, sweet, big ballad, full of strings and groovy percussion, and Craig, who co-produced it, added this feel-good Bill Withers, Randy Newman vibe. I think the combination is really fabulous.” **“Posing for Cars”** “I love a long, six-minute song to show off a little bit. It starts off as an understated acoustic guitar ballad that reminded me of Wilco’s ‘At Least That\'s What You Said,’ which also morphs from this intimate acoustic scene before exploding into a long guitar solo. To me, it always has felt like Jeff Tweedy is saying everything that can\'t be said in that moment through his instrument, and I loved that idea. I wanted to challenge myself to do the same—to write a long, sprawling, emotional solo where I expressed everything that couldn\'t be said with words.”

In August of 2018, Helado Negro mastermind Roberto Carlos Lange found himself in Berlin, collaborating and performing with more than 150 other artists as part of the PEOPLE festival, a weeklong artist residency founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner. Afterward, on his way home to New York, he spotted multi-instrumentalist and new age pioneer Laraaji seated nearby at the airport. “I don\'t like bugging people like that in public spaces,” Lange tells Apple Music, “but I did it. And then, as I was telling him what we’d been up to in Berlin, he was like, ‘Oh, wow. Far in.’” That expression stayed with him—so much so that it became a title and kind of unifying principle for his full-length follow-up to 2019 breakthrough *This Is How You Smile*. A reaction to what he calls the “implied grooves” of his previous work, *Far In* finds him moving away from the ethereal towards arrangements whose drums and bass are noticeably “present” throughout. Written in Brooklyn and Marfa, Texas—during a stay extended by the pandemic’s first lockdown—it’s a bilingual set of moody, psychedelic folk and pop that even at its dreamiest has a strong sense of place, whether he’s conjuring the fragrant citrus groves of his native South Florida or the spiritual expanse of a desert vista. “What I\'ve tried to do—and I think what I\'ve always tried to do—is make sure each song is its own world,” he says. “*Far In* was the best way for me to describe it, the way for me to talk about how I wanted to express a lot of different places and sounds that I know how to get to, but I maybe haven\'t shared before. I had to just look further in.” Here, he walks us through a number of the album’s songs. **“Wake Up Tomorrow” (feat. Kacy Hill)** “There\'s something about it that is a complete mystery. It feels like it\'s a doorway or it\'s just some kind of path somewhere out in some overgrown, shrubby path that\'s leading you somewhere, to some light. I think a lot of it has to do with Kacy\'s vocals on it, this humming melody that she does. It\'s just haunting.” **“Gemini and Leo”** “I\'m a Leo, my wife is a Gemini. I was working on this really funny loop that I wasn\'t sure was going to go anywhere. And then, the melody just clicked. A lot of times I shape the lyrics phonetically, in terms of trying to find what melodies attach. I don’t know why I was just thinking about us, but ‘her and I’—that was the hook. And then I was like, ‘Shit. Now I’ve got to make a song around this. Let\'s find a way to design a little story that talks about this relationship.’” **“There Must Be a Song Like You”** “There\'s different ways to look at it, and I think one of them is looking at somebody that you don\'t necessarily see eye-to-eye with. But another thing that I was thinking about was, how do you define this person, or how do you define this thing, because ‘you’ doesn\'t really have to be a person. ‘You’ could be you confronting a feeling, trying to describe what that feeling is, and maybe the only place you can find it is in the song.” **“Hometown Dream”** “It was one of the first songs I wrote when I got back to Brooklyn from Marfa, and a lot of those songs were responding to being forced into living somewhere else for six months, and really realizing that the world is beautiful everywhere. In a way, the idea of a hometown is just a dream. This idea of being a native anything. I think it\'s just a fantasy, more than anything, and that\'s kind of the feeling that I\'m trying to convey with this.” **“Outside the Outside”** “That breakdown was a moment of inspiration. I was using this synth that I was really getting into, the OP-Z. And that moment in the song, it\'s one of those happy accidents, where I didn\'t extend some edits and everything had dropped out except for the synth and I was like, ‘Oh, shit.’ It kind of pushed the whole theme of being outside the outside. It\'s almost like the further outside the outside you are, you\'re going far in. Not to put the joke on it, but it\'s true.” **“Brown Fluorescence”** “It\'s an interlude. It\'s a song, too. It’s a field recording I made, of some voices that I was able to record. They’re all chopped up and processed, but there was a glow about it. When I talk about music, it\'s more in colors and shapes and textures. It has nothing to do with synesthesia or anything like that—it’s a vocabulary I use because I didn\'t go to music school or anything. So there was something about this idea of something having a brown fluorescence, and that was the feeling I got when I was making that song. It was like this funny glow, something that was not like a fluorescent light, but almost like if there was a brown rock that was fluorescent and you just found it in nature.” **“Wind Conversation”** “The theme—which is a thread that runs through the whole album—was kind of this feeling towards climate change, towards the earth, being spiritually moved by being in Marfa. I had never really experienced the desert before. But the song’s also going deeper into thinking about not so much impending doom, but impending changes that are going to cause a lot of hardships. It takes place under this tree that my wife Kristi and I would go to sometimes, to have lunch under in this park, essentially, surrounded by the desert. It was just us, laying back, looking out to the cliffs, daydreaming.” **“Thank You For Ever”** “It\'s another play on this idea—it’s not \'thank you forever,\' it\'s \'thank you forever, dot, dot, dot.\' And I think that\'s kind of what the song is about, this expansiveness. I think that\'s the first song I\'ve ever written that really feels like the desert. That one was a dream. I just woke up, went to the studio, and it kind of just ignited out of me. It all happened in one day, in one sitting.” **“La Naranja”** “‘Naranja’ means orange, and it\'s kind of like a cousin to another song on the record, ‘Agosto.’ It’s this abstract idea, thinking about how there used to be all these orange trees around me growing up in South Florida. It was something that we would experience in a life cycle: There would be the blossoms and then there would be the oranges and then the oranges would hit the ground and then they\'d be rotting and then it would stink. There was this abundance, and then it was gone—they cut down all the trees. It’s about this era that we\'ve grown up in, how we\'ve had access to everything, and knowing that it\'s not going to last forever. ‘You and I can stop time. You and I can save the world together’: That\'s what the song says in Spanish.” **“Telescope” (feat. Benamin)** “It\'s a song that I wrote for my mom, this idea of how we\'re Zooming or FaceTiming, but how it’s been like a telescope. You\'re only seeing this person through this way of seeing, and it just doesn\'t feel tangible. It doesn\'t feel like the person you know. You\'re seeing this person as if you\'re reading about them in a book or something.”

There’s a handful of eyebrow-raising verses across Tyler, The Creator’s *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*—particularly those from 42 Dugg, Lil Uzi Vert, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Pharrell, and Lil Wayne—but none of the aforementioned are as surprising as the ones Tyler delivers himself. The Los Angeles-hailing MC, and onetime nucleus of the culture-shifting Odd Future collective, made a name for himself as a preternaturally talented MC whose impeccable taste in streetwear and calls to “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” perfectly encapsulated the angst of his generation. But across *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, the man once known as Wolf Haley is just a guy who likes to rock ice and collect stamps on his passport, who might whisper into your significant other’s ear while you’re in the restroom. In other words, a prototypical rapper. But in this case, an exceptionally great one. Tyler superfans will remember that the MC was notoriously peeved at his categoric inclusion—and eventual victory—in the 2020 Grammys’ Best Rap Album category for his pop-oriented *IGOR*. The focus here is very clearly hip-hop from the outset. Tyler made an aesthetic choice to frame *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST* with interjections of shit-talking from DJ Drama, founder of one of 2000s rap’s most storied institutions, the Gangsta Grillz mixtape franchise. The vibes across the album are a disparate combination of sounds Tyler enjoys (and can make)—boom-bap revival (“CORSO,” “LUMBERJACK”), ’90s R&B (“WUSYANAME”), gentle soul samples as a backdrop for vivid lyricism in the Griselda mold (“SIR BAUDELAIRE,” “HOT WIND BLOWS”), and lovers rock (“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE”). And then there’s “RUNITUP,” which features a crunk-style background chant, and “LEMONHEAD,” which has the energy of *Trap or Die*-era Jeezy. “WILSHIRE” is potentially best described as an epic poem. Giving the Grammy the benefit of the doubt, maybe they wanted to reward all the great rapping he’d done until that point. *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, though, is a chance to see if they can recognize rap greatness once it has kicked their door in.

“Right then, I’m ready,” Adele says quietly at the close of *30*’s opening track, “Strangers By Nature.” It feels like a moment of gentle—but firm—self-encouragement. This album is something that clearly required a few deep breaths for Tottenham’s most celebrated export. “There were moments when I was writing these songs, and even when I was mixing them and stuff like that, where I was like, ‘Maybe I don\'t need to put this album out,’” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Like, ‘Maybe I should write another.’ Just because music is my therapy. I\'m never going into the studio to be like, ‘Right, I need another hit.’ It\'s not like that for me. When something is more powerful and overwhelming \[to\] me, I like to go to a studio, because it\'s normally a basement and there\'s no fucking windows and no reception, so no one can get ahold of me. So I\'m basically running away. And no one would\'ve known I\'d written that record. Maybe I just had to get it out of my system.” But, almost two years after much of it was completed, Adele did release *30*. And remarkably, considering the world has been using her back catalog to channel its rawest emotions since 2008, this is easily Adele’s most vulnerable record. It concerns itself with Big Things Only—crippling guilt over her 2019 divorce, motherhood, daring to date as one of the world’s most famous people, falling in love—capturing perfectly the wobbly resolve of a broken heart in repair. Its songs often feel sentimental in a way that’s unusually warm and inviting, very California, and crucially: *earned*. “The album is for my son, for Angelo,” she says. “I knew I had to tell his story in a song because it was very clear he was feeling it, even though I thought I was doing a very good job of being like, ‘Everything’s fine.’ But I also knew I wasn’t being as present. I was just so consumed by so many different feelings. And he plucked up the courage to very articulately say to me, ‘You’re basically a ghost. You might as well not be here.’ What kind of poet is that? For him to be little and say ‘I can’t see you’ to my face broke my heart.” This is also Adele’s most confident album sonically. She fancied paying tribute to Judy Garland with Swedish composer Ludwig Göransson (“Strangers By Nature”), so she did. “I’d watched the Judy Garland biopic,” she says. “And I remember thinking, ‘Why did everyone stop writing such incredible melodies and cadences and harmonies?’” She felt comfortable working heartbreaking bedside chats with her young son and a voice memo documenting her own fragile mental state into her music on “My Little Love.” “While I was writing it, I just remember thinking of any child that’s been through divorce or any person that has been though a divorce themselves, or anyone that wants to leave a relationship and never will,” she says. “I thought about all of them, because my divorce really humanized my parents for me.” The album does not steep in sorrow and regret, however: There’s a Max Martin blockbuster with a whistled chorus (“Can I Get It”), a twinkling interlude sampling iconic jazz pianist Erroll Garner (“All Night Parking”), and the fruits of a new creative partnership with Dean Josiah Cover—aka Michael Kiwanuka, Sault, and Little Simz producer Inflo. “The minute I realized he \[Inflo\] was from North London, I wouldn’t stop talking to him,” she says. “We got no work done. It was only a couple of months after I’d left my marriage, and we got on so well, but he could feel that something was wrong. He knew that something dark was happening in me. I just opened up. I was dying for someone to ask me how I was.” One of the Inflo tracks, “Hold On,” is the album’s centerpiece. Rolling through self-loathing (“I swear to god, I am such a mess/The harder that I try, I regress”) into instantly quotable revelations (“Sometimes loneliness is the only rest we get”) before reaching show-stopping defiance (“Let time be patient, let pain be gracious/Love will soon come, if you just hold on”), the song accesses something like final-form Adele. It’s a rainbow of emotions, it’s got a choir (“I got my friends to come and sing,” she tells Apple Music), and she hits notes we’ll all only dare tackle in cars, solo. “I definitely lost hope a number of times that I’d ever find my joy again,” she says. “I remember I didn’t barely laugh for about a year. But I didn’t realize I was making progress until I wrote ‘Hold On’ and listened to it back. Later, I was like, ‘Oh, fuck, I’ve really learned a lot. I’ve really come a long way.’” So, after all this, is Adele happy that *30* found its way to the world? “It really helped me, this album,” she says. “I really think that some of the songs on this album could really help people, really change people’s lives. A song like ‘Hold On’ could actually save a few lives.” It’s also an album she feels could support fellow artists. “I think it’s an important record for them to hear,” she says. “The ones that I feel are being encouraged not to value their own art, and that everything should be massive and everything should be ‘get it while you can’… I just wanted to remind them that you don’t need to be in everyone’s faces all the time. And also, you can really write from your stomach, if you want.”

After a year filled with highlights—including a critically acclaimed debut EP, 2020’s *For Broken Ears*, and hit collaborations with Wizkid, Justin Bieber (“Essence”), and Drake (“Fountains”)—Nigerian alté R&B singer-songwriter Tems leans into a newfound sense of creative freedom on her sophomore EP. “I have learnt to let go and just live life and just do what comes naturally to me,” she tells Apple Music. “It has helped me find a new freedom of expression and a new vibe that isn\'t based on past experiences but present moments.” Through its five tracks, *If Orange Was a Place* creates ample space for Tems’ distinctive voice to shine as she navigates through themes of finding inner peace and staying true to self. “Orange is a vibe,” she explains. “It is the feeling of sunset and the sweetness of an orange. And when I think of those songs, I am transported to a different place where everything is warm and sweet.” Lyrically and sonically, Tems (Temilade Openiyi) represents an alté sound driving a new wave of African R&B—one centered on mood, expression, and originality, and one less concerned with trying to sound too familiar. “Growing up in Nigeria has created the rebel in me when it comes to my sound,” she explains, “and what motivates me to move every morning. All the encounters I have had brought out that rebel in me in different ways—the rebel that dares to do things her own way.” Here, Tems shares a snapshot of the EP, track by track. **“Crazy Tings”** “This song was inspired by the crazy amazing things that have been going on in my life, and it was made in Ghana. The beat was played to me by GuiltyBeatz and I was surrounded by orange light and alcohol. The vibes just flowed in afterwards.” **“Found” (feat. Brent Faiyaz)** “I was in LA with Brent; he is such an amazing artist. He always knows how to bring a different perspective. The song is really about releasing different thoughts in my head and reconciling them with my truth.” **“Replay”** “This song was just my rebel side coming out. Again, this was just me expressing my thoughts on opinions and all types of energies I encounter. It’s me reiterating who I am. The song was produced by Jonah Christian.” **“Avoid Things”** “I am someone who doesn’t like unnecessary disputes that lead nowhere, and ‘Avoid Things’ is about my \[desire\] to provide solutions, but being met with resistance, madness, and crazy things.” **“Vibe Out”** “‘Vibe Out’ is the setting of the sun and getting prepared to move. It is what I call the ‘ginger’ and the burst of dance…the sunset dance.”

What does an MC from Las Vegas sound like? It’s a funny question to not have an obvious answer for in 2021, but one that seems that much sillier when you consider who it is that will likely become one of the city’s first reference points. Across his debut album *The Melodic Blue*, 20-year-old Vegas native Baby Keem sounds firstly like a combination of his biggest influences (Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar), but also, maybe more notably, like he could be from anywhere, because that’s what an emergent MC sounds like in 2021. What other emergent MCs don’t have, however, are Keem’s dedication to airing out multiple flows over the course of a single song, his gift for spellbinding non sequitur, or the fearlessness with which he approaches song-making. They likely aren’t cousins with Kendrick Lamar either, but if Lamar’s scarcity between projects tells us anything, it’s that he’s not stepping to the mic for just anybody. In fact, it is Lamar who sounds like he’s doing his best to keep up with Keem over the course of their *The Melodic Blue* collaborations (“range brothers,” “family ties”). But keeping up with Keem is no easy task. He’s hilarious, even when he’s trying to get a point across (“I must confess, I am a mess, I cannot fix it/Lil baby thick, Margiela sweats, look at my dick print,” he raps on “vent”), and he switches flows so often you’d think he had some kind of tic. The album’s only other guests are Travis Scott (“durag activity”) and Don Toliver (“cocoa”). Which just leaves that much more room for Keem to dance across octaves, drop into a whisper, deadpan, shift to double-time, and sing, all of which he does over the course of just “trademark usa.” One song into his debut and Keem has unloaded a display so excessive that a forward-thinking manager might ask him to save something for a deluxe version. But there’s not likely much you could say to someone tasked with putting Las Vegas back on the map.

A decade after Willow Smith taught us how to whip our hair back and forth, the genre-bending artist is still just getting started. Her sound has evolved from bubblegum pop hits to alt-R&B to, now, a full pop-punk album. However, her transition into the genre shouldn’t be surprising, since rock runs in her blood: Her first introduction to the medium was from being on the road with her mother Jada Pinkett Smith’s nu-metal band Wicked Wisdom in the early 2000s. Then the multi-hyphenate talent experimented with rock-adjacent sounds on tracks like “Human Leech” from her 2017 album *The 1st*, and more prominently on her 2020 album *THE ANXIETY*. All of these moments set the groundwork for the singer’s fifth studio album. Created and recorded during quarantine, *lately I feel EVERYTHING* is an homage to the touchstones of 2000s pop-punk, such as blink-182, Avril Lavigne, and Fefe Dobson. The opening track “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l” is an upbeat, energetic, angst-ridden anthem with a mix of clean and distorted guitars backed by booming drums courtesy of blink-182’s drummer Travis Barker, who assists on two other tracks on the album. For every angsty pop-punk like “Gaslight” and “G R O W”—which features none other than Lavigne herself—there’s a heavier metal-influenced track like “Lipstick,” “don’t SAVE ME,” or “Come Home,” showing WILLOW’s growth not only as a singer but as a songwriter.

There’s a liquid, surreal feeling that runs through *Pray for Haiti*, a sense of touching solid ground only to leave it just as fast. Between the bars of Newark rapper Mach-Hommy\'s dusty, fragmented beats (many courtesy of the production regulars of Griselda Records), he glimpses thousand-dollar brunches (“Au Revoir”), bloodshed (“Folie Á Deux”), and the ghosts of his ancestors (“Kriminel”) with spectral detachment—not uncaring so much as stoic, the oracle at the outskirts who moves silently through a crowd. He likes it grimy (“Magnum Band,” “Makrel Jaxon”) and isn’t above materialism or punchlines (“Watch out, I ain’t pulling no punches/So real I make Meghan Markle hop out and get the Dutches”), but is, above all, a spiritualist, driven by history (like a lot of his albums, this one is peppered with Haitian Creole), feel, and a quiet ability to turn street rap into meditation. “It’s crazy what y’all can do with some old Polo and Ebonics,” he raps on “The 26th Letter”—a joke because he knows it’s not that simple, and a flex because, for him, it is.

All rippers, no skippers, Sarah Tudzin’s second album as Illuminati Hotties imbues hooky Y2K-era pop-punk with an attitude that feels distinctly contemporary. Stretching her sweet-and-sour voice like taffy, Tudzin sings from the perspective of a millennial slacker who isn’t quite buying what society’s selling, be it marketing scams (“Threatening Each Other re: Capitalism”) or too-cool-for-school socialites (“Joni: LA’s No. 1 Health Goth”). She’s referred to her scrappy, bruised songs as “tenderpunk,” and beneath all the pool-hopping and kick-flipping, there’s a woman trying to pull off this adulting thing in what feels like end times. But in the meantime, why not try and have some fun?

When Low started out in the early ’90s, you could’ve mistaken their slowness for lethargy, when in reality it was a mark of almost supernatural intensity. Like 2018’s *Double Negative*, *Hey What* explores new extremes in their sound, mixing Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker\'s naked harmonies with blocks of noise and distortion that hover in drumless space—tracks such as “Days Like These” and “More” sound more like 18th-century choral music than 21st-century indie rock. Their faith—they’ve been practicing Mormons most of their lives—has never been so evident, not in content so much as purity of conviction: Nearly 30 years after forming, they continue to chase the horizon with a fearlessness that could make anyone a believer.

With her incisive lyrics and gift for harnessing classic UK garage samples, PinkPantheress very quickly became one of 2021’s breakout stars. Her debut mixtape, *to hell with it*, is a bite-size collection of moreish pop songs and a small slice of the 20-year-old singer and producer’s creative output over the nine months since her first viral TikTok moment. “I basically put together the songs that I put out this year that I felt were strongest,” she tells Apple Music. “I sat in the studio with my manager and a good friend from home whose ear I trust, and I said, ‘Does this sound cohesive to you? Are the songs in a similar world?’” The world of *to hell with it* is one of sharp contrasts existing together in perfect balance: sweet, singsong vocals paired with frenetic breakbeats, floor-filler samples through a bedroom pop filter, confessional lyrics about mostly fictionalized experiences, and light, bright production with a solidly emo core. “They’re all vividly sad,” PinkPantheress says of the 10 tracks that made the cut. “I think I\'ve had a tendency, even on a particularly happy beat, to sing the saddest lyrics I can. I paint a picture of the actual scenarios where someone would be sad.” Here, the Bath-born, London-based artist takes us through her mixtape, track by track. **“Pain”** “In my early days on TikTok I was creating a song a day. Some of them got a good reception, but ‘Pain’ was the first one where people responded really well and the first one where the sound ended up traveling a little bit. It didn\'t go crazy, but the sound was being used by 30 people, and that got me quite excited. A lot of people haven’t really heard garage that much before, and I think that for them, the sample \[Sweet Female Attitude’s 2000 single ‘Flowers’\] is a very palatable way to ease into garage breakbeats, very British-sounding synths, and all those influences.” **“I must apologise”** “This track was produced by Oscar Scheller \[Rina Sawayama, Ashnikko\]. I was trying to stay away from a sample at this point, but there’s something about this beat \[from Crystal Waters’ 1991 single ‘Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)’\] which drugged me. When we started writing it, Oscar gave me the idea for one of the melodies and I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this actually is probably going to end up being one of my favorite songs just based off of this great melody that he\'s just come up with.’” **“Last valentines”** “My older cousin introduced me to LINKIN PARK; *Hybrid Theory* is one of my favorite albums ever. I went through the whole thing thinking, ‘Could I sample any of this?’ and when I listened to ‘Forgotten’ I just thought: ‘This guitar in the back is amazing. I can\'t believe no one\'s ever sampled it before!’ I looped it, recorded to it, mixed it, put it out. This was my first track where it took a darker turn, sonically. It really is emo through and through, from the sample to the lyrics.” **“Passion”** “To me, a lack of passion is just really not enjoying things like you used to—not having the same fun with your friends, finding things boring. I haven’t experienced depression myself, but I know people that have and I can attempt to draw comparisons of what I see in real life. Like it says in the lyrics, ‘You don’t see the light.’ I think I got a lot more emotional than I needed to get, but I\'m still glad that I went there. The instruments are so happy, I feel like there needed to be something to contradict it and make it a bit more three-dimensional.” **“Just for me”** “I made this song with \[UK artist and producer\] Mura Masa. I was sat with him, just going through references, and he started making the loop. I’ve never said this before, but I remember being like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to write anything good to this,’ and then it just came, after 20 minutes of sitting there wondering what I could do. The line ‘When you wipe your tears, do you wipe them just for me?’ just slipped off the tongue.” **“Noticed I cried”** “This is another track with Oscar Scheller and the first song I made without my own production. I held back a lot from working with producers, because I like working by myself, but Oscar is really good, so it ended up just being an easy process. He understood the assignment. I think it’s my favorite song I’ve ever released. It’s the top line, I’m just a big fan of the way it flows. I hope that people like it as much as I do.” **“Reason”** “Zach Nahome produced this track. He used to make a lot of garage, drum ’n’ bass, jungle, but his sound is quite different to that nowadays. So this was a bit of a different vibe for him. We made the beat together. I told him what kind of drums I wanted, what kind of sound and space I wanted, and he came up with that. With garage music, I just enjoy the breakbeats of it, the drums. It’s also quintessentially British. We birthed it. I think it’s always nice to go back to your roots.” **“All my friends know”** “I wanted to try something a bit different, and there were a few moments with this one where I wasn’t sure if I really liked it or not. After I stopped debating with myself it got a lot easier to enjoy it and I ended up feeling like it could actually be a lot of people’s favorite. The instrumental part of it is really beautiful; both producers—my friends Dill and Kairos—did a good job. It’s sentimental in a musical sense, and it’s sentimental in a personal sense as well.” **“Nineteen”** “This is a song that stems from personal experience, and kind of the first time in any of my songs where I’m like, ‘I’m actually speaking the truth here, this actually happened to me.’ Nineteen was a year of confusion, emotional confusion. I didn’t want to do my uni course, I wanted to do music. I didn\'t want people to laugh at me. I didn\'t want to tell myself out loud and then have it not happen. Internally, I was very sure and certain that it was going to happen, just because I\'m a big believer in manifestation. So 19 was that transition year. Once I\'d settled down and started doing what I loved, I felt a lot more comfortable, and actually, a lot more safe.” **“Break It Off”** “‘Break It Off’ was, I guess, my breakthrough track. It was the first time my name was being chucked around a fair bit. I fell in love with the original \[Adam F’s 1997 single ‘Circles’\] and I just wanted to hear what a top line would sound like on the track. So I found the instrumental, played around with it a little bit, and then sang on top. I think it got 100,000 likes on TikTok when I wasn’t really getting likes in that number before. The lyric is really tongue-in-cheek, and I think a lot of people on TikTok like tongue-in-cheek.”

It’s not uncommon for debut artists to navigate a circuitous route to releasing their first full-length project, but few have traversed paths as long and arduous as Mickey Guyton’s road to *Remember Her Name*. The Nashville-based singer-songwriter first signed a record deal in 2011 and, 10 years later, is finally releasing her debut album. “This whole album really is my life, and my learning self-acceptance, over the last 10 years,” Guyton tells Apple Music. “The ups, the downs, the back and forth, the impostor syndrome that we all tend to get because of the downs—all of that is wrapped up in one album.” *Remember Her Name* opens with the powerful title track, which was inspired both by the murder of Breonna Taylor and by Guyton’s own reclamation of the sense of self that 10 years in the music industry mercilessly eroded. Empowerment is a recurring theme throughout the LP, but Guyton rejects schmaltzy clichés in favor of nuanced, often painfully personal stories of working through internalized racism (“Love My Hair,” “Black Like Me”), embracing the inherently imperfect nature of a marriage (“Lay It on Me”), and fighting for space in a white-dominated industry (a particularly moving rerecording of her 2015 track “Better Than You Left Me”). “I hope people walk away from the album feeling seen,” Guyton adds. “I tried to put my life on display in an honest way, showing the good and the bad. And I hope people can hear that in that album and find hope within their own lives from it.” Below, Guyton walks us through several key tracks on *Remember Her Name*. **“Remember Her Name”** “I wrote ‘Remember Her Name’ in the pandemic. And I was actually watching what happened with Breonna Taylor. Whenever someone is wrongly murdered, a lot of people say, ‘Say their name. Remember their name.’ So, I was inspired by that. And then, as I was writing the song, it turned into my own story as an artist. When I first started music, I had so much excitement and confidence in myself, and then life happened and I lost every ounce of confidence that I ever had. No matter what life did to you, that person, that fire is still in you, and you have to find that person. And the reason why I called it ‘Remember Her Name’ for the album was because it took me so long to get to this point of releasing my first body of work, ever.” **“All American”** “I also wrote ‘All American’ in the pandemic while very, very pregnant. And the funny story about that is, when I tried to record the song, if I ate, I couldn’t sing because I had no room left. My baby was taking over. So, I would have to come back another day when I didn’t have any food in my stomach to be able to record it. I wanted to write a song showing that our differences make America great. I think so many people have forgotten that. And in this genre—this predominantly white genre—I wanted to sing a song that was true to me and all the different parts of America, whether it’s the Texas sky or the New York City lights, whether it’s James Brown or James Dean or Daisy Dukes and dookie braids. All of that is American.” **“Love My Hair”** “I wrote that song after I watched this video on YouTube of this little Black girl with braids crying to her mother because she got sent home from school because they said her hair was distracting. I couldn’t even finish the video because it took me back to my own struggles, as a little girl, with self-love and being in predominantly white spaces in school and just being different. I had those experiences and it’s taken me a long time to get over that and to learn self-acceptance. And this song was a step in that direction.” **“Lay It on Me”** “My husband and I have been together for a long time, almost 11 years. At one point in time, he was really, really sick and he almost died. I just remember, at the time, I was broke and I was working on this album; I didn’t exactly know what I was doing. He wouldn’t let me quit. Even when I wanted to just give up my apartment in Nashville and move to LA, he wouldn’t allow it. And he was giving everything so that I could pursue this dream. It’s watching someone that I love struggle and me wanting to take the load off them for a second.” **“Black Like Me”** “A lot of these songs I’d written two, three years ago. And ‘Black Like Me’ was kind of the one that helped me focus on what, exactly, I was trying to say in this album. I was chasing after acceptance, and chasing after acceptance in a predominantly white genre. And that was a tough pill for me to swallow, but I took it on the chin and had to take a minute and look at myself. As I was looking at myself, I was looking at everything that I was doing in this industry and trying to just get a chance. And it broke me a little bit. ‘Black Like Me’ was that moment of me being like, ‘Hey, it’s hard. It’s really hard for Black people.’ Some have it easier than others, and I’m definitely on the easier side of the spectrum. But there’s a lot of people that it is not easy for, and I wanted to sing about that.” **“Better Than You Left Me” (Fly Higher Version)** “I don’t know what came over me, but I knew that the anniversary of that song was coming up and I was like, ‘I need to do an updated version.’ It has a totally different meaning now, and I needed to put that on the album. When I first wrote the song, I wrote it about an ex that I was so brokenhearted over and that I’d moved on from. But that was forever ago, and that guy is not even a thought in my head anymore; he doesn\'t matter to me, but the song does. I pulled myself out of that with the help of a small group of people. I wanted to include that because I’m just so different and I am better than the town left me. I’m stronger. I love deeper. I fly higher. I’m all of those things.”

“Quivering in Time” is the debut album by DJ and producer Eris Drew on T4T LUV NRG, the label she runs with partner Octo Octa. In 2020, after the release of Trans Love Vibration (NAIVE, 2018) and Transcendental Access Point (Interdimensional Transmissions, 2020), Eris moved from her hometown of Chicago to rural New Hampshire and recorded the nine beautiful songs featured here. Her first album feels something like her DJ sets, with stacked layers of vinyl samples and turntable manipulations serving as a fast-moving foundation for hand-played keyboard riffs, walls of percussion and sampled, scratched and strummed guitar tones. On each song for the album Eris expresses the anxiety and hope of her present. She wrote, recorded, and mixed the album as she stared into the forest through her studio window, collapsing present and past into future, her memories and body literally quivering in time. The songs are cast with Eris’s experiences and intentions. The plucky progressive Loving Clav is in the form of an evocation (“good times come to me now....”), while the tracks Time to Move Close and Show U LUV express Eris’s longing for togetherness. The hardcore Pick ‘Em Up (“...and it might be a different story”) and organ-heavy Ride Free are funky odes to psychedelics, hard dancing and the subjectivity of real lived experience. The twinkling house of Howling Wind and the tempo-shifting bop of Sensation capture the mystery of the forest cabin where Eris spent most of the last 15 months. Two booming hip house dubs round out the album, Baby and Quivering in Time, each an itchy track about hope and personal resilience. As with her prior work, Eris’s approach to music making is unique and genre-dissolving. Ultimately, her special sound is a metaphor for her main message, which is that every person deserves to be themself.

That motherhood is transformative is an understatement. For those who have the experience, it can change who they are and how they perceive the world, with fresh eyes, an open heart, and a devotion so deep it feels like being unmade. Thus, it\'s fitting that Cleo Sol’s *Mother* begins with a monument to maternal love—its abundant patience and grace for which she has a new understanding. “The train never stopped, never had time to unpack your trauma,” the British singer-songwriter croons gently on the opening track, “Don’t Let Me Fall.” “Keep fighting the world, that’s how you get love, mama.” Likewise, “Heart Full of Love” is an ode to her own child (who adorns the cover) that strives to portray both the power of that singular feeling and the gratitude that’s leveled her in its presence: “Thank you for sending me an angel straight from heaven, when my hope was gone, you made me strong...Thank you for being amazing, teaching me to hold on.” The rest of *Mother* unfurls like a letter addressed to a little one who, once removed from the safety of the womb, may come to know cruelty more often than mercy. On the piano-laden centerpiece “We Need You,” she pours into whoever may hear it a reminder of their worth, while a choir summons the divine. “We need your heart, we need your soul,” they sing, “we need your strength through this cold world, we need your voice, speak your truth.” Similar affirmations pepper the album, as Cleo imbues the lyrics with a tenderness that lands like a hug; her voice itself is so elegant and serene these songs, despite the lushness of the instrumentation, nearly resemble lullabies. It’s easy to be given to pessimism, but what she offers here is a balm, brimming with the kind of compassionate optimism that only new life can bring.

“Take this opportunity to learn from my mistakes. You don’t have to guess if something is love. Love is shown through actions. Stop making excuses for people who don’t show up for you. Don’t ignore the red flags. And don’t think you have to stay somewhere ’cause you can’t find better—you can and you will. Don’t settle for less—you don’t deserve it and neither does your family.” —Summer Walker, in an exclusive message she provided to Apple Music about her second album

Lil Nas X is nothing if not a testament to the power of being true to yourself. His breakthrough single, “Old Town Road,” forced the industry to revisit old conversations about the limitations of genre, race, and who is kept out (or locked in) by the definitions we use to talk about music. The Georgia-born singer-rapper responded in kind with a remix and remixes to that remix that rocketed him up the charts and simultaneously highlighted the fickleness of the entire endeavor—did Billy Ray Cyrus suddenly prove his country bona fides any more than the addition of Young Thug proved his trap ones or Diplo his electronic? But that\'s the magic of Lil Nas X and of his debut album *MONTERO*: He knows that pop music is whatever the artist creating it wants it to be, an exercise of vulnerable imagination packaged as unyielding, larger-than-life confidence. “I feel like with this album, I know what I wanted,” he tells Apple Music\'s Zane Lowe. “I know what I want. I know where I want to be in life. And I know that\'s going to take me being more open and bringing it out of myself no matter how much it hurts or feels uncomfortable to say things that I need to say.” But any such ambivalence doesn\'t explicitly manifest in the songs here, as Lil Nas X roams his interior spaces as openly as he does assorted styles—which span everything from emo and grunge to indie pop and pop punk. On “DEAD RIGHT NOW,” a thunderous track complete with choral flourishes, he recaps the journey to this moment, how it almost didn\'t happen, and the ways his personal relationships have changed since. “If I didn’t blow up, I would\'ve died tryna be here/If it didn’t go, suicide, wouldn’t be here,” he sings, adding, “Now they all come around like they been here/When you get this rich and famous everybody come up to you singing, \'Hallelujah, how’d you do it?\'” All throughout—on songs like “SUN GOES DOWN” or “DONT WANT IT”—the weight of his burdens exists in contrast to the levity of his sound, a particular kind of Black and queer disposition that insists on a joy that is far more profound than any pain. And make no mistake, there is plenty of joy here. On “SCOOP,” he finds an effervescent kindred spirit in Doja Cat, while “DOLLA SIGN SLIME,” which features Megan Thee Stallion, is a trapped-out victory lap. Elsewhere, the dark riffs on the outstanding “LIFE AFTER SALEM” bring him to new creative lands altogether. The album brims with surprises that continuously reveal him anew, offering a peek into the mind of an artist who is unafraid of himself or his impulses, even with the knowledge that he\'s still a work in progress. “Don\'t look at me as this perfect hero who\'s not going to make mistakes and should be the voice for everybody,” he says. “You\'re the voice for you.” And to that effect, *MONTERO* is a staggering triumph that suggests not just who Lil Nas X is but the infinite possibilities of who he may be in the future, whether that falls within the scope of our imaginations or not.

Pop music is, by design, kaleidoscopic, and Doja Cat\'s third album takes full advantage of its fluidity. *Planet Her* is ushered in on the euphoric Afropop of “Woman” and moves seamlessly into the reggaetón-kissed “Naked,” the hip-hop-meets-hyperpop of “Payday,” and the whimsical ad-lib trap of “Get Into It (Yuh)”—and that\'s just the first four songs. Later, R&B ballads and club-ready anthems also materialize from the ether, encompassing the spectrum of contemporary capital-P Pop and also the multihued sounds that are simply just popular, even if only in their corners of the internet for now. This is Doja\'s strength. She\'s long understood how mainstream sensibility interacts with counterculture (or what\'s left of it anyway, for better and worse), and she\'s nimbly able to translate both. *Planet Her* checks all the right boxes and accentuates her talent for shape-shifting—she sounds just as comfortable rapping next to Young Thug or JID as she does crooning alongside The Weeknd or Ariana Grande—but it\'s so pristine, so in tune with the music of the moment that it almost verges on parody. Is this Doja\'s own reflection or her reflecting her fans back to themselves? Her brilliance lies in the fact that the answer doesn\'t much matter. The best pop music is nothing if not a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, its brightest stars so uniquely themselves and yet whatever else they need to be, too.

“Things should change and evolve, and music is an extension of that, of the continuity of life,” Hiatus Kaiyote leader Nai Palm tells Apple Music. The Melbourne jazz/R&B/future-soul ensemble began writing their third album, *Mood Valiant*, in 2018, three years after the Grammy-nominated *Choose Your Weapon*, which featured tracks that were later sampled by artists including Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and Anderson .Paak. The process was halted when Nai Palm (Naomi Saalfield) was diagnosed with breast cancer—the same illness which had led to her mother’s death when she was 11. It changed everything about Nai Palm’s approach to life, herself, and her music—and the band began writing again from a different perspective. “All the little voices of self-doubt or validation just went away,” she says. “I didn\'t really care about the mundane things anymore, so it felt really liberating to be in a vocal booth and find joy in capturing who I am, as opposed to psychoanalyzing it. When you have nothing is when you really experience gratitude for what you have.” The album had largely been written before the pandemic hit, but when it did, they used the extra time to write even more and create something even more intricate. There are songs about unusual mating rituals in the animal kingdom, the healing power of music, the beauty and comfort of home, and the relationships we have with ourselves, those around us, and the world at large. “The whole album is about relationships without me really meaning to do that,” she says. Below, Nai Palm breaks down select lyrics from *Mood Valiant*. **“Chivalry Is Not Dead”** *“Electrons in the air on fire/Lightning kissing metal/Whisper to the tiny hairs/Battery on my tongue/Meteor that greets Sahara/We could get lost in static power”* “The first couple of verses are relating to bizarre mating rituals in the animal kingdom. It’s about reproduction and creating life, but I wanted to expand on that. Where else is this happening in nature that isn’t necessarily two animals? The way that lightning is attracted to metal, a conductor for electricity. When meteors hit the sand, it\'s so hot that it melts the sand and it creates this crazy kryptonite-looking glass. So it\'s about the relationship of life forces engaging with each other and creating something new, whether that\'s babies or space glass.” **“Get Sun”** *“Ghost, hidden eggshell, no rebel yell/Comfort in vacant waters/And I awake, purging of fear/A task that you wear/Dormant valiance, it falls”* “‘Get Sun’ is my tribute to music and what I feel it\'s supposed to do. Even when you’re closed off from the world, music can still find its way to you. ‘Ghost, hidden eggshell’ is a reference to *Ghost in the Shell*, an anime about a human soul captured in a cyborg\'s body. I feel that within the entertainment industry, but the opposite—there are people who are empty. There’s no rebellion. They’re comfortable in this vacant pool of superficial expression. I feel like there\'s a massive responsibility as a musician and as an artist to be sincere and transparent and expressive. And it takes a lot of courage but it also takes a lot of vulnerability. And ‘Dormant valiance, it falls’—from the outside, something might look quite valiant and put together, but if it\'s dormant and has no substance, it will fall, or be impermanent. And that\'s not how you make timeless art. Maybe it\'ll entertain people for three seconds but it will be gone.” **“Hush Rattle”** *“Iwêi, Rona”* “When I was in Brazil, I spent 10 days with the Varinawa tribe in the Amazon and it changed my life. On my last day there, all the women got together and sang for me in their language, Varinawa, and let me record it. There were about 20 women; they\'ll sing a phrase and when they get to the last note, they hold it for as long as they can and they all drop off at different points. It was just so magical. So we\'ve got little samples of that throughout the song, but the lyrics that I\'m singing were taught to me: ‘Iwêi,’ which means ‘I love you,’ and ‘Rona,’ which means ‘I will always miss you.’ It’s a love letter to the people that I met there.” **“Rose Water”** *“My hayati, leopard pearl in the arms of my lover/I draw your outline with the scent of amber”* “There’s an Arabic word here: *hayati*. The word *habibi* is like ‘You’re my love,’ but to say ‘my hayati’ means you\'re *more* than my love—you\'re my life. One of my dear friends is Lebanese. He’s 60, but maybe he\'s 400, we don\'t know. He’s the closest thing to a father that I\'ve had since being an orphan. He makes me this beautiful amber perfume; it’s like a resin, made with beeswax. There’s musk and oils he imports from Dubai and Syria. So it’s essentially a lullaby love song that uses these opulent, elegant elements from Middle Eastern culture that I\'ve been exposed to through the people that I love.” **“Red Room”** *“I got a red room, it is the red hour/When the sun sets in my bedroom/It feels like I\'m inside a flower/It feels like I\'m inside my eyelids/And I don\'t want to be anywhere but here”* “I used to live in an old house; the windows were colored red, like leadlight windows. And whenever the sun set, the whole room would glow for an hour. It\'s such a simple thing, but it was so magic to me. This one, for me, is about when you close your eyes and you look at the sun and it\'s red. You feel like you\'re looking at something, but really it\'s just your skin. It’s one of those childlike quirks everyone can relate to.” **“Sparkle Tape Break Up”** *“No, I can’t keep on breaking apart/Grow like waratah”* “It’s a mantra. I’m not going to let little things get to me. I\'m not going to start self-loathing. I\'m going to grow like this resilient, beautiful fucking flower. I\'ve made it a life goal to try to at least be peaceful with most people, for selfish reasons—so that I don\'t have to carry that weight. Songs like this have really helped me to formulate healthy coping mechanisms.” **“Stone or Lavender”** *“Belong to love/Please don’t bury us unless we’re seeds/Learn to forgive/You know very well it’s not easy/Who are they when they meet?/Stone or lavender/Before the word is ever uttered/Was your leap deeper?”* “‘Please don\'t bury us unless we\'re seeds’ is a reference to a quote: ‘They tried to bury us, they didn\'t know we were seeds.’ That visual is so fucking powerful. It’s saying, ‘Please don\'t try to crush the human spirit, because all life has the potential to grow, belong to love.’ This song is the closest to my breast cancer diagnosis stuff; it’s saying, ‘All right, who are you? What do you want from life? Who do you want to be?’ Do you emit a beautiful scent and you\'re soft and you\'re healing or are you stone? Before anyone\'s even exchanged anything, before a word is ever uttered, your energy introduces you.” **“Blood and Marrow”** *“Not a speck of dust on chrysanthemum/Feather on the breath of the mother tongue”* “I think is one of the most poetic things I\'ve ever written; it\'s maybe the thing I\'m most proud of lyric-wise. The first lyric is a reference to a Japanese poet called Bashō. I wanted to use this reference because when my bird Charlie died—I had him for 10 years, he was a rescue and he was my best friend—we were watching *Bambi* on my laptop. He was sitting on my computer, and we got halfway through and he died. The song is my ode to Charlie and to beauty in the world.”

For this suite inspired by the life and legacy of polymath agriculturalist George Washington Carver, tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis assembles a quintet with cornetist Kirk Knuffke, cellist Chris Hoffman, bassist William Parker, and drummer Chad Taylor. The texture is raw and sinewy, with earthy grooves and big, declamatory melodic themes that find Lewis sounding like his forebear David S. Ware (a close colleague of Parker’s for decades). But the writing can be intimate and chamber-like, with tenor, cello, and cornet interweaving sensitively on pieces like “Fallen Flowers” and “Experiment Station.” Parker plays guembri, the bass-like West African instrument, on “Lowlands of Sorrow” and “Chemurgy,” introducing a low, sandpapery timbre in the mix. Taylor’s mbira on the shortest piece, “Seer,” further varies the palette. The cover art is Carver’s actual drawing of his ultimately impractical prototype Jesup Wagon (funded by a Morris Jesup), intended as a rolling laboratory that would spread word of new innovations to farmers on-site. As Robin D. G. Kelley puts it in a booklet essay, Carver “made art out of botanical science, listening to voices while collating data.” He was also a capable musician. In finding deep connection with the subject, Lewis emerges with something beautiful and prescient of his own.

A very different and highly imaginative debut album from Italian-Canadian mezzo Emily D’Angelo blends ancient and modern to wonderful effect. The 12th-century composer Hildegard von Bingen provides the impetus that is picked up by the 21st century’s Missy Mazzoli and Sarah Kirkland Snider, who provide their own mesmerizing arrangements, hauntingly performed, as well as original works. The album has an organic feel, each track emerging from the one before, and the cumulative effect is immensely powerful. Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir seems to reach back through the centuries to create music of an almost medieval character. D’Angelo’s expressive voice is just perfect for this music. Unmissable.

A lot changed for Amythyst Kiah between the 2013 release of her debut album *Dig* and the making of *Wary + Strange*. The singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist gained significant notoriety as part of the roots music supergroup Our Native Daughters, with whom she earned a Grammy nomination (Best American Roots Song) for the song “Black Myself,” on which Kiah was the sole songwriter. Kiah reprises that powerful track here, though she does so in a way truer to her own personal musical sensibilities by fusing her love for both old-time music, which she studied at East Tennessee State University, and indie rock. *Wary + Strange* finds a rich middle ground between these seemingly disparate genres, primarily via the strength of Kiah’s songwriting and singing, the latter of which deserves just as much celebration as her masterful guitar playing, as well as studio assists from producer Tony Berg (Phoebe Bridgers, Andrew Bird).

“It’s a quarantine record, made in deep Mexico, surrounded by a very rural landscape and the sounds of folk music,” Mon Laferte tells Apple Music about *SEIS*. For her sixth album, the Chilean singer-songwriter embarks on a musical journey through her adoptive country as she takes a trip down through the long months of the 2020 lockdown. “I had never had that much time to contemplate things in silence,” she remembers. Her new songs come from a lifelong fascination with the folk form, the earthy urban poetry of José Alfredo Jiménez, and classic love stories. But these tracks all sound tied to the present as they subvert, with stirring lyricism, the old myths of romantic love. “I’m a woman in 2021,” she explains, “in a very different world from the one where those songs came—and they were mostly written by men anyway. Mine are very traditional on the outside and very current inside.” Although *SEIS* is an intimate record, and strays from the nocturnal electricity of her early days, there is nonetheless room for pointed political commentary disguised as cumbia (“La Democracia” nods to the Chilean wave of protests of 2019) and a return to the time when Laferte channeled the spirit of Amy Winehouse (her Gloria Trevi collaboration “La Mujer”). “Each song lives in its own universe,” she says, “but they all mix stories from the past with the melancholy of lockdown.” Here she guides us through *SEIS* one song at a time. **“Se Me Va A Quemar el Corazón”** “It’s a monologue. Like any of the other other songs in the album, I wrote it on the deck, with a glass of wine and smoking like a chimney, although I quit cigarettes six months ago. Halfway through the song, I realized I had to change paradigms. There’s a line that says ‘quiero dar amor, desaprender’ \[\'I want to give love, to unlearn\'\]. It’s something that I always remind myself of. Unlearning that romantic love—that love that’s harmful and needs you to suffer. The song is a complete contradiction, because I end up saying goodbye, but in a spiteful way. It’s me saying, ‘I’m leaving because I have my dignity, but so that you know it, I hate you.’ I tried to be as honest as I could. I didn’t want to be politically correct or send a message out to the world. I just want to be myself and get my demons out in the songs.” **“Amigos Simplemente”** “This one comes from a personal experience too, but the viewpoint is different. I used to live in the Roma neighborhood in Mexico City, and there’s a corner there, Álvaro Obregón at Avenida Insurgentes, where I would always notice teenage couples kissing. Every time I walked by, it seemed like a really beautiful and poetic meeting point. I think I almost turned into a voyeur. I would observe the couples that hung out on the corner and make a bunch of stories up. The song came from that obsession, and not really because I had a friend that I was hoping would become something else.” **“No Lo Vi Venir”** “This is one of the last songs that I wrote for the album, and it was more about the music than the story. I love listening to what they call corridos tumbados, which is something fairly new. I love them because they mix trap with 12-string guitars and all that folk universe. I wanted to do my own corrido tumbado, and the lyrics came out the way I’m feeling now, really happy and in love.” **“Amado Mío”** “It’s a bolero with a Brazilian touch in the harmonies, which I find very cinematic. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album. I wrote it at the peak of the pandemic, and it has an air of resignation, which is how I felt. The cicadas would wake me up at night with their horrible noise, and it was the same every day. My partner back then was far from being the love of my life. In fact, he was more like torture. I was resigned to living like that and trying to keep it cool. ‘Amado Mío’ sums up the album in a way. It’s very beautiful, very traditional, and very romantic, but also very melancholic.” **“Canción Feliz”** “This was written in the middle of the pandemic, and it has that same Brazilian vibe. Strangely, it is very sad. I remember feeling devastated during the pandemic, with so many empty hours ahead that my head wouldn’t stop. I’m not sure I want to spend that much time with myself, to see myself that much. The lyrics mention fados because back then I was blasting Portuguese music at home. Same with the tangos. I would sit down and cry with a glass of wine. It was kind of a masochistic thing, but rewarding in a way. I needed some of that drama.” **“La Mujer” (feat. Gloria Trevi)** “I wrote ‘La Mujer’ a long time ago; that’s why it sounds more like my older albums. I used to play it live, but I dropped it because I found the lyrics too self-destructive. People never stopped asking for it, so I decided to put it on the album, changing a few things to give it a completely different meaning. Because it was an older song, although only my hardcore fans had heard it, I wanted to refresh it a little bit. I needed a really powerful woman to sing it with me, and that’s when Gloria Trevi came to mind. To me and a lot of people my age, Gloria Trevi was a turning point. After Gloria, I felt like I could do anything I wanted. She would come on stage with ripped tights, mopping the floor with her hair. Gloria Trevi gave me so much power.” **“Calaveras”** “The arrangement is genius. My producers did a great job with that. For reference, I played them Cuban music and Toña la Negra, an artist from Veracruz that sang Agustín Lara’s songs. Some time ago, I had a very toxic relationship, all these power games with a very sexist partner. As time went by, I realized that he had consumed me so much that I had turned off completely. I stopped believing in myself and in art, not with a healthy questioning but in a destructive way. Then I thought about how many women must have gone through the same thing: How many of them have had partners who need to destroy the other person to find validation? What I’m talking about in this song—and it’s a word I didn’t know until recently—is sorority.” **“Aunque Te Mueras Por Volver”** “This sounds very much like me. As a singer, I like long choruses with long notes. Here I set myself the task of hitting some extreme highs. I already had a lot of songs about longing, and I wanted to have something more powerful, a good-riddance kind of thing. I was very inspired by \[Spanish singer\] Raphael, ‘Yo Soy Aquél’ and that big orchestral sound. I’m a huge fan, and I look at his videos just to copy his moves. I love his over-the-top theatrics.” **“La Democracia”** “You can totally hear the South American in me here. I realize that the song doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the album, but it had to be on it because I wrote it during the pandemic, which is the common thread that connects the tracks, even though it’s really a protest song. Cumbias are different in every country, and this is a very Chilean one. It’s my little South American present.” **“Esta Morra No Se Vende”** “Things return to the general spirit of the album, which is a lot more Mexican. Years ago, I had an experience with a guy that had money, private jets, the whole deal, which is something that I find very embarrassing. I feel that a lot of people are hypnotized by this bling culture and they need to validate themselves with expensive brands or whatever they wear. I find it very sad. That’s what ‘Esta Morra No Se Vende’ is about. You can have all the money in the world, but I couldn’t care less. You can’t buy me. It’s a personal statement.” **“Que Se Sepa Nuestro Amor” (feat. Alejandro Fernández)** “This is something that maybe I wouldn’t have thought about. It was my label’s idea and I think it was a good one, because this is a very Mexican record and Alejandro Fernández is a Mexican music icon. I’m a new voice in Mexican music, and this was a gift I very happily accepted. It’s been great because it brought my music to different people.” **“Te Vi”** “Kany García is a friend of mine and a great Puerto Rican songwriter, very much in a writing-on-the-acoustic-guitar kind of way. Like a year or so ago, right before the confinement, she came to my house and we were drinking wine and talking about life. We wanted to write a song together, but we didn’t know what about. We ended up talking about our moms and we found out that we both had complicated stories with them. When I was younger, I had this stereotype in my head of what they tell you a mother should be, and I used to think, ‘How come every mother in the world is perfect and does everything for their children, but my mom doesn’t?’ Now, from an adult point of view, I realize how heavy motherhood can be, with all the pressure of being perfect and never failing. I loved writing this song for her. When I showed it to her, we were both in tears. Being a mother is not what defines my mom—she’s a woman first. Now I see her as a brave, courageous woman. This is a song that helped me heal our relationship.” **“Se Va La Vida” (feat. Mujeres del Viento Florido)** “This is a very special one. At the end of 2019, I played for imprisoned women in Valparaíso, Chile, and this melody came to me when I was leaving. It was a big moment recognizing them as equal women and not these criminals they make them out to be. When I wrote the song, I thought it would be nice to collaborate with other women. Mujeres del Viento Florido are just starting in music. They are women that are coming out of a different kind of prison, because they couldn’t play music before; orchestras used to be just for men in Oaxaca. It turned out that they too had played in a women’s prison, Santa Martha in Mexico, and they felt just the way I did. It was a beautiful coincidence and a magical situation.” **“Se Me Va A Quemar El Corazón” (feat. La Arrolladora Banda el Limón de René Camacho)** “Banda music from Northern Mexico is completely connected to a very sexist culture. I wanted to go into that sexist world, collaborate with a band as amazing as La Arrolladora, and maybe understand why it is that there are no women in the field. Banda Sinaloense music is just delirious. You put a song on and it’s an instant party. I wanted to cover all of Mexico in the album. A lot of it is missing, because it’s such a big and diverse country, but banda had to be here.”

Composer/saxophonist Kenny Garrett emerged as a distinctive voice on the national scene in 1978 with an undisputed aptitude for emotive melodic phrasing that led him to collaborations with Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Art Blakey and Miles Davis. With "Sounds from the Ancestors," Garrett remembers the spirit of the sounds of African ancestors from church services, recited prayers, songs from the work fields, Yoruban chants and African drums, alongside tributes to Roy Hargrove and two drum pioneers — Art Blakey and Tony Allen — who all looked into the past to influence the future sound and evolution of jazz.

The week before Yebba released her debut, she got one powerful boost from none other than Drake, who gave the Memphis singer an interlude on his *Certified Lover Boy* album, and named it after her to boot (“Yebba’s Heartbreak”). Her brief inclusion was a sample of her charms, but *Dawn*, which was lovingly produced by Mark Ronson, offers a more robust idea of one of her greatest strengths—her breathy, soulful voice, which she uses to bring emotional depth and texture to her lyrics. A song like “October Sky” becomes a dazzling yet devastating ballad of grief honoring her mother. “Now I work in the city and I blend into the crowd/And the pеople grieve with mе since the towers came down,” she sings, filling the final syllables of each line with soul. “You could cut the pollution with a butter knife/You could wake up at two and then party all night/But I\'m missin\' my mama, so I stand on the street and get high.” It\'s poetry as is, but Yebba makes it magic. Such heart-wrenching tenderness is her sweet spot—see, for example, the mellow opener “How Many Years” and closer “Paranoia Purple”—but alongside a rapper like A$AP Rocky or against more throbbing, danceable beats like on “Love Came Down,” we are able to hear her voice in all of its soaring glory. Enchantment seems to come easy for Yebba, as she soothes and stuns all at once.

The members of the all-star Artifacts Trio – flutist Nicole Mitchell, cellist Tomeka Reid and drummer Mike Reed – have long been recognized as torchbearers of Chicago’s innovative jazz scene, as well as the most prominent performer-educators in the third generation of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), the historically vital, leading-edge Chicago arts organization. The trio served on the organization's executive board from 2009–2011, and their music advances the organization’s motto, “Ancient to the Future,” celebrating African-American culture while reaching across genres and integrating new, progressive ideas into the legacy of jazz and composition. The first Artifacts Trio release, 2015’s Artifacts, showcased classic compositions by such AACM composers as Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Hopkins, Leroy Jenkins, Amina Claudie Meyers, Steve McCall, Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams. The album placed in lists of top albums for 2015 on NPR as well as in The New York Times and All About Jazz, among others. New York Times critic Ben Ratliff declared Artifacts to be “exceptional,” while The Free Jazz Collective dubbed the band “a next-generation AACM dream team.” Now, the second Artifacts Trio album – …and then there’s this, to be released digitally and on CD via Astral Spirits Records on October 29, 2021 – furthers the evolution of the band by featuring compositions by each member of the trio, plus interpretations of more pieces by Mitchell and Abrams. Reviewing the band live, The New York Times encapsulated the Artifacts Trio sound: “Nicole Mitchell’s flute and Tomeka Reid’s cello met with Mike Reed’s cymbal-heavy drumming to make an aqueous sound that allowed itself to be warped and melted and spread about by the room.” As for their recordings so far, Tomeka Reid explains the trio’s intent: “The aim with our first record was to honor classic AACM composers – to bring our own approach to some of our favorite pieces by them, pieces that we thought would work especially well with our distinctive instrumentation. For this second album, we wanted to underscore that theme while also recognizing that we ourselves are also AACM composers – we want to contribute to that canon of music.” For all its ambitions, “the Artifacts Trio is a fun band – because the three of us have been close friends for many years,” Nicole Mitchell says. “I don’t think we can separate our friendships from the music. This project has been a way to celebrate our mutual inspiration from the AACM, while also learning more about how to support each other’s musical aesthetic – and the free improvisations on the album reflect how we’ve grown together. The new album is also more focused on groove than our debut, and this is the first record together where we are supporting each other as composers – contributing to each other’s arrangements, developing more of a vibe in our grooves, and getting almost telepathically close in our open improvisations. Our initial album, Artifacts, was the first real project where I incorporated electronics through the use of guitar pedals – in this space, that sort of experimental approach is welcome. This is a band that enables each of us to stretch out and try new things.” Along with collaborating with each other in various settings over the years, each of the musicians of the Artifacts Trio leads his or her own bands, having established strong artistic profiles in their own rights. Mitchell – an award-winning composer, bandleader and soloist, as well as the new director of jazz studies at the University of Pittsburgh’s Deitrich School – has released many albums by various incarnations of her Black Earth Ensemble, as well as by diverse bands chronicling a series of album-length suites. JazzTimes has praised Mitchell as embodying “a bold, creative spirit.” Reid – who teaches composition at Mills College in Oakland – has released two albums leading an all-star quartet with guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Tomas Fujiwara; she also co-leads the string trio Hear In Now. The New York Times has praised Reid as “a melodic improviser with a natural, flowing sense of song.” Reed leads the quartet People, Places & Things and the quintet Loose Assembly, and he also operates the celebrated Windy City multi-arts venue Constellation; all of which led the Chicago Tribune to call him “a center of gravity for music in Chicago (and beyond).” Describing Reid’s qualities, Mitchell says: “Tomeka is such an amazing, virtuosic player – her sense of rhythm is impeccable, her creativity unstoppable. No matter what I send her way – no matter how challenging it is – I know she will master it. That’s a great feeling to know you can try anything and Tomeka is up for it. I have probably played with Tomeka in more diverse contexts than anyone else in my world. Whether I want to bounce, swing, hip hop, make chaos, play intricate line or blurry textures, she’s ready.” About Mitchell, Reed says: “Nicole really does challenge us to develop as musicians. It could be a specific beat or an improvising concept – whatever it is, her compositions always require me to learn something.” As for Reed, the cellist says: “He is always trying to expand his sound in very thoughtful yet subtle ways. It’s exciting to see what new sound Mike is going to bring to a set.” Whether atmospheric (“J.J.”), hard-grooving (“In Response To”) or explosive (“Pleasure Palace”), the trio aimed for each original piece on …and then there’s this to have “its own distinct sonic characteristics and rhythmic identity,” Reed explains. “We wanted to avoid thinking in terms of traditional references, like ‘swing’ or a generic ‘Afro-Cuban’ style.” Regarding the included compositions by Muhal Richard Abrams and Roscoe Mitchell, Reid says: “I loved Muhal’s ‘Soprano Song’ when I first heard it, years ago. It’s got a really funky groove that’s fun to play, plus a finger-twisty head. I was introduced to ‘No Side Effects’ while playing in the Art Ensemble of Chicago, but I think we've all played it with Roscoe at some point. Our version is a little reggae-inspired, which was fun!” Musing on the trio’s connection to its AACM forebears and the band’s devotion to carrying that legacy forward in new work, Mitchell concludes: “Musically, the spirit of the AACM is so rich – it’s about originality, experimentation, Blackness. It’s about a legacy emerging from the Black Arts Movement of Chicago. It’s about mentorship and intergenerational inspiration. It’s about Afrofuturism before it had the name Afrofuturism. It’s about making space to assert who you are as an individual of the African Diaspora, when society wants to put you in a Black box. The Artifacts Trio has soaked up the influences of Muhal, Roscoe and all the others. There’s more to celebrate – but also so much more we can do to move the legacy forward, to create as a trio with our own compositions. The possibilities are endless.”

Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak were already hard at work on what would become *An Evening With Silk Sonic* when the pandemic shut down live music in early 2020, but they weren’t going to let that stop them from delivering a concert experience to their fans. “All of a sudden, my shows get canceled, Andy\'s shows get canceled,” Mars told Ebro Darden during their R&B Now interview. “This fear of ‘we’ll never be able to play live again’ comes into play. And to take that away from guys like us, that\'s all we know. So we\'re thinking, all right, let\'s put an album together that sounds like a show.” It began with the project’s lead single, “Leave the Door Open,” a syrupy-sweet piece of retro soul that Mars considers something of a backbone for the project. After its completion, he and .Paak began building out the nine songs of *An Evening With Silk Sonic*, soliciting help, in the few instances where they needed it, from friends like Bootsy Collins, Thundercat, and even Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. Their access to HOF-worthy firepower notwithstanding, the pair always understood that their own combined musicality was the real draw. “We just wanted it to feel special,” Mars says. “Instead of trying to get too cute with the concept, it\'s like, what\'s more special than Anderson .Paak behind a drum set singing a song and me having his back when it\'s my turn, you know? And the band moving in the same direction? It was just like a musician\'s dream.” Below, the pair talk through some of the tracks that make *An Evening With Silk Sonic* an experience fans won’t soon forget. **“Leave the Door Open”** Bruno Mars: “Me and Andy come from the school of performing and playing live instruments. We wrote ‘Leave the Door Open’ and it was just one of those songs like, dang, I can’t believe we a part of this, and we don\'t know what it\'s gonna do, we don\'t care that it\'s a ballad or a whatever you wanna call it—to us, this just feels right and it\'s important. So no matter what, if it hit No. 1 or it didn\'t, me and Andy both know that that was the best we could do. And we were cool with that.” **“Fly as Me”** Anderson .Paak: “‘Fly as Me’ is a joint hook \[Mars\] had for a minute. He was trying to figure out some verses for it, trying to figure out the groove, and we spent some time on that.” Mars: “Andy goes behind the drum set one day and says, ‘The groove gotta be like this,’ and starts playing his groove. D’Mile is on the bass, I\'m on the guitar. After all the grooves we tried, I don\'t know what it is, there\'s something about someone in the studio, someone that you trust, saying, \'It\'s gotta be like this.’ And the groove you hear him playing, which is not an easy groove to play, was what he showed me and D. And we just followed suit.” **“After Last Night” (with Thundercat & Bootsy Collins)** Mars: “That one got a lot of Bootsy on it. And my boy Thundercat came in and blessed us. It’s just one of them songs—everything was built to be played live, so that song is one of those we can keep going for 10 minutes.” **“Smokin Out the Window”** Mars: “‘Smokin Out the Window’ was an idea we started four or five years ago on tour. It didn\'t sound nothing like how it does now, but we just had the idea. On \[.Paak’s\] birthday, I called him over. He was hysterical that night. After every take he was like, \'I\'m the king of R&B! I’m the best! Tell me I’m not the hottest in the game!\' We were going back and forth with the lines and who can make who laugh, and we end up finishing that song and he was like, \'I’m out, what we doing tomorrow?\'” **“Put On a Smile”** Mars: “I had a song that I played for Andy and I said, ‘What do you think about this?’ and he said, ‘It sucks.’ I start singing it again and he gets behind the drums and that\'s when the magic happens. So we come up with this hook and these chords and that\'s when we start cooking, when everything starts moving in the studio. The song\'s starting to sound real good now. I don’t wanna mess it up, so I call Babyface. I only call Face to know if I got something good, you know, ’cause he’ll tell me too, \'This is wack.\' For all of us to finish that record together, that was one of my favorite experiences on this album.” **“Skate”** Mars: “It\'s hard to be mad on some rollerskates. So really, that\'s kinda the essence of this album: If me and Andy were to host a party, what would that feel like? Summertime. Outside. Set up the congas and the drums and amplifiers, and what would that sound like? And this is what our best effort was: \'Skate.\'”