Passion of the Weiss's Best Albums of 2021

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.

It’s likely that only diehard Boldy James fans understand how perfect a complement he is to the Griselda Records roster. The Detroit MC’s focus has always been lyrically proficient street rap, but in 2020 alone, his ear for production would manifest collaborative tapes with beloved Mobb Deep collaborator The Alchemist (*The Price of Tea in China*), jazz musician Sterling Toles (*Manger on McNichols*), social media content creator Jay Versace (*The Versace Tape*), and fashion label/production collective Real Bad Man. The man likes to rap. And if there’s one thing Griselda doesn’t do, it’s hold back projects where their MCs go off. James’ first release of 2021, *Bo Jackson*, clearly fits the mold. Look no further than the album opener “Double Hockey Sticks” for Donald Goines-vivid streetlife scenarios unfurled in James’ signature deadpan: “My bitch scored and hit a game-changer/I made her transport the work in her Keyshia Ka\'oir waist trainer/Say she gon\' leave me and I can’t blame her/’Cause I was cutting up my side bitch raw with the same razor,” he raps. The Alchemist is, here, who he was for *The Price of Tea in China* and the James/Alc collaborative project that preceded that, 2019’s *Boldface*: a producer whose one-of-a-kind loops bring the best out of an MC who never really needed the help.

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.

In his native country of Niger, singer-songwriter Mdou Moctar taught himself to play guitar by watching videos of Eddie Van Halen’s iconic shredding. When you hear his unique psych-rock hybrid—a mix of traditional Tuareg melodies with the kinds of buzzing strings and trilling fret runs that people often associate with the recently deceased guitar god—it makes sense. Moctar has honed that stylistic fingerprint over the course of five albums, after first being introduced to Western audiences via Sahel Sounds’ now cult classic compilation *Music From Saharan Cellphones, Vol. 1*, and in the process has been heartily embraced by indie rock fans based on his sound alone (he also plays on Bonnie \"Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney’s *Superwolves* album). The songs that make up *Afrique Victime* alternate between jubilant, sometimes meandering and jammy (the opening “Chismiten”)—mirroring his band’s explosive live shows—and more tightly wound, raga-like and reflective (the trance-inducing “Ya Habibti”). But within the music, there’s a deeper, often political context: Recorded with his group in studios, apartments, hotel rooms, backstage, and outdoors, the album covers a range of themes: love, religion, women’s rights, inequality, and the exploitation of West Africa by colonial powers. “I felt like giving a voice to all those who suffer on my continent and who are ignored by the Western world,” Moctar tells Apple Music. Here he dissects each of the album’s tracks. **“Chismiten”** “The song talks about jealousy in a relationship, but more importantly about making sure that you’re not swept away too quickly by this emotion, which I think can be very harmful. Every individual, man or woman, has the right to have relationships outside marriage, be it with friends or family.” **“Taliat”** “It’s another song that addresses relationships, the suffering we go through when we’re deeply in love with someone who doesn’t return that love.” **“Ya Habibti”** “The title of this track, which I composed a long time ago, means ‘oh my love’ in Arabic. I reminisce about that evening in August when I met my wife and how I immediately thought she was so beautiful.” **“Tala Tannam”** “This is also a song I wrote for my wife when I was far away from her, on a trip. I tell her that wherever I may be, I’ll be thinking of her.” **“Asdikte Akal”** “It’s about my origins and the sense of nostalgia I feel when I think about the village where I grew up, about my country and all those I miss when I’m far away from them, like my mother and my brothers.” **“Layla”** “Layla is my wife. When she gave birth to our son, I wasn’t allowed to be by her side, because that’s just how it is for men in our country. I was on tour when she called me, very worried, to tell me that our son was about to be born. I felt really helpless, and as a way of offering comfort, I wrote this song for her.” **“Afrique Victime”** “Although my country gained its independence a long time ago, France had promised to help us, but we never received that support. Most of the people in Niger don’t have electricity or drinking water. That’s what I emphasize in this song.” **“Bismilahi Atagah”** “This one talks about the various possible dangers that await us, about everything that could make us turn our back on who we really are, such as the illusion of love and the lure of money.”

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.

Madvillain superfans will no doubt recall the Four Tet 2005 remix EP stuffed with inventive versions of cuts from the now-certified classic rap album *Madvillainy*. Coming a decade and a half later, *Sound Ancestors* sees Kieran Hebden link once again with iconic hip-hop producer Madlib, this time for a set of all-new material, the product of a years-long and largely remote collaboration process. With source material arranged, edited, and recontextualized by the UK-born artist, the album represents a truly unique shared vision, exemplified by the reggae-tinged boom-bap of “Theme De Crabtree” and the neo-soul-infused clatter of “Dirtknock.” Such genre blends turn these 16 tracks into an excitingly twisty journey through both men’s seemingly boundless creativity, leading to the lithe jazz-hop of “Road of the Lonely Ones” and the rugged B-boy business of “Riddim Chant.”

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.”

The increasing success of drill music in the UK has raised some questions for Unknown T, an early adopter of the sound imported from Chicago’s South Side. “At the start it was like Bitcoin,” he tells Apple Music. “But around the time it started to explode, from 2016 to ’18, everyone was jumping on it. And me? A person that loves music, but also thinks like a businessman, I’m thinking to myself, ‘How can I adapt my product?’” On *Adolescence*, features including M1llionz, Potter Payper, and M Huncho ensure a rhyme-heavy affair, but carefully selected moments allow the Hackney MC to explore growth. “GLEE” serves a warm, oxymoronic jam; “Tugman Vacation” employs a sweet sample-flip of Tyrese’s 1998 R&B hit “Sweet Lady”; and “Sweet Lies” offers a soulful guitar ballad. “As a child, I grew with positivity and light, and built up a passion for music,” he says. “But then you go through real shit. And faced with many different emotions as I was growing up, I just wanted to rap it out. It’s still the same, but I’m going back to the origin.” Here, Unknown T guides you across his second mixtape track by track. **“22 double 0”** “This one is a reminder of my flows, style, and technique. Something to get the blood pumping for the fans that have been with me from the beginning—and haven\'t heard this sound in a little while.” **“Driller sh!t”** “Recording this track with \[UK producer\] AXL Beats was probably the most interesting session I had. When I was in jail, I missed out on the main part of Pop Smoke’s career; from ‘Welcome to the Party’ to his death—that year was my jail time. Everyone compared me to him, with my voice and style, but the only person that really knew him over here was AXL. So that whole day was dedicated to Pop. We spoke about his legacy, but also how we can continue to revolutionize drill in the UK and the US. So you’ll notice my flow here reflects \[Chicago rapper\] G Herbo’s, but I’m representing in my way.” **“Trenches” (feat. Potter Payper)** “This is the UK streets, the trenches, you know? This is that sound we’ve been missing for a while, that authentic rap sound.” **“WW2”** “My fans on Twitter were screaming at the fact that I wasn’t nominated for some awards in 2020. It left me feeling like I had something to prove, but I kept quiet for the rest of the year—and when I came back with this \[in January 2021\], it left everyone gobsmacked. The flows, bars, and just the overall conviction—I put every element of me as an artist into this.” **“EAST”** “This one is for my side of London. In this game, everyone represents where they’re from, and I wanted to bring attention back to the East, and keep the energy up.” **“VIN DIESEL” (feat. M1llionz)** “I wanna big up \[UK producer\] Ghosty for this. We were discussing how to introduce new sounds to drill, and he pitched Turkish vocals. And we listened to some together; they’re really good singers. The sample through the beat is from one of those Turkish songs. I like to paint pictures, so with the energy of the beat, it gave me the feeling of the \[movie franchise\] *Fast & Furious*.” **“Sweet Lies”** “I would always say how it’s too early in the journey to show this side of me as an artist. But my guys would ask, ‘When is too early, or too late?’ They helped me realize that the only time you have is what you make of it.” **“Tugman Vacation”** “This life is a journey, and the way it’s panned out with my music, it’s a story that I reflect back on it like, ‘Wow.’ Somehow it all ended up making sense.” **“Goodums”** “This track was inspired by 2pac’s \[1996 song\] ‘Me and My Girlfriend.’ All the imagery and lyrics about his girl were a metaphor, and I’ve put my spin on that here.” **“Grandma Prayer”** “I thought it would be nice to have my grandma say the Holy Commandment, to better understand my growth spiritually, and also lead into the next song.” **“Bible Love”** “As a Christian, I’ve never really spoken about my faith, but now I’m growing as an artist and a man, I wanna try and touch on some real shit.” **“No Forgiveness” (feat. Nafe Smallz)** “This is the perfect drill-meets-rap wave; it gives a UK version to that Gunna and Lil Baby vibe. Nafe and I have our elements on lock, so when we get together it’s smooth like a relay.” **“Wonderland” (feat. M Huncho)** “My first track with M Huncho was ‘Addicts’ on \[2020 mixtape\] *Rise Above Hate*, a much darker track. So I have to give him the credit here, he suggested a more uplifting, triumphant vibe—or we’d just be doing ‘Addicts’ again. He was right.” **“Louis Bloom”** “Louis Bloom is the head of Island Records. I met him when I came home \[from prison in February 2020\] and he listened to my vision. This is a way for me to talk shit; I’m making noise on the man’s label, so why not?” **“GLEE” (feat. Digga D)** “On this track we wanted to make something for everyone—men, women, kids, parents—but still make it certy. With the structure and melodies, it’s just perfect. It was leaked onto TikTok a few weeks ago and the reaction was crazy. I know how much they’re waiting for this.”

“Hopefully this is the start of something new—no more five-year gaps,” Isaiah Rashad tells Apple Music of his long-awaited third album. It’s been that long between *The House Is Burning* and 2016’s *The Sun’s Tirade*, but the Chattanooga rapper easily proves why he’s worth waiting for. The songs here are kinetic even in their nocturnal wooziness and precise even in their unpretentiousness. Many of them, he says, were born from “scratches” or songs he just made on a whim with a minimal amount of time invested alongside Dallas producer Kal Banx, who’s credited on most of the tracks. True to Rashad’s geographic background, there’s a decidedly Southern and soulful aura that informs the album’s momentum and references. Tucked beneath the layers of syrupy melodies are nods to Pimp C, Goodie Mob, Three 6 Mafia, and Anthony Hamilton. Within the sounds and lyrics, he lights up a map to his musical roots and the proud Dirty South lineage in which he operates. “I tried to hone in on the energy of all the types of music I grew up listening to—Texas bounce, Louisiana bounce, a little bit of neo-soul in there,” he says. “I tried to update it, flip it, and make it apply to how I be feeling nowadays.” Below, he shares a bit of background about a handful of the album’s standouts. **“From the Garden”** “Originally, the beat was something else. I\'d made it at my mom\'s crib about four years ago, and we just switched the beat because it still sounded cool. We were like, \'Why waste it? Why have it just sitting to the side?\' So we put Uzi on it. He said he was going to do some s\*\*t for me if I asked him, so we asked him, and he did it.” **“Lay Wit Ya”** “‘Lay Wit Ya’ came from a lockout that we had had like last January. Again, it was just a scratch—a scratch idea that we turned full once we had listened to it a couple of times. Hollywood Cole threw us the beat. Made it in about 10 minutes. That was it. I just liked it.” **“Claymore”** “I made that song for Smino. And if I didn\'t use it, I was going to try to give it to him. And then he finally got on it, but I think his album was about done and he didn\'t really need it, so we used it. Most everybody on my album I listen to, so most of the tracks were made like \'oh, this would be a tight Smino song\' or that type of s\*\*t if it\'s fitting. I be having that type of stuff in mind.” **“Headshots”** “People say \[this reminds them of\] Outkast, but I was doing an Anthony Hamilton impression more than anything else. The verses is just— maybe I can get how they get some Outkast in that, but that was a whole bunch of Zay right there. But the inspiration behind the track was really Anthony Hamilton, honestly.” **“All Herb”** “\[Amindi and I\] got a nice little chemistry. We got a couple of songs on the project—she did the intro with me too, and another one, ‘True Story.’ But yeah, we made that on the spot. Me and Devin \[Malik\] made the beat. It was like a simple loop. We added a drum, and then I started like mumbling the hook. Once I came up with the hook, the cadence for the verses was easy. But I didn\'t really want to finish the verses, because I was like, \'It sounds like a whole bunch of me.\' So I called Amindi, and she came and she wrote. It\'s pretty quick when we\'re in a zone.” **“Hey Mista”** “Me and Kal \[Banx\] were at his house, and our whole plan was to freestyle—just make a beat and whatever comes to mind. It\'s like trusting the whole idea of \'I don\'t really make nothing bad. I\'m incapable of making something bad, so let me just trust in this.\' We went into it with that type of mentality, and we freestyled that whole motherf\*\*king thing. Like the whole track, it\'s really a big-ass joke. The second verse is a whole joke—every line is some s\*\*t that made me laugh and it just sounded funny.” **“Wat U Sed”** “‘Wat U Sed’ is another homage to the South—I\'m just now realizing that I do those a lot. I didn\'t want to do a whole bunch of tracks with cowbells, but that was one that was like, hell yeah. This sounds like some of that—there\'s this producer named ICYTWAT who has this very specific type of sound. And it kind of gave me some of that old *Kush & Orange Juice* vibes from Wiz, too, like \'Mezmorized\' and s\*\*t.” **“Score”** “For me ‘Score’ is probably one of my favorite songs out the whole album, just because of how f\*\*king different it is. I think I really got off an R&B song, and I hadn\'t got one off for real on the other ones. So I think I\'m probably most proud of that one.” **“THIB”** “That was probably the first track I made for my album. Towards the end of the whole s\*\*t, I was thinking about changing the title to something else, but it was like, nah, we can’t leave that off. It was definitely like the inspiration behind just about the whole soundscape of the album. I wanted it to be like dark and winding, sounds like two or three in the morning. That\'s a pretty constant theme with my music anyway. I like to listen to s\*\*t at night—when all my obligations are done, I\'m a night person. When I\'m in the mix, I\'m an early riser, but when I\'m just enjoying music on some vacay s\*\*t, definitely nighttime. So that\'s the type of stuff I like to make.”

Across a decade and a half of aliases and side-projects, Dean Blunt’s been known as an enigma. With a penchant for trolling and a disdain for genre boundaries, the Londoner is hard to pin down—from the masked post-punk of his Hype Williams duo to the weirdo noise-rap of Babyfather. But the sequel to 2014’s *BLACK METAL*, released under his own name, is mostly just…pretty. A pared-down collection of downcast avant-pop, *BLACK METAL 2* blurs acoustic strums, MIDI strings, and Blunt’s deadpan half-raps, telling fascinatingly unresolved stories—a gun on the beach, a mother without a son. These are lush, delicate songs that still feel profoundly unhappy: “Daddy’s broke/What a joke/Future’s bleak,” he sing-songs on folk downer “NIL BY MOUTH.” Even at its most accessible, Blunt’s work remains a bit of a mystery.

Take the irony Steely Dan applied to Boomer narcissists in the ’70s and map it onto the introverts of Gen Z and you get some idea of where Atlanta singer-songwriter Faye Webster is coming from. Like Steely Dan, the sound is light—in Webster’s case, a gorgeous mix of indie rock, country, and soul—but the material is often sad. And even when she gets into it, she does so with the practiced detachment of someone who glazes over everything with a joke. Her boyfriend dumps her by saying he has more of the world to see, then starts dating a girl who looks just like her (“Sometimes”). She might just take the day off to cry in bed (“A Stranger”). And when all that thinking doesn’t make her feel better, she suggests having some sake and arguing about the stuff you always argue about (“I Know I’m Funny haha”). On the advice of the great Oscar the Grouch, Faye Webster doesn’t turn her frown upside down—she lets it be her umbrella.

The identity of Toronto fusionists BADBADNOTGOOD has largely been shaped by the company they keep. This is, after all, a group with the stylistic fluidity and instrumental dexterity to bring Ghostface Killah’s ’70s-funk fantasias to life, turn up the heat on Charlotte Day Wilson’s slow-burning R&B ballads, and allow Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring to channel a past life as a cabaret soul singer. But in contrast to 2016’s star-studded *IV*, BADBADNOTGOOD’s *Talk Memory* is conspicuously lacking in vocal features. Rather, the group’s first album in five years is an all-instrumental affair that puts the focus squarely on their most crucial quality: the ever-present tension between compositional sophistication and freaked-out improvisation. That said, *Talk Memory* still boasts the sort of enviable guest list only BADBADNOTGOOD could assemble. They built a dream team of instrumentalists—including Brazilian composer Arthur Verocai, ambient icon Laraaji, electro-psych voyager Floating Points, and Kendrick Lamar saxophonist Terrace Martin—to infuse their grooves with a cinematic grandeur (and also help fill the space vacated by keyboardist Matty Taveres, who left the band in 2019). But while the album’s lustrous string arrangements and psychedelic harp flourishes speak to the group’s ever-expanding musical vision, *Talk Memory* is also fueled by a primal energy that’s more conducive to head-banging than chin-stroking—when bassist Chester Hansen activates his fuzz pedal and starts shredding on the colossal nine-minute opener “Signal From the Noise,” BBNG practically resembles a free-jazz Death From Above 1979. “We come from a background of listening to a lot of rock music when we were younger,” Hansen tells Apple Music. “When we started to play our instruments, \[saxophonist\] Leland \[Whitty\] was learning Iron Maiden solos, and \[drummer\] Alex \[Sowinski\] was playing a bunch of Rush and Led Zeppelin, so it\'s nice to be able to incorporate some of those elements on this record.” Here, Hansen talks us through his memories of *Talk Memory*, track by track. **“Signal From the Noise”** “In the years of playing shows \[after *IV*\], we did a lot of improv stuff, and the intro to this song was a bass interlude we did on stage—I would essentially play stuff that sounded like this. And then when we were writing stuff for this album, we wanted to build it into a full song. So we added the arrangements and the bass solo, and our engineer Nic \[Jodoin\] made a tape loop that he faded in over the end. We also had some additional production from Floating Points at the very end to make it even more psychedelic.” **“Unfolding (Momentum 73)”** “I think the idea behind this title was that the human body is 73% water. And the \'unfolding\' part refers to the fact that the main sax part sounds like it\'s actually unfolding. Leland had the first arpeggio that you hear on sax, and we wanted to build a song around that. We finished the song right before the pandemic, and then, over the last year, we sent it to Laraaji, who\'s a legendary ambient artist. He has vocal songs but he also plays zither and other instruments, so we thought it\'d be a cool twist to get him to play zither on this.” **“City of Mirrors”** “A lot of our favorite records have incredible string arrangements on them, but logistically it\'s sometimes difficult to work them in. We\'ve been really lucky in the past because Leland plays violin and viola, so previously, we\'d just record him a hundred times stacked on top of each other to make an orchestral sound. But for this album, we were able to reach out to Arthur Verocai, who\'s a massive influence on us and a true legend. So we sent him every song and then he sent back all the string arrangements that you hear, which really took everything to the next level.” **“Beside April”** “Mahavishnu Orchestra was a big influence on this song. In the past, we haven\'t really had a lot of songs with riffs like this, so it\'s cool to be able to include some stuff that has a lot of riffs. It made sense for us to release this as a single before the album came out, because it has a pretty epic energy. Karriem Riggins played on this with us. He came by when we were running through it in the studio, and liked how it sounded. He\'s obviously an amazing drummer, but for this one, he was like, \'Just give me a snare drum!\' So Alex played the drum kit, and then Karriem had a snare drum with brushes and we just set up a mic for him. He was making sounds that I had never heard from just a single drum before. It was really amazing.” **“Love Proceeding”** “I was out of town, and Leland and Alex got together and jammed an early version of this. One interesting thing about this album is that it\'s the first thing we\'ve done with just the three of us, because Matty—our keyboard player and founding member of the band—went his own way a couple years ago, so this is us trying to figure out what we\'re going to do, and if we can cover all the parts. For this one, Leland played guitar for the first half and then ran over to the sax to play the solo, and we did it like all in one take, which was pretty fun.” **“Timid, Intimidating”** “Another difference about this album in general is that we would bring in stuff that we had written individually and take it to the next level with the rest of the group, instead of being there for every part of the writing process all together. I was trying to write songs that had crazy riffs in them, basically. I had a really funny MIDI demo version of this that got deleted, so I had to remember it and teach it to the other guys. And then it turned into what you hear. It was just a really good framework for a couple of solos. It has a Steely Dan vibe now that I hear it—I wasn\'t really thinking of them at the time, but they\'re a big influence on us.\" **“Beside April (Reprise)”** “Before we had recorded the original version of \'Beside April,\' I was visiting my mom and I was playing on her piano and came up with this alternate version of it. We had some extra studio time one day, so I just recorded the piano part and then Verocai did his thing on it.” **“Talk Meaning”** “It was one of the last days in the studio and Terrace Martin came by for a couple of hours. We had run into him a lot on the road, but never got to do anything together in the studio. He was very generous with his time. Leland and Alex wrote the main melody and the chords for this, and then we wanted to play it in a jazz context, so we just showed Terrace the melody. This song had the most old-school mic setup: There\'s maybe a couple mics on the drums, one mic on the bass, and then one mic for both saxophones. So Leland and Terrace were both standing behind a baffle, and they had to move \[toward the mic\] and back depending on who was taking the lead. Then we added some keyboards and Verocai put an amazing arrangement on it. And for the finishing touch, we sent it to Brandee Younger, who\'s an amazing harpist, and she really took it to the next level and played a beautiful outro. It\'s really the most in-depth collaboration on this record.”

The 49-year-old Brownsville rapper cuts a mythic figure: Raised on the mean streets of ’70s Brooklyn, he now splits his time between being a NYC fire captain and crafting dense rap allegories that touch on Greek mythology and the code of the samurai. But on *A Martyr’s Reward*, Ka strips down everything—the mythology, the production—to tell his own story, unembellished, over hauntingly minimalist (and mostly self-produced) beats. But it isn’t just his story; it’s the story of surviving being Black in America—or, in the cases of too many of his friends, not surviving. And on “I Need All That,” he demands retribution: “I want back everything they took/My culture, my music, my look.”

“So when my brother died, probably like three days after, I hopped right back in the studio,” Maxo Kream tells Apple Music. “Not on no super rushing shit, but just tryna catch my vibe. Because he always told me, ‘Never stop this music shit.’ He always told me to keep going, so I was like, I gotta turn it up for bro.” This, in a nutshell, is the driving force behind Maxo Kream’s *WEIGHT OF THE WORLD* project. It comes to fans two years after 2019’s acclaimed *Brandon Banks* and after some serious soul-searching spurred by the murder of Maxo’s brother, an MC in his own right called Money Madu—and then the COVID-19 pandemic. Maxo will say that the pandemic did little to affect his day-to-day, but the time he had to reflect—coupled with the passing of one of the most important people in his life—wrenched from him his most honest and autobiographical work to date. The MC unfurls details about the life experiences that built him on songs like “11:59,” “FRFR,” and a particularly heavy late-album stretch that features “GREENER KNOTS,” “MAMA’S PURSE,” and “TRIPS.” He can be so open on record that you might assume it difficult for him to give more insight into his thought process, but he’s taken time below to talk us through some of the standout tracks on *WEIGHT OF THE WORLD*. **“CRIPSTIAN”** “‘CRIPSTIAN’ was a song I already had, but it felt like it was a good intro song. Very serious, very mature, very on topic. I felt like I needed to start my project with that because even though I got a big persona and shit and I be having fun, I still gotta cater to my core fanbase.” **“11:59”** “I just be wanting people to know that shit that they think they doing, I really did that shit. But ain’t nothing wrong with growing your standards, getting your mind right, getting your frame right. It’s life lessons.” **“BIG PERSONA”** “Persona is what we push. That’s like the clique, that’s like the gang. RIP my brother—after he passed away, we really started to embrace the persona shit. The song is actually—I don\'t want to say the only, but one of the few positive songs I did in a long time at that time. No killing, no robbing, no drug dealing, no trauma, just balling and being positive.” **“DON’T PLAY WITH SHAWTY ASS”** “When I heard that beat, I was like, this shit stupid, super crazy. I liked it ’cause ain’t nothing else like that on the tape. I’ll try new types of beats: soulful beats, real guitars, real piano—not just like acoustic, trap beats. Really experiment. And like, my whole process I brought in Dom, Teej, Reginald Helms, Monte Booker, Guru, Bankroll Gotti, I was having a workshop. Like producers working, all that shit. I had like a real camp, like a real workshop for the tape.” **“LOCAL JOKER”** “I felt like COVID humbled a n\*\*\*a so many ways. I ain\'t talking about financing—it stopped shows, it ain’t really nothing financially—but like accessibility, being around people. It really made me get more down to earth. At the same time I might be contradicting myself ’cause I am local. Like you can come to Houston and catch me at a sneaker store, a restaurant. I really just be outside.” **“WORTHLESS”** “So the zone I was in for this was the same zone I was in for every song because I took Adderall on every fucking song. Like I think I made this shit during a comedown. \[The title is\] probably like a little exaggeration, because I\'m not strung out on Adderall. I don\'t even take Adderall if I\'m not rapping. Like, how many people do you know that take Adderall to pass college tests or to finish papers? I just be using it to make music. Same thing.” **“GREENER KNOTS”** “I\'m just being real, I don\'t know what to tell you. I\'m different. I ain\'t like anybody else. If it’s anything I’m rapping about, that shit comes from the heart. Especially with this tape. I put blood, sweat, and tears in this. I ain’t gon\' say tears, but shit, it was some tears, though.” **“TRIPS”** “I was going through it when my brother passed away. I felt like I needed to get something off my chest. I felt like I wasn’t gonna be able to rap about it again. I don’t even listen to the song, for real. The only song I don\'t go back and jam is \'TRIPS.\'”

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.

Every year since 2015, Manchester producer Anz has released a mix of all of her own tracks made over the course of the preceding months. For 2020, she sought to finish 40 tunes; by summer, she’d already made 74, which were then culled down to a slim 35 for her *Spring/Summer Dubs 2020* mix. Like the ones prior, that set—which, again, *was made entirely of her own brand-new songs*—spanned genres and revealed all kinds of influences: UK garage and 2-step, East Coast club, techno, house, jungle, old-skool rave breaks, you name it. While the *All Hours* EP is a compact six tracks, it’s just further proof that Anz is one of dance music’s most versatile, exciting (and obviously prolific) producers working today. “Inna Circle” mixes B-more club with B-boy breaks. “Real Enough to Feel Good” is the kind of stepping garage tune that keeps dancers in an anaerobic state, while Anz drives a vocal sample in all sorts of unexpected directions. “Last Before Lights” is a whip-cracking, high-BPM assault that goes down a rabbit hole of squelchy bass, pitched-up voices, and classic rave-style piano riff. But as wildly divergent as all these tracks are, little can prepare you for “You Could Be,” on which singer George Riley channels the giddy joys of Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s “I Wonder If I Take You Home” and Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” atop one of the funkiest, most glorious synth arpeggios recorded since the heyday of Miami freestyle. Dance pop has rarely sounded so perfect—and so out of left field—as it does here.

“I wanted to get a better sense of how African traditional cosmologies can inform my life in a modern-day context,” Sons of Kemet frontman Shabaka Hutchings tells Apple Music about the concept behind the British jazz group’s fourth LP. “Then, try to get some sense of those forms of knowledge and put it into the art that’s being produced.” Since their 2013 debut LP *Burn*, the Barbados-raised saxophonist/clarinetist and his bandmates (tuba player Theon Cross and drummers Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick) have been at the forefront of the new London jazz scene—deconstructing its conventions by weaving a rich sonic tapestry that fuses together elements of modal and free jazz, grime, dub, ’60s and ’70s Ethiopian jazz, and Afro-Caribbean music. On *Black to the Future*, the Mercury Prize-nominated quartet is at their most direct and confrontational with their sociopolitical message—welcoming to the fold a wide array of guest collaborators (most notably poet Joshua Idehen, who also collaborated with the group on 2018’s *Your Queen Is a Reptile*) to further contextualize the album’s themes of Black oppression and colonialism, heritage and ancestry, and the power of memory. If you look closely at the song titles, you’ll discover that each of them makes up a singular poem—a clever way for Hutchings to clue in listeners before they begin their musical journey. “It’s a sonic poem, in that the words and the music are the same thing,” Hutchings says. “Poetry isn\'t meant to be descriptive on the surface level, it\'s descriptive on a deep level. So if you read the line of poetry, and then you listen to the music, a picture should emerge that\'s more than what you\'d have if you considered the music or the line separately.” Here, Hutchings gives insight into each of the tracks. **“Field Negus” (feat. Joshua Idehen)** “This track was written in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests in London, and it was a time that was charged with an energy of searching for meaning. People were actually starting to talk about Black experience and Black history as it related to the present, in a way that hadn\'t really been done in Britain before. The point of artists is to be able to document these moments in history and time, and be able to actually find a way of contextualizing them in a way that\'s poetic. The aim of this track is to keep that conversation going and keep the reflections happening. I\'ve been working with Joshua for 15 years and I really appreciate his perspective on the political realm. He\'s got a way of describing reality in a manner which makes you think deeply. He never loses humor and he never loses his sense of sharpness.” **“Pick Up Your Burning Cross” (feat. Moor Mother & Angel Bat Dawid)** “It started off with me writing the bassline, which I thought was going to be a grime bassline. But then in the pandemic lockdown, I added layers of horns and woodwinds. It took it completely out of the grime space and put it more in that Antillean-Caribbean atmosphere. It really showed me that there\'s a lot of intersecting links between these musics that sometimes you\'re not even aware of until you start really diving into their potential and start adding and taking away things. It was really great to actually discover that the tune had more to offer than I envisioned in the beginning. Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother are both on this one, and the only thing I asked them to do was to listen to the track and just give their honest interpretation of what the music brings out of them.” **“Think of Home”** “If you\'re thinking poetically, you\'ve got that frantic energy of \'Burning Cross,\' which signifies dealing with those issues of oppression. Then at the end of that process of dealing with them, you\'ve got to still remember the place that you come from. You\'ve got to think about the utopia, think about that serene tranquil place so that you\'re not consumed in the battle. It\'s not really trying to be a Caribbean track per se, but I was trying to get that feeling of when I think back to my days growing up in Barbados. This is the feeling I had when I remember the music that was made at that time.” **“Hustle” (feat. Kojey Radical)** “The title of the track links back to the title of our second album, *Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do*. The answer to that question is to hustle. Our grandparents came and migrated to Britain, not to just be British per se, but so that they could then create a better life for themselves and their families and have the future be one with dignity and pride. I gave these words to Kojey and he said that he finds it difficult to depict these types of struggles considering that he\'s not in the present moment within the same struggle that he grew up in. He felt it was disingenuous for him to talk about the struggle. I told him that he\'s a storyteller, and storytelling isn\'t always autobiographical. His gift is to be able to tell stories for his community, and to remember that he\'s also an orator of their history regardless of where his personal journey has led him.” **“For the Culture” (feat. D Double E)** “Originally, we\'d intended D Double E to be on \'Pick Up Your Burning Cross.\' But he came into the studio and it really wasn\'t the vibe that he was in. We played him the demo of this track and his face lit up. He was like, \'Let\'s go into the studio. I know what to do.\' It was one take and that was it. I think this might be one of my favorite tunes on the album. The reason I called it \'For the Culture\' is that it puts me back into what it felt like to be a teenager in Barbados in the \'90s, going into the dance halls and really learning what it is to dance. It\'s not just all about it being hard and struggling and striving; there is that fun element of celebrating what it is to be sensual and to be alive and love music and partying and just joyfulness.” **“To Never Forget the Source”** “I gave this really short melody to the band, maybe like four bars for the melody and a very repeated bassline. We played it for about half an hour, where the drums and bass entered slowly and I played the melody again and again. The idea of this, when we recorded in the studio, is that it needs to be the vibe and spirit of how we are playing together. So it wasn\'t about stopping and starting and being anxious. We need to play it until the feeling is right. The clarinets and the flutes on this one is maybe the one I\'m most proud of in terms of adding a counterpoint line, which really offsets and emphasizes the original saxophone and tuba line.” **“In Remembrance of Those Fallen”** “The idea of \'In Remembrance of Those Fallen\' is to give homage to those people that have been fighting for liberation and freedom within all those anti-colonial movements, and remember the ongoing struggle for dignity within especially the Black world in Africa. It\'s trying to get that feeling of \'We can do this. We can go forward, regardless of what hurdles have been done and of what hurdles we\'ve encountered.\' But, musically, there\'s so many layers to this. I was excited with how, on one side, the drums are doing what you\'d describe as Afro-jazz, and on the other one, it\'s doing a really primal sound—but mixing it in a way where you feel the impact of those two contrasting drum patterns. This is at the heart of what I like about the drums in Kemet. Regardless of what they\'re doing, the end result becomes one pulsating, forward-moving machine.” **“Let the Circle Be Unbroken”** “I was listening to a lot of \[Brazilian composer\] Hermeto Pascoal while making the album, and my mind was going onto those beautiful melodies that Hermeto sometimes makes. Songs that feel like you remember them, but they\'ve got a level of harmonic intricacy, which means that there\'s something disorienting too. It\'s like you\'re hearing a nursery rhyme in a dream, hearing the basic contour of the melody, but there\'s just something below the surface that disorientates you and throws you off what you know of it. It\'s one of the only times I\'ve ever heard that midtempo soca descend into brutal free jazz.” **“Envision Yourself Levitating”** “This one also features one of my heroes on the saxophone, Kebbi Williams, who does the first saxophone solo on the track. His music has got that real New Orleans communal vibe to it. For me, this is the height of music making—when you can make music that\'s easy enough to play its constituent parts, but when it all pieces together, it becomes a complex tapestry. It\'s the first point in the album where I do an actual solo with backing parts. This is, in essence, what a lot of calypso bands do in Barbados. So when you\'ve got traditional calypso music, you\'ll get a performer who is singing their melody and then you\'ve got these horn section parts that intersect and interact with the melody that the calypsonian is singing. It\'s that idea of an interchange between the band backing the chief melodic line.” **“Throughout the Madness, Stay Strong”** “It\'s about optimism, but not an optimism where you have a smile on your face. An optimism where you\'re resigned to the place of defeat within the big spectrum of things. It\'s having to actually resign yourself to what has happened in the continued dismantling of Black civilization, and how Black people are regarded as a whole in the world within a certain light; but then understanding that it\'s part of a broader process of rising to something else, rising to a new era. Also, on the more technical side of the recording of this tune, this was the first tune that we recorded for the whole session. It\'s the first take of the first tune on the first day.” **“Black” (feat. Joshua Idehen)** “There was a point where we all got into the studio and I asked that we go into these breathing exercises where we essentially just breathe in really deeply about 30 times, and at the end of 30, we breathe out and hold it for as long as you can with nothing inside. We did one of these exercises while lying on the floor with our eyes shut in pitch blackness. I asked everyone to scream as hard as we can, really just let it out. No one could have anything in their ears apart from the track, so no one was aware of how anyone else sounded. It was complete no-self-awareness, no shyness. It\'s like a cathartic ritual to really just let it out, however you want.”

Listening to Liz Harris’ music as Grouper, the word that comes to mind is “psychedelic.” Not in the cartoonish sense—if anything, the Astoria, Oregon-based artist feels like a monastic antidote to spectacle of almost any kind—but in the subtle way it distorts space and time. She can sound like a whisper whose words you can’t quite make out (“Pale Interior”) and like a primal call from a distant hillside (“Followed the ocean”). And even when you can understand what she’s saying, it doesn’t sound like she meant to be heard (“The way her hair falls”). The paradox is one of closeness and remove, of the intimacy of singer-songwriters and the neutral, almost oracular quality of great ambient music. That the tracks on *Shade*, her 12th LP, were culled from a 15-year period is fitting not just because it evokes Harris’ machine consistency (she found her creative truth and she’s sticking to it), but because of how the staticky, white-noise quality of her recordings makes you aware of the hum of the fridge and the hiss of the breeze: With Grouper, it’s always right now.

File under “things that seem like they should’ve happened years ago, but somehow hadn’t until now”: *Garbology* is the first album-length collaboration between the two underground hip-hop veterans, despite the fact that they’ve known each other since college, and that Aesop’s biggest tracks to date have been Blockhead productions. Here, the latter’s beats are heady as ever; meanwhile, Aes has grown into the role of the curmudgeonly hermit, digging through the landfill of late-capitalist culture with no small amount of despair: “I hate praising net worth over legwork/I hate ceding all power to the extroverts/I find the current social architecture hell on earth,” he spits on “That Is Not a Wizard.” It isn’t easy making existential anguish sound this good.

“You can never get to a point where the music is perfect,” London pianist, rapper, and composer Alfa Mist tells Apple Music. “You just have to be in the moment that feels right.” This prioritizing of intuitive feeling over cold perfectionism is a trait that has seen Mist produce a remarkable amount of perceptive and ever-changing work. There have been collaborative projects with singer Emmavie, drummer Richard Spaven, and musician Lester Duval, as well as two self-released albums, three EPs, and features with Jordan Rakei, Yussef Dayes, and Tom Misch. Where 2017’s *Antiphon* interspersed Mist’s jazz-referencing compositions with conversations with his brothers on the meaning of family, and 2019’s *Structuralism* featured dialogue with his sister on the formulation of identity, *Bring Backs* is equally considered and thematic. Built around a sensuous and impressionistic poem written by Hilary Thomas, *Bring Backs* explores the effects immigration has on the understanding of our lives and the world, while referencing a card game Mist would play as a child where a “bring back” could see you pulled into the game again, even if you thought you had already won. It is a metaphor that has continued to resonate. “Growing up, I saw how people’s success could disappear as quickly as it came,” Mist says, “and that means you then live unsure of what you can hold on to—it creates an instability in your place in the world, and that’s where I wrote this album from.” Here he talks through each of *Bring Backs*’ tracks. **“Teki”** “‘Teki’ is a song about being in a battle with yourself. In Japanese, the word means ‘enemy’ or ‘opposition,’ and in the UK when things are difficult or hard to navigate, you might say, ‘This is a bit teki.’ This battle is not about conquering yourself, it’s about leading to a knowing of yourself and having an understanding of who it is you are. The guitar is prevalent since I really like post-rock and bands like Radiohead. The softer harmony meets an energetic, harsh guitar line—and that’s the conflict in the music itself.” **“People” (feat. Kaya Thomas-Dyke)** “‘People’ has no piano on it, as I wanted to make a conscious effort to show my composing side, rather than only being seen as a jazz-piano guy. I first came up with the tune on bass, which is often the case, because I find the simplest things will sound amazing on bass or guitar. The lyrics were written and sung by a frequent collaborator of mine, Kaya Thomas-Dyke. She’s talking about how you have to acknowledge how people become who they are and their own stories, as that’s how we can all build compassion for each other.” **“Mind the Gap” (feat. Lex Amor)** “The opening has a recording of the tube announcement from my usual journey, which is where I listen to a lot of music and do a lot of writing. ‘Mind the gap’ is a phrase you hear on the tube all the time, but the song is more about the times where we grow tired of everything for a moment—we might not have the capacity to take on other people\'s issues then, and we have to be aware of that. I’ve known Lex Amor for a few years. Her voice is soft and it fits perfectly. The guitar and the drumbeat is quite stuttery, which reminded me of the sound of the train tracks too.” **“Run Outs”** “I come from Newham, which is a place where grime was very prevalent, and some of the first beats I made had a grime vibe to them. I wanted to return to that style because I had previously separated playing piano from beat-making, but in the last few years I realized that to truly sound like myself, I’ve got to bridge these two aspects together. ‘Run Outs’ is a perfect example of that marrying of the two styles, and the title comes from another childhood game I’d play, which is like tag but in teams.” **“Last Card (Bumper Cars)”** “This track really focuses on Hilary Thomas’ poem. It’s giving space for her to speak about a character’s journey to get to this country and things that she can remember from her childhood back home—so there are no drums at the beginning, the song just flows around her speech, and then it transitions into another tune called ‘Bumper Cars’ at the end. This one is influenced by the Madlib *Beat Konducta* songs I always used to listen to and how he would flip these found theme songs and samples into something entirely different.” **“Coasting”** “‘Coasting’ is exactly how the song feels, like you’re coasting along. I worked with an amazing strings player and arranger, Peggy Nolan, on the song, and we were thinking in terms of layering, and how to build this tune to just keep it going and floating along. We only play the theme at the start and then we never go back to it—it flows and then it’s done. Essentially, it’s a journey from one place to another through improvisations, never returning to where it\'s been.” **“Attune”** “We recorded all the tracks to tape. We could do two takes in the sessions and then if we wanted to do a third one, we’d have to record over one of the previous takes. I liked that limitation—I’m a perfectionist, but if I stuck to that, then nothing would ever come out. We’re choosing the moment that feels right, rather than repeating something until you feel like it’s perfect, and you can hear that on ‘Attune.’” **“Once a Year”** “I really enjoy writing string arrangements, and this track was written for Peggy, who played the cello like it was a quartet by recording the parts four times. That cello sound is quite dark and somber, and it is perfect for this record because the themes are self-reflective and introspective. The song itself is about how I’d only really see a lot of my relatives on Christmas because of the hustle and bustle of life—it’s remembering that time of family togetherness.” **“Organic Rust”** “I wanted Rocco Palladino and Richard Spaven on this track as I\'ve been playing with them both for years so I knew they\'d be perfect for its hip-hop feel. ‘Organic Rust’ deals with similar themes to ‘Mind the Gap,’ talking about the times where it feels like everyone is performing and nobody’s being themselves and so you begin to question the point of what it is you’re doing. Lyrically, everything in there is a metaphor, since I like to keep things ambiguous. I want to ask the questions and then walk away.”

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.

On her sixth LP, Dawn Richard wanted to celebrate the Black DJs and producers who played an instrumental role in developing the early sounds of electronic music. “Dance music has always been culturally from a Black culture,” Richard tells Apple Music. “It’s Detroit house, Chicago footwork, the New Jersey sound, D.C. go-go, and it goes on.” Dismayed by their lack of representation in festivals and playlists, most notably female artists, the New Orleans artist felt the need to speak louder through her art in order to break the glass ceiling. “I have always been a warrior, this Black woman fighting in a space where I didn\'t think I needed to fight,” she adds. “Conceptually, this album became bigger than just a sonic experience—it became an intention.” Also driven by a desire to bring her hometown to the fore, Richard wanted to tell the story of New Orleans filtered through a post-apocalyptic lens—an idea that started from some sketches she drew while working as a creative consultant for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Centered around an android alter ego she created called King Creole, *Second Line* is a futurist, dance-driven voyage intended to narrate her evolution from girl-group reality star to independent artist. “I had to figure out how to stand on my own in a system that didn\'t look at me as belonging in the genre that I was trying to tackle,” she says. “The android was the mainstream journey. Then the independent hustle comes, and you get to see King Creole as the human.” Read on as Richard guides you on her journey through self-discovery. **“King Creole (Intro)”** “It is a call to arms saying, if you thought you knew what this genre or what this electronic idea was, I\'m going to show you what it really is. And I\'m going to add New Orleans all over it right out the gate. So you know it\'s going to drip with soul and presence, and electronic is not just going to be an algorithm—it\'s going to be a soulful experience.” **“Nostalgia”** “I wanted to make sure that I paid homage to those who created and started a genre that is usually not recognized. Larry Heard was one of those incredible DJs and producers that I actually loved. I wanted to say, ‘Let\'s go back to Black, because this genre was started and developed by a culture that is Black.\' I\'m also introducing the mechanics of King Creole and her build—the first half of the album is the machine version of King Creole. It\'s the android—so that\'s why the beats per minute is fast and why we\'re dealing with a more processed sound.” **“Boomerang”** “Now we\'re playing with the vocals as the instrumentation to bring us through. So out the gate, we\'re hearing the vocoder, the harmonization between the vocals. And again, paying homage to a sound that was curated by Blacks. So again, disco becomes the next one. We\'re still in the future, but we\'re paying homage to the root. And with \'Boomerang,\' there are all these messages saying that the love comes back. If you give love out, it\'ll come back tenfold. So it\'s the idea that within this space, each record pays homage to the things that came before.” **“Bussifame”** “The word itself comes from New Orleans. We talk fast so everything we do is bled together. So really, it generally was ‘bust it for me’—like ‘bust a move’—but in New Orleans that sounds like ‘Bussifame.’ I was paying respects to the accent. I wanted to try to take it to the next level, bring New Orleans to the future. We don\'t hear New Orleans in this kind of sound, and that was the fun part—to create something that doesn\'t exist yet.” **“Pressure”** “To me, ‘Pressure’ was taking a traditional pop record and completely de-structuring it—adding bits of Chicago footwork, adding bits of go-go, adding bits of drum and bass, like really playing with movement within the bass and the sound. The record constantly moves. By the end of it, it goes into hip-hop. I\'m just spitting at that point. Like the cockiness to say that, \'I\'m going to give you a record that has four different transitions, and you will never know what to expect.\'” **“Pilot (A Lude)”** “It\'s a bounce record. It\'s an ode to Freedia, Katey Red, and Messy Mya, and I got to show love to my city. If I\'m going to talk about dance, I got to show love to where I grew up in. And again, calling the record \'Pilot,\' saying that we are the flyers of this. We steer this. Call us the pilots, because we are the connoisseurs of this thing that we do.” **“Jacuzzi”** “I always love juxtapositions, like applying something as catchy and melodic to the raunchiest of records. I\'ve always felt like Black women have been severely disrespected within us owning our sexuality. And on every album, I\'ve always had one song that best speaks to that. I really wanted to connect the relationship of one\'s body when you think about the intertwining of android to human; what that physically looks like sexually to the body, and how machine can make sense to human skin.” **“FiveOhFour (A Lude)”** “504 is an area code in New Orleans. You fight very hard to have that 504. The 504 legitimizes you as you\'re legit New Orleans. I produced it myself, showing that I didn\'t need a collaborator for this. It is purposely gritty, it is purposely pitched low. You\'re starting to see the shift in where I\'m getting out of android and going into human. But more importantly, I\'m showing how culturally important New Orleans is as the narrator of this process.” **“Voodoo (Intermission)”** “This is all *Blade Runner* at this point, the soundtrack to a post-apocalyptic New Orleans. So King Creole comes out, and she’s telling everyone that she\'s on a mission to give you more. This is the human in her that wants that acceptance and love. She\'s having the vulnerability to say, \'All I want is your love. If you can just see me, I can give you all of this.\'” **“Mornin Streetlights”** “‘Mornin Streetlights’ starts with my mom speaking about how the only person she\'s ever loved is my father. They met when they were 15 and they\'ve been together ever since. I love music, and the reason why I\'ve been so tenacious at it is because I\'ve only known love like that. I\'ve only been taught to love the way my mom and dad have loved. That\'s what I grew up in, but it also makes sense as to the way I love my art. I love it with a tenacity that I can\'t give up.” **“Le Petit Morte (A Lude)”** “I wanted something that was honest. Even just start with the comment ‘This is the last time I\'m going to write a song about you.\' It\'s like going from talking about how I love this music to then saying, \'But I\'m tired of talking about my relationship with art and music.\' It is my purest and most honest moment and I\'m at my most vulnerable. And I freestyled that entire record. I did that as soon as I walked in. My dad played the piano on it and I just wailed. I didn\'t even know what was coming out.” **“Radio Free”** “You see the album now start to transition into hope, because I never sit in that dark place too long. So with ‘Le Petit Morte,’ it felt a little like death. It\'s acknowledging the death, whereas \'Radio Free\' is acknowledging the loss but understanding that you can play your freedom loud.” **“The Potter”** “‘The Potter’ is seeing the loss of worthiness but exposing it and saying, ‘Okay. But how do I see myself as worthy?’ It came to me when I was in church. What happens when you rust, rot, and you sit on the shelf? Will you be loved then? Who am I now? They let you go, and then how do you go on? How do you go on knowing you are this sculpted thing that once was so beautiful that is now worthless to those? And how do you find your worth within that place?” **“Perfect Storm”** “It’s literally being in a storm—having lost everything and being in Katrina and recognizing that we were homeless. It was beautiful the day before. It was hell the day it happened. And then, the next day, it was beautiful again, as if it didn\'t happen, and everything in its path was gone. My biggest theme and aim was to make the record as close to an actual storm as I possibly could—and that breath of fresh air that you feel when you realize that you\'ve lost everything and that you\'re still alive.” **“Voodoo (Outermission)”** “So now we\'re out of it, and now I\'m bringing you to what will be the next album in the trilogy. Because we\'re on album two after *new breed*. I\'m taking myself and removing it out of the art and the music industry, and now it is me as myself. And so I\'m trying to maneuver you guys out of that journey, and I\'m bringing you into what will be the next phase.” **“SELFish (Outro)”** “When people think of selfish, they think of it negatively, and I totally threw that out the window. I\'ve always loved to mess with interludes and make these hidden gems where people are like, \'Why wasn\'t this song longer?\' With this one, I thought it would be really cool to make an outro eight minutes. Black women, especially, we are punished for wanting more for ourselves. And I just want to encourage artists that it\'s okay to put yourself first in the process.”