Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of 2024

It’s no surprise that “PARTYGIRL” is the name Charli xcx adopted for the DJ nights she put on in support of *BRAT*. It’s kind of her brand anyway, but on her sixth studio album, the British pop star is reveling in the trashy, sugary glitz of the club. *BRAT* is a record that brings to life the pleasure of colorful, sticky dance floors and too-sweet alcopops lingering in the back of your mouth, fizzing with volatility, possibility, and strutting vanity (“I’ll always be the one,” she sneers deliciously on the A. G. Cook- and Cirkut-produced opening track “360”). Of course, Charli xcx—real name Charlotte Aitchison—has frequently taken pleasure in delivering both self-adoring bangers and poignant self-reflection. Take her 2022 pop-girl yet often personal concept album *CRASH*, which was preceded by the diaristic approach of her excellent lockdown album *how i’m feeling now*. But here, there’s something especially tantalizing in her directness over the intoxicating fumes of hedonism. Yes, she’s having a raucous time with her cool internet It-girl friends, but a night out also means the introspection that might come to you in the midst of a party, or the insurmountable dread of the morning after. On “So I,” for example, she misses her friend and fellow musician, the brilliant SOPHIE, and lyrically nods to the late artist’s 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry.” Charli xcx has always been shaped and inspired by SOPHIE, and you can hear the influence of her pioneering sounds in many of the vocals and textures throughout *BRAT*. Elsewhere, she’s trying to figure out if she’s connecting with a new female friend through love or jealousy on the sharp, almost Uffie-esque “Girl, so confusing,” on which Aitchison boldly skewers the inanity of “girl’s girl” feminism. She worries she’s embarrassed herself at a party on “I might say something stupid,” wishes she wasn’t so concerned about image and fame on “Rewind,” and even wonders quite candidly about whether she wants kids on the sweet sparseness of “I think about it all the time.” In short, this is big, swaggering party music, but always with an undercurrent of honesty and heart. For too long, Charli xcx has been framed as some kind of fringe underground artist, in spite of being signed to a major label and delivering a consistent run of albums and singles in the years leading up to this record. In her *BRAT* era, whether she’s exuberant and self-obsessed or sad and introspective, Charli xcx reminds us that she’s in her own lane, thriving. Or, as she puts it on “Von dutch,” “Cult classic, but I still pop.”

“Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?” Linda Martell cackles at the beginning of “SPAGHETTII.” Perhaps the name Linda Martell isn’t a household one, which only proves her point. She was the first Black woman to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, but her attempt to move from soul and R&B into the realm of country in the 1960s was met with racist resistance—everything from heckling to outright blackballing. Beyoncé knows the feeling, as she explained in an uncharacteristically vulnerable Instagram post revealing that her eighth studio album was inspired by a deep dive into the history of Black country music following an experience where she felt similarly unwelcome. *COWBOY CARTER* is a sprawling 80-minute tribute not only to those pioneering artists and their outlaw spirit, but to the very futility of reducing music to a single identifying word. Another key quote from that post: “This ain’t a country album. This is a Beyoncé album.” It’s more than a catchy slogan; anyone looking for mere honky-tonk cosplay is missing a much richer and more complex point. Listening in full to Act II of the presumed trilogy Bey began with 2022’s *RENAISSANCE*, it’s clear that the perennial overachiever hasn’t merely “gone country,” she’s interrogating what the word even means—and who merits the designation. On “AMERIICAN REQUIEM,” in a voice deep and earthy as Texas red dirt, the Houston native sings, “Used to say I spoke too country/And then the rejection came, said I wasn’t country enough.” She nods again, as she’s done before on songs like “Formation,” to her family ties to Alabama moonshiners and Louisiana Creoles. “If that ain’t country,” she wonders, “tell me what is.” With subtlety and swagger, she contextualizes country as an offshoot of the Black American musical canon, a storytelling mode springing from and evolving alongside gospel and blues. Over the wistful pedal steel and gospel organ of “16 CARRIAGES,” she tells you what it’s like to be a teenage workhorse who grows into an adult perfectionist obsessed with ideas of legacy, with a bit of family trauma buried among the riffs. On “YA YA,” Beyoncé expands the scope to rock ’n’ roll at its most red-blooded and fundamental, playing the parts of both Ike and Tina as she interpolates The Beach Boys and slips in a slick Playboi Carti reference, yowling: “My family lived and died in America/Good ol’ USA/Whole lotta red in that white and blue/History can’t be erased.” A Patsy Cline standard goes Jersey club mode on “SWEET ★ HONEY ★ BUCKIIN’,” with a verse from the similarly genre-flouting Shaboozey and a quick note regarding *RENAISSANCE*‘s Grammy fortunes: “AOTY I ain’t win/I ain’t stuntin’ ’bout them/Take that shit on the chin/Come back and fuck up the pen.” Who but Beyoncé could make a crash course in American music history feel like the party of the year? There’s the one-two punch of sorely needed summer slow-dance numbers: the Miley Cyrus duet “II MOST WANTED,” with its whispers of Fleetwood Mac, followed by “LEVII’S JEANS” with Post Malone, the “in those jeans” anthem filling the radio’s Ginuwine-shaped hole. *RENAISSANCE*’s euphorically nasty house bounce returns, albeit with more banjo, on “RIIVERDANCE,” where “II HANDS II HEAVEN” floats on clouds of ’90s electronica for an ode to alternately riding wild horses and 24-inch spinners on candy paint. (Houston, Texas, baby!) There are do-si-do ditties, murder ballads, daddy issues, whiskey kisses, hungover happy hours, cornbread and grits, Beatles covers, smoke breaks, and, on “DAUGHTER,” what may or may not be a wink in the direction of the artist who won AOTY instead. There’s also a Dolly-approved Beyoncification of “Jolene,” to whom the protagonist is neither saying please nor begging on the matter of taking her man. (“Your peace depends on how you move, Jolene,” Bey purrs, ice in her veins.) Is this a genre-bucking hoedown? A chess move? A reckoning? A requiem? If anyone can pull it off, it’s *COWBOY CARTER*, as country as it gets.

At just 25 years old, with four solo studio albums and three as guitarist for North Carolina band Wednesday under his belt, MJ Lenderman already seems like an all-timer. The vivid, arch songwriting, the swaying between reverence and irreverence for his forebears, steeped in modern culture while still sounding timeless—he evokes the easy comfort of a well-worn favorite and the butterflies of a new relationship with someone who is going to have a massive, rich, and argued-about discography for decades. The songs go down easy but are dark around the edges, with down-home strings and lap steel adorning tales of jerking off into showers and the existential loneliness of a smartwatch. But in a fun way. And just as 2021’s “Knockin” both referenced erstwhile golfer John Daly’s cover of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and lifted its chorus for good measure, “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” honors The Band’s classic while rendering it redundant. But album closer “Bark at the Moon” represents Lenderman’s blending of sad-sack character sketches and meta classic-rock references in its final form: “I’ve never seen the Mona Lisa/I’ve never really left my room/I’ve been up too late with Guitar Hero/Playing ‘Bark at the Moon.’” Then he punctuates the line with an “Awoo/Bark at the moon,” not to the tune of the Ozzy song, but to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London.” Packing that many jokes into half a verse is impressive enough—more so that the impact is even more heartbreaking than it is funny.

Some people kill their nemeses with kindness; Sabrina Carpenter, the breakout pop star of summer 2024, takes the opposite tack, shooting withering one-liners at loser exes via featherlight melodies, a wink and a smile. The former Disney Channel star began her music career at age 15 with her 2014 debut single “Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying.” Now 25, the singer-songwriter is making the catchiest, funniest, and most honest music of her career at a moment when all the world’s watching. But on songs like “Please Please Please,” on which she begs her boyfriend not to embarrass her (again), she’s poking fun at herself, too. “A lot of what I really love about this album is the accountability,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I will call myself out just as much as I will call out someone else.” It’s not because Carpenter’s “vertically challenged,” as she puts it, that she named her sixth album *Short n’ Sweet*. “I thought about some of these relationships, how some of them were the shortest I’ve ever had and they affected me the most,” she tells Lowe. “And I thought about the way that I respond to situations: Sometimes it is very nice, and sometimes it’s not very nice.” Hence songs like “Dumb & Poetic,” a gentle acoustic ballad that’s also a blistering takedown of a guy who masks his sleazy tendencies with therapy buzzwords and a highbrow record collection, or the twangy, hilarious “Slim Pickins,” on which she croons: “Jesus, what’s a girl to do?/This boy doesn’t even know the difference between there, their, and they are/Yet he’s naked in my room.” With good humor and good taste (channeling Rilo Kiley here, Kacey Musgraves there, and on “Sharpest Tool,” a bit of The Postal Service), Carpenter reframes heartbreak through the lens of life’s absurdity. “When you’re at this point in your life where you’re almost at your wits’ end, everything is funny,” Carpenter tells Lowe. “So much of this album was made in the moments where there was something that I just couldn’t stop laughing about. And I was like, well, that might as well just be a whole song.” Carpenter wrote a good deal of the album on an 11-day trip to a tiny town in rural France, where the isolation unlocked her brutally honest side, resulting in unprecedentedly vulnerable music and one song she readily admits shouldn’t work on paper but hits anyway: “Espresso,” the song that catapulted her career with four delightfully strange-sounding words: “That’s that me espresso.” “There really are no rules to the things you say,” she tells Lowe on the songwriting process. “You’re just like, what sounds awesome? What feels awesome? And what gets the story across, whatever story that is?” Still, she’s painted herself in a bit of a corner when it comes to placing an order at coffee shops worldwide: “They’re just waiting for me to say it,” she laughs. “And I’m like, ‘Tea.’”

Billie Eilish has always delighted in subverting expectations, but *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* still, somehow, lands like a meteor. “This is the most ‘me’ thing I’ve ever made,” she tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And purely me—not a character.” An especially wide-ranging and transportive project, even for her, it’s brimming with the guts and theatricality of an artist who has the world at her feet—and knows it. In a tight 45 minutes, Eilish does as she promises and hits listeners with a mix of scorching send-ups, trance excursions, and a stomping tribute to queer pleasure, alongside more soft-edged cuts like teary breakup ballads and jaunts into lounge-y jazz. But the project never feels zigzaggy thanks to, well, the Billie Eilish of it all: her glassy vocals, her knowing lyrics, her unique ability to make softness sound so huge. *HIT ME* is Eilish’s third album and, like the two previous ones, was recorded with her brother and longtime creative partner FINNEAS. In conceptualizing it, the award-winning songwriting duo were intent on creating the sort of album that makes listeners feel like they’ve been dropped into an alternate universe. As it happens, this universe has several of the same hallmarks as the one she famously drew up on her history-making debut, 2019’s *WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?*. In many ways, this project feels more like that album’s sequel than 2021’s jazzy *Happier Than Ever*, which Eilish has said was recorded during a confusing, depressive pandemic haze. In the three years since, she has tried to return to herself—to go outside, hang out with friends, and talk more openly about sex and identity, all things that make her feel authentic and, for lack of a better word, normal. “As much as *Happier Than Ever* was coming from this place of, like, \'We\'re so good. This sounds so good,\' it was also not knowing at all who I was,’” she tells Apple Music. FINNEAS agrees, calling it their “identity crisis album.” But *HIT ME HARD AND SOFT* is, she says, the reverse. “The whole time we were making it, we were like, \'I don\'t know if I\'m making anything good, this might be terrible…’ But now I\'m like, \'Yeah, but I\'m comfortable in who I am now.\' I feel like I know who I am now.” As a songwriter, Eilish is still in touch with her vulnerabilities, but at 22, with a garage full of Grammys and Oscars, they aren’t as heavy. These days it’s heartache, not her own insecurities, that keeps her up at night, and the songs are juicier for it. “LUNCH,” a racy, bass-heavy banger that can’t help but hog the spotlight, finds Eilish crushing so hard on a woman that she compares the hook-up to a meal. “I’ve said it all before, but I’ll say it again/I’m interested in more than just being your friend,” she sings. The lyrics are so much more than lewd flirtations. They’re also a way of stepping back into the spotlight—older, wiser, more fully herself. Read below as Eilish and FINNEAS share the inside story behind a few standout songs. **“LUNCH”** BILLIE: “One of the verses was written after a conversation I had with a friend and they were telling me about this complete animal magnetism they were feeling. And I was like, ‘Ooh, I\'m going to pretend to be them for a second and just write...and I’m gonna throw some jokes in there.’ We took ourselves a little too seriously on *Happier Than Ever*. When you start to embrace cringe, you\'re so much happier. You have so much more fun.” **“BIRDS OF A FEATHER”** BILLIE: “This song has that ending where I just keep going—it’s the highest I\'ve ever belted in my life. I was alone in the dark, thinking, ‘You know what? I\'m going to try something.’ And I literally just kept going higher and higher. This is a girl who could not belt until I was literally 18. I couldn\'t physically do it. So I\'m so proud of that. I remember coming home and being like, ‘Mom! Listen!’” **“WILDFLOWER”** BILLIE: “To me, \[the message here is\] I\'m not asking for reassurance. I am 100% confident that you love me. That\'s not the problem. The problem is this thing that I can\'t shake. It’s a girl code song. It\'s about breaking girl code, which is one of the most challenging places. And it isn’t about cheating. It isn’t about anything even bad. It was just something I couldn’t get out of my head. And in some ways, this song helped me understand what I was feeling, like, ‘Oh, maybe this is actually affecting me more than I thought.’ I love this song for so many reasons. It\'s so tortured and overthinky.” **“THE GREATEST”** BILLIE: “To us, this is the heart of the album. It completes the whole thing. Making it was sort of a turning point. Everything went pretty well after that. It kind of woke us back up.” FINNEAS: “When you realize you\'re willing to go somewhere that someone else isn\'t, it\'s so devastating. And everybody has been in some dynamic in their life or their relationship like that. When you realize that you\'d sacrifice and wear yourself out and compromise all these things, but the person you\'re in love with won’t make those sacrifices, or isn’t in that area? To me, that\'s what that song is about. It\'s like, you don\'t even want to know how lonely this is.” **“L’AMOUR DE MA VIE”** FINNEAS: “The album is all about Billie. It\'s not a narrative album about a fictional character. But we have always loved songs within songs within songs. Here, you\'ve just listened to Billie sound so heartbroken in ‘THE GREATEST,’ and then she sings this song that\'s like the antibody to that. It’s like, ‘You know what? Fuck you anyway.’ And then she goes to the club.” **“BLUE”** “The first quarter of ‘BLUE’ is a song Finneas and I made when I was 14 called ‘True Blue.’ We played it at little clubs before I had anything out, and never \[released it\] because we aged out of it. Years went by. Then, for a time, the second album was going to include one additional song called ‘Born Blue.’ It was totally different, and it didn’t make the cut. We never thought about it again. Then, in 2022, I was doing my laundry and found out ‘True Blue’ had been leaked. At first I was like ‘Oh god, they fucking stole my shit again,’ but then I couldn\'t stop listening. I went on YouTube and typed ‘Billie Eilish True Blue’ to find all the rips of it, because I didn\'t even have the original. Then it hit us, like, ‘Ooh, you know what\'d be cool? What if we took both of these old songs, resurrected them, and made them into one?’ The string motif is the melody from the bridge of ‘THE GREATEST,’ which is also in ‘SKINNY,’ which starts the album. So it also ends the album.”

“I\'ve always wanted to be a pop star, but beyond that, I wanted to be an African pop star,” Tyla tells Apple Music. “The roots of my sound are in amapiano music, in South African and African music.” Though the megaviral 2023 single “Water” may have put the South African singer-songwriter on the proverbial map—first as a social media sensation, then as the highest-charting African female soloist ever on Billboard’s Hot 100, earning her the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance—she’s been carefully plotting her path to the top for years. “Since I started experimenting with amapiano, I just feel like it\'s really helped me get to this point where I created something that is fresh and new, but still familiar and comes from home,” she says. “It\'s a sound of Africa, and it\'s something that I couldn\'t be more proud about.” She weaves through a blend of pop, R&B, amapiano, and Afrobeats (“pop-piano sounds cute,” she admits) across *TYLA*, a coming-of-age chronicle through love, heartbreak, and self-discovery. “I’m speaking about the things that I\'ve gone through while creating the album—basically three years in the making,” she explains. “I was becoming a woman. So it was a lot of growing that happened, and me realizing my worth, and realizing how I want to be treated—and how basically, I\'m that girl, and people need to know I\'m that girl.” While the project was brought to life with the help of global producers including Sammy Soso, Mocha, Believve, Rayo, and Sir Nolan, Tyla made sure they all had a taste of her homeland. “\[It was important\] to bring some to South Africa,” she explains, “so when we get in the studio, they have context. Some people that try amapiano sound so watered down, it\'s cringey. So even though I am mixing it with pop and R&B, I didn\'t want it to sound watered down. Music is our everything in Africa. The way we speak, the way we dance, literally, our dance moves—they come so naturally. It\'s just in us. It’s our essence.” Below, Tyla talks us through her debut album. **“Intro” (Tyla & Kelvin Momo)** “I wanted to start off my album with something that was truly South African, something that showed people the root of where I started, before ‘Water,’ before all of these mixtures. I secretly recorded a voice note when I was in a session with Kelvin Momo. I loved hearing the people in the session, speaking, hearing the language, the accents. It was so raw and real. Kelvin Momo is my favorite amapiano producer—his music and his sound is my heart.” **“Safer”** “The message of the song is something that I feel like a lot of people could relate to. And the energy of the song I feel like is a strong intro to open an album.” **“Water”** “‘Water’ surpassed all expectations. I could\'ve never expected all of these accolades—a Grammy, the Billboard Hot 100, people all over the world dancing and pouring water down their back. From the time I finished recording the song, it was all that I was listening to. It was also like a step away from what I was used to, because I \[had been\] *very* PG. And with this one, I was more grown up and I was experimenting more. And even though I don\'t enjoy vulgar music, I feel like we were able to make the song speak about what it speaks about, but in a way that\'s friendly.” **“Truth or Dare”** “This was the song where I was playing more house-y with it. It’s me calling out people, being like, ‘Hey, *now* you care.’ I\'m not that type of person, but these are feelings that I felt around the time where I\'m like, ‘Where did this person come from? Out of nowhere, you want to now talk to me?’ and I literally hate it. I\'m sure a lot of people have felt that.” **“No.1” (feat. Tems)** “Tems and I had been wanting to make a song for long now. We ended up making it work, and Tems\' voice alone is so amazing, so unique. The song is for everyone, but when I had it in mind, it was really for the girls—me and Tems, girl power, African girls—and we were just really pushing that message of ‘I\'m leaving. I don\'t need anybody. If this is not serving me anymore, I’m gone, and I\'m going to be okay.’ Always put yourself before anything.” **“Breathe Me”** “It\'s a song that\'s so emotional and so real. It\'s just about love, of how strong love is, and how you don\'t even need anything else. I don\'t need anything else. You don\'t need anything else—just me, and you; just breathe me and we\'ll be fine.” **“Butterflies”** “With ‘Butterflies,’ I was in a session with \[producer and songwriter Ari PenSmith\] and he was playing me some stuff that he\'s worked on, and I was like, \'Cool, cool, cool.\' And then he played this, and I fell in love with it. It sat so perfectly with my voice. I connected with the song instantly, and it was too specific to what I was going through to not do anything with it.” **“On and On”** “This was \[an initial\] version of my sound, before ‘Water’ and everything. I made this with Corey Marlon Lindsay-Keay in South Africa. We were supposed to go out, and we didn\'t end up going out, so I was dressed up in a whole outfit in the studio session, and he was producing. I love the song so much because it\'s so nostalgic but new. I love that it feels like old-school R&B. I love that it has hints of Aaliyah\'s influence, but it\'s new, and fresh, and African—all things that are Tyla. The messaging is not so serious—it’s literally about not wanting a party to end.” **“Jump” (Tyla, Gunna & Skillibeng)** “‘Jump’ is a very different vibe. I really just wanted to tell people who I am, and I had to show my confidence through the song. And the opening line, with Skilli being like, \'Original girl, you want a replica? No.\' There\'s no replica. That intro was already perfect, and it segues to that line of me saying, \'They\'ve never had a pretty girl from Joburg/They see me now and that\'s what they prefer.\' That line is just—it’s too iconic for me, and I\'m just so excited to hear all the girls sing it, all the Joburg girls sing it, all the girls from home. And having Gunna on it, I really feel like it took me into that world further, making it even more raw and cool.” **“ART”** “When I\'m with someone that treats me so good, treats me well, treats me like art, treats me like a princess, I will be there for them. I will be their art piece. We also played with that wording where it can be ‘art piece,’ but also your peace and your comfort. As a woman, that\'s how I want to be treated, and that\'s how I would treat you if you treat me that way. It’s about being treasured.” **“On My Body” (Tyla & Becky G)** “This was such a fun one because it’s in my world, but also I played a bit with the Latin vibes. The feature came so organically—I was in studio, and she was in a session next door. She loved it, and she recorded a verse, and I absolutely died. I died. I just love her touch, and how it just broadened the audience, because now it\'s just bringing everybody into this experience. It\'s a melting pot with all these genres, and I love that I was able to expand it even further.” **“Priorities”** “This song was probably the most difficult to share, because it\'s really letting people into my heart and mind, and how I feel I\'ve been with myself. I feel like people would resonate with it, and it speaks about what a lot of people feel and may not express. \[The idea of having spread yourself too thin\] is something that\'s so raw and real, that not even just women, men, everybody feels.” **“To Last”** “I love this song with all my heart. I was in the Vaal with LuuDadeejay, and I literally finished this song in five minutes. It was based off an experience that my friend was going through at the time. About a year prior, I wrote the lines ‘You never gave us a chance, it\'s like you never wanted to last.’ And that note just came to mind, and the song just flowed out of me. I ended up going through something that made me feel that way. It was like I told the future, which is not good—but I fell in love with the song again. It’s so South African: It’s amapiano, it\'s house-y, it\'s our sound.” **“Water (Remix)” (Tyla & Travis Scott)** “Travis reached out—he loved ‘Water,’ and around the time, I was like, \'I don\'t want a remix, I\'m cool.\' But Travis Scott was so unexpected that I wanted to do it so bad, and he absolutely killed it. He added some South African shout-outs in his verse, and I just knew that people from home were going to love it—he acknowledged us, and he mentioned \[the South African telephone country code\] +27 and all those things. And I also love that he brought a different energy to the song. Everyone knows ‘Water’ to be that summer banger, and now Travis made it still the summer banger, but also more gritty. Putting him on an African-sounding song was just the perfect collab.”

Ariana Grande is used to being in the spotlight, but over time, she’s gotten savvy at playing it. The pop star’s seventh studio album *eternal sunshine*—a lightly conceptual riff on the head-spinning 2004 film starring Jim Carrey, of whom Grande has said she’s a lifelong fan—feels like a mind game itself, blurring the lines between real-life references and theatrical bits. It arrives in the middle of a whirlwind tabloid-packed stretch—Grande married, divorced, and scored a starring role in Hollywood’s big-screen adaptation of *Wicked*—and she knows fans have questions. What’s true? What’s real? Ari gives a lot of things on this album, but answers aren’t one of them, a cunning reminder of how little transparency celebrities actually owe us. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Grande leans into the project’s thematic murkiness. “true story,” she says, is “an untrue story based on all untrue events,” and when asked about her own experience with the Saturn return, an astrology milestone referenced in the album’s only interlude, she shrugs. “It was chill. Nothing changed. Pretty uneventful.” She says she finds freedom in art because “you can really pull from anywhere,” and she describes the film as another “lovely costume” to wear. Her answers have flickers of defiance that feel like power. Whoever said albums had to be tidy, or true? “It doesn’t have to be an everlasting love story,” she tells Lowe. “Love is complicated. Showcasing both sides of it is what I tried to \[do\].” If there’s one thing these tracks make clear, it’s that she’s still Ari on the mic—she’s still hitting those high highs (“eternal sunshine”); still finding release on the dance floor (“yes, and?”); still sifting gold out of ’90s R&B (“the boy is mine”), a sequel to the leaked 2023 track “fantasize.” Her favorite? “imperfect for you,” a tribute to the friends who make up her inner circle. “We’re so lucky to have loved ones who are accepting and real with us no matter what,” she says. “We live in a time where everything is boiled down, but that song demands room for nuance, humanness, and complexity.”

On Doechii’s 2024 release, the Tampa-born rapper showcases the blend of clever rhymes with deep, philosophical musings that have punctuated early releases like 2020’s *Oh the Places You\'ll Go* mixtape and 2022’s *she / her / black bitch* EP. Lead cut “STANKA POOH” finds the Top Dawg Entertainment artist wrestling with her artistic mortality and role as a Black woman in music. She raps: “Let’s start the story backwards/I’m dead, she’s dead, just another Black Lives Mattered/And if I die today I die a bastard/TikTok rapper, part-time YouTube actor.” Obviously, Doechii aims to be bigger than viral clips and TV shows so small they can fit on your computer screen. On *Alligator Bites Never Heal*, Doechii asserts herself as one of rap’s most impressive bar-for-bar MCs. “DENIAL IS A RIVER” is a classic narrative cut in the style of Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story,” while “NISSAN ALTIMA” is an electro-rap thriller designed to keep the dance floor hot and heart rates up. She sums it up simply enough when she raps: “All beef gets smoked/I’m a real fly bitch, you in coach.”

When artists experience the kind of career-defining breakthrough that Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield enjoyed with 2020’s *Saint Cloud*, they’re typically faced with a difficult choice: lean further into the sound that landed you there, or risk disappointing your newfound audience by setting off into new territory. On *Tigers Blood*, the Kansas City-based singer-songwriter chooses the former, with a set of country-indebted indie rock that reaches the same, often dizzying heights as its predecessor. But that doesn’t mean its songs came from the same emotional source. “When I made *Saint Cloud*, I\'d just gotten sober and I was just this raw nerve—I was burgeoning with anxiety,” she tells Apple Music. “And on this record, it sounds so boring, but I really feel like I was searching for normal. I think I\'ve really settled into my thirties.” Working again with longtime producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Snail Mail, Hurray for the Riff Raff), Crutchfield enlisted the help of rising guitar hero MJ Lenderman, with whom she duets on the quietly romantic lead single (and future classic) “Right Back to It.” Originally written for Wynonna Judd—a recent collaborator—“365” finds Crutchfield falling into a song of forgiveness, her voice suspended in air, arching over the soft, heart-like thump of an acoustic guitar. Just as simple but no less moving: the Southern rock of “Ice Cold,” in which Crutchfield seeks equilibrium and Lenderman transcendence, via solo. In the absence of inner tumult, Crutchfield says she had to learn that the songs will still come. “I really do feel like I\'ve reached this point where I have a comfort knowing that they will show up,” she says. “When it\'s time, they\'ll show up and they\'ll show up fast. And if they\'re not showing up, then it\'s just not time yet.”

Perhaps the biggest compliment one could pay Rema is that he has always had clarity of vision regarding his artistry. Since dubbing himself “the future” right out of the gate in 2019, Rema (born Divine Ikubor) has operated with the assured air of a generational talent. His otherworldly melodies, energetic stage performances, and eerie imagery have inspired a new generation of emerging artists—and made him a beacon for Afropop’s global expansion. A lot has happened in the two years since he released his debut album, *Rave & Roses*—including standout single “Calm Down,” and its Selena Gomez-assisted remix, launching the singer to the top end of the charts across Europe and in the US. *HEIS*, the follow-up to *Rave & Roses*, arrives with hardly any warning and is packed with more of the freewheeling experimentation that Rema has built his reputation on. The album—11 songs in under 30 minutes—sees Rema step into a new era as he reckons with the thrills of global stardom and the pressures of being at the forefront of Afropop. He’s keen to be respected for his contributions to the culture, defiantly placing himself at the top of Afropop’s taxonomy on the punk-adjacent “HEHEHE.” Over a riotous instrumental on the title track, he makes a case for cross-continental pollination by infusing Swahili into the song proclaiming his musical greatness. Both of Nigeria’s 2023 breakout stars join Rema’s metaverse here: Fellow Benin native Shallipopi dials in for a love letter to their hometown on “BENIN BOYS,” while Abuja rapper ODUMODUBLVCK delivers a thumping verse on “WAR MACHINE.” Still, the narrative of *HEIS* is solely Rema’s as he declares that he’s primed for more success on “MARCH AM” and reels off his accomplishments on the P.Priime-produced “YAYO.” It all feels like the work of a candid creator reminding his listeners that he’s still operating at the cutting edge of Afropop and laying the building blocks for the genre’s future.

In the 313 days after Zach Bryan released his self-titled fourth album, he scored his first No. 1 single alongside Kacey Musgraves and headlined no fewer than 58 arenas, stadiums, and festivals, further cementing his legend as a self-made megastar whose ascendance looks, at least from the outside, like it’s skipped all the hard parts. And then, on the 314th day, he released *The Great American Bar Scene*, a 19-track follow-up that dispenses with any questions about his ability to remain almost laughably prolific as he’s learning how to adjust to it all in real time. Like its immediate predecessor, *The Great American Bar Scene* opens with a spoken-word soliloquy about good fortune and good morals that burnishes the Oklahoman’s earnest, everybro cred, serving as a mission statement of sorts for the 18 songs that follow—and, really, for Bryan’s whole deal. At only 28, he is a master of nostalgia, bathing the libertine spirit of past generations and 2021 in the same sepia light. Bryan’s grappling with his recent past isn’t just subtext; it’s in the songs. In “Northern Thunder,” a wistful slow-burn ballad characteristic of the album’s overall vibe, he’s still processing a mix of homesickness and shock: “And please don’t ask me how these last years went/Mama, I made a million dollars on accident/I was supposed to die a military man/Chest out too far with a drink in my hand/But I’ve got folks who like hearing me rhyme/I think of thunder under metal roofs all the time.” “Like Ida” reaffirms his aversion to the Music City machine, even if the feeling isn’t mutual: “When you make it to Nashville you can tell from one hat tilt/That shit just ain’t my scene/I like out-of-tune guitars and taking jokes too far/And my bartenders extra damn mean.” *This* is Bryan’s great American bar scene: less shout-along rave-ups exhorting you to go out and get drunk than evocative meditations on your inalienable right, and frequent need, to go out and get drunk. The title track is a barroom serenade that name-checks Springsteen’s spare, pitch-black *Nebraska* track “State Trooper”; “Sandpaper” pays off the reference with an appearance by Springsteen himself that plays like a heartland-rock *Looper*—a weathered elder meeting a younger version of himself who already has seen so much. (It also sounds more than a little like “I’m On Fire.”) And for all of Bryan’s humility, he’s self-aware enough to lean into the romance of his origin story and underdog status, numbers be damned—he is nothing if not an elite storyteller.

In a short time, Claire Cottrill has become one of pop music’s most fascinating chameleons. Even as her songwriting and soft vocals often possess her singular touch, the prodigious 25-year-old has exhibited a specific creative restlessness in her sonic approach. After pivoting from the lo-fi bedroom pop of her early singles to the sounds of lush, rustic 2000s indie rock on 2019’s star-making *Immunity* and making a hard pivot towards monastic folk on 2021’s *Sling*, the baroque, ’70s soul-inflected chamber-pop that makes up her third album, *Charm*, feels like yet another revelation in an increasingly essential catalog. *Charm* is Cottrill’s third consecutive turn in the studio with a producer of distinctive aesthetic; while *Immunity*’s flashes of color were provided by Rostam Batmanglij and Jack Antonoff worked the boards on *Sling*, these 11 songs possess the undeniable warmth of studio impresario and Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings founding member Leon Michels. Along with several Daptone compatriots and NYC jazz auteur Marco Benevento, Michels provides the perfect support to Cotrill’s wistful, gorgeously tumbling songcraft; woodwinds flutter across the squishy synth pads of “Slow Dance,” while “Echo” possesses an electro-acoustic hum not unlike legendary UK duo Broadcast and the simmering soul of “Juna” spirals out into miniature psychedelic curlicues. At the center of it all is Cottrill’s unbelievably intimate vocal touch, which perfectly captures and complements *Charm*’s lyrical theme of wanting desire while staring uncertainty straight in the eye.

Álvaro Díaz’s artistic evolution has been nothing short of remarkable. The Puerto Rican rapper heard on 2020’s hip-hop-centered *Diaz Antes* sounded little like the 2.0 version on his innovative and inventive 2021 follow-up *Felicilandia*. His now-established penchant for pop-wise productions and futuristic forms carries on with *SAYONARA*, an album that finds him on the cutting edge of reggaetón, among other styles. At a time when the pervasive dembow thump in Latin music can feel a bit too formulaic, he brings a freshness to the format on cuts like “KAWA” and the Quevedo team-up “QUIZÁS SI QUIZÁS NO.” He has obvious reverence for his pioneering predecessors, evident on the homage-heavy Feid collab “GATITAS SANDUNGUERAS VOL.1,” but he’s not beholden to genre norms: The beat switches on “EN PR NO HACE FRÍO” and “SIN PODERES” feel surprisingly natural, a testament to his ability to navigate shifting sonic environs. Further departures such as “QUIÉN TE QUIERE COMO EL NENE” and the balladic “YOKO” only add to his growing mystique.

As someone who invited fame and courted infamy, first with inflammatory albums like *Wolf* and later with his flamboyant fashion sense via GOLF WANG, Tyler Okonma is less knowable than most stars in the music world. While most celebrities of his caliber and notoriety either curate their public lives to near-plasticized extremes or become defined by tabloid exploits, the erstwhile Odd Futurian chiefly shares what he cares to via his art and the occasional yet ever-quotable interview. As his Tyler, The Creator albums pivoted away from persona-building and toward personal narrative, as on the acclaimed *IGOR* and *CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST*, his mystique grew grandiose, with the undesirable side effect of greater speculation. The impact of fan fixation plays no small part on *CHROMAKOPIA*, his seventh studio album and first in more than three years. Reacting to the weirdness, opening track “St. Chroma” finds Tyler literally whispering the details of his upbringing, while lead single “Noid” more directly rages against outsiders who overstep both online and offline. As on his prior efforts, character work plays its part, particularly on “I Killed You” and the two-hander “Hey Jane.” Yet the veil between truth and fiction feels thinner than ever on family-oriented cuts like “Like Him” and “Tomorrow.” Lest things get too damn serious, Tyler provocatively leans into sexual proclivities on “Judge Judy” and “Rah Tah Tah,” both of which should satisfy those who’ve been around since the *Goblin* days. When monologue no longer suits, he calls upon others in the greater hip-hop pantheon. GloRilla, Lil Wayne, and Sexyy Red all bring their star power to “Sticky,” a bombastic number that evolves into a Young Buck interpolation. A kindred spirit, it seems, Doechii does the most on “Balloon,” amplifying Tyler’s energy with her boisterous and profane bars. Its title essentially distillable to “an abundance of color,” *CHROMAKOPIA* showcases several variants of Tyler’s artistry. Generally disinclined to cede the producer’s chair to anyone else, he and longtime studio cohort Vic Wainstein execute a musical vision that encompasses sounds as wide-ranging as jazz fusion and Zamrock. His influences worn on stylishly cuffed sleeves, Neptunes echoes ring loudly on the introspective “Darling, I” while retro R&B vibes swaddle the soapbox on “Take Your Mask Off.”

Where the ’60s-ish folk singer Jessica Pratt’s first few albums had the insular feel of music transmitted from deep within someone’s psyche, *Here in the Pitch* is open and ready—cautiously, gently—to be heard. The sounds aren’t any bigger, nor are they jockeying any harder for your attention. (There is no jockeying here, this is a jockey-free space.) But they do take up a little more room, or at least seem more comfortable in their quiet grandeur—whether it’s the lonesome western-movie percussion of “Life Is” or the way the featherlight *sha-la-la*s of “Better Hate” drift like a dazzled girl out for a walk among the bright city lights. This isn’t private-press psychedelia anymore, it’s *Pet Sounds* by The Beach Boys and the rainy-day ballads of Burt Bacharach—music whose restraint and sophistication concealed a sense of yearning rock ’n’ roll couldn’t quite express (“World on a String”). And should you worry that her head is in the clouds, she levels nine blows in a tidy, professional 27 minutes. They don’t make them like they used to—except that she does.

As important as it is to foreground the Tuareg/Nigerien heritage of Mdou Moctar’s scorching psychedelic rock, it’s just as important to note its connection to the American underground. After all, *Funeral for Justice* isn’t “folk music” in any touristic or anthropological sense, and it’s probably as (if not more) likely to appeal to fans of strictly American weirdos like Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees as anything out of West Africa. Still, anyone unfamiliar with the stutter-step rhythm of Tuareg music should visit “Imajighen” and the lullaby-like hush of “Modern Slaves” immediately, and it pleases the heart to imagine a borderless future in which moody teenage guitarists might study stuff like “Sousoume Tamacheq” the way Moctar himself studied Eddie Van Halen. As with 2021’s breakthrough *Afrique Victime*, the intensity is astonishing, the sustain hypnotic, and the combination of the two an experience most listeners probably haven’t had before.

The White Stripes were nothing if not a formal exercise in exploring the possibilities of self-imposed limitation—in instrumentation, in color scheme, in verifiable biographical information. Since the duo’s dissolution in 2011, Jack White has continued playing with form (and color schemes), from the just-one-of-the-boys-in-the-band vibes of The Raconteurs to 2022’s sonically experimental *Fear of the Dawn* and its more restrained companion *Entering Heaven Alive*. Despite—or perhaps *to* spite—those who longed for a simpler, noisier, more monochromatic time, White tinkered away. The rollout for *No Name*, White’s sixth solo album, was characteristically mischievous: It first appeared as a white-label LP given away at Third Man Records before being posted online without song titles, sparking an excitement that felt fresh, largely because the sound did not. Meg White is not walking through that door anytime soon, but the 13 tracks here channel the unadorned, wild-eyed ferocity of the band that made him famous more efficiently and consistently than anything he’s done since. There’s plenty of swagger from top to bottom, but most of all there’s *hooks*: big, fat, noisy guitars played in the catchiest combinations possible. “That’s How I’m Feeling” may not relieve “Seven Nation Army” of its ubiquity anytime soon, but it is a ready-made capital-A anthem with a euphoric jump-scare chorus that sticks on first listen and doesn’t get unstuck. “Bless Yourself,” “Tonight (Was a Long Time Ago),” and “Number One With a Bullet” are just as infectious, while “Bombing Out” may be the fastest, heaviest thing White has ever put out in any of his many guises. The casualness of it all is a flex—as meticulous and exacting as White can be, *No Name*’s modest arrival is a reminder of how easily he could have kept churning out earworm White Stripes songs. Good for him that he didn’t want to; good for us that he does now.

If there were any remaining doubts as to hip-hop’s MVP, consider the decision stamped: Kendrick Lamar officially won 2024. There were whispers that Compton’s finest was working on an album in the wake of his feud with Drake, a once-in-a-generation beef that kept jaws dropped for months. (Perhaps you’ve heard of a little song called “Not Like Us,” an immediate entry into the canon of all-time great diss tracks.) After a sold-out celebration at the Kia Forum, an armful of Grammy nods and streaming records, and the headlining slot at next year’s Super Bowl, Lamar ties up his biggest year yet with a bow with his sixth album, *GNX*, the most legitimately surprising surprise drop since *BEYONCÉ* in 2013. Named for his beloved classic Buick, *GNX* finds Kendrick wielding a hatchet he’s by no means ready to bury, still channeling this summer’s cranked-to-11 energy. On “wacced out murals,” he’s riding around listening to Anita Baker, plotting on several downfalls: “It used to be fuck that n\*\*\*a, but now it’s plural/Fuck everybody, that’s on my body.” (Yes, there’s a nod to his Super Bowl drama with Lil Wayne.) If you’ve been holding your breath for Jack Antonoff to link with Mustard, wait no more—the seemingly odd couple share production credits on multiple tracks, the explosive “tv off” among them. Still, K.Dot keeps you guessing: It’s not quite 12 tracks of straight venom over world-conquering West Coast beats. SZA helps cool things down on the Luther Vandross-sampling “luther,” while Lamar snatches back a borrowed title on “heart pt. 6” to remember the early days of TDE: “Grinding with my brothers, it was us against them, no one above us/Bless our hearts.” He cycles through past lives over a flip of 2Pac’s “Made N\*\*\*\*z” on “reincarnated” before getting real with his father about war, peace, addiction, and ego death, and on “man at the garden,” he outlines his qualifications for the position of GOAT. Here’s another bullet point to add to that CV: On *GNX*, Lamar still surprises while giving the people exactly what they want.

In the 18 months after Taylor Swift released *Midnights*, it often felt as though the universe had fully opened up to her. The Eras Tour was breaking records and blowing past the billion-dollar mark; its attendant concert film became the highest-grossing of all time. She generated interest and commerce and headlines everywhere she stepped foot, from tour stops to the tunnels of NFL stadiums. In 2023, she was named both *TIME* magazine’s Person of the Year and—just as iconic, tbh—Apple Music’s Artist of the Year. But do songs about that level of success speak to you? As the news broke that her highly private six-year relationship to Joe Alwyn had ended, Swifties started Swiftie-ing, quickly recirculating a clip on social media of Swift a few weeks earlier, onstage during an early Eras show, in tears as she sang “champagne problems”—a song she and Alwyn had written together. It was a reminder that, despite the superhero-like aura she now radiates, Swift, at her peak, still hurts like the rest of us. What sets her apart is her ability to sublimate that pain into pop. When she announced her 11th studio album in early 2024—while accepting another Grammy, as one does—we probably shouldn’t have been surprised. “I needed to make it,” she’d say of *THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT* a few weeks later, to a crowd of—\[rubs eyes\]—96,000 in Melbourne, Australia. “I’ve never had an album where I’ve needed songwriting more than I needed it on *TORTURED POETS*.” Working again with trusted collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, she returns to the soft, comfortable, bed-like sonics of *Midnights*. But the stakes feel noticeably higher here: This isn’t so much a breakup album as it is a deep-sea exploration of everything Swift has been feeling, a plunge through emotional debris. On “But Daddy I Love Him”—over strings and guitar that faintly recall her country roots—she lashes out at the crush of scrutiny and expectation she’s been subject to from the start. Naturally, catharsis comes after the chorus: “I’ll tell you something right now,” she sings. “I’d rather burn my whole life down than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning.” On “Florida!!!” she and Florence + the Machine team up for a pulpy escape fantasy wherein they Thelma and Louise their way down to the Sunshine State in hopes of starting over with new lives and identities: “Love left me like this,” they sing. “And I don’t want to exist.” At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, *TTPD* is a study in extremes, Swift leaning into heightened emotions with heightened, hyperbolic, ALL-CAPS language and imagery—how we think when we’re drunk on love or flattened by its sudden disappearance. Note the dark humor she weaves through the Post Malone-enriched opener “Fortnight” (“Your wife waters flowers/I wanna kill her”). Or the thrilling self-deprecation of “Down Bad,” a foray into science fiction wherein Swift likens the warmth of a relationship to being abducted by love-bombing extraterrestrials—only to be left “naked and alone, in a field in my same old town.” But this remains her most candid and unsparing work to date: As a listener, you frequently get the feeling that you’ve stumbled across emails she’d written but never sent, or into conversations you were never meant to hear. There’s a density and a specificity and a ferocity to her lyrical work here that makes 2012’s “All Too Well” feel sorta light by comparison. If you’re the kind of Swiftie who likes to live in the details, well, this one might be your Super Bowl. “You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues?” she asks on the devastating “So Long, London,” a high point. “I died on the altar waiting for the proof.” Alone at a piano on the haunting “loml,” she flips the script on someone who’d told her she was the love of their life, by telling them that they were the loss of hers: “I’ll still see it until I die.” The story, as you likely know, doesn’t end there. We get a glimpse of new beginnings in “The Alchemy” (“This happens once every few lifetimes/These chemicals hit me like white wine”) and something like triumph in the montage-ready synths of “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” when Swift, shattered on the floor, “as the crowd was chanting, ‘More!’,” still finds the strength to deliver: “’Cause I’m a real tough kid and I can handle my shit.” But we also get a sense of acceptance, of newfound perspective. On “Clara Bow”—named after a 1920s movie star who was able to survive the jump from silent film to sound—Swift reflects on the journey of a small-town girl made good, sung from the vantage of an industry obsessed with the next big thing. She zooms out and out and out until, in the album’s closing seconds, she’s singing about herself in the third person, in past tense, acknowledging that nothing is forever. “You look like Taylor Swift in this light, we’re loving it,” she sings. “You’ve got edge she never did/The future’s bright, dazzling.”

The scrappy Memphis rapper has been on a two-year victory lap since her 2022 breakthrough hit “F.N.F. (Let’s Go)” established her as one of rap’s most promising new voices. Since then, GloRilla’s dropped an EP (2022’s *Anyways, Life’s Great...*) and her first studio mixtape (2024’s *Ehhthang Ehhthang*), scored a Grammy nomination, and sold out arenas alongside Megan Thee Stallion for the Hot Girl Summer Tour. The glow-up is real on *GLORIOUS*, her official debut album, but let it be known that the reigning queen of crunk is still hanging out the window with her ratchet-ass friends when the opportunity arises. “It’s 7 pm Friday/It’s 95 degrees/I ain’t got no n\*\*\*a and no n\*\*\*a ain’t got me,” she declares in the opening bars of “TGIF,” a worthy “F.N.F.” follow-up made for blasting at max volume. There’s plenty of the rowdy girl-power anthems fans have come to expect from Big Glo, among them the bad-bitch motivational “PROCEDURE” with Latto and “WHATCHU KNO ABOUT ME,” a Sexyy Red collab that riffs on the Trill Entertainment classic “Wipe Me Down.” Less expected is “RAIN DOWN ON ME,” a gospel number with a blessing from Kirk Franklin, though it’s really only fitting for a rapper born Gloria Hallelujah Woods.

“Pain makes you more humane,” Shakira tells Apple Music. “Being able to take that pain and transform it into something else, that is an opportunity and a luxury that us artists have.” Assuredly, the Latin-pop superstar’s romantic and professional woes in recent years have been significant, often converted into cruel tabloid fodder that, no doubt, amplified the issues and surrounding emotions. Yet with *Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran*, her first new album in nearly seven years, she transforms the numbingly dull lead of personal hardship into a glorious musical gold. “In a way, it’s kind of good not to have a husband,” Shakira says of the impact her breakup had on her creativity. “Now I feel like working. It’s a compulsive need of mine that I didn’t feel before.” Even before the album emerged, that compulsion came through clearly and eventfully with the release of singles like the award-winning “Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” showing the world that she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind during trying times. “No one should tell any woman how she’s supposed to heal and lick her wounds.” *Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran* exemplifies that sentiment. As expected, given her prior hits, she retains a mastery of the dance floor with the benefit of autobiographical lyricism. Here, she provides such expertly executed versions as the Bizarrap-assisted “La Fuerte” and the emotionally potent “Tiempo Sin Verte.” One of many successors to Shakira’s bilingual pop lineage, Cardi B joins for the opener “Puntería,” a sweat-inducing track dripping with erotically charged metaphors. More than willing to branch out beyond what her legacy already holds, she also demonstrates just how integral she’s become to the modern reggaetón landscape, lending her cosign to Manuel Turizo on “Copa Vacía” and finding a kindred spirit in KAROL G on “TQG.” Far more surprising are her successful forays into other genres represented throughout the album, namely the música mexicana team-ups “(Entre Paréntesis)” with Grupo Frontera and “El Jefe” with Fuerza Regida, as well as the brisk bachata cut “Monotonía” with Ozuna. Still, Shakira hasn’t forgotten her long-standing rock listenership, bringing energy and grace to the cathartic “Cómo Dónde y Cuándo.” Similarly, her balladry remains exemplary, the revelatory messages of “Acróstico (Milan y Sasha)” and “Última” obviously driven by her experiences and in response to these challenges. Ultimately, against all odds, she emerges from this album with a sense of hope and optimism. “Love is the most amazing experience a human can live, and no one should take away that opinion from you,” she says. “It doesn’t matter the shitty experiences you go through in life; there’s always a lot more to look forward to.”

Woodland Studios is the cultural anchor of East Nashville’s Five Points, a bustling district of restaurants, bars, and vintage shops that some consider the heart of the greater artistic enclave found east of downtown Music City. Woodland is the home studio of musical and life partners David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, as well as the headquarters for the duo’s Acony Records. Nearly destroyed by the deadly March 2020 tornadoes that devastated much of Nashville (the pair actually rushed out mid-storm to rescue master recordings), Woodland is still standing, though only after substantial repairs. That close call inspired Welch and Rawlings to celebrate their musical home with this album, which also notably bears both artists’ names. (The pair has a tendency to alternate album billing for their always-collaborative projects, like Rawlings’ credit for 2017’s *Poor David’s Almanack* and Welch’s for 2011’s celebrated *The Harrow & The Harvest*.) Accordingly, *Woodland* is as crackling and alive an album as the pair has made, leaning into the warmth of its homey origins and the ease of the duo’s fruitful and supportive creative partnership. Production is lusher and more complex, though never distractingly so—as always, the pair’s ultimate reverence is for songcraft, as heard on the evocatively titled opening track “Empty Trainload of Sky,” which could hint at the awestruck horror wrought by a tornado, or “The Day the Mississippi Died,” a clever bit of social commentary that also breaks the fourth wall (“I’m thinking that this melody has lasted long enough/The subject’s entertaining but the rhymes are pretty rough”). Other highlights include “Hashtag,” which avoids hollow social media commentary in favor of acknowledging the plight of artists whose names only become media fodder in death, and closer “Howdy Howdy,” a sweet encapsulation of the pair’s unbreakable connection.

On Mustafa’s 2024 debut album, the Sudanese Canadian songwriter moves from topic to topic with the deft narrative craft of a seasoned wordsmith. “Dunya,” which translates from Arabic to “the world in all its flaws,” perfectly encapsulates Mustafa’s approach to songwriting: It\'s raw and unfiltered but totally in awe of the planet on which we find ourselves. On opener “Name of God,” Mustafa surrounds himself with little outside of an acoustic guitar melody, letting his powerful voice carry the song’s emotional heft. He blends the personal and universal on the song, asking, “Whose Lord are you naming/When you start to break things?” Elsewhere, on the percussive “Old Life,” he looks back with mixed feelings on a relationship long in the rearview. He croons, “I\'m not yours/But there\'s a part of your life that is mine.” All we are, Mustafa asserts, is the experiences we have.

When Griff was writing her debut album, she went alone to a variety of homes and Airbnbs to get it done. That’s how the UK singer, songwriter, and producer (real name Sarah Griffiths) found herself in Imogen Heap’s old home, now a residential studio, piecing together song ideas. The house was round, and in the middle was a staircase. During a FaceTime call with friend and collaborator Congee, they both noted how the stairs might give you vertigo. But the album’s title has a more layered meaning, too. “It’s this idea of vertigo in an emotional sense,” Griff tells Apple Music. “All of these songs are written from a place of autobiographical, emotional vertigo. The physical condition of vertigo is the idea of dizziness and a loss of balance and the world spinning and not really being able to grapple and find your feet in all of that.” *Vertigo* arrives three years after Griff won the prestigious Rising Star award at the 2021 BRITs, having started as a teenager teaching herself production via YouTube. A lot has changed since then, but much of this record’s DNA is still in that DIY place. “The genesis of almost all these ideas has been me by myself making beats and lyrics,” she says. (She also worked closely with her core team of Congee, Lost Boy, and Siba, who she says are “like brothers” to her.) The result is a debut record about losing parts of yourself to time and hurt, and wondering if you’ll ever get them back—and a collection offering a vast array of feelings and energy. Here, her big, unfaltering voice is met with synth, piano, and guitar, all drenched in both euphoria and melancholy. “I love how in pop you can have such a spectrum of feeling,” says Griff. “That’s really the goal for me with this album—that people are moved, whether it’s that they want to dance and scream it out and it’s super cathartic, or they hear all the notes of loneliness and sadness in there. I wanted to explore the most extreme emotions.” Here, Griff dives into her debut, one track at a time. **“Vertigo”** “The song’s really simple at its core. Congee and I wrote it all over one note, so it doesn’t really change. It was only later that we started putting in chords and the bridge to make it feel like it’s building. We created that climax journey where all the synths are getting more and more layered, and that was very much to create that vertigo feeling. I really love the production, and I love that the drums and the rhythm are very hip-hop-inspired, even though it’s such a pop tune. Even the BPM of it, I think we were very much inspired by old James Blake beats and *808s & Heartbreak* and that world. It’s fun to disguise those kinds of rhythms and grooves in a pop melody.” **“Miss Me Too”** “I wanted to write a song about the idea of missing an older version of yourself for a while. There was a version of yourself that used to exist that wasn’t so heartbroken, it wasn’t so cynical about love and people, and it had this trust in the world that you feel like you’ve lost. I wrote this with Lost Boy and Siba—Lost Boy came in with the more pop, almost dance-y piano chords. And it just felt right that it would be super euphoric. I like the sense that it’s not really a love song; it’s more a conversation with yourself and about trying to get yourself back.” **“Into the Walls”** “This is one of the first songs I wrote on this album. Again, I love that it’s not really a love song. It’s basically about being at such a low, numb point in yourself that you look at the walls around you and you’re almost jealous of their existence because at least they’re strong and they can hold something up and can watch the world go by. And that’s almost more than you can say for yourself. It’s a bit of a stream of consciousness. It’s all pretty true to the first time I improvised it. ‘Today, I really, really don’t think I can do this’ is the essence of the song. And it’s that fantasy, it might be nice to disappear and to not be in my body for a second. It’s quite an innocent metaphor, but also very heart-wrenching.” **“19th Hour”** “This is probably the one I mainly produced for myself. It’s about how hurtful the words ‘I love you’ can be when it’s not said because someone means it, but almost as a last resort, or just as a way to cover up all of the issues. And it’s about being almost too optimistic. I feel like in a lot of our lives, we can be pessimists with everything, but actually when it comes to that one person, for some reason you’re an optimist, hoping they’ll change, hoping they’ll stick around, hoping it’ll turn a corner. It’s sitting in that place of knowing maybe things aren’t right but wanting them to be. The production really sums up the album to me, because it starts off in a super melancholic way, but it builds into such euphoric big drums and those big stabs.” **“Astronaut”** “I was alone in a house, sitting at the piano. I started with the chorus lyric: ‘You said that you needed space/Go on then, astronaut.’ It’s got this tongue-in-cheek style. That line kind of came out of nowhere, and then made sense to what I was trying to write. It’s almost dealing with rejection by going like, ‘Go on then. But it really hurts. But go on then.’ Everyone’s got this weird mindset with dating where there’s a million fish in the sea, and everyone’s constantly thinking the grass is greener, and there’s more out there. I wrote it originally on piano, and then for some reason shied away from that and produced it up into something that was a lot more synthy and almost spacey. I’m so glad that with Chris \[Martin\], we ended up stepping it back and putting it on piano again, because I think the lyric deserves that. It was surreal having Chris on it \[Martin plays piano on the track\]. And very special.” **“Anything”** “It’s almost a song of trying to figure out, ‘Do you realize the hold you have on me? And if you do, that makes this even more dark, and I’m letting you know I would’ve done anything you wanted.’ That’s why that lyric is screamed. It’s like you’re almost trying to get through to this person. It’s from a young female perspective. Often you get into relationships where there is a power imbalance, especially if it’s a first real love or a first real feeling of attachment to someone. Again, the production’s super upbeat and super cathartic and epic, and I love how dramatic the lyrics are in the chorus. The bridge is more in hindsight: It’s that feeling of how, at the end of something, often it’s your confidence that’s been completely ripped from you.” **“Pillow in My Arms”** “It’s the most reminiscent of some of my earlier stuff, because this one really was just me on production. It’s about loneliness and the idea that at the end of everything, once you’ve lost everything or everyone, maybe your pillow is your only companion. It almost reminds me of Miss Havisham in *Great Expectations*, where she’s still in her wedding dress. You’re going through this denial and insanity, talking to this pillow as if it’s a human. And the production has that groove, and it’s really simple. It’s that one riff at the beginning that grows and grows throughout the song.” **“Cycles”** “I went on a writing camp with Congee, and we were put in a room with these amazing songwriters, Vera \[Carlbom\] and Minna \[Koivisto\]. Minna’s DNA is more in the dance world, so the original track was a lot more dance-y. By that point, I was aware the album was about vertigo and spinning, so it felt really natural to write these lyrics. It’s about how there’s not a linear chronology to heartbreak—you think you’re done, then you’re not, and it’s an endless cycle, and you’re exhausted, but at this point you’re just dancing in it. I got back to London and asked if Mura Masa would be down to reproduce it. We’ve worked together a little bit before. I’m a really big fan of his sound. He was an influence when I started out producing myself. So, it was a dream come true, and you can really hear his sonic stamp on it.” **“Tears for Fun”** “One of the really euphoric ones. I wanted to sing it with a big audience. I guess the concept is a question between yourself or God or something where you’re like, ‘Will I always be collecting tears for fun?’ It feels like, at this point, that’s what I’m doing. The chorus makes me feel really moved and like I want to yell it. I definitely think there is a second layer when you are a writer or a creative where you’re like, ‘Am I getting myself into these situations for the story of it?’ It’s all of those questions. I was listening to a lot of ’80s music, like Yazoo’s ‘Only You.’ I wanted to inject a bit of that into this song.” **“Hiding Alone”** “The song’s about that one person almost being your force field to the world. That one relationship or friendship that, when you’re with them, it’s almost like the rest of the world can disappear for a second, and that safety has been your bedrock. And as soon as that disappears, you’re like, ‘Whoa, who am I? What am I?’ I like it because it’s one of the only guitar songs in the album, but it just felt right.” **“Hole in My Pocket”** “In this album, there are a lot of metaphors and visual analogies about the idea of loneliness. On this, it’s feeling like you’ve got a hole in your pocket because you can’t explain why you’re in this place, losing things. There are romantic undertones to all of the songs, but a lot of them aren’t particularly romantic for me. At this stage in life, a lot of relationships are shifting, and with the nature of my life—going from COVID to touring to moving out of home, living by myself—so much about the relationships in my life is shifting. You’re entering adulthood and reflecting on what relationships matter and what relationships weren’t right.” **“Everlasting”** “I want to believe in the everlasting in that I want to believe that love can last and be good. But often, everyone carries a little bit of generational baggage into their relationships. And I especially think that’s real when you come from different ethnic backgrounds but grow up in the UK; you have a different idea of what relationships look like. I’ve always really been aware of my upbringing not being the tidy, neat picture of what often we see. I was always so aware because, culturally, I’ve got a Jamaican dad and Chinese mom. My whole upbringing was hectic in so many layers, in so many different ways. You’re confronted with it at different stages in your life. And in school, you’re confronted with it on maybe a beauty-standard level. But as you grow older, it dribbles into your relationships and everything. It’s a complex thing that will keep unraveling.” **“So Fast”** “With the journey of the album, it’s like we’ve built up to this bit and then it’s almost calm, simmering down, with lots of reflective songs at this point. It’s essentially a folk song, and again, it’s nearly a love song but not quite—it’s still from a point of loneliness. It’s about the end of the night or a party or whatever, and you’re having this moment with someone, and you’re like, ‘Actually I don’t want you to go so fast because I’m really lonely.’ But it’s almost like you’re too lonely and polite to say that outright. So, you’re like, ‘You don’t have to go right now if you don’t want to.’ It’s from someone who’s quite broken and doesn’t really want to put themselves out there. But it’s like, ‘I could watch everyone else disappear, but if you could stay here for a moment, that’d be really nice.’” **“Where Did You Go”** “I wrote this around the same time as ‘Into the Walls,’ so you can see where my head was at. I guess it’s a less conventional pop song. It felt right to keep it on vocoder and sprinkle around elements of synth. The story is basically about someone going missing in your life, and it splits into two halves. The first is like, ‘Where did you go? I’ve been looking everywhere,’ and then the second half is the person that’s gone missing going, ‘Sorry, but I’m leaving.’ For me, it was written about the idea of fleeing the nest and the guilt of that—a conversation between a parent and a child. But I’ve left it open—you could also hear it in a relationship sense. It’s the question of the album. I’m asking it about myself: ‘Where did I go?’”

Normani knows some things are worth the wait, and nothing more than a debut album. The Fifth Harmony alum’s 2019 song “Motivation” introduced the triple threat as a solo performer. The hit single boasted an irresistible cascade hook and a choreography-rich music video to rival Britney Spears’ and Janet Jackson’s best. In the years since, while navigating family crises and online criticism, Normani has continued to hone down a full-length introduction to her singular voice. She completes that leap with *DOPAMINE*, a studied, seductive pop record that coats reflections on sex, love, and confidence with a glistening trap sheen. While smoother ballads like “All Yours” and “Insomnia” stay in direct conversation with vanguard hip-hop, single “Candy Paint” turns up the cowbell to hit the sweet spot of early Destiny’s Child, Brandy, and Cassie hits. Meanwhile, standout “Tantrums” darts down experimental pathways with a little help from vocals by one of Normani’s self-proclaimed favorite artists, James Blake. Contributions from Cardi B and Gunna round out the elegant portrait of this intentional artist, who’s more than ready for the rocket-ship rise depicted on *DOPAMINE*’s cover.

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

Faye Webster’s fifth album marks the point of full immersion when it comes to the Atlanta songwriting prodigy’s sly, shifting aesthetic. The tones are richer and deeper; the arrangements expand and breathe like massive lungs; her voice layers over itself and ripples, decadent and deeply felt. Webster’s genre-blending approach may have been slightly overstated in the past—a result of her early association with Atlanta’s rascally, defunct hip-hop crew Awful Records—but her sonic playfulness has never been more fully realized than it is on on *Underdressed at the Symphony*. Slinky, flute-dotted R&B is situated up against sumptuous country pop and grungy flips on ’50s sock-hop rock music; longtime friend and rap chameleon Lil Yachty pops up on “Lego Ring” as the pair switch off from a Weezer-esque chug to spacey, astral psych-rock. Lyrically, *Underdressed at the Symphony*—which was written and recorded coming off of a breakup—carries Webster’s now-trademarked mixture of emotional intimacy and straightforward humor. She finds potency in simple sentiments (“Thinking About You,” “He Loves Me Yeah!”), and on the sparse hyperpop “Feeling Good Today,” she details the small pleasures that come with moving through one’s daily existence. “I used to be self-conscious/Well, really, I still am/I’m just better at figuring out why,” Webster ruminates over the lush guitars of “Wanna Quit All the Time,” one of several songs that feature Wilco guitarist Nels Cline. This is music that’s as mesmerizing as it is disarmingly personal, and *Underdressed at the Symphony* represents an artist who, similar to cosmic kin Cass McCombs, seems increasingly intent on proving she really can do anything.

The Smile, a trio featuring Radiohead prime movers Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood along with ex-Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, sounds more like a proper band than a side project on their second album. Sure, they’re a proper band that unavoidably sounds a *lot* like Radiohead, but with some notable distinctions—much leaner arrangements, bass parts by Greenwood and Yorke with a very different character from what Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood might have laid down, and a formal fixation on conveying tension in their melodies and rhythms. Their debut, *A Light for Attracting Attention*, was full of tight, wrenching grooves and guitar parts that sounded as though the strings were coiling into knots. This time around they head in the opposite direction, loosening up to the point that the music often feels extremely light and airy. The guitar in the first half of “Bending Hectic” is so delicate and minimal that it sounds like it could get blown away with a slight breeze, while the warm and lightly jazzy “Friend of a Friend” feels like it’s helplessly pushed and pulled along by strong, unpredictable winds. The loping rhythm and twitchy riffs in “Read the Room” are surrounded by so much negative space that it sounds eerily hollow, like Yorke is singing through the skeletal remains of a ’70s metal song. There are some surprises along the way, too. A few songs veer into floaty lullaby sections, and more than half include orchestral tangents that recall Greenwood’s film score work for Paul Thomas Anderson and Jane Campion. The most unexpected moment comes at the climax of “Bending Hectic,” which bursts into heavy grunge guitar, stomping percussion, and soaring vocals. Most anyone would have assumed Yorke and Greenwood had abandoned this type of catharsis sometime during the Clinton administration, but as it turns out they were just waiting for the right time to deploy it.

Almost six years after releasing her breakout single, 2018’s “Mr Rebel,” Nigerian superstar Tems delivers her debut LP, *Born in the Wild*. Of course, that interim has been characterized by a trajectory that’s trended upward at almost every turn. From her acclaimed 2020 debut EP *For Broken Ears* to global megahit collaborations with Wizkid (and later Justin Bieber) on “Essence” and Drake on “Fountains” to 2021’s sophomore EP, *If Orange Was a Place*, to appearances on 2022’s *Black Panther: Wakanda Forever* soundtrack (including songwriting credits for Rihanna’s “Lift Me Up”) and Beyoncé’s *RENAISSANCE* and a Grammy win for Future and Drake’s “Wait for U” in 2023—the alté-R&B star has experienced an almost exponential rise. That kind of journey is part of what makes *Born in the Wild* all the more captivating. Over 18 tracks, Tems cracks open her journal through those career highs, and reveals how the person behind them grappled with it all. “I had to step back a bit, to check in with myself,” Tems (Temilade Openiyi) tells Apple Music, “and also just find healing from all the trauma and everything I experienced before ‘Tems.’ I think I had to unlearn a lot of things. This album is just a new way of me expressing myself, while still centering who I am in it.” Here, she works through moments of feeling like an impostor, of rebuilding her self-confidence, of learning the ins and outs of relationships, and of learning to trust herself. Don’t read that as insecure, however—this is the journal of someone who’s done the work, and who’s fully ready to embrace the next chapter. It’s all brought to life through Tems’ usual brand of honest, mature storytelling—and here, as ever, the centerpiece remains a distinctive voice that simultaneously balances multiple layers of raw, delicate emotion and a natural, unforced ease. That reflective songwriting shows a sonic maturity that’s unrestricted by genre: She traverses from R&B (“Burning”) to fusions of Afrobeats and amapiano (“Get It Right”), balanced with celebrations of culture and heritage, like her reimagined version of Seyi Sodimu’s 1997 hit, the breezy “Love Me JeJe.” Below, Tems talks through these and more key tracks from *Born in the Wild*. **“Born in the Wild”** “‘Born in the Wild’ is a story of transformation from a cocoon to a butterfly. It speaks on surviving a mental wilderness that comes with life, and coming to a place where one can thrive. It\'s about accepting oneself, and embodying the woman I was born to be. It shows the different dimensions of who Tems is, and her journey from a cub to a lioness.” **“Burning”** “‘Burning’ is about the feelings I felt when I first started getting popular as Tems. I didn\'t really understand what was happening, and everything was happening so fast. And it\'s about me looking back on that time and realizing that we are all going through something. We all have our internal battles. We all have the things that we struggle with, our triggers. And ‘Burning’ is really about understanding that I have my triggers too, and now I know that I\'m not alone. And there\'s many people that have felt the way I do about not wanting to be seen, not really being used to attention, and people trying to take advantage of you in many different ways.” **“Love Me JeJe”** “‘Love Me JeJe’ is a sweet, happy song about finding unconditional love. The joy of finding a love that doesn\'t run out and not settling for anything else. Just basking in the sun, basking in that unconditional type of love.” **“Get It Right” (feat. Asake)** “This is just about a conversation between two people and one is saying, ‘I know you\'re scared, but if you do me right, I always got your back, because that\'s who I am.’ And it\'s just about two people feeling each other and wanting to explore more.” **“Unfortunate”** “‘Unfortunate’ is about realizing that the person that you put your trust in isn\'t worth your time. And also being thankful that the person showed themselves early, and the person disappointed you. And it\'s basically finding the good in the bad. This was a disappointment, but it is actually great that it was, because it means that I\'m winning, and I\'m going to overcome this, and I don\'t need to be with you anymore. It is a blessing that I\'m not obligated by any means to stay with you, and it\'s a blessing that I\'m not with you.” **“Forever”** “Forever is about the aftermath of a breakup, when the guy comes circling back, and it\'s coming from a place of healing, it\'s coming from a place of ‘I’ve moved on already, but it\'s interesting to see you scramble because I\'m moving on. It\'s the desperation for me from you. I love that you are so desperate to get me back you\'re always checking for me, stalking me, checking for what I\'m doing, and it\'s really intriguing and fascinating to see.’” **“Free Fall” (feat. J. Cole)** “This is about, after you fell in love with someone, they fell in love too. It was great until you realize that you both were new to it, and they didn\'t really know what to do in the relationship. It\'s about knowing, ‘If I stay, I\'m going to be drained,’ and knowing your limits and setting your boundaries. It\'s basically reflecting on all of that. Reflecting on the fact that I had to go, because if I didn\'t go, it would have been detrimental.” **“Me & U”** “‘Me & U’ is about reconnecting with God. It\'s a new conversation. It\'s about reconnecting with your inner child and the truth. It\'s about now being honest with yourself about who you are, and about having faith that everything is going to be okay, as long as you believe.” **“You in My Face”** “‘You in My Face’ is a conversation with the inner me, the inner child, and it\'s about finding peace within, and also hoping that I don\'t get lost again.”

“I have to write about how I feel,” Rachel Chinouriri tells Apple Music. “If I don’t feel it or can’t relate to it, I can’t write about it.” Since breaking out in 2022 with viral track “So My Darling,” the South London singer-songwriter has done just that, penning bittersweet indie bops and devastating ballads that have been fueled, most often, by stories of heartache. You’ll find plenty of that on this debut album, but Chinouriri also goes deeper, with songs about self-contempt, loss, grief, and feeling like you don’t belong right when you’re supposed to be killing it (see “The Hills,” her cathartic exhale about a five-week songwriting trip to LA, which left her feeling lonely, under pressure, and creatively stumped). For Chinouriri, *What a Devastating Turn of Events* was shaped by “the journey of being in your early twenties. You finally leave home and then you are kind of becoming an adult, but you don’t really feel like an adult,” she says. “You’re still looking at the grown-ups to give you advice, but you are the grown-up. It is a weird journey of trying to discover yourself. Being able to feel and then turn it into song—it’s a privilege to have that as a gift.” But *What a Devastating Turn of Events* also feels rooted in much more than just a bumpy life transition, and Chinouriri’s lyricism is laced with far more wisdom than most people can apply to those chaotic early-twenties years. Either way, the singer-songwriter wanted her debut to capture what it’s like to be shattered by a sudden event. And so, the record opens with sharp-witted, mostly upbeat indie-pop moments (plus some “wonky” bits, as Chinouriri puts it), before the crushing title track—written after the singer-songwriter’s cousin tragically took her own life—shifts this album, and its creator, on its axis. What follows are some of Chinouriri’s most raw, arresting songs yet. “When death happens, it does turn your entire world upside down,” she says. “It might not even be death, it might just be something that happens. And sometimes you don’t realize how much you have until something major happens. Then you realize, ‘Damn, I’ve wasted so much time bothering about stuff that doesn’t matter.’ Turning points can either make or break people.” This album ends on Chinouriri’s own turning point: “Pocket,” a sweet song about new, better love that Chinouriri promised she’d give to the person who finally allowed her to feel it, followed by her acoustic version of “So My Darling,” the song that started this wild ride in the first place. Here, Chinouriri takes us through her debut, track by track. **“Garden of Eden”** “I wrote this after my big LA trip feeling like, ‘This \[the UK\] is home for me.’ I’m just adamant I want a house in the countryside. Where I grew up in Croydon isn’t that, but it was quiet, and I would always hear birds and see fields and grass. We were in a room \[in a studio in the UK countryside, where Chinouriri went after LA\] and would always have the recording on, and the birds were that loud. I was like, ‘Let’s just maybe make it a soundscape where you’re just falling into this situation.’ It’s setting the scene.” **“The Hills”** “We’ve left the Garden of Eden now and I’m like, ‘Right, I don’t belong here.’ The music video shows \[me\], a Black woman, walking across some flags, and people have said, ‘Oh, she’s talking about how she doesn’t belong in the UK,’ but I’m actually talking about how much I *do* belong. It’s almost seeing those street parties where they’ve got all the flags and being like, ‘I’m as English as you guys, so I belong here and I’ll be staying here whether you like it or not.’ The song is definitely a headbanging, screaming moment—it has a bit of an American-boy-band-in-a-basement, kids-in-a-garage vibe. It felt like a relief to have something after a trip where we didn’t have much, especially after five weeks.” **“Never Need Me”** “After I wrote this, I didn’t even send it to the label. A few days later, I was at a festival and my manager came to me and said, ‘Why didn’t you send us this song? Oli \[Bayston, one of the song’s co-writers\] sent it to us.’ I said, ‘I don’t like it, I think it’s a terrible song.’ I think it was because of its meaning. And in the session, I was just so angry and annoyed and in such an agitated mood. I felt uninspired. But later, I said, ‘If I can do it however I want, I’ll finish the song.’ So I went to \[songwriter\] Glen Roberts and changed all the production—I was thinking Kings of Leon and heavy guitars.” **“My Everything”** “This song is about giving your all to everyone. My project before this album, *Four° in Winter*, was very experimental and wonky. I knew I was hitting some pop territories with this album, but I think there are still wonky elements to me. I really love Ladysmith Black Mambazo and how they use their voice almost as the instruments. I just liked being in the studio and coming up with weird sounds with my voice. I don’t even want to know how many vocal tracks are on that—but it was a lot! I don’t know if people will like it, but I wanted to show all the different parts of who I am.” **“All I Ever Asked”** “Again, I didn’t want it on the album. But now I realize this song is important and a way people discovered me \[it was a single in 2022\]. I think I’m actually quite a dark person because I’m a Scorpio. Whether you believe in star signs or not, I’ve always gravitated towards dark lyrics to a point where I don’t think sad lyrics really hit me anymore. But there’s also a degree of making light of situations. Because as much as \[what inspired this song\] is sad, it’s also like, ‘You’ll live. He was an asshole. There are plenty more people you can meet in this world.’ There’s light that can come to those situations.” **“It Is What It Is”** “When I was doing \[the speak-singing here\], I was like, ‘Maybe I’m going to sound a bit like a loser.’ I’m not really rapping, I’m talking, and then obviously I have this English accent. I don’t want to say I have a boring voice, but when I’m speaking, I think I sound quite monotone. But what I’m saying is, ‘You are a fucking arsehole.’ This one’s for my girls and boys who have definitely felt this multiple times. Mae Muller is on this track. She is that person who will be like, ‘Absolutely not.’ I’ll go out and look at someone slightly questionable and be like, ‘I fancy him.’ She’ll go to the bathroom and be like, ‘Rachel, love you so much. No, no, you’re not doing that.’ And I’ll be like, ‘OK.’” **“Dumb Bitch Juice”** “This was very much Amy Winehouse-inspired—I know it’s not Amy Winehouse at all, but she had this ability to sing in quite a free and melodic way, but you can hear every single thing she says. When I wrote this, I was like, ‘I’m here to insult today.’ Not just insulting someone else—insulting myself too. Because sometimes men are terrible, but there’s also a degree of ‘You have allowed someone to treat you like that.’ Of course I’ve been heartbroken by an absolute idiot because I’m drinking dumb bitch juice!” **“What a Devastating Turn of Events”** “All my siblings were born in Africa, I’m the only one who was born in the UK. There’s a set of relatives who know I exist, but I’ve not met most of them—I have no clue who they are, but my siblings grew up with them. And when she \[Chinouriri’s cousin, the subject of this song\] died, my siblings were devastated. I was sad about someone I didn’t know. I constantly thought about it and wondered how it had happened. I had gone through something similar; being able to write about it has been kind of helpful for me to understand my own situation and stuff that I’ve gone through. Sonically, I never thought we needed a big chorus. It’s a different verse and different chorus every single time. Then there’s just this kind of chanting thing—I think that’s maybe where my African influence is coming, the marching and the pace of the drum and everyone singing as a group. We all sat in the studio with a mic and just screamed, ‘What a devastating turn of events.’ I think there’s a degree of sorrow that comes along, kind of trudging through this very sad story. This is a very important one.” **“My Blood”** “I wanted a song where there’s not necessarily continuation, but which speaks about things which people might do as a cry for help. You should always watch when things like that happen to people. I went through a phase where I was pulling out my own hair—it was a stress thing. It started making me think about when I was younger and there was self-harm things. It was visualizing looking in a mirror and being like, ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’ But it’s also these invisible wounds. The strings here add so much to the song—the cinematic-ness of it is definitely influenced by Daughter. I wanted to get people to feel. It sounds very sad from top to bottom, but I hope people listen to it and think, ‘Wow.’” **“Robbed”** “There was a baby in our family who passed away, and I felt like I was robbed of them. I was a bit more poetic in this song, but it’s almost considering people I’d not met that had such a massive effect on me. You can be robbed of time sometimes, with people or family. When stuff like that happens, the people around you are always like, ‘It’ll be OK. I’m sorry that happened.’ And actually, sometimes it’s OK to just be like, ‘That was fucking shit. That was horrible and this is unfair.’ That was the kind of emotion I wanted to translate in these songs.” **“Cold Call”** “I was really inspired by Coldplay’s ‘Politik.’ It’s just mind-blowing. I’m quite obsessed with Coldplay and I asked my team to show them the song. I know that they liked it—it meant a lot. They are my inspiration for a lot of things. I think it feels like a universal song. It’s kind of like, ‘I’ve had enough of this now, I’m not doing that anymore.’” **“I Hate Myself”** “I like how this ends with me reflecting on the positive. I’ve felt some very negative things, which I’ve been lucky enough to stop in their tracks. I mean, ‘a victim of your mind’ is one of the lyrics here. I wrote this with \[producer and songwriter\] Jonah Summerfield and he was like, ‘Oh, this is pretty deep.’ But sometimes when you put your thoughts on paper, you can read it back and think, ‘That was ridiculous.’ I looked back at this and thought, ‘That was a really stupid thing for me to even put myself through.’ You have to learn to love yourself—and hope that as a society we can really unlearn the treatment of people for being different sizes. Being able to write music has been a combination of me unlearning and learning so much about myself. And I think I can see how my self-esteem really skyrocketed the song in many ways.” **“Pocket”** “When I wrote this, I’d gone through all my phases of being like, ‘Men are trash, men are toxic.’ Then I was kind of like, ‘Well that’s just BS. I was just choosing terrible men. And there are actually nice ones if you allow yourself to be loved. So I’m going to write a song about how I would like to be loved.’ I thought, ‘When I find someone, I’m going to give them this song.’ And when I started dating my boyfriend, I said, ‘There’s this song I have.’” **“So My Darling (Acoustic)”** “The song is like six years old, so it’s a nostalgic way to end the album. You’ve gone through this journey of \[mostly\] new songs, and then you get thrown back into one that everyone knows. I wanted the whole album to sound and feel nostalgic for being a Black Brit, so to end on something nostalgic for the fans was really important. I think the whole album is very nostalgic of maybe my home life, but for the fans, it’s nostalgic for them.”

“How long is too long to be stuck in a memory?” That eternally unquantifiable question defines Sophie Allison’s fourth album as Soccer Mommy, a record marked by loss and grief. *Evergreen* marks a perspective shift from Allison’s 2022 album *Sometimes, Forever*. “When I started writing songs for this album, I was very clearly in a completely different headspace and wanted to write something that felt more intimate and up front, and not kind of shrouded by having all this fun making it,” Allison tells Apple Music. “The feelings that I was expressing on this album were a lot about loss and grief, because that’s what I was going through at the time—a lot of changes. It was scary and different, and everything felt kind of sudden. So I was just grappling with all of that.” The result is a richly melodic work that, with the production touch of Ben H. Allen (Animal Collective, Belle and Sebastian), feels cavernous in its scope while retaining intimacy. There are moments when Allison cranks up the volume and rips into the riffage—witness the chunky chords on “Driver,” or the shape-shifting guitar lines that stretch across “Salt in Wound”—but elsewhere Allison achieves a magic trick of making nuanced, close-to-the-vest songwriting sound one million miles wide. The closing title track is draped in stretches of strings not unlike generational counterpart beabadoobee’s work, while on “M” she laments, “I hear your voice in all my favorite songs.” It’s a raw admission on an album full of them.

When KAYTRANADA left the 2021 Grammys with two awards (Best Dance/Electronic Album for 2019’s *BUBBA* and Best Dance Recording for “10%”), he made history as the first Black and first openly gay artist to win the former category. The industry recognition was long overdue for the producer, who had been building a devout following for nearly a decade. “In my mind I was finally a true artist,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. After relocating to Los Angeles, he channeled that confidence into making his third solo album, *TIMELESS*: “It felt more serious—more legit. I was still having fun making *TIMELESS*, but making *BUBBA* was another type of fun where I didn’t really take it seriously.” Like its predecessor, *TIMELESS* is a collection of club grooves for catching a vibe. It’s packed with guests who effortlessly acclimate to KAYTRANADA’s singular sound while imprinting their own touch. PinkPantheress’ saccharine voice is richer on the squiggly house beat of “Snap My Finger,” Ravyn Lenae offers breathy seductions on the hard-edged R&B of “Video,” and Thundercat delivers comical disses in soothing falsetto on the jazzy hip-hop of “Wasted Words.” Back-to-back tracks “Do 2 Me” (featuring Anderson .Paak and SiR) and “Witchy” (featuring Childish Gambino) hit an energy peak, their tales of late-night infatuation framed by sultry, body-enveloping production. If *BUBBA* was about finding KAYTRANADA’s sound, *TIMELESS* expands it. The producer is in what he calls his “experimental bag,” and Channel Tres joins him in it on the incendiary “Drip Sweat.” Channel’s trademark baritone drifts in and out of disembodied Auto-Tune, dropping bars over punchy drums and breaks sampled from Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It).” “We were just making the funkiest thing, like how it would sound if we did new jack swing today,” KAYTRANADA says. “What is that Bobby Brown energy? We were trying to give it that.” He tries out AI sampling on the breezy instrumental “Seemingly.” He also sings on a track for the first time on the Weeknd-inspired “Stepped On,” creating his version of ’80s New Wave with strobing synths and a dark disposition. With a new skill unlocked, *TIMELESS* makes room for another KAYTRANADA evolution.

“It’s definitely different,” Young Miko tells Apple Music about *att.* “You’ll feel the evolution in the music.” For anyone who thought her full-length debut would be merely an extension of 2022’s *TRAP KITTY*, the Puerto Rican rapper offers a multi-pronged, genre-mashing rebuke. Expanding well beyond prior hits like “Riri” and the Feid team-up “Classy 101,” as well as high-profile collabs with Bad Bunny and KAROL G, her album boldly engages with sounds and styles that help solidify her status as one of Latin music’s most compelling young artists. The nostalgic charms of “arcoiris” and “wiggy” speak to an era in hip-hop from well before trap music’s global dominance. An irresistible highlight, “princess peach” reframes a mid-2000s electro-meets-crunk style to tell a love story from a queer perspective. That freedom is even more prominent on “MADRE,” a house music jam that centers the genre’s LGBTQ+ foundations. “I definitely can’t die without me being able to just say whatever I want to say and express myself,” she says proudly. “Hiding yourself sounds so exhausting.” Naturally, Miko retains many of the familiar elements and touchpoints that pushed her deservedly into the spotlight. Her trap and reggaetón bona fides remain very much intact, evident on opener “rookie of the year” and late standout “curita,” among others of note. She reunites with Feid on the thumping “offline” and cultivates a dancehall reggae vibe with her “COLMILLO” collaborators Jowell & Randy on the inspired “ID.” But mostly, *att.* is an expression of a singular talent seizing her moment and standing out in the best of ways. “At the end of the day, that’s what every artist tries to be: unique.”

When she emerged from obscurity as a 19-year-old vagabond turned overnight SoundCloud star, Halsey was something of a cipher: You knew her voice (one of the 2010s’ prime examples of “cursive singing”), but very little else. “I think there is a little bit of a grand narrative about me that’s like, ‘I don’t know what she looks like. I couldn’t recognize her on the street because she looks different every time I see her,’” the singer tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Some people get into a creative medium and have a very specific style: ‘This is what works for me, this is who I am and what I’m comfortable with.’ And for me, I just don’t know that it’s fun unless I’m reinventing. I think a lot of people see that and get the sense that I don’t have a very secure sense of self.” In one sense, the lead single from her fifth studio album shows she’s as hard to pin down as ever: For one, she was beginning with “The End.” An unplugged folk ballad co-produced by Alex G and Michael Uzowuru, the song shed light on recent health scares she’d been keeping under wraps. But *The Great Impersonator* is vulnerable in a new way, using the concept of homage as a lens through which to write—hence the series of photos Halsey released leading up to the album’s release in which she posed as David Bowie, Aaliyah, Kate Bush, and more. “As I get older, I love to write about myself, but I find it boring to talk about myself,” she says. “So these reinventions give me these little means of escapism—not in the sense of running away, but just telling the story in a different way.” Themes of identity, mortality, and legacy snake through the album’s 18 tracks, which channel ’70s folk, ’80s power ballads, ’90s alt-rock, and 2000s pop before arriving at the decade in which Halsey herself emerged. At times she reels at her own temporary nature; elsewhere, she craves depersonalization: “I think that I should try to kill my ego/’Cause if I don’t, my ego might kill me,” she yelps on the PJ Harvey-inspired “Ego.” “Hometown” is an ode to Dolly Parton, though it’s Springsteen-esque (“Glory Days” in particular) in its depiction of faded American dreams. And on “Lucky,” she riffs on the Britney Spears hit of the same name, one of the great pop ballads on fame’s diminishing returns. “I turned 20 as *BADLANDS* came out, and I’m turning 30 as this record comes out,” Halsey says, tracing the arc of her career. “I had this 10-year plan, but I didn’t really have anything beyond that. I hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen.” And though she may not know where life will take her in the next 10 years, she’s focused on appreciating the journey rather than racing towards the finish line. “I used to look at the way that SZA or Frank \[Ocean\] make records like, ‘Gosh, I could never spend two or three years on an album. I’m so impulsive and impatient and I just want to get it done,’” she says. “Then I spent a long time writing this record and I understood for the first time—oh, the making is the best part.”

There’s a sense of optimism that comes through Vampire Weekend’s fifth album that makes it float, a sense of hope—a little worn down, a little roughed up, a little tired and in need of a shave, maybe—but hope nonetheless. “By the time you’re pushing 40, you’ve hit the end of a few roads, and you’re probably looking for something—I don’t know what to say—a little bit deeper,” Ezra Koenig tells Apple Music. “And you’re thinking about these ideas. Maybe they’re corny when you’re younger. Gratitude. Acceptance. All that stuff. And I think that’s infused in the album.” Take something like “Mary Boone,” whose worries and reflections (“We always wanted money, now the money’s not the same”) give way to an old R&B loop (Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life”). Or the way the piano runs on “Connect”—like your friend fumbling through a Gershwin tune on a busted upright in the next room—bring the song’s manic energy back to earth. Musically, they’ve never sounded more sophisticated, but they’ve also never sounded sloppier or more direct (“Prep-School Gangsters”). They’re a tuxedo with ripped Converse or a garage band with a full orchestra (“Ice Cream Piano”). And while you can trainspot the micro-references and little details of their indie-band sound (produced brilliantly by Koenig and longtime collaborator Ariel Rechtshaid), what you remember most is the big picture of their songs, which are as broad and comforting as great pop (“Classical”). “Sometimes I talk about it with the guys,” Koenig says. “We always need to have an amateur quality to really be us. There needs to be a slight awkward quality. There needs to be confidence and awkwardness at the same time.” Next to the sprawl of *Father of the Bride*, *OGWAU* (“og-wow”—try it) feels almost like a summary of the incredible 2007-2013 run that made them who they are. But they’re older now, and you can hear that, too, mostly in how playful and relaxed the album is. Listen to the jazzy bass and prime-time saxophone on “Classical” or the messy drums on “Prep-School Gangsters” (courtesy of Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes), or the way “Hope” keeps repeating itself like a school-assembly sing-along. It’s not cool music, which is of course what makes it so inimitably cool. Not that they seem to worry about that stuff anymore. “I think a huge element for that is time, which is a weird concept,” Koenig says. ”Some people call it a construct. I’ve heard it’s not real. That’s above my pay grade, but I will say, in my experience, time is great because when you’re bashing your head against the wall, trying to figure out how to use your brain to solve a problem, and when you learn how to let go a little bit, time sometimes just does its thing.” For a band that once announced themselves as the preppiest, most ambitious guys in the indie-rock room, letting go is big.

LA-based alt-pop quartet The Marías explore pain, isolation, and the strength it takes to get better on their 2024 LP *Submarine*. The album, which follows their 2021 breakthrough debut *CINEMA*, finds the band expanding their sound to include underground dance music, disco, jazz, and more—all while pursuing melodic gold thanks to singer María Zardoya. Take the album’s second track, “Hamptons,” which blends garage drum grooves with whimsical synths and a textural tension that recalls trip-hop pioneers Portishead. Or, on “Real Life,” the group conjures up lounge jazz, managing to practically capture the heavy smoke that often fills those ambiance-heavy rooms. It’s sleek and sexy, a glowing encapsulation of the band’s mission to achieve mood with subtly complex compositions. On “Paranoia,” many of the album’s lyrical themes cohere. Zardoya takes aim at an untrusting lover, illustrating how a communication breakdown can result in total isolation: “Why do you think I have another/When you have always been the one/Your paranoia is annoying/Now all I wanna do is run away.”

“I don’t be trying to get too involved in the ‘extra big shoes to fill’ shit,” Latto tells Apple Music of her provocative and spirited third album. “I just do me, and I really feel like that have worked for me. I feel like all that is due to just me being me.” On *Sugar Honey Iced Tea*, the rapper elevates her work beyond what she feels is a “single-driven and club-driven” culture. “I wanted to make a cohesive project,” she says. “And I think with that, to sit through, what, an hour of one person, you have to be dimensional and be multidimensional, and I think you have to showcase different sides and versions of your artistry.” And with “Big Mama,” she found a single that didn’t compromise her vision. “I was like, ‘Okay, this the best one. It shows the versatility in the song.’” The album is also brimming with smooth collaborations—including Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Ciara, Flo Milli, Young Nudy, Hunxho, Coco Jones, Mariah the Scientist, and Teezo Touchdown—which was Latto’s goal. “Everybody on there, I’m a fan of personally,” she says. “I made the music first and then I was like, ‘Okay, I think this person. Let me call this person. I want them to get on it.’ Or ‘I feel like they could add to the song.’ So everything was very intentional.” The bouncy and playful “Squeeze” with Megan Thee Stallion is Latto’s answer to the success of her 2021 hit “Big Energy.” “I didn\'t want to just run away from that pop fanbase that I had built,” she says. “So I wanted to incorporate some of that without it sounding too poppy, because I don’t think that’s where I’m rooted. I come from a rap competition show. I think it’s very clear, very evident that I’m a rapper first.” Certain tracks may shed light on her personal life, too. If “Prized Possession” featuring Teezo Touchdown tells the story of a toxic relationship (“I think I was very keen on it being a mood,” she explains), the sexy and sultry “Look What You Did” with Mariah the Scientist captures how Latto has been feeling running up to the album’s release. “This whole project is about my last two years,” she says. “And I feel like I found someone who uplifts me as a person.” But even so, Latto reminds us where the focus should be: “Listen to the music and you’ll know what you need to know.”

Lainey Wilson couldn’t have chosen a more fitting title for her fifth studio album. The wildly beloved country singer-songwriter’s rise to fame has surely been a whirlwind, catapulting the small-town Louisiana native from relative obscurity to stardom in just a few short years. That success was not earned overnight, though, as Wilson had put in nearly a decade of work before breaking out with *Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’* in 2021. “I felt like my life was changing at 190 miles an hour and I was just trying to keep one foot on the ground,” Wilson tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “But I think those 10 years of nothing happening for me prepared me for my life changing super fast.” *Whirlwind* is Wilson at the height of her powers, mixing pop, rock, and soul into her already inimitable brand of traditionally informed country. Highlights include the title track, a light and groovy celebration of reckless love, and “Devil Don’t Go There,” a heartbreak ballad that lets Wilson lean into the emotive side of her versatile voice. The Miranda Lambert duet “Good Horses” connects two generations of country spitfires, with dusky production to emphasize the singers’ undeniable vocal chemistry. Wilson’s band sounds better than ever, too, which she attributes to years spent touring relentlessly and working toward a shared dream. “They are ride or die,” she says. “I mean, these guys are the ones that ate dirt with me. And I think it’s really important to keep the people close that you ate dirt with. They know you, they know how bad you want it. They want it just as bad. They love you for you. They sacrifice so much to be out there on the road with you.” Below, Wilson gives insight into a few key tracks. **“Whirlwind”** “I finally found a guy that gives me a run for my money. And he’s my biggest cheerleader. He’s just a good person. And he knows how important chasing down a dream is, because even when he was a little boy, football was his life. He did it and he tried out for the Steelers and made the team. And so he achieved what he set out to do. And so he knows. We met at a time where he was still playing with them, but then it all changed. So it was weird. It was like his life was changing as my life was changing and we were going different directions. So, yeah, life for us is a whirlwind.” **“Middle of It”** “We had actually just got nominated for Entertainer of the Year for the CMAs. And I had not been at my house in Nashville, and I didn’t have furniture in my house for months. We don’t need a couch, we’re not here. So my friends The Heart Wranglers came over and they just said, ‘Let’s do a heart check.’ And they’re like, ‘What’s going on? Where are you at? How you feel? Where’s your head?’ I sat on the floor and I just said, ‘I feel like I’m just smack-dab in the middle of it. It’s a blur to me where it started, where it’s going to end up. I just can’t hardly tell.’ And then we just started talking about how that’s really what all this is about anyway. That’s the beauty of it.” **“Whiskey Colored Crayon”** “That song actually came from a word exercise that my co-writer \[Josh Kear\] did. I’ll probably get this wrong, but every morning before he writes songs, he writes a list of things. And say the first list that he wrote was ‘things that I hate’ and maybe it’s lettuce or greens or whiskey or whatever. And then he writes a list of random things, things that you can use to create. He mix-mashed these words and he was like, ‘Well, I’ve got this whiskey-colored crayon,’ and we got to thinking about the storyline of this. And we came up with, ‘Okay, let’s think about a young student, the colored crayon part. Okay, and how could we tell a story about a little boy who goes through some things at home that most people don’t know about?’ We created the story. And for me, again, putting myself into the shoes of somebody else takes me out of my mess for a minute and gives me a fresh and new perspective. And I left that songwriting session, after we told this story, just feeling grateful.”

Few artists have done more for carrying the banner of guitar rock proudly into the 21st century than St. Vincent. A notorious shredder, she cut her teeth as a member of Sufjan Stevens’ touring band before releasing her debut album *Marry Me* in 2007. Since then, her reputation as a six-string samurai has been cemented in the wake of a run of critically acclaimed albums and collaborations (she co-wrote Taylor Swift’s No 1. single “Cruel Summer”). A shape-shifter of the highest order, St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has always put visual language on equal footing with her sonic output. Most recently, she released 2021’s *Daddy’s Home*, a conceptual period piece that pulled inspiration from ’70s soul and glam set in New York City. That project marked the end of an era visually—gone are the bleach-blonde wigs and oversized Times Square-ready trench coats—as well as creatively. With *All Born Screaming*, she bids adieu to frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff, who produced *Daddy’s Home*, and instead steps behind the boards for the first time to produce the project herself. “For me, this record was spending a lot of time alone in my studio, trying to find a new language for myself,” Clark tells Apple Music’s Hanuman Welch. “I co-produced all my other records, but this one was very much my fingerprints on every single thing. And a lot of the impetus of the record was like, ‘Okay: I\'m in the studio and everything has to start with chaos.’” For Clark, harnessing that chaos began by distilling the elemental components of what makes her sound like, well, her. Guitar players, in many respects, are some of the last musicians defined by the analog. Pedal boards, guitar strings, and pass-throughs are all manipulated to create a specific tone. It’s tactile, specialized, and at times, yes, chaotic. “What I mean by chaos,” Clark says, “is electricity actually moving through circuitry. Whether it\'s modular synths or drum machines, just playing with sound in a way that was harnessing chaos. I\'ve got six seconds of this three-hour jam, but that six seconds is lightning in a bottle and so exciting, and truly something that could only have happened once and only happened in a very tactile way. And then I wrote entire songs around that.” Those songs cover the spectrum from sludgy, teeth-vibrating offerings like “Flea” all the way to the lush album cut (and ode to late electronic producer SOPHIE) “Sweetest Fruit.” Clark relished in balancing these light and dark sounds and sentiments—and she didn’t do so alone. “I got to explore and play and paint,” she says. “And I also luckily had just great friends who came in to play on the record and brought their amazing energy to it.” *All Born Screaming* features appearances from Dave Grohl, Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa, and Welsh artist Cate Le Bon, among others. Le Bon pulled double duty on the album by performing on the title track as well as offering clarity for some of the murkier production moments. “I was finding myself a little bit in the weeds, as everyone who self-produces does,” Clark says. “And so I just called Cate and was like, ‘I need you to just come hold my hand for a second.’ She came in and was a very stabilizing force, I think, at a time in the making of the record when I needed someone to sort of hold my hand and pat my head and give me a beer, like, ‘It\'s going to be okay.’” With *All Born Screaming*, Clark manages to capture the bloody nature of the human experience—including the uncertainty and every lightning-in-a-bottle moment—but still manages to make it hum along like a Saturday morning cartoon. “The album, to me, is a bit of a season in hell,” she says. “You are a little bit walking on your knees through some broken glass—but in a fun way, kids. We end with this sort of, ‘Yes, life is difficult, but it\'s so worth living and we\'ve got to live it. Can\'t go over it, can\'t go under it, might as well go through it.’ It\'s black and white and the colors of a fire. That, to me, is sonically what the record is.”

“Sampling is a part of me, because I grew up on these songs,” Cash Cobain tells Apple Music. “I just take everything, throw it in a bowl and mix it up, and make my own Slizzy sauce.” Raised in the Bronx and Jamaica, Queens, two of the most hallowed locales in hip-hop history, he came up as a leader in the city’s vibrant sample-drill and sexy-drill waves before breaking big nationally as a sought-after producer for Drake, Trippie Redd, and Lil Yachty, to name but a few. Even while he scored hits and built his movement with locals such as B-Lovee and Chow Lee, he didn’t get as much credit for his rapping until his single “Fisherrr” with Bay Swag and its corresponding Ice Spice remix made him inescapably ubiquitous. “Two years ago, I thought I made it,” he says, adding, “but now I’m like, ‘You going somewhere.’” After linking on both sides of the booth as a featured artist opposite the likes of Don Toliver and A Boogie wit da Hoodie, his proper album debut *PLAY CASH COBAIN* puts him fully front and center. The raw sexual energy of “act like” and “rump punch” exemplify the sumptuous sound he pioneered and its correspondingly raunchy lyrical direction. Elsewhere, though, he demonstrates a softer, more romantic side on “message to u” and “wassup wya,” actively conjuring his dream girl fantasies into sincere realities. (“The album is sexual healing,” he quips.) Whether he’s creatively interpolating R&B classics on “all i wanna hear” and “cantsleep/drunkinluv” or flirting with other sources like on the Afrobeats-inflected “luv it,” his cutting-edge approach makes nearly every track feel momentous and of the moment. As if his own verses and hooks weren’t enough, the diverse guest list on *PLAY CASH COBAIN* nods to Cobain’s elevated status in the rap game. Quavo and the aforementioned Toliver help set the tone on opener “slizzyhunchodon,” their respective waves uniting for one irrestible vibe. For the show-stopping “problem,” he gathers a breathtaking and unexpected array of compounding features by everyone from Big Sean and Fabolous to Flo Milli and YN Jay. “It\'s like everyone is doing their own freestyle to it,” he says of the multigenerational posse cut built around Brooklyn singer Laila!’s single “Not My Problem.” For the most part, Cobain does what he does best without high-profile help, reflecting his humble rise from a South Jamaica basement. “I’m just trying to bring positivity and fun,” he says. “I want my people or my peers around me to do the same. I want everybody to win.”

Puerto Rican singer RaiNao earned some deserved attention from her memorable features on Mora’s 2023 album *ESTRELLA*. Six months after those collaborative songs went public, she returns with a solo set of her own, the transfixing *CAPICÚ*. Judging by these 16 shape-shifting tracks, beginning with the junglism of “navel point” and through the ambient trap-pop of “f\*ck$,” any previously held notions about her style warrants swift reevaluation. Her seeming unwillingness to be boxed into any one sound presents listeners with a diverse yet oddly cohesive experience benefitting from her breathy voice. Such artistic restlessness sometimes becomes evident over the course of a single song, as when “readysita” slips out of airy R&B and into shimmering yet jagged house music shards. At other points, the fusion of genres is more pronounced, particularly on the tropical hybrid “Gualero REFF12.31.” Reggaetón, as expected, does play a role here, via the alt-perreo vibes of “logout” and the Tainy-aided “roadhead.”