Uproxx's Best Albums of 2023

The music of Dylan Brady and Laura Les is what you might get if you took the trashiest tropes of early-2000s pop and slurred them together so violently it sounded almost avant-garde. It’s not that they treat their rap metal (“Dumbest Girl Alive,” “Billy Knows Jamie”), mall-punk (“Hollywood Baby”), and movie-trailer ska (“Frog on the Floor,” “I Got My Tooth Removed”) as means to a grander artistic end—if anything, *10,000 gecs* puts you in the mind of kids so excited to share their excitement that they spit out five ideas at once. And while modern listeners will be reminded of our perpetually scatterbrained digital lives, the music also calls back to the sense of novelty and goofiness that have propelled pop music since the chipmunk squeals of doo-wop and beyond. Sing it with them now: “Put emojis on my grave/I’m the dumbest girl alive.”

“Almost everyone that I love has been abused, and I am included,” declares Arlo Parks with arresting honesty in the first lines of her second album *My Soft Machine*. Then, almost in the same breath, she adds, “The person I love is patient with me/She’s feeding me cheese and I’m happy.” It’s an apt introduction to an album that both basks in the light—as Parks celebrates the affirming joy of falling deeply in love—and delves into darkness. “The core concept of the project is that this is reality and memory through my eyes, experienced within this body,” Parks tells Apple Music. “From the loss of innocence to the reliving of trauma to the endless nights bursting through Koreatown to first kisses in dimly lit dive bars, this is about my life.” It’s all told, of course, with the poetic, diary-entry lyricism that made *Collapsed in Sunbeams* so special—and which catapulted Parks to voice-of-a-generation status. Here, Parks also allows her indie-pop sound to unfurl, with embraces of synths, scuzzy guitars (see “Devotion,” the album’s most electrifying and unexpected moment), jazz, gorgeous harmonies (on the sweet, Phoebe Bridgers-guested “Pegasus”), electronic music, and more. That came, she says, in part from the team she assembled for the album, who allowed her to be more “fluid” (*My Soft Machine* was worked on with names including BROCKHAMPTON producer Romil Hemnani, the prolific US songwriter/producer Ariel Rechtshaid, and Frank Ocean collaborator Baird). “The community that organically formed around the album is one of my favorite things about it,” says Parks. “I think there is a confidence to the work. There is a looseness and an energy. There was a sense of sculpting that went beyond the more instinctive and immediate process of making album one. I am very proud of this.” Read on for the singer-songwriter’s track-by-track guide to *My Soft Machine*. **“Bruiseless”** “This song is about childhood abandon and the growing pains. It was inspired by a conversation I had with \[American poet\] Ocean Vuong where he said he was constantly trying to capture the unadulterated joy of cycling up to a friend’s house and abandoning the bike on the grass, wheels spinning, whilst you race up to their door—the softness and purity of that moment.” **“Impurities”** “I wrote this song the first time I met my dear friend Romil from BROCKHAMPTON. My friends and I were party-hopping and every time we called an Uber it was a Cadillac Escalade, which we thought was hilarious at the time. This is a song that is simply about being happy and feeling truly accepted.” **“Devotion”** “Romil, Baird and I were driving to a coffee shop called Maru in the Arts District of LA in Baird’s Suzuki Vitara that I nicknamed the ‘Red Rocket.’ We were blasting ‘17 Days’ by Prince. The three of us decided two things during that 15-minute round trip: that we had to fully commit to drama and that we were a rock band for the day.” **“Blades”** “The reference to the aquarium scene in Baz Luhrmann’s *Romeo + Juliet* refers to the idea of looking at a person you once knew so intimately and something indescribable has changed—as if you’re looking at each other through ocean water or obscure glass.” **“Purple Phase”** “The guitars you hear on this song are Paul \[Epworth, the British producer who also worked on *Collapsed in Sunbeams*\] and I just improvising. It was the last day of a long working week, we were feeling free and connected and our heads were cleared by exhaustion—we didn’t even have the capacity to overthink. This song has one of my favorite lines I’ve ever written: ‘I just want to see you iridescent charming cats down from trees/Mugler aviators hiding eyes that laugh when concealed.’” **“Weightless”** “Making ‘Weightless’ was a defining moment in the album process. I felt completely unchained from *Collapsed in Sunbeams*. Anything was possible, Paul \[Epworth\] and I were just chaos-dancing around the room and giggling. This one is very special to me and gave me so much creative confidence.” **“Pegasus (feat. Phoebe Bridgers)”** “Of course ‘Pegasus’ features lovely Phoebe \[Bridgers\]. The inspirations for the sparseness melting into the light, dancy beat were ‘White Ferrari’ by Frank Ocean, ‘Talk Down’ by Dijon, and ‘Grieve Not the Spirit’ by AIR. This is the first song I’ve written being so candid about how tricky it can be to accept someone being unbelievably kind.” **“Dog Rose”** “The original demo for this song was recorded in a hotel room in Toronto. I had the idea for the riff in the chorus and I was lying wide awake at 3 am just letting it drive me insane. Then I got up and ran about 15 blocks, through parks and across bridges, to get my guitar from the bus and get the idea down. It was very dramatic.” **“Puppy”** “I had always wanted to capture that half-spoken, half-melodic cadence—kind of like Frank Ocean in ‘In My Room’—and I was so pleased when I achieved it. The fuzzed-out guitar-sounding instrument is actually this little synth that \[producer\] Buddy \[Ross\] has. We were trying to recreate the energy of \[my bloody valentine’s\] *Loveless*.” **“I’m Sorry”** “Garrett Ray from Vampire Weekend’s touring band is on drums and David Longstreth \[the lead singer and guitarist\] from Dirty Projectors is on guitar for this one. Sculpting the right sonic treatment for this song took what felt like years, but it’s definitely my favorite song on the record from a textural and feel point of view.” **“Room (Red Wings)”** “‘Red Wings’ is a reference to the book *Autobiography of Red* by Anne Carson. The main character has distinctive red wings; his home life is tumultuous and he finds comfort in photography and falls deeply in love with a man called Herakles. The fragility and heart-rending nature of this book mirrors the broken quality of the song.” **“Ghost”** “This is the oldest song on the record. I demoed it in the winter of 2020 in my childhood bedroom. At the core of the song is a sense of embracing help, embracing human touch, learning not to suffer in solitude, learning to let people in.”

By the time December 2022 swung around, there was very little doubt that YBNL newcomer Asake had been the most propulsive voice in Afropop in a year that had seen the genre turn decisively on its head. Asake’s run from earlier in the year, after the breakout of his Olamide-assisted “Omo Ope” led to the release of his enchanting debut album *Mr. Money With the Vibe*, established crowded vocals, futuristic percussive elements, and iridescent amapiano-Fuji fusions as the new framework of Afropop while minting hits like “Sungba,” Terminator,” “Peace Be Unto You,” and “Organise.” Keen to keep his momentum going and further the narrative of his blistering come-up, Asake’s sophomore album, *Work of Art*, coming less than a year after his debut, presents an artist operating at a nearly peerless level. With production still majorly helmed by Magicsticks, the template remains largely the same, but the scale of ambition is stratospheric as Asake aims to present his music as high art. Switching between effervescent live arrangements, jaunty hip-hop-adjacent beats, and classic African samples, the air on *Work of Art* is celebratory and zestful, with the singer’s compelling blend of Yoruba panegyrics and urban slang adding color to songs like “Sunshine” and “Basquiat.” In a throwback to his *Ololade Asake* EP, label boss Olamide makes the only guest appearance here, contributing a standout verse on “Amapiano.” Still, mostly alone, Asake continues to take inspiration from his journey, spreading himself far and wide to channel bleary-eyed optimism on “Lonely at the Top” and hope on “I Believe.” Across these 14 songs, Asake invites us into his new reality and tells his story in vivid Technicolor.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a description of boygenius that doesn’t contain the word “supergroup,” but it somehow doesn’t quite sit right. Blame decades of hoary prog-rock baggage, blame the misbegotten notion that bigger and more must be better, blame a culture that is rightfully circumspect about anything that feels like overpromising, blame Chickenfoot and Audioslave. But the sentiment certainly fits: Teaming three generational talents at the height of their powers on a project that is somehow more than the sum of its considerable parts sounds like it was dreamed up in a boardroom, but would never work if it had been. In fall 2018, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker released a self-titled six-song EP as boygenius that felt a bit like a lark—three of indie’s brightest, most charismatic artists at their loosest. Since then, each has released a career-peak album (*Punisher*, *Home Video*, and *Little Oblivions*, respectively) that transcended whatever indie means now and placed them in the pantheon of American songwriters, full stop. These parallel concurrent experiences raise the stakes of a kinship and a friendship; only the other two could truly understand what each was going through, only the other two could mount any true creative challenge or inspiration. Stepping away from their ascendant solo paths to commit to this so fully is as much a musical statement as it is one about how they want to use this lightning-in-a-bottle moment. If *boygenius* was a lark, *the record* is a flex. Opening track “Without You Without Them” features all three voices harmonizing a cappella and feels like a statement of intent. While Bridgers’ profile may be demonstrably higher than Dacus’ or Baker’s, no one is out in front here or taking up extra oxygen; this is a proper three-headed hydra. It doesn’t sound like any of their own albums but does sound like an album only the three of them could make. Hallmarks of each’s songwriting style abound: There’s the slow-building climactic refrain of “Not Strong Enough” (“Always an angel, never a god”) which recalls the high drama of Baker’s “Sour Breath” and “Turn Out the Lights.” On “Emily I’m Sorry,” “Revolution 0,” and “Letter to an Old Poet,” Bridgers delivers characteristically devastating lines in a hushed voice that belies its venom. Dacus draws “Leonard Cohen” so dense with detail in less than two minutes that you feel like you’re on the road trip with her and her closest friends, so lost in one another that you don’t mind missing your exit. As with the EP, most songs feature one of the three taking the lead, but *the record* is at its most fully realized when they play off each other, trading verses and ideas within the same song. The subdued, acoustic “Cool About It” offers three different takes on having to see an ex; “Not Strong Enough” is breezy power-pop that serves as a repudiation of Sheryl Crow’s confidence (“I’m not strong enough to be your man”). “Satanist” is the heaviest song on the album, sonically, if not emotionally; over a riff with solid Toadies “Possum Kingdom” vibes, Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus take turns singing the praises of satanism, anarchy, and nihilism, and it’s just fun. Despite a long tradition of high-wattage full-length star team-ups in pop history, there’s no real analogue for what boygenius pulls off here. The closest might be Crosby, Stills & Nash—the EP’s couchbound cover photo is a wink to their 1969 debut—but that name doesn’t exactly evoke feelings of friendship and fellowship more than 50 years later. (It does, however, evoke that time Bridgers called David Crosby a “little bitch” on Twitter after he chastised her for smashing her guitar on *SNL*.) Their genuine closeness is deeply relatable, but their chemistry and talent simply aren’t. It’s nearly impossible for a collaboration like this to not feel cynical or calculated or tossed off for laughs. If three established artists excelling at what they are great at, together, without sacrificing a single bit of themselves, were so easy to do, more would try.

“You can feel a lot of motion and energy,” Caroline Polachek tells Apple Music of her second solo studio album. “And chaos. I definitely leaned into that chaos.” Written and recorded during a pandemic and in stolen moments while Polachek toured with Dua Lipa in 2022, *Desire, I Want to Turn Into You* is Polachek’s self-described “maximalist” album, and it weaponizes everything in her kaleidoscopic arsenal. “I set out with an interest in making a more uptempo record,” she says. “Songs like ‘Bunny Is a Rider,’ ‘Welcome to My Island,’ and ‘Smoke’ came onto the plate first and felt more hot-blooded and urgent than anything I’d done before. But of course, life happened, the pandemic happened, I evolved as a person, and I can’t really deny that a lunar, wistful side of my writing can never be kept out of the house. So it ended up being quite a wide constellation of songs.” Polachek cites artists including Massive Attack, SOPHIE, Donna Lewis, Enya, Madonna, The Beach Boys, Timbaland, Suzanne Vega, Ennio Morricone, and Matia Bazar as inspirations, but this broad church only really hints at *Desire…*’s palette. Across its 12 songs we get trip-hop, bagpipes, Spanish guitars, psychedelic folk, ’60s reverb, spoken word, breakbeats, a children’s choir, and actual Dido—all anchored by Polachek’s unteachable way around a hook and disregard for low-hanging pop hits. This is imperial-era Caroline Polachek. “The album’s medium is feeling,” she says. “It’s about character and movement and dynamics, while dealing with catharsis and vitality. It refuses literal interpretation on purpose.” Read on for Polachek’s track-by-track guide. **“Welcome to My Island”** “‘Welcome to My Island’ was the first song written on this album. And it definitely sets the tone. The opening, which is this minute-long non-lyrical wail, came out of a feeling of a frustration with the tidiness of lyrics and wanting to just express something kind of more primal and urgent. The song is also very funny. We snap right down from that Tarzan moment down to this bitchy, bratty spoken verse that really becomes the main personality of this song. It’s really about ego at its core—about being trapped in your own head and forcing everyone else in there with you, rather than capitulating or compromising. In that sense, it\'s both commanding and totally pathetic. The bridge addresses my father \[James Polachek died in 2020 from COVID-19\], who never really approved of my music. He wanted me to be making stuff that was more political, intellectual, and radical. But also, at the same time, he wasn’t good at living his own life. The song establishes that there is a recognition of my own stupidity and flaws on this album, that it’s funny and also that we\'re not holding back at all—we’re going in at a hundred percent.” **“Pretty in Possible”** “If ‘Welcome to My Island’ is the insane overture, ‘Pretty in Possible’ finds me at street level, just daydreaming. I wanted to do something with as little structure as possible where you just enter a song vocally and just flow and there\'s no discernible verses or choruses. It’s actually a surprisingly difficult memo to stick to because it\'s so easy to get into these little patterns and want to bring them back. I managed to refuse the repetition of stuff—except for, of course, the opening vocals, which are a nod to Suzanne Vega, definitely. It’s my favorite song on the album, mostly because I got to be so free inside of it. It’s a very simple song, outside a beautiful string section inspired by Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy.’ Those dark, dense strings give this song a sadness and depth that come out of nowhere. These orchestral swells at the end of songs became a compositional motif on the album.” **“Bunny Is a Rider”** “A spicy little summer song about being unavailable, which includes my favorite bassline of the album—this quite minimal funk bassline. Structurally on this one, I really wanted it to flow without people having a sense of the traditional dynamics between verses and choruses. Timbaland was a massive influence on that song—especially around how the beat essentially doesn\'t change the whole song. You just enter it and flow. ‘Bunny Is a Rider’ was a set of words that just flowed out without me thinking too much about it. And the next thing I know, we made ‘Bunny Is a Rider’ thongs. I love getting occasional Instagram tags of people in their ‘Bunny Is a Rider’ thongs. An endless source of happiness for me.” **“Sunset”** “This was a song I began writing with Sega Bodega in 2020. It sounded completely nothing like the others. It had a folk feel, it was gypsy Spanish, Italian, Greek feel to it. It completely made me look at the album differently—and start to see a visual world for them that was a bit more folk, but living very much in the swirl of city life, having this connection to a secret, underground level of antiquity and the universalities of art. It was written right around a month or two after Ennio Morricone passed away, so I\'d been thinking a lot about this epic tone of his work, and about how sunsets are the biggest film clichés in spaghetti westerns. We were laughing about how it felt really flamenco and Spanish—not knowing that a few months later, I was going to find myself kicked out of the UK because I\'d overstayed my visa without realizing it, and so I moved my sessions with Sega to Barcelona. It felt like the song had been a bit of a premonition that that chapter-writing was going to happen. We ended up getting this incredible Spanish guitarist, Marc Lopez, to play the part.” **“Crude Drawing of an Angel”** “‘Crude Drawing of an Angel’ was born, in some ways, out of me thinking about jokingly having invented the word ‘scorny’—which is scary and horny at the same time. I have a playlist of scorny music that I\'m still working on and I realized that it was a tone that I\'d never actually explored. I was also reading John Berger\'s book on drawing \[2005’s *Berger on Drawing*\] and thinking about trace-leaving as a form of drawing, and as an extremely beautiful way of looking at sensuality. This song is set in a hotel room in which the word ‘drawing’ takes on six different meanings. It imagines watching someone wake up, not realizing they\'re being observed, whilst drawing them, knowing that\'s probably the last time you\'re going to see them.” **“I Believe”** “‘I Believe’ is a real dedication to a tone. I was in Italy midway through the pandemic and heard this song called ‘Ti Sento’ by Matia Bazar at a house party that blew my mind. It was the way she was singing that blew me away—that she was pushing her voice absolutely to the limit, and underneath were these incredible key changes where every chorus would completely catch you off guard. But she would kind of propel herself right through the center of it. And it got me thinking about the archetype of the diva vocally—about how really it\'s very womanly that it’s a woman\'s voice and not a girl\'s voice. That there’s a sense of authority and a sense of passion and also an acknowledgment of either your power to heal or your power to destroy. At the same time, I was processing the loss of my friend SOPHIE and was thinking about her actually as a form of diva archetype; a lot of our shared taste in music, especially ’80s music, kind of lined up with a lot of those attitudes. So I wanted to dedicate these lyrics to her.” **“Fly to You” (feat. Grimes and Dido)** “A very simple song at its core. It\'s about this sense of resolution that can come with finally seeing someone after being separated from them for a while. And when a lot of misunderstanding and distrust can seep in with that distance, the kind of miraculous feeling of clearing that murk to find that sort of miraculous resolution and clarity. And so in this song, Grimes, Dido, and I kind of find our different version of that. But more so than anything literal, this song is really about beauty, I think, about all of us just leaning into this kind of euphoric, forward-flowing movement in our singing and flying over these crystalline tiny drum and bass breaks that are accompanied by these big Ibiza guitar solos and kind of Nintendo flutes, and finding this place where very detailed electronic music and very pure singing can meet in the middle. And I think it\'s something that, it\'s a kind of feeling that all of us have done different versions of in our music and now we get to together.” **“Blood and Butter”** “This was written as a bit of a challenge between me and Danny L Harle where we tried to contain an entire song to two chords, which of course we do fail at, but only just. It’s a pastoral, it\'s a psychedelic folk song. It imagines itself set in England in the summer, in June. It\'s also a love letter to a lot of the music I listened to growing up—these very trance-like, mantra-like songs, like Donna Lewis’ ‘I Love You Always Forever,’ a lot of Madonna’s *Ray of Light* album, Savage Garden—that really pulsing, tantric electronic music that has a quite sweet and folksy edge to it. The solo is played by a hugely talented and brilliant bagpipe player named Brighde Chaimbeul, whose album *The Reeling* I\'d found in 2022 and became quite obsessed with.” **“Hopedrunk Everasking”** “I couldn\'t really decide if this song needed to be about death or about being deeply, deeply in love. I then had this revelation around the idea of tunneling, this idea of retreating into the tunnel, which I think I feel sometimes when I\'m very deeply in love. The feeling of wanting to retreat from the rest of the world and block the whole rest of the world out just to be around someone and go into this place that only they and I know. And then simultaneously in my very few relationships with losing someone, I did feel some this sense of retreat, of someone going into their own body and away from the world. And the song feels so deeply primal to me. The melody and chords of it were written with Danny L Harle, ironically during the Dua Lipa tour—when I had never been in more of a pop atmosphere in my entire life.” **“Butterfly Net”** “‘Butterfly Net’ is maybe the most narrative storyteller moment on the whole album. And also, palette-wise, deviates from the more hybrid electronic palette that we\'ve been in to go fully into this 1960s drum reverb band atmosphere. I\'m playing an organ solo. I was listening to a lot of ’60s Italian music, and the way they use reverbs as a holder of the voice and space and very minimal arrangements to such incredible effect. It\'s set in three parts, which was somewhat inspired by this triptych of songs called ‘Chansons de Bilitis’ by Claude Debussy that I had learned to sing with my opera teacher. I really liked that structure of the finding someone falling in love, the deepening of it, and then the tragedy at the end. It uses the metaphor of the butterfly net to speak about the inability to keep memories, to keep love, to keep the feeling of someone\'s presence. The children\'s choir \[London\'s Trinity Choir\] we hear on ‘Billions’ comes in again—they get their beautiful feature at the end where their voices actually become the stand-in for the light of the world being onto me.” **“Smoke”** “It was, most importantly, the first song for the album written with a breakbeat, which inspired me to carry on down that path. It’s about catharsis. The opening line is about pretending that something isn\'t catastrophic when it obviously is. It\'s about denial. It\'s about pretending that the situation or your feelings for someone aren\'t tectonic, but of course they are. And then, of course, in the chorus, everything pours right out. But tonally it feels like I\'m at home base with ‘Smoke.’ It has links to songs like \[2019’s\] ‘Pang,’ which, for me, have this windswept feeling of being quite out of control, but are also very soulful and carried by the music. We\'re getting a much more nocturnal, clattery, chaotic picture.” **“Billions”** “‘Billions’ is last for all the same reasons that \'Welcome to My Island’ is first. It dissolves into total selflessness, whereas the album opens with total selfishness. The Beach Boys’ ‘Surf’s Up’ is one of my favorite songs of all time. I cannot listen to it without sobbing. But the nonlinear, spiritual, tumbling, open quality of that song was something that I wanted to bring into the song. But \'Billions\' is really about pure sensuality, about all agenda falling away and just the gorgeous sensuality of existing in this world that\'s so full of abundance, and so full of contradictions, humor, and eroticism. It’s a cheeky sailboat trip through all these feelings. You know that feeling of when you\'re driving a car to the beach, that first moment when you turn the corner and see the ocean spreading out in front of you? That\'s what I wanted the ending of this album to feel like: The song goes very quiet all of a sudden, and then you see the water and the children\'s choir comes in.”

Chappell Roan is not afraid to tell you—or, really, sing at you—about how she\'s feeling, in vivid detail. On her debut album, the Missouri-born upstart, who has been making waves since the 2017 release of her intense debut single “Good Hurt,” collects tales of debauchery and despair as it chronicles her realization of being queer and coming into her own. *The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess* opens with Roan singing mournfully about a dastardly ex-boyfriend over trembling pianos and starlit choirs; an insistent beat rises up gradually at first, then overtakes the song as she realizes she needs to be part of a “Femininomenon” that demands pleasure and respect from anyone lucky enough to be in her orbit. Left turns like that abound over the next 13 songs. Take the synth-pop “Casual,” which dissects a friends-with-benefits relationship in brutally specific detail, or the euphoric club cut “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl,” an insouciant dismissal of “hyper mega bummer boys” that opens with a sardonic mini-monologue and closes with a triumphant sing-along. Roan still traffics in ballads, too: “California” grapples with homesickness and frustration, Roan dipping down into her voice\'s low reaches, while the plush “Coffee” examines the idea of fully closing the loop with an ex, with the reality of its impossibility closing in as the music swells. There\'s a hunger that drives Roan\'s music, even in its more introspective moments. It isn\'t just sexual, although songs like the smirking poison-pen letter “My Kink Is Karma” and the flirty electro-psych come-on “Red Wine Supernova” show off how Roan\'s erotic awakening has helped her whole outlook on life come into sharp relief. Her willingness to take pop in unexpected directions, combined with her frankness about the tangled feelings that arise even when good things seem to be happening, make her debut compulsively listenable.

Nigerian superstar Davido has turned the pursuit of exhilaration into high art throughout his career. Much of the singer’s decade-plus reign at the top of Afropop has been spent in the construction of rapturous moments when the barrier between music, audience, and performer explodes into white-hot moments of manic ecstasy. Every album release has felt like a furtherance of that quest. He announced his arrival on the scene with 2012’s *Omo Baba Olowo*, a swashbuckling cache of songs that presented him as an iconoclastic figure with a dream of reshaping the genre’s defined order. On his sophomore LP, *A Good Time*, Davido reflected on his rising global profile vis-à-vis Afropop’s western push, while album number three, *A Better Time*, stood out as a beacon of light from the lonesome, uncertain moodscape of 2020’s COVID-19 disruptions. As with all success stories, these moments of elation and escape have come with prickly instances of sorrow and pain. *Timeless*, Davido’s highly anticipated fourth album, follows a period of such intensely personal losses and an extended retreat from the public eye after the tragic passing of his son in 2022. Across *Timeless*’s 17 tracks, Davido responds with an elder’s acceptance, prioritizing soothing self-preservation over blinding euphoria and returning with songs that are as measured as they are assured of his success over whatever forces might arise against him. The opening song, “OVER DEM,” takes a reference from the biblical story of David and Goliath to make a point about his inevitable rise, hinting at an introspective turn from Afropop’s premier party-starter. Other songs like “GODFATHER,” “AWAY,” and “LCND” offer a glimpse into the singer’s id as he dissects pain, seeks healing, and comes to terms with his titanic profile. However, *Timeless* is not only about drawing strength to go on; there are more of the romantic slappers that Davido has made a stock-in-trade (“NO COMPETITION” and “FOR THE ROAD”) as well a bouncy hip-hop-influenced collab with grime don Skepta (“U \[JUJU\]”) before things round up with the fiery “Champion Sound.” Overall, *Timeless* is an instructive look into the life of a phenom who has dealt with the darkest of times and come out raring to go again.

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

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

Physical copies at Convulserecords.com

When Olivia Rodrigo shocked the pop music landscape with her ballad “drivers license,” she drew influence from an unexpected place: Gracie Abrams, an introspective bedroom-pop newcomer with an incredible knack for writing her interior world into a whispered hook—and who had yet to release a debut LP. *Good Riddance*, Abrams’ first full-length, is a triumph, from coming-of-age rockers (“Difficult”), mournful ruminations on past relationships (“I Know it won’t work”), and guitar ballads (“Full machine”) to the lyrical wisdom that only comes with distance (“You were there all the time/You’re the worst of my crimes/You fell hard/I thought good riddance” in the opener “Best”). Straight from the frank, lushly detailed Taylor Swift school of songwriting, Abrams has clearly learned a thing or two from her tourmate; for good measure, *Good Riddance* was co-written with one of Swift’s collaborators, Aaron Dessner of The National.

Eighteen months before *a Gift & a Curse*, Gunna was in a very different position. The Georgia native ushered in 2022 with the chart-topping success of *DRIP SEASON 4EVER* and its lexicon-altering hit “pushin P” with Young Thug. In May of that year, both he and his YSL label boss found themselves under indictment in a sweeping RICO case. By December, he was free, only to be faced with wild speculation over the terms of his release. Caught up in the fallout, he clapped back over the rumors and narratives that formed about and around him with the single “bread & butter.” Scarred and singed by some of the most damaging accusations one could face in the rap game or the streets, he unloads his lyrical clip in spectacular fashion on his first album since his arrest. Throughout *a Gift & a Curse*, Gunna makes it a point to address his predicament head-on, offering a perspective as unique as the circumstances. A defiant superstar, he reintroduces himself to his fans and haters alike on the simmering “back at it,” following it swiftly with the confident and confrontational “back to the moon.” He shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders over what’s changed with “idk nomore” while returning to the lavish normalcy of his pre-arrest lifestyle via “rodeo dr” and “p angels.” For the grand finale, “alright,” he sees the path forward clearer than ever, shouting out YSL amid a hopeful chorus.

Rooms feature everywhere on Holly Humberstone’s debut album—including in its title, *Paint My Bedroom Black*. That wasn’t a conscious move, says the British singer-songwriter, but it’s reflective of when the record was made, on tour in 2022. “I’d say I spent 90 percent of the year on the road, which I loved,” she tells Apple Music. “My favorite times were last year. But it’s also such an emotional roller coaster: traveling, being in different cities. I started to feel like I was living this weird double life and was struggling to connect with the people back home. I lost sense of who I was a little bit.” *Paint My Bedroom Black*—written in “grounding” sessions between tour dates—captures Humberstone’s yearning for those people back home and her guilt at not being around enough (see the self-castigating “Antichrist”), but also tentative new love (album standout “Kissing in Swimming Pools”), the simple joy of reuniting with someone you’ve missed (“Room Service,” which recalls José González’s “Heartbeats”), and realizing you see the same sky as the people you’re miles away from (the d4vd-featuring “Superbloodmoon”). And here, Humberstone embraces the brooding alt-pop that earmarked her as one of the UK’s most promising young singer-songwriters, but expands it too, with touches of country and Americana (she credits her love of Kacey Musgraves and Springsteen for this), skittering electro-pop (“Flatlining”), plenty of vocoder, and even ’90s breakbeats (“Lauren”). All of which, to Humberstone, feels like “chaos.” “There’s so much going on, every track is a different story and something new that I’m trying to figure out,” she says. But when the album was finished, she realized it also captured two distinct parts of herself. “I didn’t do it on purpose, but to me, the album is split in two. There’s one side that’s my extrovert self, reclaiming my love for everybody back home and reaching out,” she says. “And then the other side, which is just wanting to shut everything out.” Read on as Humberstone lets us in on her debut record—and both of those sides—one track at a time. **“Paint My Bedroom Black”** “This was such a release to write. I had a couple of days off and my producer Rob \[Milton\] flew over to join me in New York. We got a little studio and it was the biggest relief after such a long time. To me this feels like a really intimate track—like I’m wanting to shut everything out. I didn’t write it about anybody. It just came from things that I was feeling about myself and about the world that I was finding myself in. It was just reclaiming myself a little bit. But there’s something positive about it, it feels like the start of something.” **“Into Your Room”** “I didn’t realize until I finished the record, but rooms come up in nearly every song. This time we were in LA and Rob flew over again and we went in with Ethan Gruska \[boygenius, Phoebe Bridgers, Ryan Beatty\]. A theme of this album is feeling like I was neglecting people at home and not being there for the people I wanted to be there for—and I wanted to turn those things into something that felt positive. It’s a love song about wanting to be close to someone. We were trying to get across an embrace of somebody after not having seen them for such a long time—\[I was\] proclaiming my love for people back home. The production is really upbeat and sparkly and shiny.” **“Cocoon”** “I got off tour and was trying to navigate picking things up at home after being away for so long. It’s really hard getting back home and being jet-lagged, and then that rolling into not wanting to get out of bed \[or\] face the fact that I’ve returned to normal life. Mental health and feeling depressed isn’t an easy thing to write about but it felt really important to do that. An angsty, guitar-heavy song was fun and really healing to write.” **“Kissing in Swimming Pools”** “We wrote and recorded it in a day and didn’t change much. It’s about the start of a relationship. I’d gotten home and been able to see this person a little bit more, and it was just a really positive thing that was going on in my life alongside the stresses of trying to write an album, being on tour, and being away. I just wanted to write a love song for this person, that was all there was to it. Everything felt live and washy and reverbing, because that’s how those feelings are.” **“Ghost Me”** “One of my strengths and downfalls is that I form really strong attachments to people and then become dependent on them—I cling onto people a lot. When everything else is changing, I find it really comforting to know that the people back home are still there and that they’re kind of a constant. I think that this song especially is me wanting to literally clutch on for dear life to these people. The voice note at the end is my friend Lauren. She had sent it to me earlier that day and I just thought it was hilarious. We put it in, thinking that it was a joke and that we were probably going to take it out at a later date. But it just never ended up coming out.” **“Superbloodmoon” (feat. d4vd)** “I’d been a fan of d4vd’s for a while and knew he was in London, so reached out. I’d had the title ‘Superbloodmoon’ in my notes and something like ‘The Superbloodmoon, can you see it from where you are?’ He was able to relate to me quite a lot with the touring and being away from home and wanting that one thing that would connect you back to the people you were longing to see. I’m so grateful to d4vd for being so down to be part of it.” **“Antichrist”** “This is about the end of my first proper relationship where I just couldn’t be enough for them. And just feeling like a bit of a letdown, I guess. Obviously I’m over-exaggerating \[in the song\]—I’m not actually a terrible person! I feel like you hear a lot of breakup songs and being brokenhearted and somebody hurting you, but I’d never really heard many songs about being on the other side of it and how that can also break your heart a little bit, about who you thought you were. It’s kind of an apology song.” **“Lauren”** “This was another with Rob and Ethan. We’d been in a new space in London for a good few days and I’d not been able to make any progress with writing. The studio had this old-fashioned drum machine and it was about building something that felt cool from that to try and spark some sort of inspiration. Ethan built this weird drum loop and then I jumped on the Wurlitzer and started playing some kind of darker chords underneath. And that’s where the song came from.” **“Baby Blues”** “There’s the voice note from Lauren and there’s the song ‘Lauren’ about her obviously. I wrote quite a lot of songs about her. I wrote this about her coming to visit—she’d come to visit me and then she’d left. I wanted to write about seeing her getting off the train and being across the zebra crossing from me and just getting to see somebody that I loved again. It was so simple. I got addicted to the demo—I thought it was perfect, this little snippet. A little breath.” **“Flatlining”** “The person I wrote ‘Antichrist’ about moved literally down the road from me, with a friend. When you have the same friends, your lives are kind of intwined and at some point you’re going to run into each other. It’s that fear of being ambushed by old feelings that I really just want to bury and not think about. But it ended up being totally fine and, after I wrote this, I felt like we were friends again, which is weird because the chorus is, ‘We just can’t be friends anymore.’ But I think I have a tendency to blow things out of proportion! We introduced the little heart monitor sounds and I think you can hear the anxiety in the percussion—the feeling of not knowing where your head is at or how things are going to play out. It’s an anxiety-inducing song, for sure.” **“Elvis Impersonators”** “I wanted to write about my sister being away—she lives in Tokyo and she must have such a different life that I have nothing to do with, which is really hard to grasp. I really don’t know the person that she is over there. We’d been to visit her before the pandemic and we had this really hilarious night out where there were all of these Michael Jackson and Elvis impersonators. It was just really bizarre but funny, and I wanted to put it into a song. But this is really about missing a sister.” **“Girl”** “It’s yearning for a deeper connection. I think when you’re away, you meet so many people and so many things that seem superficial and surface level. I think the yearning in my voice in this song represents what it’s about.” **“Room Service”** “I’m sure a lot of people are a lot busier than me and have a lot more on their plate than me and have to travel a lot more than I do. But for me, I’m still learning to navigate this side of my life and being away from home more than I’m used to. This song was about wanting to go somewhere really cool and then just shut ourselves in our room, order room service, and catch up: This is the only place that I want to be, the only thing that really matters. Which is how I feel about my friends and everybody I wrote this album about. It felt like the closing track because it sums everything up to me in a really nice way. It feels like the closing of the chapter.”

Just when it looked like The Hustla was about to leave us hanging for another summer—third album *Beautiful and Brutal Yard* arrived for 2023. When news first broke of the long-awaited album, fans were immediately alarmed by the lack of credits for JAE5. Exploring his range away from the guidance of his former exec producer and Afroswing architect, has, though, seen J Hus stage a coup on the direction of his own sound. Here, he turns up the dial on his flickering emotions: careering from aggressor to party-starter via lover boy at dizzying speeds. TSB holds the reins chiefly on production here—but it’s undoubtedly J Hus calling the shots now. Follow on for our pick of five highlights from *B.A.B.Y.*. **“Massacre”** Straight after the bright horns and gruff, motivational intro (“THE GOAT”), it’s “Massacre” where *B.A.B.Y.* shifts into gear. The sharp, sexy chords of the beat (produced by Marco Bernardis and P2J) was featured on the album’s visual trailer—narrated by Idris Elba. In the short clip, an invite to Hus’ yard, the London actor states, “Imagine if the heart was not designed to express love or pain, but to express ultimate power: the core of masculinity.” This internal struggle, in spite of all his success, is still key to understanding a mind as complex and chaotic as J Hus’. **“Who Told You” (feat. Drake)** A solid contender for the song of summer 2023, and a track fans have been waiting for since Drake declared his admiration for J Hus on stage at London’s O2 Arena in 2019. If we were worried about the absence of JAE5, this stellar single (produced by P2J, E.y, and Gaetan Judd) put all fears to bed. An infectious anthem on not being too tough to bust a move that certainly lives up to its billing. These badmen dance, and we should follow their lead. **“Militerian” (feat. Naira Marley)** The Marlian meets the Militerian on this swinging combination of sounds from sons of the African diaspora. Slick, pidgin-infused lyricism mingle within crisp production that wouldn’t sound out of place at Fela’s The Shrine in the ’70s. **“Cream” (feat. CB)** J Hus teased a snippet of this track way back in 2020. A month before release he declared it “The Hardest in Drill History” on Instagram. And when the rankings are eventually drawn up one day, this collaboration between Newham’s finest should at least be considered. Hus is joined by infamous driller CB—three years into a 23-year prison sentence when *B.A.B.Y* was released—on this blaring ode to money-making, to cement his legacy. **“Nice Body”** All the stars are out across the album’s genre-fluid features. There’s Popcaan (“Killy”) and Burna Boy (“Masculine”) flying their flag for their regions. And here’s the UK’s Jorja Smith, laying a sweet half-sung verse—a trick she also pulled off beautifully alongside Giggs on 2020’s “Im Workin.” An introduction to this joyful pairing that we hope to hear much more of.

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

Five years after her critically acclaimed studio debut *Lost & Found*, Jorja Smith returns more self-assured than ever. On *falling or flying*, the UK singer-songwriter stays true to her roots, her lush tone draping over jazzy, futuristic production, while cuts like “GO GO GO” give listeners access to Smith’s more lighthearted side as she dips into indie rock territory. While *Lost & Found* exuded the energy of an exploratory coming-of-age for the then-19-year-old, *falling or flying* is a brutally honest expression of all the artist has learned. In her return to the musical spotlight, Smith also found her way back to her hometown of Walsall after spending a handful of years in London, during which time she worked on her sophomore album. *falling or flying* represents the singer’s blossoming sense of self amidst relentless public opinion, once again proving her intricate capabilities as a storyteller through both lyricism and vocal prowess.

When BTS began a group hiatus in 2022 to allow the members to perform mandatory military service, Jung Kook used the opportunity to collaborate with Western artists and producers for his solo album debut, *GOLDEN*. The result is an 11-track English-language LP that is not only perfectly primed for a mainstream American listening audience, but also embraces an exploration of more explicitly sexy subject matter for the Korean superstar. Pre-release tracks “Seven” (featuring Latto), about the power of good sex, and “3D” (featuring Jack Harlow), about the limits of good phone sex, immediately set the tone for *GOLDEN*’s role in showcasing a more adult side of Jung Kook. The latter track was written (alongside BloodPop® and Harlow) by “Dynamite” co-writer David Stewart, who also contributes to *GOLDEN* with breakup tracks “Too Sad to Dance” (“And this Christmas, I got no gifts/Do I really deserve all this?”) and “Shot Glass of Tears” (“She got some dangerous hobbies/Like chasing after the sun and making me fall in love”). Elsewhere on *GOLDEN*, Jung Kook explores other relationship themes. Ed Sheeran has a co-writing credit on the playful, boy-band-esque bop “Yes or No” about maybe falling in love (“Are you feeling the rush?/If so, then I think I know what\'s going on”), while Shawn Mendes was behind the scenes for “Hate You,” a confessional broken-heart ballad (“I’m gonna hate you/Paint you like the villain that you never were/I\'m gonna blame you/For things that you don\'t do”). On “Somebody,” Jung Kook tells the story of a person who is ready to move on from a relationship (“Oh, I hoped you\'d find somebody/I hope you know that somebody ain\'t me”), while “Please Don’t Change” is a plea from one star-crossed lover to another that they stay the same until they can find a way to be together (“Please don’t change/’Cause I love you, yeah, I love you”).

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

“I spent a lot of moments in my life trying to represent that I was a *bichota*—a boss girl—but I wasn’t feeling that way completely,” KAROL G tells Apple Music. “It’s good and normal sometimes, feeling not that good and not in that mood—but that tomorrow is going to be beautiful.” That sentiment resonates from the first few moments of *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO*, on the lively opener “MIENTRAS ME CURO DEL CORA.” After dramatically impacting the very landscape of global Latin music with 2021’s career-defining *KG0516*, the Colombian superstar is now focused on what the future holds. If KAROL G’s phenomenal 2022 run of hit singles, from “PROVENZA” to “GATÚBELA” to “CAIRO,” whet her fans’ appetites, the bold and confessional *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO* provides them with a downright decadent musical feast. Boasting an eclectic series of collaborations with the likes of Carla Morrison, Sean Paul, and Sech, to name a few, her latest album intrepidly explores sounds both familiar and previously unexplored as she further refines and even redefines her artistry. From the FINNEAS-produced alt-pop of “TUS GAFITAS” to the música mexicana stylings of “GUCCI LOS PAÑOS,” *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO* sets a high bar across genres. All the while, she delivers powerhouse vocal performances with deeply personal lyrics bound to resonate with listeners. “I was scared to just show that vulnerability,” she says. “But this is the way my album came out, and now I just feel proud.” Among its numerous highlights, the undeniable centerpiece of *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO* is the momentous Shakira team-up “TQG,” an intergenerational and empowering single that unites these Colombian superstars at long last. “I was just seeing what was happening with Shakira in her personal life, and I was like, ‘You know what? Let me contact her,’” she says of the track, one that had been shelved prior to recording this historic feature. “It was worth it for me to launch it again, for girls to represent that moment of the life.” Read more about some of KAROL G’s favorite *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO* songs below. **“X SI VOLVEMOS”** “I believe that this duet with Romeo was, in fact, destined. The story of choosing Romeo began when I had originally finished the song. For a long period, I found myself unsatisfied with the end result, as if it was a recipe missing its final ingredient. After replaying the song, the thought of duetting with Romeo felt like the perfect idea. I felt that his voice, charisma, and undeniable sensuality would give life to this passionate track. Days after, I decided to post the track on social media, and coincidentally \[in\] what felt like destiny, Romeo reached out to say he loved the song and that he wanted to join. He was the secret ingredient, and this song wouldn’t be complete without his ‘so nasty’ spice.” **“TQG”** “My collaboration with Shakira is a dream come true. She has always been a reference for me, besides being Colombian. She is the kind of artist that you follow throughout their career and dream about how, one day, you want to represent your country in the incredible way that she has done. Working with her has been an enriching experience, and I have learned a lot from her. My admiration is profound. After Shakira sang about her own breakup, I shared the lyrics of ‘TQG’ with her, a song about that stage when you are ready to rip the bandages off and get back on your feet. She loved the lyrics and felt they represented her; in the end, we finished the song together.” **“TUS GAFITAS”** “‘TUS GAFITAS’ represents something special for me; I got to work with FINNEAS on this track, which also happened to be the first love song I wrote for *MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO*. I was heading to Cairo to shoot a video clip when I wrote the lyrics, which I think was symbolic of where I was on my healing journey. It was a fulfilling experience at many levels, personally and creatively, as I was also involved in the production process.” **“OJOS FERRARI”** “I love blending different genres together, and introducing dembow as an eccentric, upbeat track was essential to deliver my idea of a diverse album. My favorite part about the creative process is being able to collaborate with talent that have fresh ideas. Angel Dior and \[Justin\] Quiles brought that energy to the song. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be sad or profound but can also be a source of joy and excitement.” **“DAÑAMOS LA AMISTAD”** “I always have a great time working with Sech; he is incredibly talented. In “DAÑAMOS LA AMISTAD,” our styles fuse together perfectly to create a unique sound with its own flow and energy. We are thrilled with the final product and hope our fans will be too.” **“MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO”** “The album’s name is a phrase I repeated to myself when I saw or felt that things were wrong. I felt like I was going through a grand moment in my career, but I was very disconnected from myself and my surroundings. Sometimes, despite so many blessings that life had given me, I didn’t feel happy. So, every day I would say to myself, ‘No matter what, tomorrow it will be nice, tomorrow it will be nice.’ And that’s the message I want to convey to you, that even though life sometimes puts us in situations that no matter how bad they hurt us or how cloudy it gets, the next day, the sun will come out, and everything will be beautiful.”

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

In 2020, Kiana Ledé debuted her album *KIKI*, an honest, vulnerable 17-track dissertation on love and heartbreak that details every stage of dating. Since her debut, the singer-songwriter has been working on honing her writing and her mental health. “I really sat with myself and realized who and what I needed in my life and what was necessary and what wasn’t,” she tells Apple Music. “I did a lot of refreshing and starting over. I gave myself the permission and the freedom, rather than waiting for someone else to give it to me, to take control of my own life.” On her sophomore LP, *Grudges*, the singer-songwriter details her feelings after experiencing a breakup and takes listeners through every stage of her emotions, from bitterness (“Bitter Bitch,” “Same Type”), anger (“LMK”), and regret (“Too Far”) to finding peace (“Closure”). “I’m not going through these same moments right now, and I’m still bitter as fuck with a lot of this shit,” she says. “I swear that I’m over you, but not the shit that you put me through. That is the general theme of the entire album.” Throughout each song on *Grudges*, Ledé is heartfelt, vulnerable, and self-reflective, knowing that to move forward, she must release the pain and resentment from her past—even though it’s still a work in progress. “Say to your face/You caused me pain/Tried to move on/But I do it wrong/Carry the weight/They say I’m strong/But it’s gon’ weigh on,” she croons on the title track. She finds respite on the track “Deserve,” which she wrote about the person who sexually assaulted her. “It really felt like something that I needed to get off my chest,” she says. “I’m very open about mental health, sexual assault, but this was something that was a lot deeper than what I usually talk about. I really wanted to tap into that part of me that was strong enough to sing it. That was a lot for me to write, but I loved it because it also helped me process and it helped me get a lot of aggression out.” *Grudges* is a progression of Ledé’s releasing her negative emotions towards her entanglements with love. Instead of holding on, she finds the strength to face herself and take the necessary steps to let go.

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

Lana Del Rey has mastered the art of carefully constructed, high-concept alt-pop records that bask in—and steadily amplify—her own mythology; with each album we become more enamored by, and yet less sure of, who she is. This is, of course, part of her magic and the source of much of her artistic power. Her records bid you to worry less about parsing fact from fiction and, instead, free-fall into her theatrical aesthetic—a mix of gloomy Americana, Laurel Canyon nostalgia, and Hollywood noir that was once dismissed as calculation and is now revered as performance art. Up until now, these slippery, surrealist albums have made it difficult to separate artist from art. But on her introspective ninth album, something seems to shift: She appears to let us in a little. She appears to let down her guard. The opening track is called “The Grants”—a nod to her actual family name. Through unusually revealing, stream-of-conscious songs that feel like the most poetic voice notes you’ve ever heard, she chastises her siblings, wonders about marriage, and imagines what might come with motherhood and midlife. “Do you want children?/Do you wanna marry me?” she sings on “Sweet.” “Do you wanna run marathons in Long Beach by the sea?” This is relatively new lyrical territory for Del Rey, who has generally tended to steer around personal details, and the songs themselves feel looser and more off-the-cuff (they were mostly produced with longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff). It could be that Lana has finally decided to start peeling back a few layers, but for an artist whose entire catalog is rooted in clever imagery, it’s best to leave room for imagination. The only clue might be in the album’s single piece of promo, a now-infamous billboard in Tulsa, Oklahoma, her ex-boyfriend’s hometown. She settled the point fairly quickly on Instagram. “It’s personal,” she wrote.

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

One of Icelandic singer-songwriter-pianist Laufey’s primary concerns beyond just making her style of vocal jazz is to bring jazz, in general, to a younger audience. Hosting live sessions on TikTok and Instagram and getting co-signs from Billie Eilish and WILLOW are a couple ways she’s managed to connect to her peers, but it is the music—and, more specifically, the lyrics—that really does the heavy lifting. Laufey (pronounced *LAY-vay*) is a traditionalist at heart, and her influences (think Billie Holiday and Chet Baker) shine through in the melancholic torch songs that make up her second album. (She also regularly covers the standards, and includes a version of Erroll Garner and Johnny Burke’s “Misty” here.) But it’s in the decidedly modern words she sings where she makes new breakthroughs. A tune like “While You Were Sleeping” could be a lost Songbook addition, but its lyrics—“I\'m dancing down streets/Smiling to strangers/Idiotic things/I trace it all back/3:30 am”—draw a solid line between today and the past. Yet still, her voice’s richness and her phrasing are as spellbinding as those of many of her icons. Her songs can be inventive and playful, forlorn and wrenching, and she sings of love and lack thereof with a depth beyond her 24 years. But it’s in those unexpected, fanciful twists where Laufey really impresses. In “Letter to My 13 Year Old Self,” she sings about the awkwardness of teenage years with a sensitivity and frankness that’s very much a product of the present day.

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

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

After Maisie Peters released her 2021 debut, *You Signed Up for This*, she was hit by a feeling of anticlimax. “It was honestly a bit of a strange time for me,” she tells Apple Music. “I’d been so proud of the album. I’d worked so hard on it, but it was done and I found it very difficult to fathom that. I didn’t know what to do, actually physically, with myself.” Naturally, Peters—who’s always been a prolific songwriter—got straight back into the studio. And it soon turned out she had a lot to write about: There was a big breakup, the slow and careful process of piecing herself together again, and, in 2022, a tour, with Peters writing the rest of her second LP in between live dates. “I had so much to say because I was going through a personal crisis, one could say,” she says. “I just wanted to have it down on paper, how I felt, what had happened. I was trying to be honest.” When Peters says that, you know she means it. This is a singer-songwriter whose trademark is radical candor. Here, you can expect songs about crushing insecurity (the superb “Body Better”), missing someone even though they’ve hurt you (“Want You Back”), and wishing you could go back to before any of this happened (“Two Weeks Ago”). But there are also clear-skies moments, as Peters slowly moves on (see “There It Goes,” a poignant moment about the healing power of time passing) and realizes she’s better off without. And it’s all set against assured, infectious, and often synth-led pop laced with tender piano ballads and sassy anthems inspired by Shania Twain or Britney Spears. “This is my big life lesson of 2022,” adds Peters of the material here. Read on as the singer lets us in on the record’s creation—and what it, and the 12 months that inspired it, taught her. **You know what you’re doing more with album two.** “After the first album, I felt like I’d done a round of the track in my F1 car. This time it was like, ‘OK, I know what I’m doing a little bit now. I’ve done this before.’ I was touring so much that I just didn’t have time to think about it—I just had to make it. But there was a pressure for myself. I loved my first album and know it meant so much to my fans. I just felt this huge pressure to make something else that meant as much. When people ask me who I’m making music for, it’s primarily me, but there are also about 30 girls on Instagram too. I think about them constantly. But there was a point when I was probably doing it too much and had to say, ‘I can’t have these people on my mind.’ They love me because it’s me, so I need to trust that.” **Going to Sweden taught me about pushing boundaries.** “After the first album came out, I went to Sweden for the first time in October 2021. I worked with Fat Max Gsus (Tove Lo, Lewis Capaldi, Zara Larsson), Oscar Görres (Troye Sivan, Taylor Swift, Britney Spears), and First Aid Kit’s Klara Söderberg. It was a game changer for me, and I was so in love with the way these guys write music. The cliché of Sweden is that it’s pop by numbers—and obviously they’ve written some of the biggest hits in the world. But out of everyone I’ve ever worked with, the Swedish crew were the most open and the most interested in pushing boundaries. It’s easy to feel like you have to work within a set of guidelines—and I very much learned not to do that.” **You don’t realize how lyrically honest you can be until you go there.** “With a song like ‘Body Better,’ we’re sat there dissecting my innermost insecurities and deepest fears. There is a separation between feeling something deeply and writing it—I don’t write songs sitting there and sobbing. But this album taught me that I could do that \[be so lyrically honest\] and that I could go to those places.” **It also taught me that I won’t feel like this forever.** “There’s a Lucy Dacus song, ‘Night Shift,’ where she goes, ‘In five years, I hope the songs feel like covers.’ At some stage, it does—and you can’t believe you once felt like that. When I released ‘Two Weeks Ago,’ it was a year on from when I wrote it. It was an accurate reflection of who I was then, just a transcript of my brain. It was interesting to release it when I was in such a different place. I can recognize who I was and I’m very fond of the girl who wrote that song. It’s sort of like a shadow you have that’s walked off on its own. This album is the coolest reminder of what’s passed—it was an era of my life that I’m out of now and grateful for, but I don’t miss it.” **I needed a song to tie the bow.** “‘There It Goes’ is almost a sister song to ‘Two Weeks Ago.’ It was another screenshot of my mind. I’d just gone back to London after touring, we’d thrown a house party and I’d gone to a yoga class to try to get better. We were hanging up art. I was going on dates. And that song was so important to me, because this whole album was a reflection of my life, and I needed a song that tied the bow. I couldn’t let this record exist without a song that reminds me—and tells everyone else—that there is an ending to this. There’s a lyric on the song: ‘The comedown of closure/The girls and I do yoga/I wake up and it’s October/The loss is yours.’ Suddenly everything is a bit boring in the nicest way ever. You’re not angry. You’re not bitter. You’re just going to yoga or going on a walk. I find it really moving to talk about that song. I also learned that you can dig your heels in and think, ‘I refuse to feel anything apart from this. I only want to feel this way forever, for good or for bad.’ But the fact is, you just can’t. One day you will just wake up and you won’t feel the way you did. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to move along with the tide.” **The person you love isn’t your whole world.** “There’s a song on this album called ‘Coming of Age,’ which is a song about the fact that—how to put this?—sometimes I give magic to people. I think they’re magic, but they’re not: I just wrote them that way or I created them that way. You pin all your hopes and dreams on them. And the song, to me, is about seeing that actually I was the magic. The other person was there, but it was me that made this what it was and made this so special and shiny and glittery and beautiful. There’s another lyric on this album I think of a lot, which is on ‘BSC,’ where I go, ‘I can write you out the way I wrote you in.’ It doesn’t mean the person wasn’t great and didn’t teach me something. But it’s also knowing the person isn’t your whole world. You are your whole world.” **If a man tells you he wants you in his life forever, run!** “I’d had a conversation with another friend where one of us said, ‘Next time a man says I want you in my life forever—and then proceeds to act in the most atrocious way any man has ever acted ever—we’re out.’ I wrote the song ‘Run’ in January/February 2022, just after that conversation, with one of my best friends, \[songwriter\] Ines Dunn. We had that line going. In my own heart, I was no longer sad about it—I was just trying to take the lesson from it. I really tried to get that song right. I kept referencing Britney Spears and ‘If U Seek Amy.’ I wanted to do a song like Britney did, or like Gwen Stefani did.” **There are some songs that can only be written once about a moment in your life.** “On the first album, that was ‘Brooklyn,’ and on this one, it’s ‘The Band and I.’ It was almost ‘Brooklyn Part Two’ for me, because I remember when I was trying to put that song on my first record, I had someone I worked with say, ‘It’s so specific. I’m not sure it’s for an album—who can understand this?’ But those are the most important songs. For me, I had to have ‘The Band and I’ on this album because \[touring\] was such an integral part of my year. It just captured a moment in time that I’ll never be able to do again.” **I learned how special it is to be doing what you dreamed of when you were nine.** “There’s a lyric on ‘The Band and I’ where I say, ‘It was a far-flung wish when we were young/Now we’re living the dream and I hope we never wake up.’ I think about all of us \[Peters and her band\] on these tour buses and how it’s absolutely ludicrous that we’re allowed to do this. It’s such a one-in-a-billion chance to do music the way I do it. And I feel crushed under the weight of that sometimes—of how lucky I am. How dare I live my dream? That song is, I think, my favorite on the album, because of exactly that.” **I don’t know if I’d recommend writing an album to get over a breakup. But I’d do it all again.** “I definitely don’t write for catharsis. I do it for documentation purposes, which is kind of useful. Plus—and I’m sorry to say this, I *really* am—but there’s no breakup hack. You can’t speed yourself through it. At the time, it feels difficult and sad and you wonder what that was for. But, in \[the relationship\] not going like I wanted it to, I made this album. I learned innumerable things about myself. You grow for the better. Every time I write something that I really deeply love and believe in, I learn something about myself. And that’s the greatest, coolest gift ever. That’s why I’d do it all again.”

Masego hasn’t released an album since his critically acclaimed 2018 debut *Lady Lady*. And while fans have been anxiously awaiting his follow-up, the singer-songwriter has been popping up on tracks with Kehlani, Alex Isley, and VanJess, to name a few. He released an EP, *Studying Abroad*, amid a worldwide pandemic, and a deluxe version in 2021, but now the wait is finally over. On his self-titled sophomore outing, the multi-instrumentalist reintroduces himself as the genre-bending artist fans love as he showcases the ins and outs of his life and musings through melody. Throughout the LP’s 14 tracks, Masego revels in his dualities, such as being contemplative about his rising fame (“Who Cares Anyway,” “Remembering Sundays”) while also being bold and brash (“In Style”). He navigates the ebbs and flows of his relationships by keeping his flirtatious player attitude (“Say You Want Me,” “Two Sides \[I’m So Gemini\],” “What You Wanna Try”), but also deals with the heartache from his failed relationships (“Down in the Dumps,” “You Play With My Heart”). Sonically, Masego continues to showcase his growth and creative prowess as an artist by experimenting with his sound as he did on *Studying Abroad*. He still delivers dreamy, intoxicating vocals, but is set against a mash-up of upbeat, bouncy dance beats, trap beats, pianos, and his signature saxophone solos. Opting not to include any features, the Grammy-nominated artist instead decided to collab with other musicians, producers and creatives like WaveIQ, monte booker, Richie Souf, and more.

For as good as he is at making singles (“Bad and Boujee,” “Mask Off,” Post Malone’s “Congratulations,” and The Weeknd’s “Heartless”), Metro Boomin also knows how to put together an album. 21 Savage’s *Savage Mode* and *SAVAGE MODE II*, the Savage and Offset project *Without Warning*, 2018’s *NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES* and its sequel—and the second installment in a planned trilogy—*HEROES & VILLAINS*: They’re all proof that rap in long form is still as dynamic as its bite-sized counterparts. “I didn\'t want to be doing those things where it\'s like, \'Okay, I just called every artist on my phone,\' or \'Let me just show you and flex everybody I could get on the song,\'” he tells Apple Music. “It’s like a movie, you know what I’m saying? Maybe in this scene we got these two characters, and you might not see this character until two scenes later. And now he’s in here with this guy again. And now all three of them are together. Just mixing up the bags.” Easy enough, or at least sounds it. But the shape of *HEROES & VILLAINS* is a seductive and addictive thing, flowing from punishing to reflective and sleek to classic-sounding with a grace that feels both commanding and natural. And the “characters” he alludes to aren’t just some of the most iconic voices in modern rap, they’re juxtaposed in ways that bring out their essences: the boom of Future (“Superhero”) and deadpan menace of 21 Savage (“Walk Em Down”), the alien croon of Don Toliver (“Too Many Nights”) and the mania of Young Thug (“Metro Spider”). “I mean, no one can really say or guess what\'s in Thug\'s head,” Metro says. “He\'s one in a trillion, man.” And if you think he can only work with rap, listen to the dance-adjacent “Around Me” or The Weeknd feature “Creepin’,” which turns the airy heartache of Mario Winans’ 2004 track “I Don’t Wanna Know” into something haunted and new. And for anyone who already knows *NOT ALL HEROES* and was wondering: Yes, Morgan Freeman’s here, too. “It was like, ‘What\'s the craziest thing we could think of?’ Morgan, he had really liked the script, and what it was saying, and the values, and certain things in it, and he felt like it was important for young people to hear those things.”

“As I got older I learned I’m a drinker/Sometimes a drink feels like family,” Mitski confides with disarming honesty on “Bug Like an Angel,” the strummy, slow-build opening salvo from her seventh studio album that also serves as its lead single. Moments later, the song breaks open into its expansive chorus: a convergence of cooed harmonies and acoustic guitar. There’s more cracked-heart vulnerability and sonic contradiction where that came from—no surprise considering that Mitski has become one of the finest practitioners of confessional, deeply textured indie rock. Recorded between studios in Los Angeles and her recently adopted home city of Nashville, *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We* mostly leaves behind the giddy synth-pop experiments of her last release, 2022’s *Laurel Hell*, for something more intimate and dreamlike: “Buffalo Replaced” dabbles in a domestic poetry of mosquitoes, moonlight, and “fireflies zooming through the yard like highway cars”; the swooning lullaby “Heaven,” drenched in fluttering strings and slide guitar, revels in the heady pleasures of new love. The similarly swaying “I Don’t Like My Mind” pithily explores the daily anxiety of being alive (sometimes you have to eat a whole cake just to get by). The pretty syncopations of “The Deal” build to a thrilling clatter of drums and vocals, while “When Memories Snow” ropes an entire cacophonous orchestra—French horn, woodwinds, cello—into its vivid winter metaphors, and the languid balladry of “My Love Mine All Mine” makes romantic possessiveness sound like a gift. The album’s fuzzed-up closer, “I Love Me After You,” paints a different kind of picture, either postcoital or defiantly post-relationship: “Stride through the house naked/Don’t even care that the curtains are open/Let the darkness see me… How I love me after you.” Mitski has seen the darkness, and on *The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We*, she stares right back into the void.

“I get inspired from the hustle,” Myke Towers tells Apple Music. “When you\'re a hustler, you got the spirit inside—don’t matter how much money you make, how done you are, you going to get back up in the game.” That drive defines the Puerto Rican rapper’s career thus far, from his hungry trapero beginnings at the age of 19 to his current status as one of the biggest names in Latin music. Over time, he’s gone from being a streetwise spitter to pursuing even greater commercial ambitions, successfully standing out from the proverbial pack as a result. In a way, *LA VIDA ES UNA* exists in reaction to its predecessor, 2021’s *LYKE MIKE*, which prominently showcased Towers’ authentic and flawless rap bona fides. “I was releasing a lot of music with pop artists because they made reggaetón too,” he says of his logic behind putting out that rawer album ahead of a decidedly poppier one. “I knew I was coming with a lot of songs like that and I said, ‘Nah, I need to feed the streets.’” Having sufficiently served his base, Towers transitioned to *LA VIDA ES UNA* mode, defying genre pigeonholing and demonstrating the diversity of his talents. It radically pivots away from those rawer hip-hop roots and allows him to fully embrace his superstar status through the thumping pop-house of “SÁBADO,” the reworked dancehall reggae of “FLOW JAMAICAN,” and the slick reggaetón of “AGUARDIENTE.” The collaborations mirror the gains made by underground and independent artists who rose to international superstardom, as on the “DON & TEGO” with Arcángel and on “ULALA” with his self-described mentor Daddy Yankee. Of course, he hasn’t abandoned his hip-hop origins altogether, spitting effortlessly dope verses for “CAMA KING” and the inventive “MI DROGA.” Yet regardless of the beat or genre, this is Myke Towers operating at the proverbial peak of his powers and international artistry. “This is global music, but with my island vibes,” Towers says. “This is my essence.”

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

As Olivia Rodrigo set out to write her second album, she froze. “I couldn\'t sit at the piano without thinking about what other people were going to think about what I was playing,” she tells Apple Music. “I would sing anything and I\'d just be like, ‘Oh, but will people say this and that, will people speculate about whatever?’” Given the outsized reception to 2021’s *SOUR*—which rightly earned her three Grammys and three Apple Music Awards that year, including Top Album and Breakthrough Artist—and the chatter that followed its devastating, extremely viral first single, “drivers license,” you can understand her anxiety. She’d written much of that record in her bedroom, free of expectation, having never played a show. The week before it was finally released, the then-18-year-old singer-songwriter would get to perform for the first time, only to televised audiences in the millions, at the BRIT Awards in London and on *SNL* in New York. Some artists debut—Rodrigo *arrived*. But looking past the hype and the hoo-ha and the pressures of a famously sold-out first tour (during a pandemic, no less), trying to write as anticipated a follow-up album as there’s been in a very long time, she had a realization: “All I have to do is make music that I would like to hear on the radio, that I would add to my playlist,” she says. “That\'s my sole job as an artist making music; everything else is out of my control. Once I started really believing that, things became a lot easier.” Written alongside trusted producer Dan Nigro, *GUTS* is both natural progression and highly confident next step. Boasting bigger and sleeker arrangements, the high-stakes piano ballads here feel high-stakes-ier (“vampire”), and the pop-punk even punkier (“all-american bitch,” which somehow splits the difference between Hole and Cat Stevens’ “Here Comes My Baby”). If *SOUR* was, in part, the sound of Rodrigo picking up the pieces post-heartbreak, *GUTS* finds her fully healed and wholly liberated—laughing at herself (“love is embarrassing”), playing chicken with disaster (the Go-Go’s-y “bad idea right?”), not so much seeking vengeance as delighting in it (“get him back!”). This is Anthem Country, joyride music, a set of smart and immediately satisfying pop songs informed by time spent onstage, figuring out what translates when you’re face-to-face with a crowd. “Something that can resonate on a recording maybe doesn\'t always resonate in a room full of people,” she says. “I think I wrote this album with the tour in mind.” And yet there are still moments of real vulnerability, the sort of intimate and sharply rendered emotional terrain that made Rodrigo so relatable from the start. She’s straining to keep it together on “making the bed,” bereft of good answers on “logical,” in search of hope and herself on gargantuan closer “teenage dream.” Alone at a piano again, she tries to make sense of a betrayal on “the grudge,” gathering speed and altitude as she goes, each note heavier than the last, “drivers license”-style. But then she offers an admission that doesn’t come easy if you’re sweating a reaction: “It takes strength to forgive, but I don’t feel strong.” In hindsight, she says, this album is “about the confusion that comes with becoming a young adult and figuring out your place in this world and figuring out who you want to be. I think that that\'s probably an experience that everyone has had in their life before, just rising from that disillusionment.” Read on as Rodrigo takes us inside a few songs from *GUTS*. **“all-american bitch”** “It\'s one of my favorite songs I\'ve ever written. I really love the lyrics of it and I think it expresses something that I\'ve been trying to express since I was 15 years old—this repressed anger and feeling of confusion, or trying to be put into a box as a girl.” **“vampire”** “I wrote the song on the piano, super chill, in December of \[2022\]. And Dan and I finished writing it in January. I\'ve just always been really obsessed with songs that are very dynamic. My favorite songs are high and low, and reel you in and spit you back out. And so we wanted to do a song where it just crescendoed the entire time and it reflects the pent-up anger that you have for a situation.” **“get him back!”** “Dan and I were at Electric Lady Studios in New York and we were writing all day. We wrote a song that I didn\'t like and I had a total breakdown. I was like, ‘God, I can\'t write songs. I\'m so bad at this. I don\'t want to.’ Being really negative. Then we took a break and we came back and we wrote ‘get him back!’ Just goes to show you: Never give up.” **“teenage dream”** “Ironically, that\'s actually the first song we wrote for the record. The last line is a line that I really love and it ends the album on a question mark: ‘They all say that it gets better/It gets better the more you grow/They all say that it gets better/What if I don\'t?’ I like that it’s like an ending, but it\'s also a question mark and it\'s leaving it up in the air what this next chapter is going to be. It\'s still confused, but it feels like a final note to that confusion, a final question.”