Uproxx's Best Albums of 2023 So Far

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.”

“I think that for this project and for these songs, I made it a priority to take care of myself first,” 6LACK tells Apple Music. “And now that I’ve been prioritizing that, I just feel inspired in a different way than I was in the past.” Every album 6LACK releases feels like a journal filled with entries about his personal experiences navigating life’s highs, lows, and everything in between. The singer-songwriter popped on the scene with his moody 2016 debut, *FREE 6LACK*, which touched on his shady first record deal and the turmoil and toxicity of past relationships. His vulnerability, honest lyrics, and dark, atmospheric beats made him the first artist inducted into Apple Music’s Up Next program. On his sophomore LP, *East Atlanta Love Letter*, 6LACK explored the trials and tribulations of his rising fame, relationships, and fatherhood, including how it led him to reevaluate his life. His highly anticipated third album, *Since I Have a Lover*, comes after a long-needed break and finds him in a much better headspace than before. Throughout the album’s 19 tracks, the Atlanta crooner showcases the other side of his heart by embracing love and finding joy (“Since I Have a Lover,” “wunna dem,” “B4L”) while acknowledging the growth and healing he has undergone to appreciate the lover in his life (“Spirited Away,” “Inwood Hill Park”). However, not every song on the project is about his newfound love; 6LACK confesses about his mental health struggles that forced him to seek therapy (“Talk”) and the life lessons he’s learned along the way to where he is now (“Talkback”). 6LACK’s growth is evident not just in lyrics but in sound as well. *Since I Have a Lover* leaves behind the dark, melodramatic production that listeners have grown to love from him and replaces it with more acoustic guitars and alternative, midtempo beats reflective of his current mindset.

“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.”

Baby Rose makes healing music for the aimless and heartbroken. The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter and producer’s uniquely rich voice naturally lends itself to her powerful, smoke-filled ballads lamenting lost loves and broken futures. “I make music to help myself get through things,” she says. The piercing honesty and vulnerability she brings to her lyrics in turn helps others process their feelings and find a place of healing. For Rose, it’s a journey that’s still ongoing. “If I’m going to leave anything behind, it’s going to be getting people back to themselves,” she says. “As I get back to myself, it’s a constant reset: Remember who you are, remember who you want to be.” You can hear the impact of this approach in Baby Rose’s upcoming second album, Through and Through. Take the hypnotic “Fight Club.” Over the track’s simmering baseline and crashing cymbals, she declares, “I don’t need no one else to show me the way.” She describes the song as a “breaking of the shell. It encourages me to just go for it and not care about what anyone else thinks.” Therein lies Baby Rose’s strength: a determination to live, love, and create on her own terms. “I’m not just a singer with a unique voice,” she says. “I’m somebody that has something to say.” Growing up in Washington DC, the artist born Jasmine Rose Wilson first realized the power of her voice by reading aloud original poems at family gatherings. Despite being bullied for her lower vocal register throughout her childhood and teen years, she ultimately found comfort in songwriting and singing while playing her piano, inspired by the likes of Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and Janis Joplin—strong women who also possessed unique voices. She moved to Fayetteville, N.C for middle and high school. In 2013, Rose moved to Atlanta for college and quickly became immersed in the city’s music scene and which also nourished the gift inside of her. With the release of her seminal projects, From Dusk Til Dawn and To Myself, Rose earned early co-signs from SZA, J. Cole, James Blake, Kehlani, and LeBron James to name a few. Her explosive To Myself project saw Rose channeling immense grief into a body of work that revealed her gift for soul-baring and universally relatable songwriting. The project received large critical acclaim from The New York Times, Pitchfork, Vogue, NPR, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Complex, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE and many more. Rose’s meteoric rise birthed a one-of-a-kind, stirring NPR Tiny Desk performance, a sold-out headlining worldwide tour and major placements on HBO’s ‘Insecure’ and Kenya Barris’ award-winning ‘Grownish’. In late 2020, Baby Rose made her late night TV debut with an arresting performance of her breakout song “Show You” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Additionally, Rose was featured on Cole’s Dreamville compilation, Revenge of the Dreamers III (“Self-Love”), after finding her way into a studio, sitting at the piano, and grabbing the attention of J. Cole by writing and producing records for the album. “I just felt, after living in Fayetteville, NC as well for so long, I deserved to be there,” she says. In the years since releasing To Myself, Rose has been painstakingly piecing together its sequel. Started almost immediately after its release, her new body of work finds her in a state of musical and personal transition. It’s a subtle merging of new sounds—stirring rock, upbeat r&b, psychedelic funk, pop, and soulful ballads—, all mastered through analog tape to make the music feel warmer and all-encompassing. It’s also a journey inward as she battles past fear and self-doubt to finally discover—and love—who she is, where she is. Finishing an album with such peace and firm resolution is a first for Rose, but she makes it clear: She’s nowhere near done writing her story. “I think as long as I’m being raw and trying to push past my comfort zone, it will feel rewarding,” she says. “I don’t want to be the type that doesn’t take risks because I’m afraid. I have to trust that as long as the music is honest and innovative, it'll be timeless."

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.”

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.

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.

As the headquarters of a producer/songwriter who’s won Grammys for his work with Adele, Beck, Foo Fighters, and more, Greg Kurstin’s LA studio is well appointed. “It’s a museum of ’80s synths and weird instruments,” Kurstin tells Apple Music. “Everything’s patched in and ready to go.” Damon Albarn discovered as much when he arrived during a trip to meet prospective producers for the eighth Gorillaz album. Tired and, by his own admission, uncertain about recruiting a “pop” producer, Albarn quietly explored the equipment, occasionally unfurling melodies on the piano which Kurstin would join in with on his Mellotron—two musicians feeling each other out, seeking moments of creative accord. After two or three hours, Kurstin felt happy enough, but Albarn’s manager was concerned. “She goes, ‘Damon just likes to float around. He’s not going to tell you to start doing something, you should just start recording,’” says Kurstin. “That gave me a kick to get down to business.” He opened up the input and added drums while Albarn built a synth part. Before the day was done, they had “Silent Running.” “Damon seemed energized,” says Kurstin. “He was excited about how the song progressed from the demo. I was thrilled too. He gave me a big hug and that was it: We were off and running.” Discovering a mutual love for The Clash, The Specials, De La Soul, and ’80s synth-pop, the pair took just 11 days during early 2022 to craft an album from Albarn’s iPad demos (give or take Bad Bunny collaboration “Tormenta,” which had already been recorded with long-standing Gorillaz producer Remi Kabaka Jr.). They valued spontaneity over preplanning and discussion, forging hydraulic disco-funk (the Thundercat-starring “Cracker Island”) and yearning synth-pop (“Oil” with Stevie Nicks), plus—in the short space of “Skinny Ape”—folk, electro, and punk. As with so much of Albarn’s best music, it’s all anchored to absorbing wistfulness. “I gravitate towards the melancholy, even in a fun song,” says Kurstin. “And Damon really brings that in his ideas. When I first heard Gorillaz, I was thinking, ‘Oh, he gets me and all the music that I love.’ I always felt that connection. It’s what you look for—your people.” Here, Kurstin talks us through several of the songs they created together. **“Cracker Island” (feat. Thundercat)** “Bringing in Thundercat was a really fun flavor to bring to the album. This wild, sort of uptempo disco song. I had just been working with Thundercat and we had become friends. I texted him and he said, ‘Yes, definitely, I’ll do it.’ It was very fun to watch him work on it and to hear him write his melody parts. He sang a lot of what Damon sang and then added his own thing and the harmonies. It’s always fun to witness him play, because he’s absolutely amazing on the bass.” **“Oil” (feat. Stevie Nicks)** “That contrast of hearing Stevie’s voice over a Gorillaz track is amazing. I think my wife, who’s also my manager, had come up with the idea. We’d have these conversations with Damon: Who could we bring in to this project? Who does he know? Who do I know? I had been working with Stevie and become really good friends with her. Damon was very excited, he couldn’t even believe that was a possibility. I think Stevie was just very moved by it. She loved the lyrics and she took it very seriously, really wanted to do the best job. Stevie’s just so cool. She’s always listening to new music, she’s in touch with everything that’s happening and just so brilliant as a person. I love her dearly.” **“Silent Running” (feat. Adeleye Omotayo)** “‘Silent Running’ really was the North Star for me, might’ve been for Damon, too. It just started the whole process for us: ‘Here’s the bar, this is what we can do, and let’s try to see if we can even beat it.’ I think we knocked out ‘Silent Running’ in two or three hours. That was the fun part about it, just this whirlwind of throwing things against the wall and then recording them—and I’m kind of mixing as I’m going as well. By the end of the day, it sounded like the finished product did.” **“New Gold” (feat. Bootie Brown & Tame Impala)** “Kevin Parker’s just great. I was really excited to be involved with something that he was involved with. Damon had started this with Kevin and was a bit stuck, mostly because it was in an odd time signature, this kind of 6/4. It’s a little bit of a twisted and lopsided groove. It was sort of put off forever and maybe nothing was going to happen with it. It needed Damon to get in there and get excited about it. I think he liked how it was started, but finishing it was just too overwhelming. I thought, ‘OK, let me just try to piece this together in the form of a song that is very clear.’ That sort of started the ball rolling again. Damon heard it and then he worked on it a bit and evened out the time signature.” **“Baby Queen”** “Only Damon could come up with such a wild concept for a song. \[In Bangkok in 1997, Albarn met a crown princess who crowd-surfed at a Blur gig; while writing songs for *Cracker Island*, he dreamed about meeting her as she is today.\] When I heard the demo, it was just brilliant. I loved it. As a producer, I was just trying to bring in this kind of dreamy feel to the track. It has a floating quality, and that’s something I was leaning into, trying to put a soundtrack to that dream.” **“Skinny Ape”** “There’s something mad and crazy about ‘Skinny Ape,’ how it took shape. I felt on the edge of my seat, out of control. I didn’t know what was happening and how it was going to evolve. It was a lot of happy accidents, like throwing the weirdest, wildest sound at the track and then muting four other things and then all of a sudden, ‘Wow, that’s a cool texture.’ Playing drums in that sort of double-time punk rock section was really fun, and Damon was excited watching me play that part. That feeling of being out of control when I’m working is exciting because it’s very unpredictable and brings out things of myself I never would have imagined I would’ve done.” **“Possession Island” (feat. Beck)** “I feel like the best of me when I work with Beck, and I feel the same with Damon. I feel pushed by their presence and their body of work, searching into places that I never looked before—deep, dark corners, sonically. What can I do that’s different than I might do with most people? It’s very easy to fall into comfort zones and what’s easy when you’re making music. Working with Damon really awakened some creative part of my brain that was sleeping a little bit. I need to work with these people to keep these things going. Damon had been playing that piano part during his shows \[*The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows* tour\]. That melody was something he would play every time he’d sit down. I started playing the nylon string guitar, and then it became a little bit more of a flamenco influence, and even a mariachi sound with the Mellotron trumpet. I love hearing Damon and Beck singing and interacting with each other that way, these Walker Brothers-sounding harmonies.”

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.

Six years after calling it quits, the Jonas Brothers reunited for their fifth studio album and first new LP in a decade, 2019’s *Happiness Begins*, producing the first No. 1 of their career, “Sucker.” It was a remarkable success from a boy band of brothers learning to expertly navigate adult life post-Disney Channel. But the question then became: Could the trio sustain interest once the novelty of the reunion wore off? On their sixth studio album, simply titled *The Album*, the answer is yes. Now exploring themes of fatherhood (“Little Bird”), mature love (“Walls”), and nostalgia (“Waffle House”), all through the adult-contemporary Laurel Canyon-inspired sounds that inform those big life questions (“Montana Sky”), the JoBros have grown wiser and bolder.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

“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.”

“This is about me telling the stories I want to tell, in the order I want to tell them, through the sonic landscape I want to tell them,” RAYE tells Apple Music of her debut album, *My 21st Century Blues*. The South London singer-songwriter, born Rachel Keen, had to wait longer than most to do that. In June 2021, she claimed on social media that she hadn’t been “allowed” to release a debut LP, despite having signed a four-album deal seven years earlier, and that she was “sick of being slept on.” (She left her label shortly after and released this LP as an independent artist.) “There really did have to be quite a lot of soul searching and therapy and forgiveness and reflection,” says RAYE of the aftermath. “I wanted to go back to the songs that I was passionate about.” Those were tracks that RAYE had written years earlier, and which, revisited and reworked, make up half of *My 21st Century Blues*. Most of the others were written fresh, after she escaped to a cabin in Utah with producer and friend Mike Sabath, armed with a laundry list of topics to dig into (reflected in some of the album’s meatier song titles, such as “Body Dysmorphia.” and “Environmental Anxiety.”). *My 21st Century Blues* can sometimes be a difficult listen: RAYE unflinchingly processes traumatic experiences including sexual violence, substance abuse, disordered eating, and the suffocation she has felt as a woman in music, with embraces of everything from trip-hop to hypnotic dance, dancehall, cinematic pop, gospel, blues, and more. Getting to this point, she says, feels like “the most beautiful validation,” as well as something close to healing. “Everything for me on this is so medicinal,” she says. “I’m so excited for the artist now I get to become. This has set the tone for me, knowing how much potential there is in what I can say and what stories I can tell.” Read on as RAYE talks us through every track on her long-awaited debut. **“Introduction.”** “Before synths and electronic stuff, it was just a show. It was a real band. The singer would come on and sing for you in a nice dress or a nice suit. I really wanted listeners to feel like they’re in this little blues club or a jazz club, taking in all the songs as they go on a wild tangent far away from that.” **“Oscar Winning Tears.”** “The version you hear now has really taken on its own form since the original demo. When the situation with the spiking happened \[RAYE’s drink was spiked by a man she knew and trusted\], the man was just crying tears in my face. He was the victim. I was like, ‘Wow, I have a song for this.’ It was liberating. And when we finished it, I knew this had to be the start. I think the initial concept and then the story ended up just merging so perfectly into just a beautiful piece of medicine for me.” **“Hard Out Here.”** “When the story or feeling is burning at my chest, it has to force its way out. It was just rage and pain flowing out. For the line about CEOs and white privilege \[‘All the white men CEOs, fuck your privilege/Get your pink chubby hands off my mouth/Fuck you think this is?’\], my engineer turned and looked at me, but I was like, ‘Yeah, we’re going there!’ This song was me promising myself that I will bounce back. It’s hard to put the story of what I’ve been through into words because it’s so much over so long. In my opinion, I really did such a good job of holding it down and in. Some of the things that were said and the way I was emotionally manipulated, it’s so dark. Coming out the other side of it, I just needed to remind myself that I will bounce back.” **“Black Mascara.”** “I’d just come back from where these assaults took place and was very much not good. It was just after ‘BED’ \[RAYE’s 2021 hit with Joel Corry and David Guetta\] came out, so I was having to sell the pop-girl image. At that time, I had the green light to do an album before they changed their mind for the last time. I played some chords, and they were very vampire-y and medieval. I had the phrase ‘Once you see my black mascara/Run from you’ on the way there, and so I was just building the lyrics. We had a session the next day, but I canceled it—I just wasn’t there—and didn’t listen to the song until maybe three weeks after I was sent it. I pressed play, and it sounds like what you hear now. I put it on repeat.” **“Escapism.” \[with 070 Shake\]** “I think when I was on my way out of the darker chapters in my life, I needed this song. It gives me hope. Mike played me this beat in the car, and I was rapping all this aggressive stuff. I knew exactly what story I wanted to tell on this. When we got to Utah, I went into the toilet and said a little prayer: ‘Dear God, help me find the best lyrics for the song.’ Then I got on the mic, and it came together so quickly—maybe in an hour and a half. I’m still processing the success of this song because I just did not expect it at all. I’m not doing this to gun for mainstream success. I’m not doing this to have the biggest chart records. These songs aren’t about that.” **“Mary Jane.”** “I’m an all-or-nothing person in every aspect of my life. So, when something dangerous is introduced \[substances\], it can get really bad—really, really bad. The lyrics in this song are dark, but substance abuse can really, really take you there. It’s a love song married with a slightly uneasy feeling behind the music. I wanted it to feel uncomfortable.” **“The Thrill Is Gone.”** “This song existed for years but was completely different in the beginning. I always wanted to take it back in time. We recorded it on tape and made it in the Valentine Studio in LA. It’s all carpeted walls, and it felt like a real taste of how music used to be created. Recording it was a beautiful experience. The story feels so classical, but the picture in my head is so distorted and modern and weird. I really love where we took it.” **“Ice Cream Man.”** “This is the hardest song on the album for me. There are so many layers of what’s taken and what’s affected and changed after trauma and sexual violence. So much is stolen. You battle so many minefields of, ‘Is this my fault? Did I put myself in the wrong position? Am I blowing something out of proportion?’ It just becomes this ugly thing that I’m having to deal with for the rest of my life because of someone else’s stupid, disgusting actions. And I think that, at the very least, this is me proclaiming what I am and that these things shouldn’t be allowed to define what we become. It’s as much for me as whoever might be listening who needs to hear it. I wanted it to just feel super intimate, with that hum that comes in at the beginning and these filtered drums. And at the end, you get this moment to feel beautiful with your tears, to stand up and walk out the room and continue with your day.” **“Flip a Switch.”** “I did this with Stephen McGregor \[aka producer Di Genius\], who’s a dancehall legend. He produced so many of the songs I grew up listening to, so he really brought his flair and flavors to the sound. I was in a budding relationship, and I had just decided to let my walls down. I felt it was safe, and then it was like, *bang*. I would have been fine if \[he\] hadn’t given me all this false hope. I was so angry, and it was like, ‘You know what! This song is going to be about you now. Let’s get all the drama out.’ It was very empowering and me saying all the things that I would love to say to his face. But instead, I just put it in the song and proceeded to listen to it all week.” **“Body Dysmorphia.”** “I’d been putting this one off for a while. It was the last day in Utah, and I felt I had to do it. I wanted it to feel sexy, in a weird way. So, we started with these scratchy, really uncomfortable strings, and then you have these smooth drums, which—if you were ignoring the lyrics—you’d probably have a little slow vibe to. It was a stream of consciousness. \[The things I talked about in this song\] can manifest in such ugly ways and hold really intense power over you. I think half of the power of this song is just saying them out loud.” **“Environmental Anxiety.”** “I’m a musician, but we know the state of the world, and you can see so clearly that things are just evidently flipping wrong. But \[the climate crisis\] is out of the control of an average citizen. It requires governments to pull their flipping pants up and put laws in place to better impact the climate. Banning plastic forks is all well and good, but you lot \[politicians\] are doing real serious damage. I thought I’d make a song about it, and I wanted to take the piss because that’s what the government does out of us. I wanted this eerie, childlike energy that brings you in, but also a punky, weird drum thing.” **“Five Star Hotels.” (feat. Mahalia)** “This song existed for a long time, and I always loved it. It was just a way of feeling sexy. We sent it to Mahalia, and when she sent me her verse, it was like, ‘Yes!’ We’re two girls who have dreams and have worked really hard from young ages. She just felt like the right person. Creating music to feel \[sexy\] has been empowering for me.” **“Worth It.”** “I wanted to release this a long time ago. Sometimes there are moments where it’s like, ‘Here comes someone—let’s make all of the shit things feel really cool. And all this work that I’m supposed to be doing on myself, I might pause for a section and start putting some work into this other thing because it feels really nice.’ I wanted to have this near the end of the album—a warm hug as you are leaving some of those darker earlier things. The irony is in putting it just before ‘Buss It Down.’ because it didn’t fucking work out!” **“Buss It Down.”** “It’s the juxtaposition between gospel feelings and a song about getting down. The choice to be single is empowering, and I think this is something for the single girls. It’s all right to be single and be joyous about it. It can be a good thing.” **“Fin.”** “I wanted to have the audience cheer at the end of ‘Buss It Down.’, and I want this thank-you moment. It’s a personal closing—I’m so proud of this album, I’m so grateful that people will even listen to this outro. I’m a human who’s put some stories together, and I’m excited for next time. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, but we’re here. And the joy of being able to share this moment is really exciting. It’s been a long time coming.”

No one could accuse Sonny Moore of being unmotivated in the years following 2014’s *Recess*—the electronic maverick better known as Skrillex kept up a seemingly endless stream of singles, remixes, high-profile collabs (Justin Bieber, Travis Scott), and co-signs of rising artists—but the lack of a follow-up album was nevertheless conspicuous. Nine years later, with *Quest for Fire*, he more than makes up for lost time. At once sprawling and punchy, the 15-track LP offers the fullest picture yet of the visionary producer’s range. Skrillex’s fondness for bass is well-represented: Virtually every track is flooded with voluminous low-end frequencies, typically in the form of stonking FM patches that glisten like oil slicks. The opening “Leave Me Like This” rides a wriggly riff straight out of the UK style known simply as bassline; “Tears,” a collaboration with UK producer Joker and Sleepnet, an artist from Noisia’s orbit, pays tribute to old-school South London bass music. Yet dubstep, for all its importance to Skrillex’s origins, is little more than a footnote on *Quest for Fire*. Stylistically, the album covers lush, melodic garage (“Butterflies,” with Starrah and Four Tet), Middle Eastern club (“XENA,” with Palestinian singer/composer Nai Barghouti), futuristic dancehall (the gargantuan “Rumble,” with Fred again.. and Flowdan), and more. What it all has in common, beyond the seismic undertow, are Skrillex’s filigreed vocal chops and intricate drum programming, which continue to unlock new levels of hyperkinetic energy. Skrillex has always tended to pack the studio with pals, and *Quest for Fire* is his most collaborative effort yet, stuffed with names both big and small. Missy Elliott drops new verses (and a clever interpolation of “Work It”) on the hip-house anthem “RATATA.” Rave dreamweaver Porter Robinson and hitmaker Bibi Bourelly add emotional uplift to “Still Here (with the ones that I came with),” a teary-eyed garage banger. The most surprising cameo might come from Eli Keszler, an experimental percussionist better known for working with avant-garde figures like Laurel Halo. Sometimes, the collaborators help lead Skrillex to some unexpected places: Who knows what kind of alchemy resulted in “TOO BIZARRE (juked),” in which rapper Swae Lee, post-everything producer Siiickbrain, and bass musician Posij come together in an unprecedented fusion of R&B, juke, pop punk, and screamo. Yet no matter who ends up in the booth with Moore, there’s no mistaking who’s behind the boards. Simply put, nobody else sounds like Skrillex, and no matter how far he roams, his sound is always unequivocally his.

Is there anyone who loves making music more than Sonny Moore? Long after Skrillex had graduated to some of the world’s biggest festival stages, he could still be found DJing pretty much anywhere: basement clubs, house parties, hotel rooms—if there was a set of decks, chances are he’d be jumping on it. So perhaps it’s no surprise that just a day after unveiling *Quest for Fire*, his long-awaited follow-up to his 2014 debut album, *Recess*, he surprise-released *Don’t Get Too Close*, adding 12 more wildly varied tracks to *Quest*’s already deeply diverse 15. Only “Way Back,” a cottony jungle tune featuring PinkPantheress and Trippie Redd, and the title song, a melancholy collaboration with Norwegian producer Lido and German Haitian hitmaker Bibi Bourelly, were released before the album dropped. Their shared softness turns out to have been a harbinger of what to expect: *Don’t Get Too Close* is a largely low-key companion to the resolutely banging *Quest for Fire*. The beats are smoother, favoring slinky house, garage, and trap over hard-charging bass music, and Skrillex’s featured vocalists lean toward cloudy R&B and emo-rap vibes. It’s an altogether more muted affair than its immediate predecessor. There are still plenty of surprises in store. The BEAM collaboration “Selecta” sounds like a deep-house dispatch from the OVO universe. Plucked harp gives the 2-stepping “Ceremony,” featuring sweetly glum verses from Yung Lean and Bladee, a feel akin to Craig David’s Y2K-era UKG. And a triptych of sentimental trap ballads—“Summertime,” “Bad for Me,” and “3am”—sets up a sumptuous R&B song featuring Justin Bieber at his pleadingest. But the secret heart of the album is its title track. Performed on what sounds like steel pans, it’s nearly ambient, and the softest thing Skrillex has ever done; it turns out to be the most personal, too. Bourelly sings first, sketching a picture of teenage depression and musical salvation; then it’s Skrillex’s turn. “I’m on my PC/I see famous people/I think they’re like me/So why aren’t we equal?” he sings, before joining Bourelly on the chorus: “Don’t get too close/You don’t even know me.” After this profoundly unguarded song, the capstone of two albums featuring the most ambitious work of Moore’s career, it feels like we know him a lot better.

The new album 'DON’T GET TOO CLOSE' out now iTunes : apple.co/3SeYXMe Spotify : spoti.fi/3XHh8vi Amazon : amzn.to/3XHdlhC

"When making this album, I wanted to do something that creatively pushed a button. Something that served a purpose while trying to understand both sides of the fence that it represents. The idea of a fictional character, Franklin Saint, and what his innermost thoughts could be when dealing with the fictional world he’s caught within. What makes it so intriguing is that his character and his world are mirrors of a time and EDA that really happened. The birth of one of the world’s most addictive drugs and how its ripple effect took on a life that may seemingly never die. The crack era was one of the worst chapters in black America’s story. Using the “Snowfall” series as a vehicle to delve into both sides was truly fascinating as an emcee. It’s a project that is layered beyond measure. If you’ve never seen Snowfall, you’ll think it’s a really great album, but if you’re an avid fan of Snowfall, you’ll truly feel as if Franklin, the conflicted boy genius turned millionaire and career criminal, truly did pick up a pen and pad to write his life story over a bed of beats. It was one of the most intense projects I’ve ever written. The idea of becoming a fictional character which represents actual real life events, making sure to hit every detail, be it from both the show and our real world, was a writing work out like no other. I’m honored to have been able to do so, and I’m honored that The Other Guys trusted me to step outside of a box and truly push the envelope with this. Enjoy, and remember, like they told us in the 80’s: just say no." -Skyzoo

**100 Best Albums** In 2017, *Ctrl*—a 14-track project rife with songs about love, sex, self-doubt, and heartbreak—became one of the most influential albums in R&B. *Ctrl* was the soundtrack for many people in their twenties, highlighting the growing pains of young adulthood. SZA’s vulnerability and raw honesty, coupled with ultra-relatable lyrics full of diary-like ruminations and conversations from friend group chats, are what made her debut so impactful. Where *Ctrl* reflected SZA’s journey towards finding self-love and acceptance, her long-awaited sophomore LP *SOS* finds the St. Louis-born singer-songwriter dealing with some of the same topics of love and relationships from a more self-assured place. She ditches the uncertainties of her romantic entanglements to save herself—most of the time. On the soulful and gritty album opener “SOS,” SZA reintroduces herself and says precisely what’s on her mind after a night of crying over a lost relationship: “I talk bullshit a lot/No more fuck shit, I’m done,” she swaggers. This isn’t the only song that shows her weariness towards relationships that no longer serve her; see also “Smoking on My Ex Pack” and “Far.” She finds the confidence to know that she doesn’t need to depend on a man to find happiness on “Conceited” and “Forgiveless.” However, not every song on the project is about moving on and leaving her past relationships behind her; SZA still has a penchant for making wrong decisions that may not end well for her (“Too Late,” “F2F”) and questions her worth in some instances (“Special”). The album sketches the ebbs and flows of emotions, with strength in one moment but deep regret and sadness the next. There’s growth between her debut and sophomore album, not just lyrically but sonically as well, blending a mix of her beloved lo-fi beats and sharing space with grunge- and punk-inspired songs without any of it sounding out of place. On the Phoebe Bridgers collaboration “Ghost in the Machine,” the duo take a deeper look at the realities of stardom, looking for a bit of humanity within their day-to-day interactions. The track is not only progressive in its use of strings and acoustic guitars but haunting in its vocal performance. Throughout the journey of *SOS*, there are moments of clarity and tenderness where SZA goes through the discomfort of healing while trying to find the deeper meaning within the trials and tribulations she endures. She embraces this new level of confidence in her life, where she isn’t looking for anyone to save her from the depth of her emotions but instead is at peace with where she’s at in life.

TWICE, one of the world’s largest K-pop girl groups, has long been celebrated for its cheer-y pop bops and buttery harmonies. *READY TO BE*, their 12th EP, is no exception. But instead of middling with a workable formula, they push boundaries: disco production on the single “SET ME FREE” (available in Korean and English here), asymmetrical falsetto on “MOONLIGHT SUNRISE,” shout-along gang chants on the 2010s electro-pop “GOT THE THRILLS,” even energetic rap-rock on “BLAME IT ON ME.” When they sing, “We can keep going at all hours,” on the synth slow-burn “WALLFLOWER,” one of a couple co-written by Dahyun of the group, it’s easy to believe them.

A Wednesday song is a quilt. A short story collection, a half-memory, a patchwork of portraits of the American south, disparate moments that somehow make sense as a whole. Karly Hartzman, the songwriter/vocalist/guitarist at the helm of the project, is a story collector as much as she is a storyteller: a scholar of people and one-liners. Rat Saw God, the Asheville quintet’s new and best record, is ekphrastic but autobiographical and above all, deeply empathetic. Across the album’s ten tracks Hartzman, guitarist MJ Lenderman, bassist Margo Shultz, drummer Alan Miller, and lap/pedal steel player Xandy Chelmis build a shrine to minutiae. Half-funny, half-tragic dispatches from North Carolina unfurling somewhere between the wailing skuzz of Nineties shoegaze and classic country twang, that distorted lap steel and Hartzman’s voice slicing through the din. Rat Saw God is an album about riding a bike down a suburban stretch in Greensboro while listening to My Bloody Valentine for the first time on an iPod Nano, past a creek that runs through the neighborhood riddled with broken glass bottles and condoms, a front yard filled with broken and rusted car parts, a lonely and dilapidated house reclaimed by kudzu. Four Lokos and rodeo clowns and a kid who burns down a corn field. Roadside monuments, church marquees, poppers and vodka in a plastic water bottle, the shit you get away with at Jewish summer camp, strange sentimental family heirlooms at the thrift stores. The way the South hums alive all night in the summers and into fall, the sound of high school football games, the halo effect from the lights polluting the darkness. It’s not really bright enough to see in front of you, but in that stretch of inky void – somehow – you see everything. Rat Saw God was written in the months immediately following Twin Plagues’ completion, and recorded in a week at Asheville’s Drop of Sun studio. While Twin Plagues was a breakthrough release critically for Wednesday, it was also a creative and personal breakthrough for Hartzman. The lauded record charts feeling really fucked up, trauma, dropping acid. It had Hartzman thinking about the listener, about her mom hearing those songs, about how it feels to really spill your guts. And in the end, it felt okay. “I really jumped that hurdle with Twin Plagues where I was not worrying at all really about being vulnerable – I was finally comfortable with it, and I really wanna stay in that zone.” The album opener, “Hot Rotten Grass Smell,” happens in a flash: an explosive and wailing wall-of-sound dissonance that’d sound at home on any ‘90s shoegaze album, then peters out into a chirping chorus of peepers, a nighttime sound. And then into the previously-released eight-and-half-minute sprawling, heavy single, “Bull Believer.” Other tracks, like the creeping “What’s So Funny” or “Turkey Vultures,” interrogate Hartzman’s interiority - intimate portraits of coping, of helplessness. “Chosen to Deserve” is a true-blue love song complete with ripping guitar riffs, skewing classic country. “Bath County” recounts a trip Hartzman and her partner took to Dollywood, and time spent in the actual Bath County, Virginia, where she wrote the song while visiting, sitting on a front porch. And Rat Saw God closer “TV in the Gas Pump” is a proper traveling road song, written from one long ongoing iPhone note Hartzman kept while in the van, its final moments of audio a wink toward Twin Plagues. The reference-heavy stand-out “Quarry” is maybe the most obvious example of the way Hartzman seamlessly weaves together all these throughlines. It draws from imagery in Lynda Barry’s Cruddy; a collection of stories from Hartzman’s family (her dad burned down that cornfield); her current neighbors; and the West Virginia street from where her grandma lived, right next to a rock quarry, where the explosions would occasionally rock the neighborhood and everyone would just go on as normal. The songs on Rat Saw God don’t recount epics, just the everyday. They’re true, they’re real life, blurry and chaotic and strange – which is in-line with Hartzman’s own ethos: “Everyone’s story is worthy,” she says, plainly. “Literally every life story is worth writing down, because people are so fascinating.” But the thing about Rat Saw God - and about any Wednesday song, really - is you don’t necessarily even need all the references to get it, the weirdly specific elation of a song that really hits. Yeah, it’s all in the details – how fucked up you got or get, how you break a heart, how you fall in love, how you make yourself and others feel seen – but it’s mostly the way those tiny moments add up into a song or album or a person.

With A Hammer is the debut studio album by New York singer-songwriter Yaeji. “With A Hammer” was composed across a two-year period in New York, Seoul, and London, begun shortly after the release of “What We Drew” and during the lockdowns of the Coronavirus pandemic. It is a diaristic ode to self-exploration; the feeling of confronting one’s own emotions, and the transformation that is possible when we’re brave enough to do so. In this case, Yaeji examines her relationship to anger. It is a departure from her previous work, blending elements of trip-hop and rock with her familiar house-influenced style, and dealing with darker, more self-reflective lyrical themes, both in English and Korean. Yaeji also utilizes live instrumentation for the first time on this album—weaving in a patchwork ensemble of live musicians, and incorporating her own guitar playing. “With A Hammer” features electronic producers and close collaborators K Wata and Enayet, and guest vocals from London’s Loraine James and Baltimore’s Nourished by Time.

Like all great stylists, the artist born Sean Bowie has a gift for presenting sounds we know in ways we don’t. So, while the surfaces of *Praise a Lord…*, Yves Tumor’s fifth LP, might remind you of late-’90s and early-2000s electro-rock, the album’s twisting song structures and restless detail (the background panting of “God Is a Circle,” the industrial hip-hop of “Purified by the Fire,” and the houselike tilt of “Echolalia”) offer almost perpetual novelty all while staying comfortably inside the constraints of three-minute pop. Were the music more challenging, you’d call it subversive, and in the context of Bowie as a gender-nonconforming Black artist playing with white, glam-rock tropes, it is. But the real subversion is that they deliver you their weird art and it feels like pleasure.