Vinyl Me, Please's Best Albums of 2022

After recording *The Car*, there was, for “quite a long time, a real edit in process,” Arctic Monkeys leader Alex Turner tells Apple Music. Indeed, his UK rock outfit’s daring seventh LP sounds nothing if not *composed*—a set of subtle and stupendously well-mannered mid-century pop that feels light years away from the youthful turbulence of their historic 2006 debut, *Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not*. If, back then, they were writing songs with the intention of uncorking them onstage, they’re now fully in the business of craft—editing, shaping, teasing out the sort of sumptuous detail that reveals itself over repeated listens. “It’s obviously 10 songs, but, even more than we have done before, it just feels like it’s a whole,” he says. “It’s its own.” The aim was to pay more attention to dynamics, to economy and space. “Everything,” Turner says, “has its chance to come in and out of focus,” whether it’s a brushed snare or a feline guitar line, a feathered vocal melody or devastating turn of phrase. Where an earlier Monkeys song may have detonated outward, a blast of guitars and drums and syllables, these are quiet, controlled, middle-aged explosions: “It doesn\'t feel as if there\'s too many times on this record where everything\'s all going on at once.” On album opener “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball,” Turner vaults from a bed of enigmatic, opening-credit-like keys and strings (all arranged with longtime collaborator James Ford and composer Bridget Samuels) into scenes of a prolonged farewell. So much of its pain—its romance, its dramatic tension—is in what’s not said. “The feel of that minute-or-so introduction was what feels like the foundation of the whole thing,” he says. “And it really was about finding what could hang out with that or what could be built around the feel of that. The moment when I found a way to bridge it into something that is a pop song by the end was exciting, because I felt like we had somewhere to go.” For years, Turner has maintained a steady diet of side work, experimenting with orchestral, Morricone-like epics in The Last Shadow Puppets as well as lamplit bedroom folk on 2011’s *Submarine* EP, written for the film of the same name. But listen closely to *The Car* (and 2018’s *Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino* before it) and you’ll hear the walls between the band and his interests outside it begin to dissolve—the string arrangements throughout (but especially on “The Car”), the gently fingerpicked guitars (“Mr Schwartz”), the use of negative space (the slightly Reznor-y “Sculptures of Anything Goes”). “I think I was naive,” he says. “I think the first time I stepped out to do anything else was the first Puppets record, and at that moment, I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is totally in its own place and it\'s going to have nothing to do with the Monkeys and what that was going to turn into.’ And I realize now that I don\'t know if that\'s really possible, for me anyway. It feels as if everything you do has an effect on the next thing.”

When Ari Lennox dropped her debut album *Shea Butter Baby* in 2019, the D.C. native was a young woman exploring love and heartbreak while trying to understand her self-worth beyond sex. Now, with her sophomore outing, Lennox ditches the romantic uncertainty and frustrations about not receiving the love she deserves for a sultrier, sexier, more self-assured collection of songs. “I just was being my regular hopeless romantic self and crushing on just completely terrible individuals that for whatever reason in that state I completely romanticized, and I’m recognizing I love the idea of love,” Lennox tells Apple Music radio’s Nadeska. “Sometimes it can feel like something that’s really unavoidable or unhealthy or avoidant. So it’s just really me just trying to maneuver through this dating life, which can be so exhausting.” Described by Lennox as a “transitional space before my current ‘eat, pray, love’ journey,” *age/sex/location* is a play on online dating and AOL chat rooms, where Lennox’s adventures in dating began. The opening track, “POF,” named after the dating site Plenty of Fish, introduces Lennox’s frustrations with the lack of good men in her life. However, despite experiencing not-so-good outcomes with these lackluster relationships, she still desires companionship. Over a bluesy bassline and gentle percussion, Lennox yearns for love but asserts her power in understanding what she doesn’t want. “Young Black woman approachin’ 30 with no lover in my bed/Cannot settle, I got standards,” she sings. Not every song on the 12-track project is about setting boundaries and lovelorn texts; the best moments are when Lennox pivots into the salacious details of her sensual pleasures. On the seductive and hypnotic “Hoodie,” Lennox lustfully crushes on a potential lover while trying to get underneath his clothes. She continues to express her passion and desires on tracks like “Pressure,” “Stop By,” and the Chlöe Bailey-assisted “Leak It.” Other guests on the album include Summer Walker, who lends her buttery vocals on the Erykah Badu-esque closer “Queen Space,” and Lucky Daye, who does his best to woo Lennox on the flirtatious duet-skit “Boy Bye.” The song plays like a game of cat and mouse with Daye’s slick talk and player-like lines, and Lennox, who’s dismissive but secretly is kind of into him too, offers up her cheeky one-liners in response, singing, “Those lines belong in 1995/Just like them funky Nikes.” “I love people who play,” Lennox says of the song. “Or not play with my feelings, but we’re playing around. We’re goofing around as long as your actions or your energy can show that you’re a secure, nice person. Me and Lucky, it was just really innate and natural. And we’re just lovers of soul. I feel like lovers of love.” *age/sex/location* showcases Lennox’s storytelling as the album starts with her search for authenticity in her suitors and ends with removing negative influences (“Blocking You”) and setting boundaries while emphasizing her self-worth (“Queen Space”). The evolution is evident in comparison to her *Shea Butter Baby* debut: Where she was hoping for reciprocation from her lover, now she demands it with a promise of cutting the relationship off without it.

Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to *RENAISSANCE*. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. *RENAISSANCE* is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I\'m finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.

Black Thought may be best-known as part of The Roots, performing night after late night for Jimmy Fallon’s TV audience, yet the Philadelphia native concurrently boasts a staggering reputation as a stand-alone rapper. Though he’s earned GOAT nods from listeners for earth-shaking features alongside Big Pun, Eminem, and Rapsody, his solo catalog long remained relatively modest in size. Meanwhile, Danger Mouse had a short yet monumental run in the 2000s that made him one of that decade’s most beloved and respected producers. His discography from that period contains no shortage of microphone dynamos, most notably MF DOOM (as DANGERDOOM) and Goodie Mob’s CeeLo Green (as Gnarls Barkley). Uniting these low-key hip-hop powerhouses is the stuff of hip-hop dreams, the kind of fantasy-league-style draft you’d encounter on rap message boards. Yet *Cheat Codes* is real—perhaps realer than real. Danger Mouse’s penchant for quirkily cinematic, subtly soulful soundscapes remains from the old days, but the growth from his 2010s work with the likes of composer Daniele Luppi gives “Aquamarine” and “Sometimes” undeniable big-screen energy. Black Thought luxuriates over these luxurious beats, his lyrical lexicon put to excellent use over the feverish funk of “No Gold Teeth” and the rollicking blues of “Close to Famous.” As if their team-up wasn’t enough, an intergenerational cabal of rapper guests bless the proceedings. From living legend Raekwon to A$AP Rocky to Conway the Machine, New York artists play a pivotal role here. A lost DOOM verse, apparently from *The Mouse and the Mask* sessions, makes its way onto the sauntering and sunny “Belize,” another gift for the fans.

From his formative days associating with Raider Klan through his revealing solo projects *TA13OO* and *ZUU*, Denzel Curry has never been shy about speaking his mind. For *Melt My Eyez See Your Future*, the Florida native tackles some of the toughest topics of his MC career, sharing his existential notes on being Black and male in these volatile times. The album opens on a bold note with “Melt Session #1,” a vulnerable and emotional cut given further weight by jazz giant Robert Glasper’s plaintive piano. That hefty tone leads into a series of deeply personal and mindfully radical songs that explore modern crises and mental health with both thematic gravity and lyrical dexterity, including “Worst Comes to Worst” and the trap subversion “X-Wing.” Systemic violence leaves him reeling and righteous on “John Wayne,” while “The Smell of Death” skillfully mixes metaphors over a phenomenally fat funk groove. He draws overt and subtle parallels to jazz’s sociopolitical history, imagining himself in Freddie Hubbard’s hard-bop era on “Mental” and tapping into boom bap’s affinity for the genre on “The Ills.” Guests like T-Pain, Rico Nasty, and 6LACK help to fill out his vision, yielding some of the album’s highest highs.

Melt My Eyez See Your Future arrives as Denzel Curry’s most mature and ambitious album to date. Recorded over the course of the pandemic, Denzel shows his growth as both an artist and person. Born from a wealth of influences, the tracks highlight his versatility and broad tastes, taking in everything from drum’n’bass to trap. To support this vision and show the breadth of his artistry, Denzel has enlisted a wide range of collaborators and firmly plants his flag in the ground as one of the most groundbreaking rappers in the game.

I let my humbleness turn to numbness at times letting time go by knowing I got the endurance to catch it another time I work with every breath in my body cause it’s the work not air that makes me feel alive That’s some real detrimental shit but that’s that shit my perfectionist mind doesn’t really mind because no one knows whats on my mind when I go to sleep at 9 & wake up at 5 - unless I say it in rhyme I can’t remember the last time someone put they phone down, looked me in the eyes and asked my current insight on the times But I remember every single time someone shined a light in my eyes I purposely try to forget what went on between some ppl and I because I know I’m not a forgiving guy even when I try My urge for revenge wins the game against my good guy inside every single fckn time I got plans I can’t talk about with more than like 4 guys because the last time I shared em with someone on the outside…well that’s another story for another night I was tryna get thru that statement to get to saying I’m not @ a time in my life where pats on the shoulder help get me by I’ll take loyalty over an oh my & emoji fire I know if it was a dark night where all the odds were against my side & my skill went to whoever took my life they’d done me off with a big smile & maybe evn post it for some likes I know everyone that tells me they love me doesn’t love me all the time especially when im doing better than alright & they have to watch it from whatever point they at in their life I got here being realistic I didn’t get here being blind I know whats what and especially what and who is by my side Honestly…Nevermind. DEDICATED TO OUR BROTHER V —Drake

Thebe Kgositsile emerged in 2010 as the most mysterious member of rap’s weirdest new collective, Odd Future—a gifted teen turned anarchist, spitting shock-rap provocations from his exile in a Samoan reform school. In the 12 years since, he’s repaired his famously fraught relationship with his mother, lost his father, and become a father himself, all the while carving out a solo lane as a serious MC, a student of the game. Earl’s fourth album finds the guy who once titled an album *I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside*, well, going outside, and kinda liking it; on opener “Old Friend,” he’s hacking through thickets, camping out in Catskills rainstorms. There’s a sonic clarity here that stands apart from the obscure, sludgy sounds of his recent records, executed in part by Young Guru, JAY-Z’s longtime engineer. Beats from The Alchemist and Black Noi$e snap, crackle, and bounce, buoying Earl’s slippery, open-ended thoughts on family, writing, religion, the pandemic. Is he happy now, the kid we’ve watched become a man? It’s hard to say, but in any case, as he raps on “Fire in the Hole”: “It’s no rewinding/For the umpteenth time, it’s only forward.”

On his third solo album, Fred Gibson (better known as Fred again..) returns with his fingers firmly on the pulse of everything around him. Rounding out a deeply personal trilogy, *Actual Life 3* sees the London-based producer, DJ, and singer-songwriter once more thrive on the challenges of sound reinvention and renewal. “I think the feeling that I’ve become really obsessed with is taking very fleeting moments and exposing as much beauty as is in them,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “You know how sometimes if you see something in normal timing, and then you see it in slow-mo, like, ‘Oh wow. There\'s a whole new emotional framing for this.’” Fred first envisioned this unique narrative in 2020 for his debut, *Actual Life*, released over lockdown as a remedy to the melancholic uncertainty of the time. Delivering three distinct chapters across 2021, the BRIT Award-winning producer (and longtime mentee of Brian Eno) dives deeper in his cache of bright snippets and samples from everyday scenes, fusing soul, R&B, and bass house elements for jaw-droppingly euphoric and intimate tracks. “Sometimes I’m conscious of it and sometimes I’m not,” he says. “But one thing I know is that when I’m there, I make loads of ideas.” Much of this LP was made on the move, via long airport stops, tube journeys, or lunchtime breaks. And, like its predecessors, this collection is predominantly influenced by this process, with tracks labeled after the people he’s worked with, or the inspirations behind them. Here, Gibson draws euphoria from fleeting emotions, filtering vocals from names including London rapper and singer BERWYN, Toronto poet Mustafa Ahmed, and G.O.O.D Music’s 070 Shake across woozy synths and deep, intrepid basslines. But *Actual Life 3* also differs in its greater worldly experience. As is the case with hits he’s penned for the likes of Ed Sheeran, BTS, George Ezra, and Stormzy, tracks including “Delilah (pull me out of this)” (sampling Delilah Montagu’s 2021 single “Lost Keys”) and “Bleu (better with time)” (slicing verses from Yung Bleu’s 2020 track “You’re Mines Still”) arrive with the boost of rapturous unveilings at Gibson’s online DJ sets and gig slots. Although getting the music to people’s ears on these occasions offered an ideal proving ground for his blossoming tracks, it was moments of solitude that gave him the most to work with. “When you\'re on your own,” he explains, “you can just be in the world—any place that gives you a conveyor belt of humanity, buzzing away in the background, often when there\'s a bubbling undercurrent of slight excitement, I think that’s just the ultimate gift.”

Harry Styles’ third solo album, *Harry’s House*, is the product of a chain reaction. Had the pandemic not thrown his world into a tailspin in early 2020, he would’ve continued to tour behind *Fine Line*, his critically adored sophomore album, and played its songs hundreds of times for sold-out crowds around the world. A return to the studio was planned, of course, but when COVID-19 canceled those plans too, Styles faced an empty calendar for the first time in a decade. The singer opted to use this free time carefully, taking a solo road trip through Italy and visiting with family and friends for rare long, drawn-out stretches. It was an important moment of reevaluation. “You miss so many birthdays,” he told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And eventually it\'s just assumed you\'re unable to be at stuff. Finally I was like, ‘I want to balance my life out a bit. Working isn’t who I am, it\'s something I do. I want to be able to put that down.’” His upbeat, lightly electronic third LP riffs on the concept of home, viewing it less as a geographical location and more as a state of mind—his mind. “Imagine it’s a day in my house, a day in my mind,” he said. “What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff.” Because of the pandemic, Styles recorded the songs with a small handful of longtime friends and close collaborators who gathered in a single room to drink wine, write, and play. That intimacy is reflected in the songs, which are conversational and casually confessional, as if he’s thinking out loud. Blending vintage folk rock with flickers of disco and a generally more relaxed sensibility, they illustrate a turning point in Styles’ career as he transitions even further towards career singer-songwriter. “For a while it was, how do I play that game of remaining exciting?” he says. “But I finally had a moment where I felt like, ‘Okay, I’m not the young thing, so I would like to really think about who I want to be as a musician.’” Read on for the inside story behind a handful of standout selections from *Harry’s House*. **“Music for a Sushi Restaurant”** “After *Fine Line*, I had an idea of how I thought the next album would open. But there\'s something about ‘Sushi’ that felt like, ‘Nah, *that\'s* how I want to start.’ It becomes really obvious what the first song should be based on what you play for people when they’re like, ‘Oh, can I hear a bit of the music?’ It\'s like, how do you want to set the tone?” **“Daylight”** “We were like, ‘We have to find a way to stay awake and finish this, because if we all go to bed, then this won’t turn out the way it would if we finished tonight.’ So we powered through, finished it, and went down to the beach as the sun was coming up and it was like, ‘Okay. Yeah.’ It felt correct that we\'d finished it in that place. Life, and songs in particular, are so much about moments. In surfing, for example, sometimes you don\'t get the wave and sometimes the wave comes and you haven\'t practiced. But every now and again, the wave comes and you’re ready, you\'ve practiced enough that you can ride it. Sometimes when the songs write themselves like that, it feels like, ‘Okay, there\'s a reason why sometimes I sit out there, falling off the board a bunch. It\'s for this moment.” **“As It Was”** “‘As It Was,’ to me, is bittersweet. It’s devastating. It\'s a death march. It’s about metamorphosis and a perspective change, which are not necessarily things you have time with. People aren’t like, ‘Oh, we\'ll give you a couple more days with this moment and let you say goodbye to your former self,’ or whatever. No. Everyone is changing, and by the time you realize what’s happened, \[the moment\] is already gone. During the pandemic, I think we all at some point realized that it would never be the same as it was before. It was so obvious that it wouldn’t. You can\'t go backwards—we can’t as a society and I can’t in my personal life. But you learn so much in those moments because you’re forced to face things head-on, whether they’re your least favorite things about the world or your least favorite things about yourself, or all of it.” **“Matilda”** “I had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, ‘Oh, that\'s not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.’ This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, ‘Okay, I think this is something to pay attention to.’ It\'s a weird one, because with something like this, it\'s like, ‘I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it\'s not necessarily my place to make it about me because it\'s not my experience.’ Sometimes it\'s just about listening. I hope that\'s what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, ‘I was listening to you.’” **“Boyfriends”** “‘Boyfriends’ was written right at the end of *Fine Line*. I\'d finished the album and there was an extra week where I wrote ‘Adore You,’ ‘Lights Up,’ and ‘Treat People With Kindness.’ At the end of the session for ‘Lights Up,’ we started writing ‘Boyfriends,’ and it felt like, ‘Okay, there\'s a version of this story where we get this song ready for this album.’ But something about it just felt like, no, it’ll have its time, let\'s not rush it. We did so many versions of it. Vocal. Acoustic. Electric guitar. Harmonies on everything, and then we took them out for chunks and put them back in for chunks. You try not to get ahead of yourself when you write a song, but there was something about this one where I felt like, ‘Okay, when I\'m 50, if I\'m playing a show, maybe there\'s someone who heard me for the first time when they were 15 and this is probably the song they came to see.’ Because I\'m learning so much by singing it. It’s my way of saying, ‘I’m hearing you.’ It’s both acknowledging my own behavior and looking at behavior I\'ve witnessed. I grew up with a sister, so I watched her date people, and I watched friends date people, and people don\'t treat each other very nicely sometimes.” **“Cinema”** “I think I just wanted to make something that felt really fun, honestly. I was on a treadmill going, ‘Do-do-do-do-do-do.’ I tend to do so much writing in the studio, but with this one, I did a little bit here and then I went home and added a little bit there, and then kind of left it, and then went into the studio to put it all together. That was a theme across the whole album, actually: We used to book a studio and be like, ‘Okay, we\'ve got it for two months, grind it out.’ But some days you just don\'t want to be there, and eventually you\'ve been in the studio so long, the only thing you can write about is nothing because you haven\'t done anything. So with this album, we’d work for a couple of weeks and then everyone would go off and live their lives.” **“Love of My Life”** “‘Love of My Life’ was the most terrifying song because it\'s so bare. It\'s so sparse. It’s also very much in the spirit of what *Harry\'s House* is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. It’s named after \[the Japanese pop pioneer Haruomi\] Hosono, who had an album in the \'70s called *Hosono House*. I immediately started thinking about what *Harry’s House* might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn\'t a geographical location, it was an internal thing. When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it\'s a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I\'m playing fun music. I\'m playing sad music. I\'m playing this, I\'m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine. This is my favorite album at the moment. I love it so much. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. To me, it\'s everything. It\'s everything I\'ve wanted to make.”

When Kendrick Lamar popped up on two tracks from Baby Keem’s *The Melodic Blue* (“range brothers” and “family ties”), it felt like one of hip-hop’s prophets had descended a mountain to deliver scripture. His verses were stellar, to be sure, but it also just felt like way too much time had passed since we’d heard his voice. He’d helmed 2018’s *Black Panther* compilation/soundtrack, but his last proper release was 2017’s *DAMN.* That kind of scarcity in hip-hop can only serve to deify an artist as beloved as Lamar. But if the Compton MC is broadcasting anything across his fifth proper album *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers*, it’s that he’s only human. The project is split into two parts, each comprising nine songs, all of which serve to illuminate Lamar’s continually evolving worldview. Central to Lamar’s thesis is accountability. The MC has painstakingly itemized his shortcomings, assessing his relationships with money (“United in Grief”), white women (“Worldwide Steppers”), his father (“Father Time”), the limits of his loyalty (“Rich Spirit”), love in the context of heteronormative relationships (“We Cry Together,” “Purple Hearts”), motivation (“Count Me Out”), responsibility (“Crown”), gender (“Auntie Diaries”), and generational trauma (“Mother I Sober”). It’s a dense and heavy listen. But just as sure as Kendrick Lamar is human like the rest of us, he’s also a Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the most thoughtful MCs alive, and someone whose honesty across *Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers* could help us understand why any of us are the way we are.

DELUXE EDITION IS ON BLACK VINYL AND COMES WITH A KOOZIE AND A SIGNED PRINT AND IS GUARANTEED HAND-NUMBER 1-50. SPECIAL EDITION LP IS ON BLACK VINYL AND COMES WITH A KOOZIE. FIRST 100 LP’S ARE HAND NUMBERED, FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED. About 'Orange 2' by Macula Dog Macula Dog’s sophomore album, 'Orange 2' is their most cohesive and purposeful release to date and marks an exciting new stage for the NYC experimental duo. This new collection melds the hard-hitting dynamics of 2020’s Breezy EP with the bands’ own version of traditional verse-chorus-verse pop songs. 'Orange 2' was written during the coronavirus lockdown, a stretch of seemingly endless free time that the duo used to fine tune and perfect their new songs while social and environmental aspects of the world were in free fall. The isolation of quarantine also afforded them a respite from live performance, which they used to break out of old routines and songwriting techniques while experimenting with new processes and equipment. 'Orange 2' is the band’s attempt to write more straightforward songs, each with a prominent lead vocalist. The vocals, which take Macula Dog’s signature processing and voice manipulation to new extremes, are more prominent in the mix than on past releases but hardly conventional. And while this distillation of their vocal sound might not hit the intended “pop singer” mark, it serves as the backbone of Macula Dog’s best songs thus far. As the band says: “We wanted to make a ‘proper’ record — with 12 pop songs, a distinct, great lead singer, and music you could dance to. Instead we have 11 songs with a singer you can’t understand. We really thought we had made our most accessible album yet until we sat down and listened to the whole thing. This album is a huge failure but may be our best work.” This modesty and irreverence is typical of Macula Dog, a band that from its earliest days has embraced experimentation and absurdity in equal measure. These 11 songs about chemical preservatives (“Orange 2”), gambling (“Spun”), executive officers (“Smart Man Do”) and misinformation are presented back to back, without the punctuation of interstitial free-form audio found on their previous releases. The instrumentation on Orange 2 hits from all sides in a way that is joyfully unpredictable. From the grinding aluminum rhythm section of the record’s title track to the liquid-rubber melodies in songs like “Go Green” and “Plug,” Orange 2 is filled to the brim with earworms.  As Macula Dog fans know well, the band’s live act has evolved as much as their recordings. When they released their debut EP, the duo were accompanied by miniature clones of themselves that sat on their shoulders (“a four-person electronic duo”). In the band’s new live configuration, they carry their gear on harnesses, adorning themselves with impact-resistant clothing to cushion from injury should their exoskeletal sit-stand legs slip out from under them. The duo also carry a camera and hologram projection system, transforming each member into a fully mobile performance rig, each with a mini jumbotron. They can now move around performance spaces unattached by cords.  “If you don’t like the record, maybe you’ll like the concert,” they say. More modesty from a band that makes an art of embracing the incidental in their creative process and in so doing makes music from another dimension.

Metamorphosis seems enchanted to the untrained eye—butterflies magically appearing from the chrysalis, the interiors of which we can’t see. But the reality is messy. One body dies to make space for another. It’s easy to forget the discomfort it takes to transform, seductive to behold only the beauty on the other side. Not so on Marina Allen’s Centrifics, the follow-up to her critically-acclaimed debut Candlepower (2021). Over ten songs, Allen is clear-eyed, wading into the lake of her own sorrow, unsure of what awaits her but unwilling to remain on the comfort of dry land. “I was fed up with hiding myself,” Allen says of the intention behind the songs. “I just kept saying ‘yes’”. There’s joy in permission, but saying “yes” always requires negation of something else. This duality of grief and mirth permeates the record, which sees Allen at her most confident and embodied, flinging her voice into the stratosphere and digging it into the earth. Humor duets with wisdom as her lyrics circle around the biblical, taking on the weight of prophecy without the prophet’s pride. “I can’t bring you where I’m going,” she sings both sure and soft. “New light seeps in, a new world is coming.” Allen’s searing vocal presence is supported by Chris Cohen’s production, which weaves far-flung influences that resonate cinematically throughout. The contrasts are held tenderly, crafting a record that’s both larger than life and intimate in its restraint, each song a portal between an old self and a new. ~Olivia Gerber

Alongside Moor Mother’s 2021 album, *Black Encyclopedia of the Air*, *Jazz Codes* explores the question of how accessible a generally inaccessible artist can get without sacrificing the density of their ideas. It isn’t to say it’s easy music (45 tightly collaged minutes of spoken word, free jazz, electronic loops, and fragmentary hip-hop)—only that it makes space for the listener in ways she hasn’t always in the past. Given the album’s subject matter—jazz history, the nature and place of Black art—it’s easy to hear the shift as one from personal expression to stewardship and communication: She wants you to understand where she’s coming from as a gesture of respect to those who came before, whether Woody Shaw (“WOODY SHAW”), Mary Lou Williams (“ODE TO MARY”), or Joe McPhee (“JOE MCPHEE NATION TIME”). Her fellow travelers—multi-hyphenate Black artists like AKAI SOLO and Melanie Charles—show you she isn’t alone. And while the difficulty lingers, it gets explicit purpose, courtesy of professor, artist, and activist Thomas Stanley on the outro: “Ultimately, perhaps, it is good that people abandoned jazz/Replaced it with musical products better-suited to capitalism’s designs/Now jazz jumps up like Lazarus if we allow it, to rediscover itself as a living music.”

Called “the poet laureate of the apocalypse” by Pitchfork, Moor Mother is announcing ‘Jazz Codes'. Coming out on July 1, it is her second album for ANTI- and a companion to her celebrated 2021 release ’Black Encyclopedia of the Air‘. ’Jazz Codes’ uses poetry as a starting point, but the collection moves toward more melody, more singing voices, more choruses and more complexity. In its warm, densely layered course through jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, ’Jazz Codes’ sets the ear blissfully adrift and unhitches the mind from habit. Through her work, Ayewa illuminates the principles of her interdisciplinary collaborative practice Black Quantum Futurism, a theoretical framework for creating counter-chronologies and envisioning Black quantum womanist futures that rupture exclusionary versions of history and future through art, writing, music, and performance. Moor Mother - aka the songwriter, composer, vocalist, poet, and visual artist Camae Ayewa – is also a professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. She released her debut album Fetish Bones in 2016 and has since put out an abundance of acclaimed music, both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians who share her drive to dig up the untold. She is a member of many other groups including the free jazz group Irreversible Entanglements, 700 bliss and moor jewelry. She has also toured and recorded with The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Nicole Mitchell.

Cometa is Nick Hakim’s 3rd full-length album. It is a collection of romantic songs written through different lenses, guided by Hakim’s own experience of falling in love in a way that made him feel like he was floating. The dizzying, out-of-body sensation is the theme that anchors this masterful album, which features guest appearances from Helado Negro, Alex G, Arto Lindsay, and DJ Dahl. The album was recorded between studios and domestic spaces throughout Texas, North Carolina, California, and New York.

Ever since an early Obongjayar demo first surfaced on SoundCloud in 2016, it’s been clear that Steven Umoh, the man behind the moniker, possesses a completely unique talent. Known to his friends simply as ‘OB’, the Nigerian-born, London-based musician pens stirring and spiritual lyrics, while commanding a distinctive voice that flits between rap, song and spoken word. With afrobeats, soul and hip-hop influences, he has created a bold, genre-defiant musicality. Despite rich successes over the last few years; OB has never felt ready to release an album, until now, and his debut full-length, Some Nights I Dream of Doors represents a real levelling up for Obongjayar. Across twelve tracks, he deftly moves through diverse sounds and subcultures while navigating a wealth of personal and political topics. OB recently featured on the latest Little Simz album and the most recent Pa Salieu project.

“I literally don’t take breaks,” ROSALÍA tells Apple Music. “I feel like, to work at a certain level, to get a certain result, you really need to sacrifice.” Judging by *MOTOMAMI*, her long-anticipated follow-up to 2018’s award-winning and critically acclaimed *EL MAL QUERER*, the mononymous Spanish singer clearly put in the work. “I almost feel like I disappear because I needed to,” she says of maintaining her process in the face of increased popularity and attention. “I needed to focus and put all my energy and get to the center to create.” At the same time, she found herself drawing energy from bustling locales like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, all of which she credits with influencing the new album. Beyond any particular source of inspiration that may have driven the creation of *MOTOMAMI*, ROSALÍA’s come-up has been nothing short of inspiring. Her transition from critically acclaimed flamenco upstart to internationally renowned star—marked by creative collaborations with global tastemakers like Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, and Oneohtrix Point Never, to name a few—has prompted an artistic metamorphosis. Her ability to navigate and dominate such a wide array of musical styles only raised expectations for her third full-length, but she resisted the idea of rushing things. “I didn’t want to make an album just because now it’s time to make an album,” she says, citing that several months were spent on mixing and visuals alone. “I don’t work like that.” Some three years after *EL MAL QUERER*, ROSALÍA’s return feels even more revolutionary than that radical breakout release. From the noisy-yet-referential leftfield reggaetón of “SAOKO” to the austere and *Yeezus*-reminiscent thump of “CHICKEN TERIYAKI,” *MOTOMAMI* makes the artist’s femme-forward modus operandi all the more clear. The point of view presented is sharp and political, but also permissive of playfulness and wit, a humanizing mix that makes the album her most personal yet. “I was like, I really want to find a way to allow my sense of humor to be present,” she says. “It’s almost like you try to do, like, a self-portrait of a moment of who you are, how you feel, the way you think.\" Things get deeper and more unexpected with the devilish-yet-austere electronic punk funk of the title track and the feverish “BIZCOCHITO.” But there are even more twists and turns within, like “HENTAI,” a bilingual torch song that charms and enraptures before giving way to machine-gun percussion. Add to that “LA FAMA,” her mystifying team-up with The Weeknd that fuses tropical Latin rhythms with avant-garde minimalism, and you end up with one of the most unique artistic statements of the decade so far.

Shygirl toyed with simply self-titling her debut album, but *Nymph* felt far more evocative—and fitting. “A nymph is an alluring character but also an ambiguous one,” the artist and DJ, whose real name is Blane Muise, tells Apple Music. “You don’t quite know what they’re about, so you can project onto them a little bit of what you want.” Co-written with collaborators including Mura Masa, BloodPop®, and longtime producer Sega Bodega, it’s an album that defies categorization, its stunning, shape-shifting tracks blending everything from rap and UK garage to folktronica and Eurodance. Along the way, it reveals fascinating new layers to the South London singer, rapper, and songwriter. While *Nymph* contains moments that match the “bravado” (her word) of earlier EPs *Cruel Practice* and *ALIAS*, Shygirl says this album is “ultimately the story of my relationship with vulnerability.” As ever, sensuality is central, but she resists the “sex-positive” label. “With a track like ‘Shlut,’ I’m not saying my desire is good or bad,” she says. “I’m just saying it’s authentically who I am.” Read on as Shygirl guides us through her beguiling debut album, one song at a time. **“Woe”** “This song is me acclimatizing to the audience’s presence and how vocal they are. Sometimes it’s annoying to have all these other voices \[around you\] when you’re trying to figure out your own. But then, on the flip of that, isn’t it nice that people actually want something from you? I often do that: give myself space to express some frustration or an emotion, then look at it in different ways. Sometimes I do that with sensitivity, and sometimes I’m just taking the piss out of myself. Like, ‘OK now, just get over it.’” **“Come For Me”** “For me, this song is a conversation between myself and \[producer\] Arca because we hadn’t met in person when we made it. She would send me little sketches of beats, then I would respond with vocal melodies. Working on this track was one of the first times I was experimenting with vocal production on Logic, manipulating my voice and stuff. It was really daunting to send ideas over to Arca because she’s such an amazing producer. But she was so responsive, and that was really empowering for me.” **“Shlut”** “I said to Sega \[Bodega\], ‘I want to use more guitar.’ I love that style of music, more folky stuff, because I used to listen to Keane and Florence + the Machine in my younger days. So, that’s definitely an undercurrent influence here, but the beat is a horse galloping. The horse was a very prevalent idea when I was making this album because it’s this powerful animal that is oftentimes in a domestic setting being controlled by someone. At the same time, there’s an element of choice in that relationship because the horse could easily not be tamed. I love that and relate to it a lot.” **“Little Bit”** “I have to give Sega credit for the beat. The way I work, mostly, is in the same room \[as my collaborators\], and we start from scratch. When most producers send me beats, I’m not inspired by them. But when Sega plays me stuff, I’m like ‘Wait, no—can I have that?’ I think because we started working together in 2015, he can probably anticipate what I want now. I never imagined hearing myself on a beat like this. It reminds me of a 50 Cent beat, which takes me back to my childhood. So, even the way I’m rapping here is nostalgic. I’m being playful and inserting myself into a sonic narrative that I didn’t think I would occupy.” **“Firefly”** “I started this song with Sega and \[producer\] Kingdom at a studio in LA, but then Sega had to leave for some reason. I was feeling a bit childish because I was like, ‘What’s more important than being in this room right now?’ So, then, with just me and Kingdom, I was like, ‘If I was going to make an R&B-style song, this is what it would sound like.’ I’d been listening to a lot of Janet Jackson, and I’d just watched her documentary. But really, I was kind of just taking the piss as I started freestyling the melodies. I really like being a bit flippant with melodies and not being too formulaic.” **“Coochie (a bedtime story)”** “The title is a Madonna reference. When I was shooting a Burberry campaign last year, her song ‘Bedtime Story’ was playing on repeat. It became the soundtrack to this moment where I was acclimatizing to a space \[in my career\] that was bigger than I had anticipated. I started writing this song at an Airbnb in Brighton with Sega and \[co-writers\] Cosha, Mura Masa, and Karma Kid. We were up super late one evening, and I was just sitting there, humming to myself. And I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to have a cute song about coochie?’ Growing up as a girl, there’s not even a cute word for \[your vagina\]. Everything is so sexualized or anatomical. I was like, ‘I need to make this cute song that I would have liked to hear when I was younger.’” **“Heaven”** “This track is quite experimental. The production started quite garage-y, but then it got weird fast. And then we reworked it again because I wanted it to sound sweet. I was thinking about when I broke up with my ex-boyfriend; there were moments where I was like, ‘Can we just forget everything and get back together?’ Obviously, you can’t just forget everything—it’s childish to want to erase those parts, but I can have that space in my music. In some moments, my ex was my peace and my place of absolute escape. And that’s what I equated to heaven at that point.” **“Nike”** “This is me revisiting my childhood, being that teenager at the back of the bus. It started when \[co-writer\] Oscar Scheller played me this recording he’d made of girls talking on the bus, and in the original production, we even had that \[chatter\] in there. You know when a girl is talking and saying nothing but also saying everything? I was that person! My friends used to ask me for advice about stuff I had no experience in, and I would dish it out with such vim. I thought it would be funny to dip back into that space on this track and be playful with it. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is always this part of me with real bravado.” **“Poison”** “I love Eurodance music. When I DJ, it’s what I play the most. I just find it really fun and sexy and flirtatious, and I relate to the upfront lyrics. Some of my audience probably isn’t as familiar with my musical references here, such as Cascada and Inna, so it’s fun to introduce them to that sound a little bit. And I love that we found a real accordion player to play on the track. I really enjoy the tone and texture that you can get from using a real instrument.” **“Honey”** “I made this track predominantly with \[producer\] Vegyn. It came out of a real jam session where we had music playing in the room, and I was speaking on the mic over it. You get the texture of that as the song starts. There’s a lot of feedback that reminds me of The Cardigans and stuff with that ’90s electronica vibe. For me, this track is all about sensualness. I had this idea of being in an orgasmic experience that keeps on intensifying, so I wanted to replicate that sonically. That’s why I’m repeating myself a lot and why the melody tends to rearrange just a little bit as I rearrange the order of the words as well.” **“Missin u”** “This song is about me being annoyed at my ex-boyfriend. We’d broken up like six times, and we weren’t even together at this point, and I was just being really petulant about that. I write poems when I’m feeling any intensity of emotion, and so I wrote this poem where I was just really dismissive of the whole situation. Then, when I was in the studio with Sega, I put the poem to the beat he was working on. I wanted this track to feel a bit disruptive at the end of the album. Because no matter how sensitive I get, there is also this sharper energy to me and my approach to lyrics.” **“Wildfire”** “This track has a very Joshua Tree title because I wrote it with Noah Goldstein at his house there. I was imagining looking across a bonfire at someone I don’t even know but kind of fancy and seeing the fire reflecting in their eyes. I romanticize situations a lot in this way, so this song is really me riffing off that idea. It’s main-character syndrome, I guess! I don’t really like closed beginnings and endings. If I was to write a story, I would always give myself space for it to continue, and I think ‘Wildfire’ does that a little bit. That’s why it’s the final track.”

“I want to love unconditionally now.” Read on as Steve Lacy opens up about how he made his sophomore album in this exclusive artist statement. “Someone asked me if I felt pressure to make something that people might like. I felt a disconnect, my eyes squinted as I looked up. As I thought about the question, I realized that we always force a separation between the artist (me) and audience (people). But I am not separate. I am people, I just happen to be an artist. Once I understood this, the album felt very easy and fun to make. *Gemini Rights* is me getting closer to what makes me a part of all things, and that is: feelings. Feelings seem like the only real things sometimes. “I write about my anger, sadness, longing, confusion, happiness, horniness, anger, happiness, confusion, fear, etc., all out of love and all laughable, too. The biggest lesson I learned at the end of this album process was how small we make love. I want to love unconditionally now. I will make love bigger, not smaller. To me, *Gemini Rights* is a step in the right direction. I’m excited for you to have this album as your own as it is no longer mine. Peace.” —Steve Lacy

Brittney Parks’ *Athena* was one of the more interesting albums of 2019. *Natural Brown Prom Queen* is better. Not only does Parks—aka the LA-based singer, songwriter, and violinist Sudan Archives—sound more idiosyncratic, but she’s able to wield her idiosyncrasies with more power and purpose. It’s catchy but not exactly pop (“Home Maker”), embodied but not exactly R&B (“Ciara”), weird without ever being confrontational (“It’s Already Done”), and it rides the line between live sound and electronic manipulation like it didn’t exist. She wants to practice self-care (“Selfish Soul”), but she also just wants to “have my titties out” (“NBPQ \[Topless\]”), and over the course of 55 minutes, she makes you wonder if those aren’t at least sometimes the same thing. And the album’s sheer variety isn’t so much an expression of what Parks wants to try as the multitudes she already contains.

Anyone encountering the gorgeous, ’70s-style orchestral pop of *And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow* might be surprised to learn that Natalie Mering started her journey as an experimental-noise musician. Listen closer, though, and you’ll hear an album whose beauty isn’t just tempered by visions of almost apocalyptic despair, but one that also turns beauty itself into a kind of weapon against the deadness and cynicism of modern life. After all, what could be more rebellious in 2022 than being as relentlessly and unapologetically beautiful as possible? Stylistically, the album draws influence from the gold-toned sounds of California artists like Harry Nilsson, Judee Sill, and even the Carpenters. Its mood evokes the strange mix of cheerfulness and violent intimations that makes late-’60s Los Angeles so captivating to the cultural imagination. And like, say, The Beach Boys circa *Pet Sounds* or *Smiley Smile*, the sophistication of Mering’s arrangements—the mix of strings, synthesizer touches, soft-focus ambience, and bone-dry intimacy—is more evocative of childhood innocence than adult mastery. Where her 2019 breakthrough, *Titanic Rising*, emphasized doom, *Hearts Aglow*—the second installment of a stated trilogy—emphasizes hope. She writes about alienation in a way that feels both compassionate and angst-free (“It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody”), and of romance so total, it could make you as sick as a faceful of roses (“Hearts Aglow,” “Grapevine”). And when the hard times come, she prays not for thicker armor, but to be made so soft that the next touch might crush her completely (“God Turn Me Into a Flower”). All told, *And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow* is the feather that knocks you over.

August 25th, 2022 Los Angeles, CA Hello Listener, Well, here we are! Still making it all happen in our very own, fully functional shit show. My heart, like a glow stick that’s been cracked, lights up my chest in a little explosion of earnestness. And when your heart's on fire, smoke gets in your eyes. Titanic Rising was the first album of three in a special trilogy. It was an observation of things to come, the feelings of impending doom. And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow is about entering the next phase, the one in which we all find ourselves today — we are literally in the thick of it. Feeling around in the dark for meaning in a time of instability and irrevocable change. Looking for embers where fire used to be. Seeking freedom from algorithms and a destiny of repetitive loops. Information is abundant, and yet so abstract in its use and ability to provoke tangible actions. Our mediums of communication are fraught with caveats. Our pain, an ironic joke born from a gridlocked panopticon of our own making, swirling on into infinity. I was asking a lot of questions while writing these songs, and hyper isolation kept coming up for me. “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” is a Buddhist anthem, ensconced in the interconnectivity of all beings, and the fraying of our social fabric. Our culture relies less and less on people. This breeds a new, unprecedented level of isolation. The promise we can buy our way out of that emptiness offers little comfort in the face of fear we all now live with – the fear of becoming obsolete. Something is off, and even though the feeling appears differently for each individual, it is universal. Technology is harvesting our attention away from each other. We all have a “Grapevine” entwined around our past with unresolved wounds and pain. Being in love doesn’t necessarily mean being together. Why else do so many love songs yearn for a connection? Could it be narcissism? We encourage each other to aspire – to reach for the external to quell our desires, thinking goals of wellness and bliss will alleviate the baseline anxiety of living in a time like ours. We think the answer is outside ourselves, through technology, imaginary frontiers that will magically absolve us of all our problems. We look everywhere but in ourselves for a salve. In “God Turn Me into a Flower,” I relay the myth of Narcissus, whose obsession with a reflection in a pool leads him to starve and lose all perception outside his infatuation. In a state of great hubris, he doesn’t recognize that the thing he so passionately desired was ultimately just himself. God turns him into a pliable flower who sways with the universe. The pliable softness of a flower has become my mantra as we barrel on towards an uncertain fate. I see the heart as a guide, with an emanation of hope, shining through in this dark age. Somewhere along the line, we lost the plot on who we are. Chaos is natural. But so is negentropy, or the tendency for things to fall into order. These songs may not be manifestos or solutions, but I know they shed light on the meaning of our contemporary disillusionment. And maybe that’s the beginning of the nuanced journey towards understanding the natural cycles of life and death, all over again. Thoughts and Prayers, Natalie Mering (aka Weyes Blood)