Across four albums in a decade‚ Rapsody wrote dense‚ referential verses over beats that barely moved‚ even within each song․ Her rhymes in their entirety were 9th Wonder samples․ The Jamla Records house sound‚ the loops‚ the trills‚ the grooves‚ were of one tempo and one mood․ The pen was nominated for a Grammy for Laila’s Wisdom in 2017‚ and the song with the verse on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) and the full-length Eve were each named after a different Black woman․ The sessions for all of it were held in the same room․ After moving to Ghana in 2025‚ Marlanna Evans came to Johannesburg and most of the fifth album was recorded there․ God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops’ executive producer was Denaun Porter‚ aka Mr․ Porter from D12‚ and that old production lane is closed․

According to a Rolling Stone Africa cover story‚ one of the triggers that began pulling Evans to Africa was an Afrofuturist exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture‚ and she began to revisit the works of Sun Ra‚ Grace Jones‚ and Fela Kuti before traveling to Ghana․ She began to visit historic sites of the Ashanti Kingdom‚ the Door of Return‚ and old slave castles‚ questioning concepts of memory‚ displacement‚ and belonging․ One morning‚ driving across Ghana‚ listening to stations and stations of gospel music‚ she realized that it all sounded American‚ white‚ colonized․ She said that she was surprised that she heard whitewashed and co-opted gospel music even when she reached the continent․ She brought that feeling to Johannesburg‚ where Mr․ Porter was setting up drums and the lines then and there were‚ in the most satirical way‚ God gotta Afro too․ The words were adapted to “God Gotta Afro” for the lead single featuring South African choir KARABO YA MORENA․

Rapsody told TIDAL that you have to look in the mirror and see God in yourself‚ and that when she looks‚ she doesn’t see a white man or his son․ Today God got some thick braids‚ she said‚ and God got an Afro‚ and God got gold hoops․ On the song she picks out the fro dripping afro sheen‚ puts rollers in her crown‚ names Miriam Makeba‚ rides a ‘64 Chevy Chevelle with oil wells in her thighs‚ names herself the Black Madonna‚ then the second verse goes‚ “Look just like my momma’s momma’s momma’s momma’s continent” then Diana Ross‚ then Auntie Em calling her to come home‚ don’t get lost in their images․

The pandemic took away Evans’s distractions long before she made it to Africa‚ and she engaged in about three years of meditating‚ praying‚ and sitting in silence; during a guided meditation‚ she recalled that she had been putting others first to be loved and valued․ “It helped me understand the root of so many things‚” she added․ Please Don’t Cry in 2024 was the first album where she said she removed the protective barriers between herself and the people listening․ “When the world shuts down and you can’t go outside and be busy enough to ignore it‚ you have to sit in the fire‚” she said․ The fifth album went further‚ geographically to Ghana and Johannesburg‚ and musically past every fence the old production had put up․

Mr․ Porter produced or co-produced most of the tracks‚ with his collaborators expanding the sound past the old boom-bap pocket: Madlib produced “The Peejays” and co-produced “Black Is Beautiful”; Groove produced “Pretty Bird / Way U R” and co-produced “Apple Juice.” “Joyful,” also produced by BLK ODYSSY and Rapsody‚ ranges in tempos from slow crawl to uptempo bounce and in feels from trap‚ piano‚ soul‚ African‚ funk‚ and spoken word․ Mr․ Porter contacted Evans to provide vocals on “Apple Juice,” a sample of D’Angelo’s “One Mo’Gin.” They recorded it months before his death in 2025․ Speaking about the song‚ Evans said she wanted to write in a more poetic way‚ and compare love to an apple‚ the kind of thing D’Angelo was powerful at․ Ebony also reported that Mr․ Porter told them that you don’t have to be a powerhouse‚ people just have to feel you․

Evans discussed the organization of her book‚ the idea her book could be banned: “Mine could be gone․ I would cry․ Kendrick’s could be gone․ Mos Def’s could be gone․ Wiped out‚” she said‚ and then asked what she was leaving behind‚ what truth‚ what codes‚ what messages․ The songs answer by naming targets․ She says on “No Way” that she’s been politically correct too long‚ names No Jumper and Vlad explicitly‚ and tells the listener to put a gate on the culture and turn the key‚ pull the curtain on Oz․ On “Pick a Side,” she thinks about the prison pipeline‚ the sexualization‚ and the stereotyping․ She names capitalism as a system that isn’t freeing any of us․ She ends the song with a run of questions: “Should I pop a titty for niggas to get it?/Should I pop some pussy for niggas to get it?/Should I kill some niggas for niggas to get it?/I need to clout chase for you niggas to get it?” She calls herself the rap Sade‚ meaning the smoothness and the stubbornness․

On “Black Love,” a cousin collect-calls her from jail and she sent cologne‚ sent socks‚ sent a cell phone․ The chorus dates out: “Twelve long‚ yeah‚ he did them‚ last day 2012‚ picked him up/Halfway house‚ his mind hard to tell‚ still in ‘94․” Beyond the weight of being free, in the second verse‚ she lists brothers who love brothers and women who love women‚ the loans they wouldn’t give‚ the redlined districts‚ and raps that a wise woman once said nothing‚ so she learned to listen and meditate instead․ Here comes Malice․ Hair grease and Black hugs․ Sunday soul food‚ baptized in bathtubs․ Then shifts to George Floyd‚ can’t breathe‚ and the verse ends on man to man‚ father and son‚ mother and daughter‚ house in order․

Evans raps, on “You,” that her mother told her the womb has power like a watchtower․ She sees the sphinx and asks it what happened to its nose‚ like us‚ a few lines later․ Still bleaching? she asks․ “Like Aretha said‚ you a natural”: she keeps asking‚ “What you mean you forgot how bad you was?” In “Black Is Beautiful,” it has her granny sewing the Ankh on the clothes and Gil Scott-Heron played on the tape deck․ Her father’s father took the eye out of a cop who called him a slur․ That and two years in the pen․ “I guess my pen the same as his is‚” she raps, where the whole bloodline is on the page․

“There is a place for all of it‚” she said of Black women in rap․ “The sexy․ The intellectual․ The spiritual․ The revolutionary․ The vulnerable․ The playful․ The ambitious․ The nurturing․” She said her purpose is to make the door wider so more people can come through‚ and that hip-hop gave her a voice for herself‚ for her family‚ for her community․ Five albums of those positions‚ and Mr․ Porter’s production is the first set of beats wide enough to carry all of them at once (despite nearly all her albums are top-tier in their right)․

Evans asks the bird who flew to heaven (an errand she takes on a song) to come talk to her and tell her who it saw․ On “Pretty Bird‚” Evans lists a handful of artists‚ an activist‚ and Makaylah‚ a family member‚ whose news she wants to hear․ “Some days I cry‚ sometimes I feel she do too on ones it rains‚” she raps‚ asking the bird to perch on her windowsill and sing songs about love lost while she soaks and thinks in the tub․ The opening track “Act II: Bloodline / Growing Older” features Amber Navran singing about divine design and bloodline․ Rapsody enters with “Momma‚ I’m home,” getting into the drum and the footwork in Nola and in Ghana․ The first part is repeated‚ “My mother’s getting older/Her house smells like my granny’s used to… She can’t remember‚ she always asking me the same old things․ And then the verse about my mother comes in‚ and she’s sweeping the floor‚ and I’m just realizing how quick this life is brushing by․ They just sent off a family member‚ and it rocked the family hard․ And her mother says‚ “Baby‚ if I die before your daddy‚ don’t you let him bring another woman in my home․” “Gladly‚ I got her‚” Evans raps․

Rapsody said recording with George Clinton was about preserving art and history and truth․ Clinton is 85 years old․ He tells you in the placement of “OMG (Love to Sun Ra)” that he is Sirius B‚ he says the Dogon‚ the mothership is in rotation‚ a fragile‚ fearful‚ mortal being behind the curtain‚ expand your mind and you’ll see him․ JOJO ABOT opens that same song with the Divine belonging to no race‚ that when we speak of the cosmos we’re listening for ancestors․ “The Peejays” flow over a Madlib beat while in the projects․ And yard fights with the homies she likes‚ bullets with the ones she doesn’t․ Homeless people at corners with liquor‚ a meal ticket of eight quarters for a nugget and fries․ Crackheads lose teeth but the wisdom is still on them․ Five percenters on the corner are asking “What’s the math?” that morning․ The melanin God is gold‚ and protected‚ God’s complexion‚ God projected․ These are projects that they’re still studying‚ still trying to exterminate․

On the groove-driven “Joyful,” Evans asks what happened to dancing․ People don’t anymore‚ brothers don’t‚ lovers don’t‚ family doesn’t․ The second verse states that joy is a weapon‚ and the caravans pass the party during Nomisupasta’s hymn‚ joyful‚ joyful Lord‚ we adore Thee‚ until we reach the light of day․ God is justified as the creator and the divine feminine and divine masculine are put back in balance․ Then the verse rewrites the origin statement: in the beginning‚ God created Eve in her own image‚ through vibration‚ and placed her in the universe․ Later‚ from her womb‚ Adam was․ Evans holds that joy is resistance‚ and that remaining joyful in these times is a radical act․ In the closing creation myth‚ the woman comes first‚ the method is the vibration‚ and the man comes out of the woman’s body․

Masterpiece (★★★★★)

Subscribe now

In a conversation released two weeks before the album drop, Nas told Skilla Baby to follow his heart and take over the world, since nothing was really stopping him; if not him, then who? When Detroit rapper Skilla Baby was shot and survived, he was one of the few to take Nas’s words seriously. The rapper took it to heart (as evidenced on The Outlet with Pretty Vee); others have watched him struggle with his mental health and the lows of life. He decided to let people know about his highs, and this album has really saved his life. Now he’s in a good headspace. The Price of Fame is co-executive-produced by Aaron “Dash” Sherrod, Skilla Baby, and Nas.

Skilla Baby would like to be the rapper starring in more cartoons and fewer news alerts, but that’s not the way it is lately. The title he’s chasing has mostly been handed out at funerals, a tradition that runs from Biggie and Pac, back through Nipsey Hussle (murdered in March 2019, just thirteen months after the rapper released his debut, Victory Lap), and on to there, wherever “there” is these days. CNN alone has tracked at least one rapper killed by gun violence every year since 2018, including King Von in 2020 and PnB Rock in 2022. The great exception is 50 Cent, who was shot nine times in Queens in May 2000 and dropped by Columbia while he recovered, waiting three years to release an album—however fortuitously titled Get Rich or Die Tryin’.

Skilla Baby knows the necessity of a roster to claim. On “God’s Favorite,” he lists 50 for the movies, Biggie for the rapping, and Pac for the influence, adding, "I'll die ‘bout my respect, I seen Nipsey do it.” On “No Tears,” Skilla repeats R.I.P.s to King Von and PnB Rock, declares, “Can’t be another legend gone like Biggie and Pac,” and stakes his place: “This my victory lap, I’ma die a legend like I’m Nipsey.” Detroit has survived and thrived through several pivotal eras over the years. As Nancy McLean explored, the Civil Rights movement’s fight was often a fight over jobs, and winning its various struggles over jobs, housing, education, urban renewal, and wages would have been more important to the movement’s history if Detroit had not been its great industrial prize. After deindustrialization spent two generations unwinding that prize, Skilla Baby captured one of its legacies when he rapped that “Detroit ain’t got no fuckin’ jobs, boy, we had to play the streets.”

On the title track (while there’s not much accounting), for example, Skilla Baby offers up, “Fighting depression I said I wasn’t, I’m just lying good.” It’s a reluctantly revealed truth, as even while making it public, the genre’s protocol suggests all the ways he might compensate for it by shooting itself up with success. And he gets some of that in his talk around retaliation, security detail, and survivor's swagger. But then, his bars that stop the song are the no-protocol ones: “She almost lost her son, I wonder how my mama feel.” Even just ten years later, saying that about his father dying doesn’t quite bring back the missed calls. The hook can price fame in money, cars, clothes, and chains all it wants; the verses reprice it in hospitals.

Although Illmatic may have presented him as a poet, Nas is the response from the funeral canon. He has spent thirty-two years making verses and has been a strong proponent of life. And yet, no other track shows how well he makes his case better than “Respect My Gangsta,” where the almost-fallen emcee teaches a young troublemaker named Skilla. Nas starts his verse with the gangster code he knows all too well—keep your reputation clean, and do not take any disrespect, even from civilians. Then, he points out that those people who turn the code into show—the rappers who rap gangsta but can communicate easily with the police, according to Nas—are music rats. “He wrote the book, I wrote the street Bible,” he claims, referring vaguely to his infamous fellow from Queensbridge who wrote The Godfather. But this song is all about the teachers and their pupils—he tells Skilla that they are brothers. And the longest-living writer in rap history should explain what that means.

Skilla Baby raps “Be Me” for those children who believed he was never going to become a success. He recorded this track on his return to Detroit, but he also showed up in the schools because he made another observation—a more straightforward one—“These kids don’t believe nothin’ they don’t see.” So he wanted to be seen by these children, a famous rapper, who used to sit in the same classrooms and felt faint because he could not heat the house with the oven since he had no job and had to stay outside on the streets. And there he was, alive and breathing, walking these hallways of Detroit, which opened for them a door to the world.

Above Average (★★★☆☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Paranoid,” “Dear Mama,” “The Price of Fame”

Subscribe now

NMD (08.21.26)

52.4KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Additional information with genres.

Download

Albums / Deluxe / EPs

• Rapsody: God Gotta Afro & Gold Hoops

• Weezer: Weezer (The Gold Album)

• Jorja Smith: What Are the Odds

• Victony: STARLIFE

• Cleo Sol: Gentlewoman

• Sam Smith: Hazel Eyes

• Ice-T: Criminal Migraine (Website Exclusive)

• Denzel Curry & Kenneth Blume: ii

• Eric Bellinger: Eric Bellinger

• Skilla Baby: The Price of Fame

• Destin Conrad: ROADRUNNER

• Ruth B.: Peace to Make

• Houston Kendrick: Portrait of a Boy On Fire

• Premo Rice: Another Night at the Chateau

• Zenesoul: Under the Same Sky

• threetwenty: Separate from the Noise (Side B)

• Keb’ Mo’: The Breakdown

• Skinny Hightower: Feels Like Destiny

• Da Flyy Hooligan: Today’s Agenda

• Rob Dixon: Naptown Soul

• the della kit: Dreams Speaking in Colour

• Tina (fka Hoodcelebrityy): Tina

• Ransom: The Price of Clarity

• Stoic: PAELLA!

• Beenie Man: Eminence

• JAMS The Flava Child & Jansport J: Love & Respect

• Manana: it really isn’t what it is

• CK The Spitta: Raps N’ BBQ

• Stalley: Speedrun

• Fielded: Some Kind of Animal

• Lexi Jayde: LOVER GIRL

• Romeo Miller: New Lane

• Angela Renee: The Conversation

• Nate Sib: Reborn

• Jorjiana: 5 Elements

• Zeethewizard: The Hidden Gem

• K-Trap: TRAPO 2

• $NOT: HIGH + RISK

• thirteendegrees °: Ghetto Hipster

• Roce de Mente: VERTIENTES, CAMINOS, SERPIENTES

• Yung Bleu: Bleu Vandross 4

• Westside Cowboy: It Goes On

• Jpay: TOP1: Phenom

• The Cramps: Gravest Gravy

• Black Marble: Life in Small Spaces

• Lambchop: Punching the Clown

• STELLA LEFTY: Long Way Home

• paris jackson: HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE

• James Ivy: The Seams

• GB: Herzsprung

• Cornelius: Refractions

• Brandon Flowers: Thrasher

• The Afghan Whigs: Soft Control

• Brennan Wedl: Brennan Wedl

• Chelsea Wolfe: The Dark

• Julia Holter: Materia

• Wild Pink: Still Coming Down

• Khantrast: Poster Child

• Mike Shabb: Sewaside IV

• Paper Skies: Greyscale

• SZN4: I Fear...

• Various Artists: Unlocked Riddim

• HALIENE: Eclipsed

• Surfer Girl: Midnight

• BLACK COLLAR HUSTLAZ: HUSTLE BLACK

• Uncle JoNH III: Mineral Water 2

• Cargo Cults: Kingdom Music for the Hard Rocks (Streaming Release)

• Dyce Payso: Pray 4 the Trap

• DJ Twi$t II: Masters of Horror

• Bukshot: Anywhere

• Roland Jones: BAD DREAMS 2

• KeepItPeezy: Unfakeable

• Tha God Fahim: Dump Gawd: Hyperbolic Time Chamber Rap 5 (Streaming Release)

• Zeethewizard: The Hidden Gem

• Eclyse: Uncanny Phantasmagoria

• K-Trap: TRAPO 2

• The Inglorious Poet: Sit the Fuck Down II

• DJ Chose & Chose: Nostalgia 3

• prettifun: Pretti Loves U 2

• Sites & THE KID: Mind State

• BoriRock & Dun Dealy: ZINGSTITUTIONALIZED

• K-Rino & Trajic: Path of Destruction

• Armor of God: Armor of God II

• Various Artists: Paraphernalia, Pt. 2: The Mob

• Squirrel Flower: Say a Prayer to the Gods of Getting Going

• Anthony Hopkins, Philharmonia Orchestra & Gustavo Dudamel: Life Is a Dream

• Mick Jenkins & greenSLIME: BLACK ASS KUNG FU FLICK (Streaming Release)

• diamond*: BLING BØI EP 2: HØSTED BY DJ HØLIDAY

• Leon Bridges: Happiness Anytime: Part 2 (EP)

• No Joy: Big Life, Big Leaf (EP)

• Mick Jenkins: Type Shit (EP) [Streaming Release]

• Black Atlass: Eternity (EP)

• Pounds448: Varsity Blues (EP)

• Ballad: Soul-Fi, Vol. 2 (EP)

• TroyBoi: FT. (EP)

• Canon: Loose Canon, Vol. 4 (EP)

• Skip Waiters: BLACK MIRROR (EP)

• OLA: ME VS ME (EP)

• Um Jennifer?: Dirty Twice (EP)

• pat junior: PREREQUISITE A (EP)

• Action Figure 973 & Don Danon: Souled Out (EP)

• Solomon Childs & Shaka Amazulu the 7th: Super-7: Issue #1 (EP)

• Sauce Heist & Karbine: All Gunz Out (EP)

• PARTYNEXTDOOR: PARTYNEXTDOOR 3 (P3) [10-YEAR EDITION]

• ERISTHEPLANET: IT REALLY DO BE THAT DAMN PHONE (Deluxe)

• BJRNCK: A Girl Like Me (Deluxe)

• sha ray & DJ Haram: Critical Thot (Extended Edition)

Singles / Maxi-Singles

• Mariah Carey & Rochelle Jordan: Didn’t Mean to Turn You On

• Rex Orange County: Indecision (feat. Daniel Caesar)

• Miles Caton: Lean On

• Lucky Daye & Leon Thomas: Fly U Out

• Remi Wolf: Bottle

• Shawn Mendes: Mercy (Live from Montreal)

• Chelsea Cutler: THIS TIME OF THE YEAR

• Carly Rae Jepsen: Motivation

• JP Saxe: Broken Parts (feat. Jonita Gandhi)

• Nessa Barrett: Bad Girls Never Die

• kenzie: jumping in

• GAYLE: bite the bullet

• Heidi Montag: Spend It

• Coco Jones: Love Me Through

• Jack Freeman: Me & U

• Phabo & OMGKENNEDY: Bet It Up

• SHERIE: BON BAGAY

• Parisalexa: HONEYMOON

• Dani Offline: Reasons

• Orla Rae: Hindsight

• NNAVY: Late Nights

• Tmera: No Games

• WIM: This and That

• Grafh & Stove God Cooks: 1-800

• Jay Worthy & George Clinton: Atomic P / P of the Week (feat. Leven Kali)

• Cozz: Pocahontas

• TJ Carroll & Ayomilly: SKYFALL

• femdot. & Gold Haze: Champion Sound

• Blu & Sndtrak: Jesus

• Spice 1: Street General

• Belly Gang Kushington: No Jewelry

• CARI: The Dealer

• Shygirl: Alyse

• Ann Marie: Drunkin’ Love

• Girlfriend: All of the Above

• E. Lundquist & Kendra Morris: Wishing

• Nate Mercereau: Accelerator

• Maverick Sabre: Moody (Interlude)

• Ye Ali: U Still Up?

• KAGE: Always On Ten

• Son Lux & Bilal: Now I’m Listening

• Louis York: I Found a Home

• sunandmoon: Circles

• Girlhood & Natalie Holmes: Lemon Aid

• Samant & Lou Val: Preacherman

• Nani Goins: Repeat

• Jackie Hill Perry: CLEAN

• Russ: Rider (feat. A Boogie Wit da Hoodie)

• Bossman Dlow: Intro

• NAV & Frost: POP MY SHIT

• Polo G: OMG

• aroomfullofmirrors: World’s Gone Crazy

• Tzu Surf & Kocky Ka: Shame On Me

• Coyote, Zombie Juice & REASON: Wassup With It?

• Katori Walker: Bigger Problems

• Majid Jordan: Two Roads

• 2BYG & Tahjaee: WYW (Remix)

• Chaka Khan: Curious Subject

• Q Parker: Stare

• Jalisa Rey: Just Like That

• Aaron Page & Hydra: Or What

• Liana Banks: Touchy Feely

• Sinéad Harnett: Love You

• Chikoruss: I Know

• Kareen Lomax: WARFARE

• CARLA: HOT (feat. UMI)

• Naliyah: Open Cards

• KAMAUU: THE DANCE

• LAUREN FAITH: Garden of Desire

• JayMin: Rollin

• Sophia Bromberg: There She Glows Again

• lordkez & Kwesta: 4SHO

• M’lynn: COLOR

• Avehre: Push It

• Henry Verus: Girls Like You / The Coda

• Marvin Sapp: He’s Not Finished

• OVI WOOD: Heartless

• David Kushner & The Isley Brothers: By Any Means

• Nia Smith: High (Mahogany Sessions)

• Scattrbrain: Setbacks

• Pynk Beard: On My Hood

• Sonnyjim & Sebb Bash: Moroccan & Broccoli

• Joy Oladokun & Adekunle Gold: Sage

• Njerae: On My Own (feat. KayCyy) / Let Them Know

• H3RIZON & Muni Long: Future Self (Remix)

• MAJOR.: May This Moment Never End

• AKAI SOLO & Bane Capital: GOOD PAYOUT

• Anthny & BJ the Chicago Kid: Pass Me By

• Lex Aura: Still

• JayDon: Summer Nights

* = Music not released on streaming platforms. Remember that we don’t always get everything right, as many releases and announcements come through at the last minute.

Subscribe now

UNLOCKED was recorded over the course of three days in 2020. It took Denzel Curry six years to make its follow-up. The rapper created a band named The Scythe, released an album with them this year, toured with Deftones across the UK and Europe, scheduled concerts with Knocked Loose in the fall, and started talking about turning to hardcore. Kenneth Blume used to be known as Kenny Beats when the two musicians got together on Curry’s YouTube show The Cave. The producer quit his old nickname, switched to making music for rock bands, and released albums with Rico Nasty, Nate Smith, CARRTOONS, and Kiefer, collaborating on projects with Geese, IDLES, and Show Me The Body. The Carol City rapper and the producer, who gained popularity as an internet personality, chose different paths.

The label’s press release discusses disagreements during the production process. Blume’s account is rather honest: according to him, what the two of them create has never been easy, but that’s exactly why it has been so rewarding. They start every project from different ends of the coin and try to meet in the middle. The music from this album represents the growth and struggle equally well. They’ve also swapped their fancy studio setup for an SP-404 beat machine and a cheap microphone as part of a conscious decision to move backward from the tools used for UNLOCKED production. In private, no one knows.

Curry has always been good with bars, and now he uses them to point fingers at people. “GONE FISHING” is about the charlatan, who is not relevant right now, whose resume from his life proves how bad he is at it. Curry creates the gas chamber of a booth and calls himself the gorilla in the mist. This man really wishes he could have been a baller, but he’s an angry fan sitting in the stands, Curry tells him. “COLD NIGHT IN HELL” sounds even harsher: Wu-Tang said it’s yours, people think that they are him because he took them on the tour. The man went from next up to busboy. There was a seat for you at the table, Curry says. He broke bread with you and gave him this warning in case he had to eat him. JPEGMAFIA, appearing on “EVIL GRIN,” goes with the flow: it’s not whipped up to shock; this is gospel, and he thinks about starting a beef with Peter. The targets change, but Curry keeps squeezing the neck of his enemies.

The charlatans and busboys are getting the most of his attention, but Curry spends the same amount of his verses talking to himself. “PRODUCT” starts rather simply: he comes from the hood, and he’s a product. Verses describe the cost of being a product, the recipe of jealousy with salt added out of necessity, the pressure too high, kickbacks from the deals, which he doesn’t want anymore because he doesn’t know who wants to get back at him, and troubles that he can’t solve with drugs. He will probably do it on his own, without contacting his therapist. “BENJAMIN” goes in a different direction with it. He walks around with moxie, speaks with gusto, and holds the titanium mic he received from Magneto, but if it’s all about the Benjamins, it’s not about him. He says that he doesn’t need anyone. Good things take time. He’s after Gouda and Ricotta in the endless pursuit of the dollar, from the morning to the moment when he puts his pajamas on. All of this fits inside a verse about greed.

No surprise that Kenneth Blume shines through the beats. He could go from hard-hitting, gritty beats to masterfully chopping a soulful sample. However, j.robb co-produced “UPS,” and Homer Steinweiss, Leon Michels, Nick Movshon, and Paul Castelluzzo assisted in the production of “EVIL GRIN,” but the overall design was created by Blume, and his task is to leave the verses alone. The wordplay on “UPS” is the reward: Curry appears lower than a handout, trains his thoughts as a locomotive, piles up the metaphors until his enemies know that it’s U-P without the S. The chorus is delivered by the villain himself, a closed casket for all your friends. Second verse appears at the hand that keeps the head underwater, Capone as God for geriatric cats, the body bag of Louis Vuitton shipped over Yosemite.

Westside Gunn on “CROWN” starts with the first bodies and hundred stacks, Eastside Buffalo, counts riches off fiends, prices of plug starting to drop, designer trunks in the bubble bath, jerk shrimp by the sand. His geography includes Buffalo and the Bahamas and the promised land in one breath, and the luxury is detailed in ways, which are not typical for Curry’s own flexing. Curry replies with his version of the track: there are legends, which don’t have trophies, and targeting your audience is obvious marketing. He sells out the shows but never sold out. On “DIFFERENCE,” Yebba sings: “Whiplash in my neck, I caught a glimpse of your regret/But your thinking cap is long lost through the wind.” Her refrain, way below ground zero, fighting everyone you know, wearing thin on your rollercoaster, plays under the verses about giving someone money for a chain but not to buy their masters with it, about winning him at his own game like Ali won Liston.

On “CANDLELIGHT,” Curry says that he has never worked a nine-to-five, but people have the nerve to ask him about what he is working with, and he comes up with a nice line from Eartha Kitt, followed by an immediate R.I.P. to the greatest Catwoman. But the spoken bridge about a car with butterfly doors being a Pegasus seems to wander, and the bounce run in the outro is stapled on. “PRODUCT” has some good moments, the jealousy recipe, the hammer like Judge Joe Brown, the therapist, but the hook takes over. Blume created a floor, Curry stood on it, and the fighting turned into rapping, and rapping into art.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “GONE FISHING,” “CROWN,” “DIFFERENCE”

Subscribe now

It has been three years since Falling or Flying, the one Jorja Smith put down in Walsall with DAMEDAME* for the most part. During that time, she has made it a habit to go back to the same producer. “Little Things” was where she and P2J first got on the same wavelength, and they have been at it ever since, putting in some good-natured talk of a dance project between them. Come September 2025, she is in his East London studio, and there are two years’ worth of ideas to be had. She would not put it down as any grand design later on, more like music you write and record in three sessions because it is right, drawing on house, grime, and UK garage.

What Are the Odds is different. Smith puts more of herself into the writing than ever and has no time for those who do not come clean. You will find her co-headlining All Points East with Tems on the night of its release and making an appearance as a musical guest for Saturday Night Live UK’s inaugural season in April. The songs here concern a liar. One who makes promises he doesn’t keep and won’t answer for. Or who was professing love in front of another woman. There is even one who put forward a home as a dream, only for it to be revealed as such. And someone who would say she was voiceless. The approach is too weary for any pretension. Take “For Life”: she tells him he can’t be saved by her now and asks why, while being certain of their bond and that she would forgo her peace for him. Then the chorus will have it, “got you for life,” and the chasm between what she is sure of and his silence is all there is to it.

One could not say Smith has written with less adornment. The ones that are best for it have the most to put across. On “I Lied, You Lied,” she is already gone, outside, and the pre-chorus is plain: “Never really had a choice with me/I still stand here, and I can’t believe/When you said I had no voice, you see/I lied, you lied.” That is the end of the matter. The second verse is superior: “You said you’re in love with her, still standing in front of me/Meanwhile, it’s all a game, just took me a second to see beneath it.” She tells him to get over her and that it was kind of her to leave him last time, when in truth he was not hard to let go.

“Pretend” is the same sort of thing, only from another vantage. She has called it off so often there is no disputing she told him, and she goes through the inconsistencies: “Many times, many ways, many games, many lies/What you say, how you moved, shit you do, don’t align.” The bridge is conclusive: “Now I’m done, I’m too good for this/That’s enough, no, it doesn’t make sense/I’m not like him, no, I can’t pretend.” As for “What’s Done Is Done,” she wants to know if it was work or his boys or simply her, before letting the mask fall: “You ain’t nobody/So quit lying to yourself.” 

On the title track, one is left with none of that relationship stuff. It is her way of seeing things, and as she puts it, she has had enough of it. The second verse makes that plain: “When you’re young on a stage with the mic to yourself/Realisin’ it all, but there’s no one there/No one there to care when the lights are out/And the crowd don’t shout any more.” She will have you know everyone wants something for it, she says by way of asking how she came to be in this position. Then comes the finest pen work on “What Are the Odds” in an Oliver Twist line: “Like Oliver Twist, you give, but quick like, ‘Please, can I have some more?’” She is aware people are making do, surviving as they can, and if she had the means, God knows she would be the saving grace. But she can’t, and she knows it.

There is a song for London, and with Devlin on “This City,” one encounters the odd moment. Smith tells of what the city has exacted in her verse; she is done with running, the passion is gone, it was better in the days of having nothing. There is a need to go and a desire to put down roots. And then Devlin puts in a redo of his 2010 “London City” verse, and it is as if he is sending word from another London altogether. He is on the A13 with four hundred or so, getting high on life with the wind and his tears in his eyes, smoking out the window with some boys prone to a fight. His words are no response to hers. The whole reason for their being on the same record is the chasm between her weariness of the place and his brand of reckless affection.

Some of the rest of it lacks the bite of that. “Dancing” is sweet enough in its inquiries as to whether he fancies a dance, holding hands, putting oneself out there for romance, but it does not get under the skin of the feeling. “Young Heart” is directed at an earlier self, yet adds little new. “Make It Your Home” is a breather in its own right; she asks him to make of her heart his home, but an hour on, there is not much to recall. 

Even the Wizkid single “Alive” is more about the chemistry than what is being said; sure, the shift to Pidgin and Yoruba in his verse has its effect, but the desire on display is the standard kind. Smith holds back for “When It Gets Like That.” The other night, she was up late, couldn’t sleep, and made a thousand calls to him, perhaps. Tired of being put to the test, even if she does love him. “Another wave and I watered my seeds down/Watch it bloom then you tear it down/Feel like your favorite shoes the way you wear me out,” goes the second verse. Sink or swim, he would see her drown.

Solid (★★★½☆)

Favorite Track(s): “For Life,” “I Lied You Lied,” “When It Gets Like That”

Subscribe now

Sam Smith left London and moved to New York after already winning a Grammy, an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a BRIT Award before hitting thirty. All the honors have been won thanks to ballads, and the ballads were successful because of one reason only—the voice carried the lyrics to perfection. Almost any line could be sung to perfection because of the incredible voice, and for the majority of the singer’s career, it has been that way. Even though “Unholy” and the Gloria cycle were more of club pop, Smith was soon back to ballad singing, organizing a 24-show run at Warsaw in Brooklyn and another 24-show run at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco before starting to write Hazel Eyes over three years with David Odlum, Simon Aldred, and a few more friends, partly at Electric Lady Studios. Smith says that this process taught them a lot as an artist, that they were really pushing themselves all the time, and that the result is incredibly romantic.

He has always written love songs, pointing at some emotion and expecting the voice to deliver the message. On the opening song, Smith asks a night walker to dance, offers to become an echo in his/her heart and a sparkle on the darkest nights, and the second verse of “Everlasting Love” repeats the first verse with slight modification. “Hazel Eyes” accumulates autumn leaves, summer breezes, winter freezes, and evergreens in one verse, and four seasons become just one pastel landscape. “Moondance” (featuring Feist) takes things even further. Smith becomes the sand, rides the river of sunlight, collides with other celestial bodies, and writes a constellation of everything he/she is. The voice is beautiful in all three songs, and the lyrics could be sung by any singer in the world.

Smith has said that they wrote “My Guy” with friends on a summer day in New York, and the song preserves this energy. “Like all good things, he caught me by surprise/You could dream he’s yours all you want, but he’s mine, mine, mine.” This is a playground taunt, childish and lovely at the same time, and the bridge challenges someone to argue, repeating that he can’t have him, that they can try, try, try. At the very end of the chorus, when Smith calls him “a breath of fresh air, a rose on the vine” and says that they can stare at him all the time, the lyrics and feeling finally match. Two images (both small and both grounded) can be easily pictured.

On “When He’s Gone,” Smith starts singing about the fight, which is irredeemable: “Hate it when you speak to me with cruel and careless words/Everything you say to me, can’t you see it hurts?” Smith is asking how the hell he got here. Fighting talk is cheap. Every time he throws the dice, he gets the same failure. And then the close flips: “That’s the thing with passion, it passes like the weather/If he stays with me tonight, I promise I’ll be better.” This promise has its expiration date in the same sentence. Passion passes, and Smith knows it when making this promise. Another song, “Thief,” starts with a simpler detail: “You’re on New York time/Over here it’s way past midnight/I drank a bottle of wine/So I can sleep tonight in silence.” The distance is measured in time zones, in drinking wine to go to bed, and in silence as the best-case scenario. After that, Smith gives a few more reasons why this person would regret his action: the gold rush, shaking the whole ocean, and no cavalry coming to help. “Baby, you held heaven.” In both these songs, there are rooms, clocks, and fights between people who know everything about each other. The writer has brought what has long been promised in love songs, but it has never come.

Smith’s greatest writing on the album is a dialogue, which cannot be completed. In “Oh Mother,” there is a mother and daughter talking about a man who hurt her, and nobody can complete this story. The mother warns: beware the woman scorned, she could move a mountain, cross the driest desert, and her anger would make roots of the earth to be torn apart. The daughter says that “He’s no man of mine” and immediately adds, “Mother, I don’t know where to start/If I stay, will he break my heart?/Maybe there’s still time to explain/But I’m too tied up in my pain now.” She wants the rescue and the permission to stay at the same time. By the fourth verse, she becomes sweaty, can’t breathe anymore, and begs her mother to come faster.

At “Constant Companion,” Smith fully commits to a cowboy image, and the commitment is clear even though the image itself is strange. “Sugar Rush” asks, “Who’s that with the killer smile?” and runs out of ideas before the second verse. “Hold On” and “To Be Free” repeat the words about rivers, feathers, and freedom’s wings, pleasant and going nowhere. Smith has said that this album is the result of pushing themselves in every possible way. The push can be heard in only four or five songs. In other songs, the voice works as hard as the pen left it to work, and after listening to “When He’s Gone” and “Thief,” one notices the difference in comparison with Gloria.

Above Average (★★★☆☆)

Favorite Track(s): “My Guy,” “When He’s Gone,” “Oh Mother”

Subscribe now

“I wasn’t happy. And I was attaching my happiness to my music, so I wanted to quit music completely,” Cleo Sol told Dazed in 2023. She had left behind a decade of making music and managed to do the unthinkable: disappear from the music industry. From 2012 to 2017, she was held to a deal from the now-defunct Island Records, which produced nothing anyone ever heard. It took getting married to Inflo, a producer so allergic to publicity that it was practically his superpower, for Sol to find her way back to music.

The married couple started their own label, Forever Living Originals, and a collective of artists called SAULT. And while the maneuvering worked well for mostly underground musicians like SAULT, who have zero interviews or photos, it didn’t seem like anyone ever bothered to tell the public not to expect Cleo Sol. Her masterful 2020 debut, Rose in the Dark, made the year-end lists of Complex and Clash, and she did it with no press release. Mother dropped the following August, a late summer dominated by two rappers.

In “23,” Sol sings, “Mama, please, stop acting twenty-three/You’ve got responsibilities/Are you still stuck in your teens?” over a harp, a bouncing xylophone, and a sweet bassline. It’s a song scolding her mother for never growing up, escaping the perils of adulthood through drinking, and striking back at her daughter with a sharp tongue hidden beneath a devilish smile. Sol’s just being harsh when she says, “Your bitter tongue is sharper than a knife/Cut so deep inside/Don’t care with a smile/That I am a child.” She’s worn out. But then she sings, “The little stars and the locked-up dreams/The missing pieces, they’re in me.” She’s of the mind that it’s not just her childhood that was stolen; it’s her mother’s as well. Sol’s not just protecting a newborn on her cover; she’s doing damage control for all that came before. A backpack full of damaged dreams. Ready or not, her own cycle may just be beginning.

The album begins with the sound of Inflo’s hands on the piano. He plays on nearly every track and assembled this exact band for the session. Nathan Allen on drums, Alex Bonfanti on bass, Kadeem Clarke on Rhodes, Graham Godfrey on congas. Something we’ve got to love about Sol is that she’s a gentle mother, while realizing that sometimes, you’ve got to get tough. Case in point: “Sunshine,” where she literally calls her baby “literal light,” and “Know That You Are Loved,” wherein she repeats her messages over and over again, but prettified by glorious strings. Most would stop there and think that these songs were made for kids. But listen to “Heart Full of Love,” and you’ll remember that a mother’s love will protect you from only so much. That strong, indomitable spirit has been about tough love long before now. That’s why, when the magnificent Rosie Danvers fiddles her strings, and a choir comes in during the second half, you are filled with contrasting emotions.

You can see a mother who will do anything and everything to protect her child, but also one who knows she cannot do it all. That’s what tears her heart apart. It’s a marvelous combination of strength and tenderness, made beautiful in a million different ways. “The train never stopped, never had time to unpack your trauma,” the songstress sings in “Don’t Let Me Fall,” and “Keep fighting the world, that’s how you get love, mama.” Overhearing a couple’s quarrel that turned violent, one reviewer had said the song started beautifully and then got purposefully intense. Sol is asking to be rescued by God, or a partner, or whatever’s strong enough. Starting a song saying “don’t let me fall” gives the feeling that you know what hitting the ground feels like, and it costs you something.

All these songs of devotion—about motherhood, family, and creativity—are anchored in practical needs. In “Music,” Sol explains why she sings at all. It’s not an explanation she owes anyone, but it’s satisfying to hear: music was the art form that finally kept her upright during all those years away from the industry she helped build. On “Spirit,” the album’s longest track, she jumps from the domestic to something bigger. Just like that. There’s no obvious announcement of the shift. Her mind drifts, and suddenly she’s singing of her ancestry, of a connection to something immense but invisible. The song expands to accommodate more voices and instruments. It is no longer about a singer and her baby in West London; it’s about where she thinks she came from before she was born. Without “Music” and “Spirit,” Mother would be a sixty-six-minute whisper to a single child. Even the most patient listener would feel locked out.

Her masterpiece snuck up on a lot of Sol’s listeners. Though it was released the same month SAULT put out Nine (which they made available for only 99 days before pulling it from streaming), a week or so before Ye unveiled his Donda with a series of stadium listening events, and in the same month Drake’s over-hyped Certified Lover Boy dropped. She ensured it wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. Sol worked with a small team of hand-picked individuals, who “helped make this music so special and whose intentions were aligned with the honesty I was looking for,” she wrote to her most devoted followers in September.

Speaking of her long-time collaborator Inflo to Dazed, she said working with him is “true joy, happiness; it’s very spiritual.” It’s been a joy, then, watching Mother get nominated for an Ivor Novello. Marked out by its warmth and intimacy, perhaps it resonates so strongly because Sol knows how much of a risk her music is taking. Whether the prize brings in new people or not, there’s no doubt more will hear her too—thoughtful for the mainstream, not niche—voice in the future, especially after Heaven and Gold, two 2023 albums, rustles up some wider recognition. With Mother, it feels like only now we’ve really started getting to know her.

Standout (★★★★½)

Subscribe now

Out of nowhere, Endless was a surprise visual album that was released exclusively on Apple Music by Def Jam Records on August 19, 2016. Fans viewed the album as Frank Ocean recently surfaced, being built in a staircase where the entire album was coincidentally playing. The next day, the actual record was released on iTunes (under Boys Don’t Cry) but on Frank’s imprint. Universal Music Group, the parent company of Def Jam, has banned the company from entering into any further exclusive streaming deals.

Frank earned over $1 million in that week alone, according to Forbes (not including money he received through Def Jam). Frank’s royalty percentage share has changed from 14 percent on Def Jam to a whopping 70 percent since breaking off and going independent. He has special plans for his two records, released nearly on the same day: one, the sacrificial lamb, while his heart and soul were destined to communicate with the people who had already left.

The characters in Blonde are holed up in their thoughts. “I thought that I was dreaming when you said you loved me,” Ocean sings so effortlessly on “Ivy,” would have you believe: it’s hard to miss the effect that past tense has on a memory. The track’s poolside construct is studded with reminders of somebody else’s presence, and that whole back end resolves itself to nothing but the refrain, “I know you gotta leave, I know you gotta leave,” whispered into a void. “Self Control,” said Ocean in a conversation with the New York Times, is also not un-adjacent to a real relationship, a mutual one that just wasn’t gonna work, but “we weren’t really on the same wavelength.”

With “White Ferrari,” the affair in question has moved from the present tense and, finally, resolved into a memory: Ocean at 16 years old somewhere in Louisiana, with the expensive car. His claim that it’s “bad luck to talk on these rides” reeks of rule more than memory; fifty versions of this song might lead you to believe he’s still following it. Ocean’s fifteen-year-old brother heard it, then told him, and Ocean replied that it’s not the version “because it didn’t give me peace yet.”

In fact, there’s no rejection offered in the tracks where sexual intimacy isn’t specified, which can at least equally describe a same-sex or heterosexual inclination. Ocean’s two-minute “Good Guy” is exclusively the former but also light-hearted—after recounting having been set up on a date to a gay bar, dressing up, and having a drink, it ends with a virtually unembellished “Here’s to the gay bar you took me to” that might as well be the same conversational tone in which he’d order some food.

Four years before Blonde, he wrote a letter on Tumblr explaining that he’d fallen in love with a man at nineteen. Ocean carefully refrained from imbuing himself with the label “bisexual,” but rather used it to further elaborate on an interest in the fluidity of his experience—to instead position himself outside the traditional constraints of sexual attraction. He neither returns to nor further develops the topic on his record—“Nikes” mourns A$AP Yams, Pimp C, and Trayvon Martin instead, while also recounting meeting with someone and taking acid together; “Skyline To” is more concerned about the reeks of weed in California than the person lying beside you at night having already left you by morning. The very title of the record, with the feminine spelling on the cover and masculine written as Blond inside the album, denies any act of refusal.

André 3000 had recorded his creativity on “Solo (Reprise)” back in 2014. The recording took place in Austin, Texas, and the beat, a hip-hop one, he added to the track later—sending it to Ocean without the latter reacting for two long years. Then, when Blonde was released, the rapper went down the drive-in in California, Boys Don’t Cry magazine in the passenger’s seat, and CD in the car’s deck. The voice coming through the speakers was his, but he had never heard the beautiful piano tune accompanying it. “He didn’t tell us that it was coming out,” the musician later recalled, before revealing it had been James Blake who had played it and had forgotten to tell André all about it during their last studio session together.

Such stories are not rare with the musician, who struggled to get his talented collaborators to understand exactly which project they were on—Blake being one of them. Besides André, Blonde features Beyoncé (on “Pink + White” without credit), Kim Burrell (on “Godspeed” also without billing), and many more whose unexpected contributions are made known through short stories like the one SebastiAn (the French producer, not the crab) told when Ocean shared “Facebook Story,” his friend’s girlfriend breaking up with him for accepting her friend’s request.

The middle of the record cuts to two different songs. The beloved “Nights.” The first stretch comes on like a hustle: Ocean goes ‘round the city and round the clock, counting money in New Orleans before and after the flood. The beat switches, and something cold comes in where Ocean’s back in the dark: “Every night fucks every day up, every day patches the night up.” He’s out, but he’s still out here, struggling to get somewhere besides here. On “Seigfried,” asks himself if it’s time to settle down, if he should have two kids and a swimming pool and then wanders to eat mushrooms and hang glide from the moon. Near the end of the track, he quotes Elliott Smith’s “A Fond Farewell”: “This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend.” Ocean takes those words the way you take a coat from someone who will not need it back.

He keeps the hard drives from recording inside the backpack because he figures, as he later told Jon Caramanica, “I’d rather the plane goes down in flames, and the drives go down with me, than somebody put out a weird posthumous release.” He was under the grip of almost a year of writer’s block when he ran into an old friend from New Orleans, who had also been struggling. “It made me feel as though I should talk about the way I grew up more,” Ocean says, and that urgency informs his writing.

He wrote channel ORANGE in two weeks. Not with Blonde. You hear the patience in it all. From the way he works in “Be Yourself,” a voicemail from a friend’s mother warning him about drugs, to how “Close to You” is just ninety seconds of a Stevie Wonder song rearranged to imply a wish. And “Pretty Sweet” begins as noise that could be a building falling before it’s revealed to be a church choir. If you listen to the back end of “Futura Free,” you’ll hear his brother and his friends answer questions in an interview: What’s your name? What’s your first memory? Do you have a hidden talent? Seventeen tracks of lovers who left and friends who died take on new meanings. It’s a version of himself that he still can’t return to. When the time came, that’s what he gave the kids. “I should be paying them, Momma,” he sings in the first half, still surprised that he gets paid for any of this.

Masterpiece (★★★★★)

Subscribe now

Nina Simone once said‚ freedom is no fear‚ and the album on which she chased her own first‚ 1982’s Fodder on My Wings‚ came decades after she’d started singing about everybody else’s․ Cleo Sol has been on the giving end of that arrangement for six years now․ Five solo records‚ all of which have been produced by her husband Inflo for Forever Living Originals‚ directed outward to God‚ to a lover‚ to her children‚ balancing SAULT’s lead with her own facilite‚ and Gentlewoman’s announcement of a new direction is that she can speak life into her family (releasing exactly five years since the masterpiece of Mother)‚ she said‚ only once she can speak life into herself․

The first words that come out of her mouth on I Only Look to You‚ a bit of piano balladry‚ are “Finally‚ I’m looking out for me”—after five albums of pouring reassurance outward‚ it sounds like a door swinging the other way․ The whole verse is torn to shreds‚ relearning how to trust‚ done wasting time where she doesn’t belong․ In the chorus‚ the forgiveness (the “Father‚ for they know not what they do” part) is immediately followed by the words “The only way to heal myself is to forgive them․” Escaping through forgiveness is furthered by the bridge‚ “I’m getting stronger” and “it is time to set me free.”

Still‚ Inflo continues to give her the biggest arrangements of her career․ “Sweet Thing” starts with his bass guitar‚ and soon Camilla Pay’s harp meets the strings under conductor David Campbell‚ the choir under director John McGough‚ and James Williams’s drums․ She tells someone “You bring out the God in me” and hopes he knows he’s not alone․ Rick Nowels provides guitar on the dancehall-influenced “Force of Love,” in which love is “personal” and what they’ve been through made them strong‚ and a bossa nova-influenced track called “Sentimental Love”․ On “Together,” she rides bongos and Nick Ramm’s piano‚ convincing us “There is no doubt we are meant to be together․” She means it․ But “Nothing’s ever perfect/But we make it worth it” is a promise any singer could make to anyone․ The words on these songs settle for less than the band behind them․

While Inflo plays time-waltz himself, words stop settling on “Family Ties.” She sings, “Look me in my eye and you lie/Then I call you out and you cry/Tell me how you can stand by someone who’s making threats/This ain’t family ties․” Estrangement is laid out from the beginning, noting “I know I’m my mother’s child/I could never be that cold/When you need me the most․” She can’t fix someone else’s demons‚ and she says so․ And she forgave‚ the cycle held the other person back anyway‚ and now she has to be the change․ “Honest Talk” strips further‚ to acoustic guitar only․ It’s the first verse anyway: if they leave you‚ they were going to do it anyway‚ and I’ve got to be the change․ But the second verse‚ in contrast‚ is self-reflective: “An honest talk with myself/How have I not seen this?/Can’t change the direction that somebody’s going in/Insecure people do insecure things/You can have the world/Still feel like something’s missing․” “Let Me Cry” is brightened by the piano and the live instrumentation behind a song that asks only one question: can she please just be tired․ “It’s a bit of a long‚ long day‚” she sings‚ “I’ve been waiting so long․” The three songs put the same amount of restraint on the production that the lyrics push forward‚ with the musicians in the background knowing when to get out of her way․

In “Their Smiles Are Not the Same‚” she sings over the bongo-laced arrangement that she learnt again not to lose herself‚ but that the people around her have changed․ She’s not to blame‚ but she should have caught it the first time․ “Someone has to lose/So I have to choose/I know my heart is kind/But trust me‚ I’m no fool․” At the two-minute and thirty second mark, it opens up․ The drums and the choir and the strings all arrive at the same time and the effect is she is singing the same thing over a room․

God is addressed in a multitude of songs. It’s no secret that when you’ve listened to her discography, Cleo pours her soul out and is fearless when she stops consoling. “Thank You,” a dark time-waltz on which Inflo plays nearly every instrument‚ and a synthesizer‚ and at the end‚ sings the record in a higher register than anywhere else on the record․ God is told to let her mourn on “Let Me Cry,” asked to show the way on “Imagine,” a slow-burn piano piece that makes its way to a bridge where she names what the trials cost: “It’s a tough‚ tough‚ tough‚ tough‚ tough situation/But I know it will change after the rain/Now you finally know your worth․” Faith runs through everything here and it is not cheap She prays‚ and sometimes she just asks‚ and sometimes she just sits down and talks that doesn’t sound preachy․

One of the best R&B songs of the year, “All Because of Love,” gives: “I don’t wanna burden you with things I’ve been through/Even though it’s anger‚ babe‚ I swear it’s not at you/I’m just speaking my truth.” She recalls someone who shows up when nobody else does: “Just like magic‚ you appear when nobody cares.”The bridge hands the song over to God’s will: you will survive‚ you’ve got the fight in your heart and the blessing of life․ Then she stops singing and starts talking․ She thanks him for being there‚ tells him she knows it’s been hard‚ and wonders whether she has actually been there for him․ “It seems like everybody goes when it’s really tough times․” She also tells him not to go a day without giving thanks for something․ In “Little Things,” Max Ramey plays the bass‚ Austin Bohlman plays the drums‚ James Payne plays the guitar‚ Kate Hainsworth plays the horns‚ and sings “It’s just the little things/Gives me hope in this big‚ cold world,” with the other musicians surrounding her․

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Sweet Thing,” “Let Me Cry,” “Family Ties,” “All Because of Love”

Subscribe now

On August 1st, 2016, a live video appeared on the website boysdontcry.co. An empty warehouse. No announcement, no press, no explanation. Over the coming days, a figure appeared on screen, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three, wearing a Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt one day and a Playboy bunny sweater the next. Sawing wood and sanding planks and occasionally playing instrumental backing tracks that built and thickened in the background. The stream ran for 18 days. No one knew what it was—art, advertising, or a nervous breakdown.

It was Frank Ocean, who had not released an album for four years, had missed every self-imposed deadline since 2015, and had moved to London without saying why. On August 19, the stream concluded with Endless, a 45-minute visual album credited to Def Jam, a label he’d been trying to leave since 2010. In an interview with The New York Times’ Jon Caramanica, he described the work on Endless as “a seven-year chess game.” Having paid back the $2 million advance given by Def Jam from his own resources, he purchased back the rights to his previous music and presented Endless as his second album, fulfilling the terms of his deal. The next day, Blonde was released independently, with Ocean earning around 70% of the revenue generated and reportedly earning $20 million from exclusive deals with Apple. Universal Music Group’s chairman immediately responded by announcing a ban on all platform-exclusive releases by labels within his group. You don’t have to admire the cunning involved to appreciate what came out of it.

Within forty-eight hours of Endless’ release, it was almost forgotten. Blonde debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart and quickly dominated all conversation about the artist. Pitchfork’s Ryan Dombal described the visuals as “painfully dull” while praising the music as “an interesting look into his creative process.” Spin described Endless as feeling “formless.” This general view of the album held true for about a year. I first returned to listen to it again when the 2017 re-release was issued on vinyl and CD/DVD cassette through Ocean’s Blonded store, and by then the album had changed. Copies of the limited-edition release can fetch high prices. Fans created guides to listen to all the tracks. And the songs initially thought to be warm-up tracks for Blonde reveal much more upon closer listening.

The strongest tracks from Endless are stronger than most on Blonde, but nobody knew this in 2016. They’re songs of love with all their significant details left out. Wither pictures a possible future with someone, with burnt-out trees and burnt fields, with two people dancing in a state of destruction. Alex G provides understated guitar work as Frank sings about wanting his children to see flowers bloom, and to “be able to see me, witness me wither.” The track name contains a wordplay between “Wither” and “with her” and doesn’t draw attention to its cleverness, which creates its emotional impact. He imagines himself growing old, asking to be seen before he’s gone. “Higgs” is over 6 minutes of disorientation in a new relationship: the title references the particle that was first proposed by theory in 1964 and discovered in 2012; “It’s all new to me/Having you around.” “What if we decide to live by choice?” And then starkly bare, “If acts of God break us apart/Least we did ours.” Big cheesy—but resolute. “Rushes,” the album’s longest track, deals with all meanings of the word: petrol money, blood pressure, and a rush of desire, and contains a snippet from Ms. Lauryn Hill’s “Just Like Water”—a constant refrain on every song, with Jazmine Sullivan and Alex G contributing to them all. Their consistent presence contributes to the best songs on Endless being the strongest material on the album as a collection, creating a sense of unity among its longer tracks beyond just individual highlights.

Less than a minute into “Comme des Garçons” and it’s already finished. A song that leans towards tropical rhythms, with a man who’s seeing someone on the side and surrounded by “perfect bitches” on his couch, “all this drillin’ has enraged the cops.” The song title plays on the fashion brand and the French term meaning “like boys,” touching on Ocean’s confusions about his desires and adulteries; he mentions them offhandedly, as if he were including some extra information in parentheses. “Alabama” creates a similar atmosphere but over 85 seconds, with layered vocals which evoke the sound of family members speaking over dinner, a dysfunctional household with a woman climbing out wearing cut-offs and a wife-beater, and extreme poverty, with Sampha providing a heartfelt coda (“What can I do to get to know you better?/What can I do to show you my love?”) although this sounds improper as a lyrical motif amid its dramatic storytelling of problems in a relationship. On “U-N-I-T-Y,” Ocean raps and delivers his strong bars. “My head fatiguing off the opus/Kept it underground to focus.” Outside of Federer and Djokovic, he puts “refugees in Margiela,” then play kids the Fugees, providing individual details that reveal more character information in a short amount of space than any of the longer music tracks managed to do.

Joe Thornalley, 23, from Kilburn, who performs under the name Vegyn, met Ocean at Plastic People, a basement rave venue in London’s East End that has since been closed down. (Plastic People helped to create an enormous amount of influential British music connections during the 2010s: James Blake has given out demos at the venue too.) Vegyn told the FADER about working on “Slide on Me.” “The song was one of his first projects working with Ocean, and he was worried sick. “I was just so fucking nervous. It was make or break, you know?” he recalls. He’d been creating boom bap beats for four years prior to working with Ocean, who flew him out to LA.

There is an air of the unfinished to some of Vegyn’s contributions, as on “Mitsubishi Sony,” “Rushes To,” and in “Higgs”; one gets the impression of an email draft you should not be privy to, words put down on the way to being sent. Alex G provides a counterpoint with his guitar work, a little messy and adrift but for the better. And where Ocean has left off, Jazmine Sullivan is there to put her voice to his on no fewer than five tracks. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead has put together the string arrangements for “At Your Best (You Are Love)” with the London Contemporary Orchestra at Abbey Road; it is an oddity for a label the size of Endless. The album was put to tape in studios from Los Angeles to Berlin, London, and Miami, and the different sensibilities of artists who were likely in separate places with their objectives are evident in the coherence, or lack of it.

The visual album has Ocean at a table saw with some plywood as another version of him looks on and checks his phone; a third is at the broom. They do not so much as acknowledge one another. It is all high-contrast black and white from afar, with Ocean reduced to a silhouette in half the shots. Of the 45-minute film, Tom Sachs says to Pitchfork that it is but a continuous edit of a 140-hour uncut video he worked on with Ocean. In the course of it, Ocean puts up a spiral staircase and then is done with it. There is no door to the world, no other floor to go to. Which makes the title Endless something of a visual jest on hard work and infinity. Wolfgang Tillmans’ “Device Control” was part of the first live stream, a seven-minute affair with lyrics cued by the press releases (besides Apple) of Samsung and Sony. You will not find the satire on the CD/LP reissue, so most of the fan base will be without it. The staircase is still there, though.

Great (★★★★☆)

Subscribe now

Welcome back to another issue of Wednesday Roundups! Diving into today’s music can be overwhelming with the constant influx of albums and singles, as 100,000+ tracks are uploaded daily. ​That’s where Shatter the Standards ​makes ​your musical ​navigation easier every ​Wednesday. They ​slice through the ​noise, bringing ​you a curated ​list of ​noteworthy new drops ​accessible on ​streaming platforms. They handpicked specific records from this past release week to curate ​a diverse lineup, ​including The Womack Sisters, Paul Wall & Termanology, Channel Tres, Arin Ray, Genia, Kelly Finnigan, NicoleYvette, Breanna Whitaker, André Cymone, The Musalini & 9th Wonder, Abby Jasmine, Yasmina Sadiki, Mutant Academy, Dylvinci, MIYANA, Osbe Chill, Wakko The Kidd, Ash Levi, Ron E, Oxii Moron, Nate Rose, B-Movie Millionaires, Kodie Shane & Wondagurl, Flames Dot Malik, and Michael Christmas, Chris Crack & Girl Talk. If you’re struggling ​to keep ​up with the ​ever-evolving music ​scene, subscribing to ​the Shatter the ​Standards newsletter is ​your ticket ​to staying in ​the loop. ​They dive deep, bringing hidden gems to your inbox weekly (and saving this playlist below). If you don’t have Spotify, save it to your Apple Music account.

The Womack Sisters: The Womack Sisters [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Paul Wall & Termanology: Repeat Repeat Repeat [Hip-Hop]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Channel Tres: Enigma POV [Dance]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Arin Ray: LIMBO [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Genia: INTENSE LOVER [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Kelly Finnigan: B-Sides, Singles & Forgotten Gems [Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

NicoleYvette: Say Yes [Vocal Jazz]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Brenna Whitaker: Reverie [Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

André Cymone: The Resurrection of Funk [Funk]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

The Musalini & 9th Wonder: The Don & Eye 3: The Trilogy [Hip-Hop]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Abby Jasmine: I’ll Be Home Soon [R&B]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Yasmina Sadiki: Made for the Past [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Mutant Academy: We’ll Swap It Out Vol. 1 [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Dylvinci: Repository [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

MIYANA: Stories of the Yearner [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Osbe Chill: DREAMS DO PAY THE BILLS [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Wakko The Kidd: Infinity [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Ash Levi: Vinyls and Ashtrays: Disc One [R&B/Hip-Hop/Electronic]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Ron E: PRIVATE NIGHTS, VOL. 1 [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Oxii Moron: SELF-CTRL [R&B/Soul]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Nate Rose: Freeskies, Vol. 2 [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

B-Movie Millionaires (Lee Scott & Black Josh): It Made Sense at the Time [Alternative Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Kodie Shane & Wondagurl: Heartthrob Hotel [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Flames Dot Malik: The Fix 2 [Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Michael Christmas, Chris Crack & Girl Talk: Don’t Come to My House Sharing Your Location [Hip-Hop/Rap]

Stream on Apple Music
Stream on Spotify
Stream on TIDAL

Subscribe now

Spending some time reading through Ransom’s rhymes will make you think about being middle-aged, which seems unusual for a rapper whose career is built on interconnected rhymes. He started in the A-Team and went by Duffle Bag. This man raps on the level that used to get someone a record deal and a radio freestyle for one sixteen. This man gives his whole albums to one collaborator at once. His discography will remain unknown to most listeners. In a slightly different environment, he would be the rapper whose name the others were using to show that the craft still has its limits. However, he became respected among those who were already listening to his music, and got the shelf full of albums that were split between him and one producer at a time. The Price of Clarity is his first solo release since 2022’s No Rest for the Wicked.

If we were to break down the complaints Ransom made against other rappers into fragments, they would be very similar to all old heads’ complaints. First of all, he is tired of bragging and exaggerations on “The Prime Example.” He is sure that nobody can recite half of what they are quoting. Finally, he believes that they do not really believe what they write. It is standard stuff, mostly. However, his demand seems strange. He wants them to confess that they are making the con and continue doing it. They should “at least own the circus that produces all the clowns.” Being either a fool or being famous—that is the choice they made. At least, both. In “Doctor Manhattan,” with another soul sample, the same disrespect is shown to the rivals vertically. Comparisons to the lesser rappers are described as embarrassing. Also, the words that he uses seem to be the painted walls of the Vatican. And underneath all this, he leaves a question. Who is going to teach the predators how to be civilians?

He wipes the sleep from his eyes on "Good Mournings.” With a mellow backdrop, he wakes up, looks at his daughter and his wife, smears rosehip oil on his skin for its antioxidants, stretches his legs on the ottoman, and realizes how happy he is. However, the burden of time falls on him, and the song changes its direction completely. Ransom starts wondering why somebody would risk everything for a man who fed the sharks. He also says that the fewer body parts somebody has, the less chalk detectives use. Finally, he mentions that the streets are cold because the best heart was taken by those without a roof over their heads. It is his birthday. He’s 46, and dedicates the rest of the verse to his wife’s father and his brother, who is sorely missed, and to the idea that life is a game that cannot be ignored and must be something more than this. “Swan Song” tells the same story but in reverse. In the summer of 2012, she was nervous; he could not notice it. She wonders why he is in prison, but he says it doesn’t matter. Braised beef, baked sweet potatoes, ginger ale. In the winter of 2017, he could not afford a wedding ring, but he managed to buy a better one and prepared himself to hear her say, “Do better.” She opens the box and says that this one would last forever.

Nobody is treated worse in this album than the man who peaked before his twentieth. Ransom talks directly to himself in “Richer Prior Life.” First of all, he shows all the things the man could have done—going to college, gaining knowledge, earning a couple of degrees, serving in the army—and finally, he says what actually happened. The man had no opportunities. Now, look at yourself. You have no wealth, being a prisoner of yourself, posting pictures of your former self. The trap set and sprung in one breath is the best moment of this verse. Spending time reflecting on the time spent climbing the mountain leaves you sulking in the hole that you claimed to have no time to dig out. This rapper puts himself into this frame, too. He realized that there were a couple of grays in his mirror this morning. Your age is mandatory, he says, and growth is optional.

Freeway appears on “The Coldest Winter,” saying that his beard is his strength and that he’s a rapping Samson. He delivers the hardest bar in the song, saying he threw a home until they murdered Nip right where they raised him, in front of a store he owned, and if you can’t be safe there, where are you safe? Young Chris broke out of the bando until they took it over and rebuilt it, says he did it without any pen or paper and managed to do it after his fifth seizure, as Ransom interpolates “What We Do” on the hook. Lloyd Banks does the most with the least room on the piano-driven “Circumvention”: money that doesn’t sleep, and so he’s peaking at your weakest hours, beef calls that mean leaving some things at home since the phone is a piece of evidence. The criminally underrated Nick Grant, on “Sorry My Love,” apologizes to a dying sister, fixes her problems, and to a mother about being an addict, and credits her with being an inspiration, crawling out of the darkest corners. These are men who have rapped at a high level long enough to watch the audience for it to shrink, and Ransom books them as you book the people you want to be pushed by. Grant pushes him. That verse is better than the one Ransom replies with.

He passes two packs to a couple called Reece and Chrissy on “Confessional Booth,” and a month later their niece is thin. The preacher nearly called the police when he heard his sins. He is robbing dreads at the Days Inn, he is aging, and he is accepting that the grave is winning because it hasn’t lost yet. Reece and Chrissy blamed themselves when he sold their niece bricks; their mother blamed them for that, and they never sold her anything. He didn’t tell them anything. He asks that both be forgiven and says he thinks you owe them that much.

His mother is on the hook on “Hollywood Squares,” warning him about the tears of common crooks played by those Hollywood squares, and the verses underneath the name call the mechanism. They sell you distractions; they count their bread. They escort you to the grave for fame and will not say your name until they pronounce you dead. Sugar kills, so they sell you Sprite. “The Ultimate Betrayal” runs the same racket on the awards circuit and gets the most concentrated writing from him here out of it. He talks to a man standing at a podium receiving a trophy made by some other man, thanking the Lord for it, and taking the oohs and aahs of the room on its feet. “It is a façade, and not a reflection of who you really are,” he says. God doesn’t make ballplayers and superstars; the verse says, God makes messages, and so what is the good of a gift you can’t deliver a message with? Whatever you make out of the theology, the picture is exact. A grown man standing on a stage, holding an object, thanking somebody for it.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Good Mournings,” “The Temptations,” “The Ultimate Betrayal”

Subscribe now

Most of the 2026 rap collaborations were pieced together through attachments—a verse arriving in someone’s inbox from a city the other person has never been to. Gregg Gillis gathered everyone in a room in Pittsburgh, with additional work conducted in Boston and Chicago, the hometowns of Michael Christmas and Chris Crack. After years of producing beats for rappers instead of creating festival mash-ups, his latest project was a full-length album featuring Wiz Khalifa, Smoke DZA, and Big K.R.I.T.

Two lines into his verse on “Wouldn’t Go to Chili’s with Michael B. Jordan,” Chris Crack is back home at his apartment with no power: “I remember nights with no lights, duckin’ police.” A cold slice of pizza follows, then “I remember fires with the mantles, had the centerpiece,” followed by chicken grease being drained away, and by the final line, his mother is a professor who has fitted rims to their Lexus. Michael Christmas follows with a cocaine nod, saying: “Like this shit was Beverly Hills, but it was Blue Hill,” he ordered a pizza on any street corner as the cops dealt out a small amount of crack, before recalling taking drugs in middle school and peddling sweets during the crack era era; and soon he’s asking if you have any juice and wonder who killed Bishop too on a later song.

The hooks are delivered by Christmas, who demands to be paid on both the 1st and 15th of the month in “Garfield Hated Mondays But Didn’t Have a Job,” and begs off being timed on “Bury Me With the Apollo Twin.” With the former, Crack delivers verses about banknotes, women of every color of the rainbow, cocaine deals, and Rogaine farms until finally getting what he really wants: “When you got the wave, you get invited to the mayor house.” Christmas then tells the caller to “Get in the car, sit in the car, skate” on “My Phone Don’t Work On Payday” and swears he’ll deal with them tomorrow; the latter hook has him under the influence of dank in one go, after which he declares: “I could not been here today/Instead I am here today.” Chris Crack responds to the call with “Business minded like I’m Percy, I had the courage,” before his line is blocked.

On “Vending Machine Charcuterie Board,” Crack demands to know why there is no Thai food, even as people keep waiting and complaining about him. As Gregg Gillis provided the soulful bounce, Michael says his crew never told him to stop hanging out at Screech’s—he’s dressed in a starter jacket and baggy jeans, ready to jump into bleachers in 2000 style. The hook sees him longing for some Jodeci action. Back to “Garfield Hated Mondays But Didn’t Have a Job,” the team’s creative energy recalls “Still Tippin’” from Christmas, with Charlie Brown appearing just two bars later. Meanwhile, Chris Crack wonders why anyone would give a finger heart. Gillis did a big one on “Dr. Umar Radio Station on GTA6.” He gives the duo a two-stepper summertime jam that turns Christmas from a dance-maker into a “Manischewitz twist.” With only six songs and under twenty minutes, the three individuals provide unexpected chemistry that we’d hoped would evolve into a full-length album soon.

Favorite Track(s:) “Wouldn’t Go to Chili’s with Michael B. Jordan,” “My Phone Don’t Work On Payday,” “Garfield Hated Mondays But Didn’t Have a Job”

Subscribe now

It was with Where I’m Coming From (1971) that Stevie Wonder truly spread his wings outside the repertoire Motown had been offering him since the early 1960s, when he was still called Little Stevie Wonder. Beyond the formal ambition of compositions that blend, sometimes with a very Beatlesque charm, pop and classical arrangements, or veer into a striking funk that would not have been disowned by Sly Stone, it was also an opportunity to let his lyrical pen speak, especially on themes of love and social issues, racial tensions (“I Wanna Talk to You”), and politics, which would continue to inspire some of his best songs, but also his gift for voices and characters. Songs with drawers, addictive hooks, melodies of cult status, Stevie overflowed with ideas on this “concept” album, all the way to its cover, from which the letters could be detached to make a mobile. (The liner notes were inside the sleeve.)

Music of My Mind (1972), brighter, less experimental but no less excellent, was recorded after he had obtained much greater artistic independence. Bob Margouleff and Malcolm Cecil of the duo Tonto’s Expanding Headband, who had assembled the world’s largest modular synthesizer, named TONTO (The Original New Timbral Orchestra), opened up new horizons for him. Thus began nine new golden songs, written with a pen steeped in marvelous sounds that they would continue exploring through 1974.

A new salvo of eternal classics (the best-known being “You and I,” “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” the irresistible “Superstition,” or the sublime “Looking for Another Pure Love” with Jeff Beck’s participation) came with Talking Book (released in October 1972), then Innervisions (1973), haunted by his breakup with Syreeta Wright and in which his political concerns took on unprecedented scale with “Living for the City,” a film within the record, an incandescent protest song against systemic racism. The orchestral profusion gave way to more stripped-down writing and instrumentation centered on Stevie Wonder’s keyboards.

The last album before his two-year absence, Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974), was also the first after the accident that nearly cost him his life, and spiritual and religious references abound, in a vein that is sometimes contemplative, even if he did not give up the art of irresistible groove (“Boogie on Reggae Woman”), nor that of denouncing the politics of his time (“You Haven’t Done Nothin’”) and songs so catchy that they become indispensable from the very first listen (“Creepin’”).

If one cannot deny the colossal stature of Songs in the Key of Life, these five records constitute, power to the fifth degree at this level of (divine) inspiration, a series that can no longer be ranked, with each installment representing a facet of Stevie Wonder’s genius, who delivered more gems in only four years than many of his contemporaries did in an entire career.

A fingerprint of Stevie and his handwritten name, and a list of inspirations more or less close to him, including Jeff Beck, Alice Coltrane, Chick Corea, David Sanborn, Stephen Stills, David Bowie, the Watts Prophets, Lennie White, Bill Withers, and Frank Zappa.

Childhood nostalgia (“I Wish”) or the experience of parenthood (“Isn’t She Lovely”), spirituality (“Have a Talk With God”), social justice (“Black Man,” “Village Ghetto Land” have an almost documentary dimension that has unfortunately retained all its relevance), and love in all its forms, the more intimate ones (“Summer Soft,” “Knocks Me Off My Feet,” “Ordinary Pain”) as well as the more collective (“Love’s in Need of Love Today”) or even esoteric (“If It’s Magic”), without forgetting the tribute to jazz, with “Sir Duke,” which celebrates Duke Ellington but also Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Glenn Miller, and Count Basie. Stevie Wonder’s pen moves between fiery declarations, mystical inspiration, and almost childlike simplicity, but when in “Village Ghetto Land,” he speaks of people reduced to eating dog food so they do not starve to death; no poetic license or metaphor softens his words.

This brutal confrontation with reality is followed without transition by “Contusion,” a jazz-fusion instrumental as catchy as it is technical, recalling the superlative qualities of his group: while he addresses social or philosophical themes on many titles, there is no clear progression on this record toward a grand central concept or an absolute truth. As in life, one moves from one scene to another and laughs through tears, according to a different logic. Songs in the Key of Life is also striking for its palette of sounds, acoustic, electric, and synthetic, notably from his “Dream Machine” (an example being the Yamaha GX-1 synthesizer, very sophisticated for the time but extremely expensive) and the mythical ARP synthesizer. It is largely thanks to its diversity and astonishing density that this album enjoyed the success and esteem that it did.

Everyone seems to recognize themselves in it: many jazz fans continue to marvel at its formal, harmonic, and technical subtleties, while others, who care only for analysis, always keep a place for “I Wish,” “Sir Duke,” or “Isn’t She Lovely” in their playlists. Gems of romantic ballads (“Joy Inside My Tears”), protest songs, accessible pop, or funk (“All Day Sucker”) come together at a breakneck pace without him abandoning his taste for strange sonic experiments that become unforgettable in a matter of moments: classical, very “Beatlesque” strings played on the keyboard in “Village Ghetto Land,” or “Pastime Paradise,” analyzed finely by Wonder and John Fischbach in David Heffernan’s documentary, where classical orchestra, gospel choir, and chants and percussion from members of the Hare Krishna Hindu sect blend over a Latin rhythm. He finds a very rare balance between auteur-composer record, studio object overflowing with details and technical audacity, without sacrificing anything of its immediate effectiveness.

The critical success was great. There were certainly a few period reviews that were not very positive from nostalgists of Talking Book or Innervisions, which had relegated certain pieces, today unavoidable, to the rank of partial successes or even failures, sometimes unsettled by texts whose almost naive simplicity in certain passages, stripped of all literary or poetic pretension, instead allowed generations of fans to learn them by heart and identify with them. The Detroit prodigy still had plenty of surprises and treasures in reserve. But he would never again renew the commercial or critical success, proof that he had succeeded in his wager of creating a body of work that does justice to life in all its diversity and complexity.

Subscribe now

As for The Musalini, the question of what makes for a good night out is one he is equally prepared to contend for, just like other men might argue a dissertation. Three albums deep with 9th Wonder, who‘d produced every second of them, and how constant when part three is announced here, in intros, in hooks, in asides, like a waiter firming up something they never doubted would come to pass. And he can be comically serious about it too, as on “Two Letters,” where he dubs himself a walking billboard and then proceeds to assign a value to his figures of speech, a quarter million for all these fly metaphors, before he cuts the chorus short so he can establish the parameters: “This ain‘t a love song.”

The bragging on “Shrimp Lo Mein” for the last two minutes, harping on grueling markets and long nights and a crew full of wolves who got eaten too, before the whole 16 settle down as though it’s a plate of house fried rice, with all the best in the world in it. Suddenly, the flexing takes the voice of a guy on the cell last night telling a friend who missed it all about the shrimp in disbelief. He does it again at the Bronx Zoo on “Salt Box,” hustling with the alligators over grilled calamari and catfish, back into a role to tell a swindler he‘s fronting like a Gotti but he‘s really just a Sammy, back into a role to say the hood loves him like some fried chicken, again 150 miles out from the capital at the top of the hill at the Capital Grille, moonlight and candlelight and reservations for nine, honey apple wings, beefsteak with his queen, ice on chill, before Eli Tha Don pulls up in the second verse with a short teal dress and Key & Peele back at the crib. No one ever says a number.

Under “Off the Books,” he asserts, “I got a safe full of these rhymes,” and says he‘ll “Treat it like art, it‘s increasing in value,” the only way he admits that the rap is work, and then states a simple credo: money over fame, tells us other men are out here trying to buy planes. Le$ does the same thing on“Lay Low,” claiming victory before he gets it, “In my head it‘s already mine, I just ain‘t got it yet,” and then noting that he speaks only when he has something to say, which, in a record like this, gives him something of a joke at his host‘s expense.

The line underneath the summer forbear on “Pocket Full” floats around a beach house in the Outer Banks, bricks in the vault and the heat of summer in the Porsche without ever catching hold, which is inevitable when the furniture becomes nothing special. A quick break at Shake Shack is the final tangible thing in “Fast Life.” Quiet Snipers pass in cappuccino mornings and toast butter to char perfectly and breakfast on the balcony with skyline views for “Picture Me Rollin’,” something any hotel would have sold for.

Swank makes it to “Can You Stand the Rain” already carrying along by writing raps, mama’s voice in his ear telling him, “The streets ain’t for you, be damned if you die here,” soon joined in the same verse by a line about bullet holes that “redecorate your home like Ikea,” and he carries it that heaviness both times he pulls up: on “Pretty Lady,” where a house with a hole in the roof has rain caught in pans and a cup, with a run of funerals for people he loved, and then on a line that sees him in SoHo four hundred dollars in on a pair of jeans, remembering when twenty was everything. King Draft steals the show on “Car Keys” so effortlessly. He raps that a classmate from kindergarten brings a knife to show and tell; half the people he knows have seen hell or a jail; the government is the terrorist and the block is an oval they‘ve been spinning for a hundred years. Then, in the middle of a song about crab cakes and canyon cribs, he says that he doesn’t have a house either, “I don’t even got a home, I want a Louis my belt.”

Heather Victoria sings he can‘t keep that to himself still thinks about him on “Memories,” the one song where anything of this costs the girl anythng, and when he responds that she has to get over it, that she‘s a memory now, he is doing what the format exists to avoid: “Nothing wrong with you, girl, it‘s more about me.” Musalini is cruising past the Bronx with Big Pun on when it‘s time to arrive. She still gets the last word on the chorus, which is as gracious as he is for the rest of the night.

On “Live from Tokyo,” he admits that the quite independent life is nice—and then at the same time notes, “but soon enough the majors want a piece, tryin’ to profit off a P,” the only topic on here he‘s ever willing to debate, and for a moment he sounds like someone not having a good time. Smoke DZA outsources that chat to himself far better, turning his hundred M pursuit into a meeting with the suits on “Premium Plush” and calling himself the stalking horse at the auction. On “Owe It All,” Musalini is back on the far side of the deal, part three with the big-guy budget, out of the hole and now out here teeing off, new tapes every other month for the streets to bump. Somewhere deep down, you can find the guy who decided long ago that a nice night is a professional grown-up worth thirty-five minutes defending, who’s just taken that argument three times, and is conspicuously going to take the round four.

Solid (★★★½☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Shrimp Lo Mein,” “Salt Box,” “Capital Grille”

Subscribe now

Paul Wall is after the kind of money that makes you question your fate; he wants to asset-manage his mother’s rewards. He mentions both of those feats on “Three-Peat” in the very next line. Termanology claims never to have sold his soul but to have struck it rich with poetry. You can plan all you want; you can set goals, but in the end, God, as ever, runs the show. Both men have built careers discussing work, and on Repeat Repeat Repeat, the work is what is always owed.

Wall is rummaging through the trash, searching for his treasure on “Catch Me If You Can,” and it’s all getting too expensive to be the boss, and most people can’t afford to be the boss. “A closed fist don’t get bread, I need the chips/And a closed mouth don’t get fed, you get the gist,” he raps on “Back In Paris.” Wall also enjoys a rhyme he can ride for several bars. His bars on “Feeling” hold down one rhyme sonically every bar, from working that wheel to ice on the grill to flipping the kale. When he’s chasing the rhyme and not an endpoint, the bars dilate.

Termanology new crib on Chasing Gold has fresh paint, a fireplace, plaques on the wall over every door, a hundred-inch screen, and then he tells you what he paid for it. He sold the dro young, sold the lean, the white, the green, and everything more powerful than caffeine, and he bought himself a Benz at eighteen. He always knew he‘d make it, he says, even at 16. On “Stoned Island,” he’s pushing Stone Island on an island of stone, putting up stats like Jeter and coming with gat lines like Peter and vowing never to put filler into the frames of a verse, and on “Back In Paris” he takes three suppositories filled with champagne from his flute to the Louvre, where an edible from Amsterdam is fucking him up and the Mona Lisa keeps watching him, and then he‘s back out on the block planning a trip back for Fashion Week.

Bun B shows up on “Feeling,” just paid his dues in this still-growing business not intended to take an “L,” loss, that is. Nothing was the deal, Air Maxes on a mountaintop the size of the salad you made, then he’s the gun gift that you won’t get on the 25th of December. Best song on the album, and neither of the main MCs topped his verse. Le$ carries lighter on “Catch Me If You Can,” turning pieces of a car down a frame, replacing each bolt and washer, putting it back on the wheels, and setting it aside as a one-of-a-kind winning sculpture. He rose from 84th to triple golds.

Wall describes happiness as a slippery fish constantly losing its grip on “Blessings.” He encourages you to make your money and stop moaning about the crust, forewarns that taking your eyes off your brother can lead to instant self-destruction, and concedes that life is hard. But at least someone, somewhere, is worse off, so you better dust yourself off and adapt. Termanology declares his undying love for his style of putting on clothes but can’t let his money slow down his getting debonair about the Joneses, and that all exists in your dark till it comes into the light. Masspike Miles makes the catchy hook with a grin in front and the pain in the corners of his eyes.

The hook on “Make Me Feel,” done by Termanology, is the drink and the dank and very little past them, and Paul Wall‘s verse underneath keeps going after the idea is spent. “You Believe In You” is moderately dull, with Kim Davis singing about rainy days over uplifting praise anyone could have written. Termanology recognizes the problem himself: “I aware this ain’t my most complex lyrical rhyme.” His verse gets better when he gets concrete, remembering 1999, cassette tapes, and records you could buy before iTunes and stream on DSPs. Wais P maneuvers like a piece on “Chasing Gold,” summing coke, baking soda, and water. Grammy-nominated, with the Glock and Paul Wall, pulls up in an 84 with the bucket seats, first ballot, unanimous, while Termanology is topped off with gold rings sprawling his hand and wrists.

He then grabs the title track and tells another plaque does nothing for him. Sure, the recognition is nice, but when off stage, there’s nothing to show for being fearless, and as he described it, “It ain’t like I’m celebrating for my hard work.” He describes himself as a functioning alcoholic who receives the dollars anyway. Paul Wall grabs the back half, cruising down 249, listening to the voices in his head telling him to do more, and this is his one firm boundary: if you’re broke, you're alright, but if you’re lazy, then he’s gone. He used to play on the bench, and now he’s at the forefront in prime time.

On “Trill On Top,” Wall claims that his best friend stole from him and then denied it, even though the video was right there. The fake ones say that they are real but get dipped when each is gone. Whenever they were rolling, another one of their crew was doing time. Finally, he figures out what they all had in common. He asks who was first, the snake or the rat. It goes to show they were both. He says their biggest enemy came from their block, which he says he never saw coming. Termanology discusses that some of his friends told him lies, and other friends told him the truth. Looking back on their actions in Roman times, he figures the liars would have been hung, persecuted, prosecuted, hogtied, and muffled (appeared in movies). Then he tells them they dug their grave and brought the shovel.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Feeling,” “Chasing Gold,” “Trill On Top”

Subscribe now

A hoodie was sent along with a statement. Cavalier wonders what‘s next for the black-market dealers and the pioneers when pot becomes legal, and if those who fought against this culture can be trusted with giving safe passage. He had already used the phrase in “Reprise.” Bring Back Weed Spots gets help from ahwlee’s production outside of the closing track, which was produced by Quelle Chris. On that final track, Cavalier claims to have coined the slogan.

For an album that’s heavy on weed, this doesn’t fall into the trap of wash-rinse-repeat stoner records. Cavalier gets the first hit after the flicker, recognizes right away that it was rolled excellent, soft bottleneck no lean smoke, screen played the hits, pulls set off the strobe when he‘s high he starts in about how haze had us stuck in the cages then how a number of his peoples off ounces and not released. He mentions what he needs back on “Bring It Back”: “Purple piff, uptown, sour D‘s, yeah, bring that back/Black market with no tax audit, yeah, bring that back/Fat baggies with no graphic branding, bring that back.” lojii desires as well the same years back, the block and the dollar sack, still no app needed for invention, barters and relaxed handshakes, White Widow and Blue Dream and Northern Lights, all of it tagged to a time before a state sales tax on ounces arrives.

His brother insists now they spray the weed with pesticide, and the hook is telling them to “keep that out of here.” In “Weed Gentrification,” he admits that his side has done exactly that before, dodging and crop-dusting the product themselves. It‘s doped with bug spray today, says he, more worried about what is inside the bag than what it costs him, which is why on the Kelly Moonstone-assisted “fukwitme” cop from quite dubious source and says, “Shit kinda like Tuskegee, these grapes ain’t from Tuscany.”

Cavalier mentions he wrote “Dead Birds” on his son’s birthday. One of the album’s standouts, he fears in the day whether he’s got the kid where he wants him to be, enough to make his own choices, whether both are all right, and if there is enough air in the balloon. He “smoked the day away,” then “put gains on layaway,” woke up in replay, and felt ashamed of not being great yet. Somebody texted him he’ll recede on music, and he responds that there are many things to shelve before that one. He laments how “OG rappers found dead in hotels and snorting the hell in,” and to young dealers that he’s an unknown civilian man. You hear the same saying from rappers: living is hard, but dying is easy. But with no fear, Cavalier rocks the coldest gear that still holds the pen, like when Anthony Curtis looked at the judge and threw the chair. Later in the second verse, he designated such bloody gauze on the “scars of our innocence,” and he’ll impulsively roll a spliff again for the cause.

On “Batman,” he’s then on the edge for wanting this life, “climbing like Bane,” jumping for the ledge and the call of strife. Absolutely wetting the bed, no boss—he pays it all before he lies in his grave. Cavalier decides it all and feeds the family. He’s swimming upstream on no sleep, burning the wick at both ends, and begging a partner to miss her with his jams like mama spit on boo-boos, thinking they were only children and they’re all doomed. lojii on “The Shuffle” says he’s tired but doing his dance still, lost in the shuffle playing musical chairs, blues in the air and voodoo in your ear while his mojo was left in his favorite suit and taken away. When the plug doesn’t pick up, he feels lonely. It’s him and the music all over again. Cavalier brushes the brain fog from the same song and tells everyone to remember what you never had since you couldn’t get a grip on the bag when things were getting bad. Keep eating well, but stay hungry.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Dead Birds,” “Bouquet of Flowers,” “Weed Gentrification”

Subscribe now

The War and Treaty, “It’ll Hurt Me More Than It’ll Hurt You”

Captain Robert Scheetz was killed when his vehicle struck an IED. Michael Trotter, Jr. sang him a song and performed it at his memorial service, with hundreds of soldiers in the audience for it, and the Army awarded him a new position on the strength of it, composing music to be played for the fallen. Prior to all this, he and his mother cohabitated in a homeless shelter when they would watch Sister Act 2 and compete over who could out-sing “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” so which woman was the first with whom he infatuated himself into harmony was first his mother, then the star of the picture. Years later, he encountered that very star at a festival in Maryland. Tanya Blount had learned the hard way herself what it felt like to come within spitting distance of a career, with a Polydor record (Natural Thing), a Bad Boy distribution deal that delivered a blank copy of a record. They wed, formed as a duo, and the rest was history, releasing multiple good to amazing albums.

There is so much weight on Michael here, as he takes his turn at the first verse and delivers what is at once a very gentle eviction notice. “I can tell you ain‘t been happy for a while/And your face has been missing that smile,” he sings before reaching the line where she‘d already notified her kin that he was the one. Then he and Tanya combined to trade a line every band has heard from the child with a switch, and here two grown folks use it on one another. “It‘s better off this way/Rip off the band-aid.” Tanya takes the second and refuses these terms. “I hear what they‘re saying, I done broke your heart,” she sings. “They only know one side, but two had a part.” She pours whiskey into a glass full of expectations. She calls their burning home a burning home. She won‘t play the fool while he plays it cool.

And then comes the bridge and they finally sing together, and Tanya asks that the tears she‘s crying be taken as a sign for a truce. Michael tells her he doesn‘t want to lose her, one verse after telling her she‘ll be fine in a day or two. —Phil

Erykah Badu & The Alchemist, “Witch Doctor”

Three years ago the story was passed along to Cold Cris. His creative partner was prepared for the Mobb Deep “The Realest.” That beat was made by the Alchemist. Through a fortunate series of circumstances someone was willing to make the call to finally have the beat speak to all of us. After a nomadic period of more than a year and a half in Dallas and Los Angeles, Badu will release an album (her first in more than a decade) on August 28. But will it come out this time? “Witch Doctor” opens in Spanish as well, with a correction: No es una bruja, es una doctora de brujas. She’s the doctor witches go see. That can be daunting, and indeed she is daunting in equal measure, wide-eyed and menacing, as though she doesn’t want to scare you but she is here to shake up your universe, and then she pins her own self down on a rhyme so simple and so unremarkable I almost miss it: “’Cause a witch is just a medium/And a medium like the media/And you take it all in, what they’re feedin’ you/That’s witchcraft.” The third section finds her naming herself not as a bruja, but rather as a curandera, healer, which is perhaps a more accurate description of the service she has been performing in between CD releases. —Harry Brown

Laila! & Teezo Touchdown, “ANGEL”

Laila! makes her own her own record for the first time on “ANGEL” (still her own record, Tyler Cole’s record on strings), and with Cole on production. It was him who made Teezo Touchdown’s debut record three years ago. Laila!’s the one directing the rest of us on where to position our bodies. Her version of the chase begins “There’s an extraordinary angel/I’ve been searching hard to find,” and the angel is deep within her own mind. She goes up to God to ask for a telephone number (quoting what the church-goers all knew to say back when Walter Hawkins was the king of gospel), and while she’s talking, on the other side of the chorus Teezo is wondering whether he can “dance that much for you.” He‘s four feet behind her, going in circles and honing the particular details of his performance. “I ain‘t know it was that bad,” he mutters after not getting a response. “I‘m just trying to make you laugh.” Teezo’s been doing work like this for a long time, and one time he brought a speaker and his friends all the way from Dallas a 250-mile trip with no permission and no show, and they made the whole of Sixth Street bounce until the police told them they had to leave. While “ANGEL” a song where somebody is being convinced to stand in the sun and put his hand over his eyes plays, we are taken through Thomasville on the hillside, through Yaletown by the marina, Poolside Estates on screens, through the transition from golden hour to night. —Marjani Fields

Honey Bxby & JID, “A Thousand Times”

Since she was a kid in a house with a studio and production equipment in the basement thanks to her Dad, Honey Bxby was on the grind. She was on an Atlantic imprint that produced 3 Words, 8 Letters, and “Touchin’,” cut a Lisa Lopes tribute called “Left Eye” with Lil’ Kim, and signed to Warner that last year for Raw Honey. This one features J. White Did It on production with Akil “Universalfresh” King. That‘s a true swing at it. Bxby‘s lines are a damage report of all of this, and the images are all her own (“The shit that you say to me/Ain’t what it claimed to be/Company needs misery”). But when did the guest on an R&B breakup song get to say this much back? JID comes on and accounts for the amount. She says it a thousand times. He says it was 999, and she’s going to need to let him know about any lies. He uses it to detail the custody fight for their friends, the proposal of communion, the aborted attempt to contact her mother, and her arrival “as if she was Solange lapping Celine,” which compresses a decade of tabloid drama into a dozen words. He ends up on “I did not even have a pot to pee,” and the whole story of what he thinks he‘s supposed to do. He also says, “You look cute, and I want to kiss you, and you want to cuss,” which is the only line of the couple’s lyrics in the song that could be interpreted as being sung while the couple is still together. —Tabia N. Mullings

Tiana Major9, “Heaven”

As Tiana Major9 is about to release her deluxe, “Heaven” arrives. The come-on is predominantly borrowed material, singing, “If you haven‘t got no plans I‘ve got the space,” is how she begins, and before the next line, she‘s quoting Dinah Washington (“I‘m lovin’ your company, oh, what a difference a day makes”). The hook builds a farming proverb with the oldest pick-up line: “Let‘s make hay while the sun shines” and is followed two lines later by “It must be Heaven that you fell from.” Then the second verse opens a window. “Let‘s workshop, you see I love the chance to teach/One-of-one kinda freak, a Scorpio, I‘ll show you somethin’/Pussy university, the stars above want you with me,” she says using the same breezy syntax she employed on the eggs, aiming the whole thing at someone in church on a Sunday morning. —Jamila W.

R&B, Soul, or Blues Albums to Check Out

• October London: Love Me for Me

• L’Rain: fata morgana

• The Womack Sisters: The Womack Sisters

• SUMIN: dinnermode

• Abby Jasmine: I’ll Be Home Soon

• Genia: INTENSE LOVER

• Kelly Finnigan: B-Sides, Singles & Forgotten Gems

• Oxii Moron: SELF-CTRL

• André Cymone: The Resurrection of Funk

• Ash Levi: Vinyls and Ashtrays: Disc One

• Yasmina Sadiki: Made for the Past (EP)

• MIYANA: Stories of the Yearner (EP)

• Ron E: PRIVATE NIGHTS, VOL. 1 (EP)

• Arin Ray: LIMBO (EP)

• MALIA: Live In Studio (EP)

• Brenna Whitaker: Reverie (EP)

• Isaia Huron: Mr. Lovebomb (Deluxe)

Other Songs to Check Out

• Jorja Smith: I Lied, You Lied

• SiR: Back to Friends

• ALA.NI & Adrian Younge: Middle of Nowhere

• JACÓTENE: Aeroplanes

• Niko Noir: Different

• Liv East: Projections

• jackson knox: Be Somebody

• Ray Lozano: fallin

• Thee Heart Tones: Don’t Forget Me Love / Sing Your Song

• Summer Banton: Problematic

• Children of Zeus: Before We Drown (feat. Knucks)

• Qendresa: Besitos / Gave Myself 2 U

• SWEATA: Did a Number

• Otis Kane & Aaron Childs: Monday

• J.P.: How Does It Feel

• Gabby Samone: SAFE

• Bobby V: Nick Nack

• Oladapo: Sugarcane

• Ramriddlz: Caliente

• ROZZZQWEEN: Can’t Rub Shoulders

• Mamadou.: Memory, Awayago

• Humble the Great: left you

• DAV!D: remines

• Janette King: Circles

• Ojerime: 4ME

• Quail P: Vacation Love

• Neya: All for Me

• Jordan Rakei: Promise

• St. Paul & The Broken Bones: Loving Wrong

• Tama Gucci: Hot Night

• Romeo Miller: Doin Something (feat. Trevor Jackson)

• Ari Kemera: Set Yourself Free

• 3LISE: no ids

Subscribe now

The only thing everyone knows Fridayy has done in roughly ninety seconds, alone, over someone else’s song. That one huge note Fridayy sings at the start of DJ Khaled’s “God Did” belongs in a church, that kind of voice that stops people in their tracks, and for a while it defined the artist, who was really just a Philadelphia-based singer with Haitian origins singing on other rappers’ songs as a featured artist. He stresses most of his third album, Tension, in much smaller rooms. He’s working his magic on each individual woman here, in the dance club and the front seat of cars, and the size of the longing overtakes the size of the room.

On “Can You Stay,” he figures out an entire night by looking at a woman’s clothes, “I know you ain’t wear that dress for nothin’,” and that ease with appraising a situation is the tone he holds onto longest. “Too Late” turns a crowded dance club into an excuse to slip away into something more private, with a line that only a rapper in 2026 could think to say: “Tell me the code to your wifi, I want connect.” The clichés begin to repeat themselves fairly quickly, that drink and that waist and that dance floor and that vow to throw everything away, but he’s witty enough inside them to let the repetition pass for a particular style. “Skip the Club” is that style taken to its most comfortable extreme, the drive home at night with the hazards on, arriving at the quiet regret that lurks behind the flirtation: “Tell me why we got dressed up just to take these clothes right off.”

That same wit keeps the party going but grinds its gears when a song starts requiring more than the come-on. Fridayy calls a woman a goddess on “Cryin,” questions how she can continue to report to work, and watches her cry, “crying, crying, crying,” for him until the words don’t mean anything anymore. “Dance” works the same way, milking the idea of dancing late into the night past the single worthwhile moment when he watches his problems leave the room: “I see my problems running from me.” The flattery is extravagant and it means nothing.

Fridayy becomes a different kind of lyricist when he’s the one being ignored. “Text” is a whole song devoted to having been ignored, jealous and ungainly, checking the app for signs of life: “It ain’t saying read, but I see you on my feed.” He calls the battle a war, going round for round and taking headshots, then says the small truth lurking under that drama: “All I got is you and this phone.” “Time & Place” interrupts a couple arguing and finds them mid-conflict, “still smoke in the air,” and does the small, dishonorable thing, turning the argument into sex before it has ended: “In my bed is where we can find closure.” The woman gets the opening word, warning him off with an itemized list, “you get headache problem, your wallet empty, big arguments,” and Fridayy sings over her.

He catches feelings for a woman inside a no-strings relationship on “Time Will Tell,” and recounts the mistake openly: “It was no strings attached; that was clear for you/It was hard not to attach.” No one is watching anymore, and the show goes downhill. Fridayy knows they both have other people in their lives and labels them an “acceptable loss,” “I know you got niggas, I got women and that’s cool,” before contradicting himself with his best couplet: “Tryna love this new girl, but I still love you/Tryna remove these feelings like a new tattoo.” No villain, no lesson learned; just talking himself through a doomed relationship and charging it to the system.

For all that honesty, Fridayy tries only one trick with his lyrics. “Haiku” works off the syllable structure of the poem it is titled after, “Five, seven, five, send my girl a haiku,” the bravado of the man who decided to fold his feelings into a set number of syllables and post them. It’s also the only song on which he hands the chorus over. ilham takes it and flips the script, so she is the one making the move and he is the one trying to keep up, “Too thick, too fine, he want me/Too bad, I’m outside.” Fridayy’s verses spend whatever pride he keeps hoarding elsewhere, “I ain’t got no pride/I was trippin’, baby, I must’ve been fried,” a far cry from the “marry-me-ten-times-and-call-me-baby” bravado a few songs ago. Fridayy admits it’s gotten out of hand, “this lovin’ done got dangerous,” and keeps dialing.

All the dialing finally results in an answer at the end of the album, where Fridayy’s chase becomes a promise. “Moment” is where Fridayy describes what he is chasing, naming a Luther Vandross song with “about two bridges and a good hook,” and stacking the end of the world on top of it, “If the world was ending and they took everything from me but you/I’d still stay right here.” “Death Do Us Part” keeps that oath going throughout, “us against the world,” and hands over a verse to Mariah the Scientist to answer from her side; she recounts the gossip about them, then meets his oath with a question: “Since when is it a crime to want to love?” The oath is less about providing new information than it is about showing up where Fridayy has been heading throughout the album, ever since he was telling her in his opening whispers that no one else could understand what the two of them understood. “Tension” begins with a secret, two people no one else gets, and the last two songs make that secret a marriage he never stops insisting on. That one voice that could silence an entire room in one note spends an entire album singing song after song to keep a person from leaving it.

Solid (★★★½☆)

Favorite Track(s): “Text,” “Time Will Tell,” “Moment”

Subscribe now

Blah Records operates out of the north-west of England, founded by Lee Scott, who raps and produces from Runcorn. Black Josh raps from Manchester. Both belong to the Cult of the Damned, and as B-Movie Millionaires, they put out a self-titled EP in 2015 and then Attack of the 50,000ft Sweg Lawds from Outer Space. It Made Sense at the Time sets the two of them trading verses about drinking, dealing, football, wrestling, their families, and their own heads. Over classic and gritty rap beats, King Kashmere built the first beat, Spectacular Diagnostics most of what came after, and Scott four of them himself.

Josh answers Scott in italics halfway through “ICL,” pushing fentanyl at a woman who wants Fenty, clocking a man who acts like a good fella and is really Henry Hill. A hangover on “SOZ” becomes a drive out to a weed farm in Andover, a blunt the size of a lamb’s shoulder, a rival buried like pavlova, and a chorus that apologizes and then declines to elaborate: “Don’t ask me what I’m doing, I’m doing it just because.” Sly Moon takes the same road through “HEX” and comes out the other end dressed like a mob lord in a trackie at the board meeting.

Josh had been gone for ages when “316” catches up with him, lost in stasis, off his meds, dropping the day shift to sell drugs and losing his main girl over it. Midway through the verse he stops and asks, “What the fuck was I talking about?” then starts again on the sight of somebody’s mother snorting down the Wetherspoons, getting aggy with him when he wouldn’t sort her out. He kept the derailment in the take, which is funnier than whatever punchline he lost track of. Nickelus F takes the last verse steadier, watching cool people go lame and enemies trade fake smiles before making records about laying each other down, everybody still living in the same town.

Scott dresses for his age in a straitjacket with shades on, calls himself relatable as the red letters in your drawer or a plastic bag of rubbish on your kitchen floor, and files MCs as fads, like Supreme collabs, all inside one verse of “LAA.” He perambulates through a bland estate on “MED,” adding color to a permanent gray firmament, and gets around to explaining that he could have played for Liverpool but tore his meniscus. He paints pictures while you draw audible winces, and moonwalks across thin ice without slipping. “This ain’t dope it’s medicinal drugs,” the chorus clarifies, and he wants unconditional love in the same breath.

On “KEV,” Scott wishes he could care a little bit more, and he means it against himself. A fish sprouts legs and peels off its fin to rush around underground on wheels. He fights through the venue just to sigh into the mic, misses social cues, opens brews with his teeth. Scott raps on “REX,” he’s in worse shape, pacing a room, chatting to itself like a leader addressing a nation, then catching a crippling hesitation and wondering why its self-worth hasn’t grown to reflect inflation. Best to repress it, the verse decides, until it comes back on the edge of the deepest sleep in years. “Yesterday they called me the king, now they call me a clown,” goes the chorus. A later verse hears that death is around the corner and almost cracks a smile, then puts the ambition plainly, which is eating rather than buying a fleet. The last verse remembers a mother saying not to be a puppy show.

Two MCs go back and forth to make up an entire “BAR” in the course of a single evening: a dark room, there isn’t a coaster for your drink, and the bottle almost breaks a tooth as you crack it open. He has the hotel address and doesn’t think he’ll be sleeping on any shit; the second man doesn’t have enough cash to catch a cab anyway. At the very end, just the last minute, he becomes clear-headed and asks if he’s all right, mate. The other admits he didn’t ask him.

When his stepdad passed away, Scott resolved to “SMH” to sort his life out; getting himself sorted meant working for a month before quitting and walking out the door during a shift with a lit joint in his mouth, with enough money in his pocket to buy an ounce and a bus ticket to the city. The household he describes before that is nan being a bit mad, uncle gone nuts, biological father going in and out of prison, and stepdad on the pint down the pub. He says he’s learned how to do this by using a pirated program on a dodgy laptop, and his baby ma said he wears his mental problems well. Josh walks out of a terraced house with blocks in the background, walks past the flat that was burgled and the corner shop that was taped off, and ends on his auntie splitting an inheritance. Blood doesn’t guarantee trust. He counted money when the Queen passed away.

Great (★★★★☆)

Favorite Track(s): “REX,” “BAR,” “SMH”

Subscribe now