The album is a gripping treatise on the relationship between Lamar’s inner turmoil and the cultural landscape.
Wet Tennis stages a 35-minute dance party that’s tempered, as well as bolstered, by notes of reflective melancholy.
Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century chases love as its guiding subject but too rarely feels amorous or sensual.
On Gifted, Koffee alternates between earnestly expressing her gratitude to be alive and confidently resting on her laurels.
Charli XCX’s Crash finds the pop singer workshopping the reckless abandon of her persona.
Spoon’s Lucifer on the Sofa gestures toward breaking free of old habits, but it doesn’t present any new ones.
Animal Collective’s Time Skiffs is the work of a band who are leaning into the nostalgic observations that come with age.
Ultimately, MØ’s Motordrome has a way of getting your attention and failing to keep it.
Blue Banisters further fleshes out Lana Del Rey’s increasingly colorful personal world.
Mickey Guyton’s Remember Her Name satisfies pop-country standards even as it defies the genre’s institutional roadblocks.
The boundaries between earnestness and camp are blurred, but the album retains the rapper’s sensitive, playful personality.
Drake’s Certified Lover Boy is a distended confessional wherein the rapper attempts to reaffirm his image as a sweet-talking power player.
Kanye West’s Donda is about human fallibility and the desire for salvation even when we may not deserve it.
Still Woozy’s If This Isn’t Nice, I Don’t Know What Is conveys even its confessions of distress with triumphant confidence.
While Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington assemble an array of mesmerizing sounds on Darkside’s Spiral, a larger vision eludes them.
Vince Staples’s eponymous album keenly draws contrasts between the rapper’s upbringing and the life he now enjoys.
There’s as much lazy delivery of the goods on the album as there is engaging interplay.
The album conceives of the exuberant possibilities of life and love while teasing out their more bracing realities.
No matter how maddening and challenging the album can be, the songwriting and musicianship is impressive.
The album is at its best when it leans into the DJ/producer’s dexterous instrumental tinkering.