Next month, perennial rap-rookie-of-the-year contender J. Cole will finally drop his major label debut.
Those songs are special because they preserve a Patti Smith who until very recently seemed to be lost to time.
The War on Drugs’s ‘Slave Ambient’ comes on like a rainy summer day in the rust belt.
The album’s powerhouse production turns out to be, as with some of West’s own work, the ultimate ace in the hole.
Skying’s sound is derived more from the jangle and hum of ’80s Cure and ’90s My Bloody Valentine than ’60s anything.
Blockbuster rap albums belong to the summer just as surely as FX-stuffed action flicks.
What Let It Beard lacks in blockbuster hooks it makes up for in its rambling excess of melody.
Ross Birchard makes club music seemingly better suited for sci-fi films than for any dance floor we Earthlings are likely to get down on.
Lloyd fares best when he stays on the sillier, sexier side of things.
Joss Stone’s fifth album continues the British soul singer’s tendency to present every release as a brand new beginning.
The album’s beats will often be too airy or too crushed with distortion for all but the most forward-thinking groove-heads.
I’m Gay (I’m Happy) can be both exhaustingly self-referential and as resolutely concerned with the truth as any Native Tongues classic.
If rap critics had their way, Jean Grae would be the queen of conscious hip-hop.
SBTRKT proves wildly entertaining while it’s on and fairly easy to forget once it ends.
We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves is engineered for minimal accessibility and maximum pretension.
It climaxes with a dramatic percussion break that counts among the most visceral moments in the Björk canon.
RIAA be damned, Lupercalia is a golden record if ever we’ve heard one.
No matter how you do the math, Battles is still blowing the curve.
It’s All True’s returns diminish exactly at a pace with its level of introspection.
One gets the sense that David Comes to Life is a rite of passage for Fucked Up more than any kind of masterwork.