These are creative guys bouncing off a group of similar ideas and seeing where the muse takes them. It isn’t always pretty. It isn’t really innovative.
Compton earns a lot of credit simply by not being a disaster or an embarrassment, but there’s only so much a 50-year-old rapper can say to a generation following their favorite artists on Snapchat.
Their squashed dynamics leave the dissonances in the gutter, and except for maybe “I Break Mirrors,” it’s hard to differentiate the highlights from the chaff.
There’s a lot to unpack in just half an hour of Wave(s) and this rising talent doesn’t plan to make it any easier as he learns to hone hooks.
Ronin is a very good album and a fun anachronism in 2015 between surprise Drake and Kanye releases.
It’s not just the production, though — the record’s summery vibe has just as much to do with Stone, who skates over the beats with impressive nimbleness and rapid-fire wit.
It’s the fifth entry in his Drink More Water mixtape series that proves he’s got more melodic facility of anyone else in the bunch.
Her second album, Big GRRRL Small World, is more of a strong sum-up than an explosive progression.
Brush those lowlights aside and what remains is a glossy, surprising album, albeit one without the obvious radio hits of 2013’s studio debut Long.Live.A$AP.
We do know that Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude is a fabulous album, even though it’s merely a sample to whet our appetite for the real product, King Push, next spring.
As a whole, SremmLife brims with potential; it's clear with each breath that Slim and Swae are hungry.
In many ways, Eat Pray Thug is a prequel to Das Racist, filling in the biographical gaps of a seemingly inscrutable wiseass from when he had to cry before he could laugh.
His paranoia is as thick as Drake's on the similarly inward If You're Reading This It's Too Late, from earlier this year. However, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside is a much leaner, less showy effort (Drake is an actor, Earl decidedly is not), and Earl turns his pen on himself, too, not just everybody else.
Dirty Sprite 2 is a tremendous compendium of everything you want from a Future album in 2015.
Staples’ wickedly backward upbringing is the focus of Summertime ’06, which could well be the fiercest, most ferociously focused street-oriented double rap album since UGK’s Underground Kingz.