On his major-label debut, Travis Scott ... doesn't rap so much as scream, moan and yelp like he's fronting an Eighties hardcore band.
Part high-concept, part low-concept, it’s a valiant attempt to connect all the dots between the Los Angeles seen in Straight Outta Compton and the one Kendrick Lamar imagined on To Pimp a Butterfly.
Lupe Fiasco's fifth album is a swirl of double meanings, extended metaphors about yoga and math, and increasingly labyrinthine ways to say "I'm dope".
At.Long.Last.A$AP takes the gritty East Coast classicism and syrup-drippin' Houston screwiness of his killer 2013 debut, Long.Live.A$AP, and adds an extra level of psychedelic sprawl via a newfound taste for acid.
With a set list running up to 20 songs, it borders on Fetty overkill, but there are plenty of fine moments you haven't heard yet.
It adds up to an album by turns confounding and enthralling. It's no Detox. It's something realer, and better.
On his excellent second LP, Earl Sweatshirt keeps deepening his game — spooling out dense, mordant rhymes over zombifically blunted tracks as he somehow sucks you into his sunless reality.
It has little of the far-reaching ambition of Honest, but what it lacks in bold strokes, it more than makes up for in consistency.
Chance the Rapper's 2013 mixtape Acid Rap marked him as one of the brightest new voices in hip-hop. For his next move, he's swerved left, collaborating with a crew of Chicago pals led by Nico Segal (a.k.a. Donnie Trumpet) on a warm, evocative pop-soul-jazz album that comes straight from the heart.
If we're talking insurgent content and currency, Lamar straight up owns rap relevancy on Butterfly, whatever challengers to the throne barely visible in his dusty rear-view.