Marshall Gu

Vampire Weekend’s first album in six years feels like a labour of love: 18 tracks running just under 60 minutes, a lot of them short and all of them sweet to the point that it feels like Vampire Weekend’s attempt at a song cycle.

It’ll take a better rapper than Blu to create a concept album with Madvillainy-style beats, but Oh No’s beats and the ambition here still result in Blu’s best album in years.

Easily one of the most simultaneously hardest and atmospheric hip-hop albums of the year.

Another rare instance of an artist coming up with a classic a decade after what seemed like the peak of his career (Clipse’s Hell Hath No Fury), and the only thing that could’ve made it better was if he pre-released “Infrared” so that Drake could’ve responded and we could’ve had an album with “The Story of Adidon” on it.

Add this to Taylor Swift’s recent Reputation as a surprisingly unhandsome contribution from a great pop star.

This is a record where the sum is greater than the parts, whereas The Epic was its parts (and having a lot of them). Harmony of Difference is another win in Kamasi Washington’s book, and I’m no less excited for his next move.

Open Mike Eagle is one of the few artists that seems to improve with every release, and just when you thought he couldn’t get better than a full collaboration with Paul White on yesteryear’s Hella Personal Film Festival, he does just that.

While Milo’s lyrical wit has remained sharp over the years, the beats he raps over have gotten better and better with every release, culminating in Who Told You To Think??!!?!?!?! as the best batch of beats he’s rapped over.

This is one of his best packages, and it was well worth the wait and all the twists and turns in between.

It’s the first album in Kendrick Lamar’s discography where tracks can more readily be taken individually. And yet, given the talent of the artist in question, and the producers he’s pulled in, this one is no less ambitious and rewarding than some of his previous entries.

Silver/Lead contentedly just continues in the latter two’s path, and I would wager a guess that none of people who praise this will end up caring about it a year after the fact.

Drake’s idea of “more life” is “more everything”. My idea of More Life is less music, and the best thing about this playlist will be the one I eventually build for myself.

Overall, no risks are taken: all of the lyrics want to be mantras but end up as little nothings instead; practically all of the songs reveal their hands way before their often too-long song lengths; they mistake reverb as a songwriting tool.

Mac Miller isn’t a good rapper, and he definitely can’t carry a note, though he tries to do that a lot on this one. However, he has a vision of what he wanted this album to sound like and then carried it through with all the right producers and features, which is a talent in and of itself.

Their new EP Titans in the Flesh is a low-key success from a solid rapper and an even better producer.

Her songs are musically sparse, and while often the first thing I think of is Grouper in comparison, Marissa Nadler’s songs are much more potent; patently bleaker; downright apocalyptic.

To say Views is a victory lap after the successes of his two mixtapes from 2015 is a lie: no victory lap in hip-hop sounds so supine and inert.

Chrissybaby Forever's invariant topic matter coupled with saccharine singing over slow-mid-tempo songs become much too much over its lengthy tracklisting.

On 2014 Forest Hills Drive , we’ve still got the same ol’ Cole, but with diminishing returns and without any friends to help him.