Elias Leight
All the different styles mean that Ocean feels center-less, but that’s kind of the point: If you hope to conquer the globe, you have to be all things to all people.
7y
Johnson is an insider now — just don’t expect him to act like one.
7y
X100PRE is everything you could possibly want from a debut album: Plenty of the stuff that initially brought Bad Bunny fame along with some impressively executed forays into new styles — no small feat, considering how many genres he has already infiltrated.
7y
Few artists mine their torrid affairs for lyrical inspiration like this 23-year-old Bronx rapper.
7y
Rosalía’s new album, El Mal Querer, is less rigorous than its predecessor, though even easier to like.
7y
Ballads 1 is elegiac and prettily pout-faced; Miller used to make you cringe, Joji makes you cry.
7y
If you heard any of the previous Gunna-Lil Baby collaborations ... you know what to expect on Drip Harder.
7y
It’s hard not to be confused by the attempts at fusion displayed on Wut Wut.
7y
French DJ-producer David Guetta hopes to be both trendy and bold with his new double album 7.
7y
MNEK is a strong singer capable of bracing jumps into his falsetto register. But he seems to have been so immersed in writing for others that he’s lost his own voice.
7y
8 Letters is just eight songs, not much longer than an EP, because there’s no point in wasting time on something that might not land. And sure enough, most of this stuff doesn’t land.
7y
This album is consistently suave, admirably steady.
7y
Hive Mind, the group’s 4th LP, is its most polished, full of tranquil, yearning Quiet Storm and light-footed, live-band funk.
7y
The electronic hit-maker behind "Friends" serves up a new LP full of festival fodder.
7y
Crossing the ocean hasn't altered BTS' DNA. The boys still genre-hop with panache.
8y
The result is heavy on pearly funk and pop, live instrumentation and harmony. But Montano mostly avoids sounding like a tasteful throwback, pulling off his merger with zippy grace, in the manner of a prime Pharrell production.
9y
Lanez is part of a long and vital tradition, and he knows it. But he has little to add, and after you identify the radio-staple-core of his songs, listening to them has all the drama of watching a friend complete a paint-by-numbers kit.
9y
This album offers cohesion and unity, though maybe at the expense of the exciting, what-will-happen next feel of past mixtapes.
11y
Charlie Puth plays a game of “spot the Marvin reference” on his debut single, repackaging lines from a number of soul classics in the not-so-subtly titled tune. Trainor lends Puth some of her doo-wop swagger, but the track seems more academic exercise than an attempt at seduction.
6y
Subtle choices code Montevallo as Nashville fare: a steel guitar here, a close harmony with a female backing vocalist there. But it’s easy to imagine a slightly altered version of this album.
9y
Pretty much the only sounds that appear on Jessica Pratt are Pratt and a closely-recorded acoustic guitar, picking spidery melodies and pleasing circles that form the backbone of so many post-‘60s folk songs.
12y
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