Black America Again is a timely statement exploring the ills of police brutality, mass incarceration, and institutionalized racism, delivered with laser-sharp focus by one of hip-hop’s foremost poets.
Ouroboros is a perfect throwback to the lost art of the album-length format.
The British songwriter marries dark, club-kid influences from her nights spent at Liverpool venues with crunching heartache on 12 lush songs that morph and twist her voice into various iterations.
While pop stars often atone for transgressions through song—just ask Justin Bieber—Grande wants to test the limits, not apologize. And that’s the best, baddest thing about Dangerous Woman.
It’s a durable, malleable passport to hedonism—loud when you want it to be, just funky enough, capable of holding up to headphone scrutiny.
Healy may get lost in his head, but I Like It… is a delightful, overshare-y trip that celebrates a new era of boundaryless pop. As for that Tumblr rant of a title, they’re forgiven.
Stranger to Stranger is ... Simon’s most interconnected work, a self-contained world unto itself full of backing tracks that wind up in multiple songs and recurring characters (“the Street Angel”) who pop up in unexpected places.
We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service not only satisfies its lofty expectations, it often exceeds them.
It’s a fully-realized vision of the dreamy shoegaze-pop they’d sought to prefect for years. How heartbreaking to know such a once-in-a-lifetime creative partnership has been silenced.
There’s something pleasingly organic ... in Weight’s cohesiveness; it asks for patience and rewards it, weaving true tales of regret and resilience into one fiercely honest, gloriously flawed whole. Bless this mess.
It’s a bold statement on what it means to be a proud and yet sometimes anguished black woman in 2016, and it’s also her most individuated work to date. Solange gets political by also making Seat stunningly personal and poetic.
A right-now snapshot of a restless, neurotic artist’s ever-evolving psyche. Like the man himself, the album is emotional, explosive, unpredictable, and undeniably thrilling.
By nature, Radiohead albums will always be somewhat epic, but this one is more consistently grandiose than any of the band’s releases since 2000’s masterpiece Kid A.
Malibu, his second full-length, is a bracing wash of warm neo-soul that spits in the face of the chilly self-flagellation the Weeknd managed to spin into chart gold.
Though it doesn’t eclipse the LSD-inspired brilliance of Acid Rap, Coloring Book affirms Chance’s place as one of hip-hop’s most promising — and most uplifting — young stars.
Anti proves Rihanna should play by her own rules more often.