purplechair

Following up from Not Your Muse, a very dynamic and relatively more upbeat debut with a more outward passion in her voice, Celeste seems to dial it all the way back to let her voice, her ideas and her heart guides the way. Melancholy and heartbreak informs the sonic direction here, and the instrumentation gave way to soulful refrains with a signature British twang. While it does seem to run out of juice towards the end, Celeste turns yet another face and gave us a rousing dual-closers in the ... read more

Thoroughly, thoroughly disappointing from one of the more consistent rappers who just put out a truly incredible project. I expected something in the same vein of Few Good Things - and that's what I got, a bunch of offcuts that didn't make the album proper. Experimentation seems to be the main purpose of this mixtape, and while there are nuggets of good tracks and good ideas here and there, it feels like a waste to throw all of it out in such an unfinished state, muddled by weak ... read more

A Tyler album that is intentionally less - less cohesive, less of a persona, less polish. In some ways, this is a new frontier for his music. Decently well executed, as we've come to expect from Tyler, but I do not think I would return to this album as much as I would his previous works.

Tyler is at his best here when he expands upon the grittier, darker sound we've seen in bits and pieces on Chromakopia or his recent verse on the Clipse project - I enjoyed 'Big Poe', ... read more

'Since nobody else wanna do it, I guess I gotta put my city on the map'. And they did exactly that: with this long-awaited project, Saba - with ample help from legendary producer No ID - delivered possibly the best Saba project to date, and an early contender for not just rap, but overall album of the year.
It's certainly not a record that came out of nowhere, nor was the quality surprising - Saba has been on my radar as a rapper with great talent since "Few Good ... read more