“Miami,” the first proper song on what-we’re-I-guess-calling-an-EP, GOOD Job, You Found Me, features Valee finally employing his soft-spoken, rise-and-fall flow popularized by hit single “Womp Womp.”…
The chaos that defined the American political discourse post-Donald Trump’s election produced any number of terribly dead-end narratives, but none were quite as misguided and…
Atlanta’s Lil Baby and College Park’s Gunna are both cut from the same cloth — or, more appropriately, from the drip of the same man: Young…
Most everything one hears on Juice WRLD’s debut, Goodbye & Good Riddance, can be gleaned from its title: a phrase laden with bitterness and condescension,…
Serving as Meek Mill’s triumphant return from a long period of legal battles and L-taking, Championships is the rapper’s first album since his controversial 2017 incarceration — which stemmed from…
J. Cole is, if anything, consistent: He’s dropped an album every two years for his past three projects; he’s constantly tried his damnedest to prove…
Ski Mask the Slump God is one of the most naturally talented rappers in the Soundcloud scene. His Busta Rhymes-inspired flow seems to trip over…
The “If young Metro don’t trust you I’m gon’ shoot you” tag has been a source for hip hop-related memes at least since it popped up at…
The closest work from this year that one can compare Vince Staples’s FM! to, stylistically, is Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You: Both are colorful, irreverent…
For those of you who haven’t followed XXL’s recent Freshmen of the Year lists, J.I.D is something of an anomaly. Where most rappers selected by XXL lately have been young Soundcloud…
Touted as controversial New York rapper/walking meme 6ix9ine’s debut album, Dummy Boy is also his second project this year — after hastily-slapped-together mixtape Day 69, a cash-grab milking the overnight success of abrasive…
On the surface, Anderson .Paak’s Oxnard is a little obnoxious. There’s the obvious aping of Kendrick Lamar’s voice (and sound) and the the jazz/R&B instrumentals that almost beg…
In the uncommonly crowded year of the female MC — with two projects by Cupcakke and other high-profile ones from Rico Nasty, Cardi B, Tierra Whack,…
Skipping elliptically across 15 or so years in an economical 84 minutes, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War tells of the tumultuous, postwar love affair between Wiktor…
Norma, the fifth album from Chilean pop artist Mon Laferte, opens with a chance encounter in a dancehall between two soon-to-be-sweethearts, and concludes with their eventual separation. While 2018 has brought…
There’s a moment at the end of the first part of Dead Souls (roughly three hours into the film’s eight-hour runtime) when its director, Chinese…
Maison Book Girl don’t craft full-fledged songs so much as attempt to make sense out of cacophonous noise. Toy flutes, jagged guitars, and pensive pianos sound-off at once, but don’t fully communicate with…
Red Velvet rose to prominence just as girl groups like Miss A, Sistar, and 2NE1 were disbanding, with a string of projects that showcased K-pop at its…
With the reissue of Park Jiha’s 2016 debut, Communion, the South Korean composer and multi-instrumentalist has gained considerable notice for her positioning of traditional Korean…
Kayoko Yoshizawa has approached songwriting as a process somewhat akin to writing a storybook since her 2013 mini-album, Majo Zukan, building her elaborate pop songs around the…
Vox Lux, the second film from actor-turned-director Brady Corbet (after 2016’s The Childhood of a Leader), scans as a fruitless and embittered attack on pop…