Recall that Cartoon Network’s The Powerpuff Girls had an opening sequence which explained how to create “super-powered” girls: mix sugar, spice, and everything nice — along with the “extra” ingredient, Chemical X. Alessia Cara’s new EP, This Summer, follows a similar formula, but with is own medley of ingredients. This recipe calls for a pinch of Lily Allen, a dash of Lorde, a sprinkling of Lana Del Rey, and another extra ingredient: a base layer of minimalist hip-hop. That’s not…
Across three mixtapes preceding Chancelor Bennett AKA Chance the Rapper’s studio debut, an organic maturation, both personal and artistic, occurred. 10 Day proved a largely forgettable lo-fi coming out, but nonetheless anticipated Bennett’s marriage of linguistic eloquence and the drippy vigor of youth. Follow-up…
Patience is a virtue that most hip-hop fans don’t possess, and one that they don’t really need to; it’s generally been accepted that in order to stay relevant against the seemingly endless cavalcade of face-tatted SoundCloud youngsters, an artist has to consistently flood the…
From the moment Vampire Weekend stepped off the Columbia University campus and quite literally into Rostam Batmanglij’s “studio” apartment to record songs about Lil Jon, the United Nations, and their own grammatical inclinations, they have been nothing if not indie-pop royalty. The band’s self-titled…
Maren Morris’ second album, Girl, certainly feels and sounds like her type of record, at least based off of the music from her previous album and more recent collaborations, but there’s one glaring issue here: on Girl, it seems that Morris has sanded down…
For those who still associate Rivers Cuomo with the confessional and unabashed awkwardness of Pinkerton, an album of estimable emotions that seems to have been released an eternity ago, Weezer’s Weezer (Black Album) could come as a special kind of shock; for everyone who’s been following the band…
As far as contemporary pop stars go, Future was always somehow simultaneously the surest, and the least sure, bet: In the context of current rap, his success makes perfect sense, fitting right alongside Drake’s and Kanye West’s, two artist’s who’ve nimbly adapted to the shifting aesthetic trends in their genre. But…
The music that Gustav Åhr made as emo-trapper Lil Peep was confessional, misanthropic, self-loathing, bringing fans some solace just by showing them that their pain was understood by somebody. Given the personal nature of Peep’s music, it’s especially challenging to hear Come Over When You’re…
Alessia Cara is at odds with herself on her sophomore album, The Pains of Growing. Following the meteoric rise of debut single “Here” — a murky and moody loner-anthem that caught everyone by surprise in 2015 — Cara released her first album, Know-It-All, which…
It’s often been said that Mariah Carey has little humility, but how much of that is just for show? Four years on from the flamboyantly-titled Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse — a commercial failure, though one modest critical acclaim — Mimi is…
