Shatter the Standards

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Milestones: All for You by Janet Jackson
After her darkest and most confessional album, Jackson came back grinning, newly single, and talking very specifically about what she wanted done to her…
 • Shatter the Standards and Maya LeRoux
Milestones: Ice Cream Man by Master P
The first album to prove that a New Orleans rapper could own his masters and still go platinum. Percy Miller bet on distribution, not bars.
 • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Album Review: Yo Favorite Trappa Favorite Rappa by Sexyy Red
Her fourth tape is the first that the St. Louis rapper has built like a real mixtape, DJ Holiday hosting throughout and the trapper-rapper distinction…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tabia N. Mullings
Album Review: Floetry the Extension by millkzy
millkzy writes live chamber rap as short-story scenes. The scene-writing carries his self-coined style better than the defense ever did.
 • Shatter the Standards and Wesley Durham
Album Review: Mudbrown by Kumail
Kumail’s second album is the rare record in Voodoo’s long shadow that shows up with the homework done. Love songs mean the offer; refusal songs mean the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Kendra Vale
Album Review: Outsider by Tiwayo
Tiwayo disappeared, stayed gone, and wrote an album that calls itself an outsider’s LP without a trace of irony.
 • Shatter the Standards and Asa McKenzie
Album Review: Don’t Call Me Lucky by DJ Muggs & T.F
An MC three LPs into a single-producer run sits across from the beatmaker who’s been running that model for thirty years. No luck was involved.
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Wednesday Roundups #145: 23 New Projects You Should Listen to Now
Listen to new releases from Momo Boyd, Isaia Huron, Wesley Joseph, Jacob Banks, Mamas Gun, Les Imprimés, Tiwayo, Parlor Greens, Xzibit, B-Real …
 • Shatter the Standards
Album Review: Simmie Sims III by Buddy
L.A. vet Buddy prints his government name across the jacket of album four. The party tracks and the prayer tracks prove to be one set of tracks, and the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Javon Bailey
Album Review: The Good by Finale
Made inside a twenty-year Detroit working circle, Finale’s first proper solo LP in over a decade takes the word “good” and spends it in different ways.
 • Shatter the Standards and Harry Brown
Album Review: Fading Forward by Les Imprimés
The Norwegian producer’s second album as a frontman buries wakes and apologies inside the sweetest arrangements he can build. The loneliness of the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Asa McKenzie
EP Review: Miss Michigan by Momo Boyd
On her solo debut, Momo Boyd works from inside the well-behaved-girl archetype, with songs that praise her for the same compliance the verses then…
 • Shatter the Standards and Charlotte Rochel
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