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Album Review: Lane Hall by JRDN & Lane Hall
Fronting the Halifax soul collective Lane Hall, JRDN sings love, family, and a city by the ocean over a working band’s warm production, and the songs…
 • Shatter the Standards and Amaya🎀
Mixtape Review: The Elephant In the Room by Catch
On her debut mixtape, Catch writes incarceration, grief, and her own queer desire into one unbroken self-portrait, and the Lewisham rapper’s eye for the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Jill Wannasa
Album Review: Clef Notes — Quantum Leap, Vol. 1 by Wyclef Jean
Wyclef Jean narrates a Haiti-to-Brooklyn life with the years thrown deliberately out of order, and plays connective tissue between Rapsody, Lil Wayne…
 • Shatter the Standards and Mina Abdel
Album Review: Holly Grove by Jadasea
Jadasea mixes his voice so far under the bass that half of Holly Grove barely surfaces. The deeper he buries it, the better the record gets.
 • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Album Review: ML2 by YoungBoy Never Broke Again
Across 20 tracks of one heavy trap mode and a sequel to his last year’s compilation, YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s love songs and his street songs keep…
 • Shatter the Standards and DeShawn Ellis
Album Review: Good Time Boy by Prof
Prof has built eight albums on being the most unhinged man in any room. On this one, he keeps clowning straight through the addiction and the inherited…
 • Shatter the Standards and Oliver I. Martin
Nobody’s Rushing to Say I Love You
Daye stretches a come-on, Muni can’t get the words out, and Dixon would rather lose than cry. Plus, Harnett learns love like a second language, and…
 • Soulpolitan
Album Review: 97 Bad Boy by Rico Love
The man who wrote Usher’s “Throwback” and Beyoncé’s “Sweet Dreams” steps out for an album that wants one woman. The rap detail he folds into the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Jamila W.
Album Review: 2 LIVE! by K, Le Maestro
Five years after Whip Music, the London producer turns a seventeen-track guest list into one record, and his bass-heavy drums are the reason it holds…
 • Shatter the Standards and Harry Brown
Album Review: Time Will Tell by Devon Gilfillian
Cut live to tape in single takes, Gilfillian’s soul album bets on the voice over polish. From rock spiral to country-soul thank-you, he means every…
 • Shatter the Standards and Kendra Vale
Mixtape Review: Naturally by Nectar Woode
Nectar Woode spends these soul songs on Naturally talking herself down from her own head, with Elton John guesting on piano for the one about lost…
 • Shatter the Standards and Maya LeRoux
Album Review: Precious Cargo by Maiya the Don
On her first full-length since Hot Commodity, Maiya the Don guards her body, her bag, and her worth like contraband, stacking luxury punchlines that are…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tabia N. Mullings
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