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Album Review: Hustlin Ain’t a Sin by Sha Hef
Home from a five-year sentence, Sha Hef bargains with God across Hustlin Ain’t a Sin over whether the dope game damns him, and makes the best album of…
6 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Okoye
Album Review: The Insanity Project by Dice Raw
On his latest full-length LP, Dice Raw writes about grief, faith across religions, and gun violence piled into the same dense verses.
6 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Janelle K. Moore
Album Review: Trapper’s Alley 3: Hell or High Water by Boldy James & Nicholas Craven
A murdered brother and ten killers loose before summer open the record, and the punchlines never outrun the grief. It’s the heaviest Boldy James and…
14 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: Critical Thot by sha ray & DJ Haram
sha ray arrives on her debut with the belladonna persona already finished, and proves sex rap can do its hardest thinking mid-strut.
14 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Mixtape Review: Make You Feel by Dylan Sinclair
On a tape about filming sex and keeping a woman home, Dylan Sinclair writes love as ownership. The craft is good enough to make most of it sound like…
14 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Jill Wannasa
How Tay Keith Made the Mainstream Sound Like Memphis
Tay Keith made national No. 1s out of a piano figure, a slab of 808s, and a lot of empty room, and left the rapper on top to finish a song he'd built…
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and Murffey Zavier
Album Review: PROJECT X by Key Glock
Twenty tracks of money, codeine, and motion in the same dry deadpan, and Key Glock is good enough at it that even the cuts riding one word go down easy.
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and LeMarcus
Album Review: THE GENTLEMEN’S CLUB by YG
Hiring a hitman to kill a man who turns out to be himself, YG turns the hardest register of West Coast rap inward and writes some of the best songs of…
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: AMA by Ama
Across her self-titled second album, Ama is almost always the one ending it. The breakups are the funniest, meanest writing she has put down.
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and Monica LaSalle
Album Review: The Story of Michael and Tanya by The War and Treaty
The married duo splits each confession between two voices, then arms its love songs with scripture. Their fifth album is their most assured set of…
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and Renée Holloway
Milestones: Secrets by Toni Braxton
Secrets is a grown woman’s album in a year when R&B was getting younger. Braxton went to Babyface and Diane Warren, and the music has outlasted…
Jun 19 • Shatter the Standards and Cierra Marcel
New Music Drops: June 19, 2026
As new albums and singles get constantly flooded into our radar, look no further than skimming through the release week of June 19th. We know it can be…
Jun 18 • Shatter the Standards
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