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Album Review: Loving This Black Woman by Oriiginelle
An Eswatini rapper courts one Black woman in siSwati and English, then hands the mic to God, to the woman, and to her own anguish.
4 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Tunde Albright
Album Review: Finesse the World 2 by RetcH
A friend killed on his birthday, a brother gone, years of cases. RetcH turns the decade since Finesse the World into his coldest, most cohesive album.
4 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Rafael Greene
Kiss-Offs, Come-Ons, and a Rider Full of Rum
Jorja Smith stays up all night with Wizkid, Fana Hues torches an ex, and Manchester’s finest soul duo ends a long quiet spell. Summer R&B is here.
12 hrs ago • Soulpolitan
Black Music Kept the Minutes of America’s 250 Years
Five hundred schoolchildren in segregated Jacksonville sang “Lift Every Voice” before the country ever heard it; the music Black people made since is…
Jul 4 • Blackpolitan and Aicha Odilia
Album Review: xperiment by Ken Carson
Ken Carson stretches Opium rage-trap across 22 songs of drugs, jewelry, and grievance.
Jul 3 • Shatter the Standards and Kamarion
Album Review: the garden by sahn
On her second album, the Vallejo singer drags self-help language off the wellness poster and into the dirt, where digging up roots is labor and…
Jul 3 • Shatter the Standards and Zoe Westfield
Album Review: Live at the Tabernackle Vol. II by Estee Nack & Mike Shabb
Three years after the first Tabernackle service, the Lynn, Massachusetts MC and his Montreal producer turn in the tightest sustained rapping of Estee…
Jul 3 • Shatter the Standards and Joelle Figueroa
Milestones: Breaking Atoms by Main Source
Large Professor was eighteen and finishing the SP-1200 technique of an engineer who had been murdered. The debut he made turned into the school where…
Jul 3 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
New Music Drops: July 3, 2026
As new albums and singles get constantly flooded into our radar, look no further than skimming through the release week of July 3rd. We know it can be a…
Jul 2 • Shatter the Standards
Album Review: Confessions II by Madonna
Reunited with Stuart Price two decades on, Madonna runs the nonstop mix through grief, exes, and pre-fame New York. Her best album since the original.
Jul 2 • Shatter the Standards and Charlotte Rochel
Milestones: Section.80 by Kendrick Lamar
A 23-year-old with a co-sign from Dr. Dre made an album about his generation’s addictions. Fifteen years later, the first week’s 5,000 copies look like…
Jul 2 • Shatter the Standards and Brandon O'Sullivan
Album Review: Visitor by SIENNA SPIRO
On the debut of orchestral soul cut at Abbey Road and Electric Lady, a 20-year-old Londoner writes love as a lease and signs it with the end date…
Jul 2 • Shatter the Standards and Darryl Keyes
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