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Album Review: sum breakup songs by Dru Kelly & Stix
A marriage that ran ten years ends in songs about Percocets, purple crayons, and a broken-ass Altima. Dru Kelly’s breakup writing is messy on purpose…
 • Shatter the Standards and Blaise Freeman
Album Review: if i’m being honest by Dame Atlas
Dame Atlas produced nearly all of his confession himself and aimed song after song at the woman who kept coming back.
 • Shatter the Standards and Brielle Saint-Amour
Album Review: REVIVAL by LADIPOE
The Nigerian rapper bends Afropop’s melody-first formula around testimony, prayer, and score-settling in three languages. REVIVAL runs on the conviction…
 • Shatter the Standards and Maya LeRoux
Milestones: The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are by The 2 Live Crew
The first Southern rap debut to cross the gold line did it through the back of a promoter’s car, one Black-owned record store at a time. A clerk in…
 • Shatter the Standards and Brandon O'Sullivan
Album Review: Boatshoes by Brian Ennals & Blockhead
The Severn, Maryland rapper takes his nihilist stand-up act to Blockhead’s funkiest beats and turns in his loosest, funniest writing. The jokes run on…
 • Shatter the Standards and Miles Everette
Album Review: Better Than McDonald’s by Gangrene
The latest Gangrene album finds the rapper-producers Oh No and the Alchemist deep in their longest-running two-man outlet. One of its charms is hearing…
 • Shatter the Standards and Owen Baptiste
Album Review: Atomic Justice by AJ Suede
After a week of tabs and an ego death, AJ Suede kept the psychic powers and cut twelve tracks of cold, self-made Seattle rap.
 • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Milestones: The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein by Parliament
Less than a year after the Mothership landed, George Clinton cloned himself an army, and Parliament’s fifth album turned funk’s silliest premise into…
 • Shatter the Standards and Imani Raven
Too Smart for the Room
The belief that rap audiences run from intelligence gets the defendant wrong; the case belongs to the industry, and to a country that once wrote Black…
 • Blackpolitan, Brandon O'Sullivan, and Alexandria Elise
Album Review: In the Hour of Chaos by Allison Russell
After two albums telling her own survival story, the Montreal songwriter starts making house calls. Her third is the warmest, most crowded record of her…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tayla North
Album Review: THIS CANNOT BE SOLD by KB
On THIS CANNOT BE SOLD, KB fences off his marriage, his kids, and his doubt, and his writing has never been better.
 • Shatter the Standards and Murffey Zavier
Five R&B Songs Warming Us Up This Week
A wildfire survivor turns grief into a gospel come-on, two 2000s hitmakers age their seduction into something warmer, and a Raphael Saadiq production…
 • Soulpolitan
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