Shatter the Standards

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Album Review: U, Me & My Ego by Chxrry
A Scarborough debut where the ego shows up uninvited and orders for the whole table.
6 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Sabine Okafemi
Milestones: Forever My Lady by Jodeci
Four teenagers from North Carolina gospel families carried twenty-nine demos to New York, and in one afternoon rewrote the terms of what masculine R&B…
10 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Mina Abdel
Milestones: Efil4zaggin by N.W.A.
The first gangsta rap LP to hit number one on the Billboard 200 was made by a four-man crew. Dre quietly built the engine of West Coast rap’s next…
18 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Sonny Rollins Played Himself Free
Sonny Rollins was no revolutionary, yet he played himself free of every jazz convention. Now the last giant of the bebop era has died at the age of 95.
23 hrs ago • Shatter the Standards and Chinedu Faulkner
Wednesday Roundups #151: 25 New Projects You Should Listen to Now
Listen to new releases from Thee Marloes, aja monet, JuJu Rogers, Chuck D & John Densmore, Patrick Paige II, Anaïs Cardot, Jon Onabowu, REMI, SIPHO…
May 27 • Shatter the Standards
Album Review: Confessions of a People Pleaser by CJ Monét
Her debut hands the first words on the record to her late grandmother. Everything that follows is written under that supervision.
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Janelle K. Moore
Album Review: Circa 01’ by Kastaway & Backpack Beatz
Kastaway and Backpack Beatz were eleven and thirteen when The Blueprint dropped. Circa 01’ remembers that year from the inside instead of curating it.
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Lance “LX” Brooks
Album Review: The Premise by Ill Conscious & Finn
A Baltimore rapper writes a sermon disguised as a rap album.
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Harry Brown
Album Review: Mantequilla by Recognize Ali & Giallo Point
Eleven boom-bap tracks of executioner bars from an Accra MC who Praises Allah and stages salaam-position sex boasts in the same eight bars.
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Blaise Freeman
Album Review: no country for old men by doPE (Chuck D & John Densmore)
An emcee at 65 and a drummer at 81 turn an Org Music gatefold into a record that argues with the easy idea of an elder statesman.
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Quinn Baptiste
Album Review: Briana by Bri Babineaux
On her third album, Bri Babineaux writes God in the second-person grammar of an R&B love song, and questions whether the form can carry an artist who…
May 26 • Shatter the Standards and Jamila W.
Rob Base Only Needed the Beat and a Microphone
The beat of his song “It Takes Two” was to hip-hop what the guitar solo from “Stairway to Heaven” was to rock. Rapper Rob Base has now died at the age…
May 25 • Shatter the Standards and Terryl Jameson
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