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Album Review: $TARFACE by $TARFACE
Working from a character he built for a film he’s developing, Tyga sings the story of a coke runner who loses everything he counted, and the results are…
 • Shatter the Standards and Asa McKenzie
Album Review: Mood 2 by Jacquees
On a sequel to his beloved 2016 mixtape, Jacquees’ latest is an unhurried, sexually explicit R&B record built around one collapsing relationship…
 • Shatter the Standards and Jamila W.
EP Review: For a Good Time… by Odeal
Told as a teenager in Anambra State that R&B wouldn’t play there, Odeal builds an Afro-R&B set whose writing about wanting carries the sex.
 • Shatter the Standards and Tunde Albright
The Woman She Armed Was Sold As a Kitchen Object
In 1972, she took the pencil out of a mammy notepad holder and gave it a rifle. Saar spent 54 years arguing that pictures of Black people are not…
 • Blackpolitan and Mina Abdel
Everybody’s Sweet Tooth Is Acting Up
Rapsody sings over a D’Angelo sample, Ari Lennox lies about leaving the party in five minutes, and Wale counts what it costs to put a woman in your…
 • Soulpolitan
Album Review: The Outlaw Cherie Lee & Other Western Tales by Shaboozey
Sending Cherie Lee after the men responsible for her father’s death, Shaboozey builds a revenge tale that sings hardest about the bill coming due.
 • Shatter the Standards and LeMarcus

July 2026

July 2026 Roundups: The Best Albums of the Month
With eighty albums cleared the bar in July, from Madonna’s dance floor to Fox BD’s living room, and the underground outwrote the majors at every weight…
 • Shatter the Standards
Album Review: The Clock Don’t Go Back by Juicy J
With spoken-word instead of rapping over Paul Cornish’s six-piece live band, Juicy J fills his third jazz album with character studies and comes back…
 • Shatter the Standards and Daliah Green
Album Review: Nature Boy by Goosebytheway
Rapping about money as an obligation to other people, Goosebytheway reports the years he couldn’t provide, and his second Drumwork project is excellent…
 • Shatter the Standards and Miles Everette
Album Review: Oriadé by Davido
Chasing a woman at 4:30 a.m. and calling his car dealer an hour later, the Nigerian singer builds his sixth album out of appetite and gets real comedy…
 • Shatter the Standards and Priya Okafor
Album Review: Resonance Frequency by Homeboy Sandman & Jack Splash
Ten albums in, the Queens rapper riffs on food, phones, and the people who can’t put either down, and the jokes do the arguing for him.
 • Shatter the Standards and Joelle Figueroa
Album Review: petal by Ariana Grande
Apologizing for being irresistible and plainly enjoying it, Ariana Grande turns petal into a comedy about wanting people who cost her something.
 • Shatter the Standards and Charlotte Rochel
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