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Album Review: DO YOU SEE ME? by Q
The South Florida singer and producer’s follow-up to Soul,PRESENT is a long address to a boy who won’t listen, his falsetto staying soft over cops…
 • Shatter the Standards and Marjani Fields
Album Review: Blue Island by Ravyn Lenae
On her second album with Dahi executive producing, the Chicago singer moves from character studies into first-person accounts of leaving that put a…
 • Shatter the Standards and Chiamaka Boudreaux
Milestones: King’s Disease II by Nas
A Queensbridge rapper and a Fontana producer locked the door, kicked everyone out, and made one of the strongest Nas albums in his discography.
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: Therapy at the Club by FLO
Writing with Amy Allen, Steph Jones, and Julian Bunetta, FLO turn a run of bad romances into pop-R&B that admits fault before anybody lays a charge.
 • Shatter the Standards and Charlotte Rochel
Milestones: Stretchin’ Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band by Bootsy’s Rubber Band
The album where P-Funk’s wildest bassist stopped playing behind other people’s concepts and discovered he had his own.
 • Shatter the Standards and Imani Raven
Wednesday Roundups #160: 25 New Projects You Should Listen to Now
Listen to new releases from DOMi & JD BECK, Kurupt & DJ Battlecat, Cautious Clay, Patchwork Inc., CRIMEAPPLE, Romi Wrights, Dave East & Harry Fraud…
 • Shatter the Standards
EP Review: Catch n’ Release by Fana Hues
On Catch n’ Release, Fana Hues turns leaving into instructions plain enough to follow.
 • Shatter the Standards and Tabia N. Mullings
The True R&B Songs of the Summer in 2026
Thirty R&B songs got played to death around here between May and July. As a sequel to last year’s column, do not let anybody tell you that there are no…
 • Shatter the Standards, Brandon O'Sullivan, and Phil
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
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