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Album Review: Outside the Lines by Shabaam Sahdeeq & Es-K
Thirty years past the open mics, the Brooklyn vet raps his parasite detox, the quiet life, and the boombox his mother bought.
 • Shatter the Standards and Quinn Baptiste
Album Review: No Era for Margins by Rasheed Chappell
Active since 2009, Rasheed Chappell takes his time centering Christian, Five-percenter, and Islamic imagery, while Reckonize Real gives him low-lit…
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: Hate the Sin Not the Sinner by Jules Clay
Jules Clay found God on the way up and still wakes up reaching for his gun, and across Hate the Sin Not the Sinner, he won’t pick one over the other.
 • Shatter the Standards and Termaine M. Scott
From the Pulpit to the Block
Artists have drawn the cultures of hip-hop and jazz closer together, the art of freestyle and that of free improvisation. A look back at a history in…
 • Blackpolitan, Kevin Matthews, and Daliah Green
Album Review: Becoming by Mare
Mare makes a smoothie, walks the dogs, and forgets to text back. She turns that small avoidance into the sturdiest writing on a debut, sure of who it’s…
 • Shatter the Standards and Osei Addae
Album Review: Swamp Dogg Contemplates the Afterlife by Swamp Dogg
Swamp Dogg’s first album for S-Curve, made at 83, swings from comic kiss-offs to a toddler’s grief. He plays both straight and sells every bit.
 • Shatter the Standards and Esther Blake
Masego Needs a Minute and Kelela Needs Nine Years
Masego grieves on a studio deadline, Dawn Richard goes giddy with Durand Bernarr, and Kelela frees a song she’d kept in a drawer since 2016.
 • Soulpolitan
Album Review: Hustlin Ain’t a Sin by Sha Hef
Home from a five-year sentence, Sha Hef bargains with God across Hustlin Ain’t a Sin over whether the dope game damns him, and makes the best album of…
 • Shatter the Standards and Okoye
Album Review: The Insanity Project by Dice Raw
On his latest full-length LP, Dice Raw writes about grief, faith across religions, and gun violence piled into the same dense verses.
 • Shatter the Standards and Janelle K. Moore
Album Review: Trapper’s Alley 3: Hell or High Water by Boldy James & Nicholas Craven
A murdered brother and ten killers loose before summer open the record, and the punchlines never outrun the grief. It’s the heaviest Boldy James and…
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: Critical Thot by sha ray & DJ Haram
sha ray arrives on her debut with the belladonna persona already finished, and proves sex rap can do its hardest thinking mid-strut.
 • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Mixtape Review: Make You Feel by Dylan Sinclair
On a tape about filming sex and keeping a woman home, Dylan Sinclair writes love as ownership. The craft is good enough to make most of it sound like…
 • Shatter the Standards and Jill Wannasa
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