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Album Review: 97 Bad Boy by Rico Love
The man who wrote Usher’s “Throwback” and Beyoncé’s “Sweet Dreams” steps out for an album that wants one woman. The rap detail he folds into the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Jamila W.
Album Review: 2 LIVE! by K, Le Maestro
Five years after Whip Music, the London producer turns a seventeen-track guest list into one record, and his bass-heavy drums are the reason it holds…
 • Shatter the Standards and Harry Brown
Album Review: Time Will Tell by Devon Gilfillian
Cut live to tape in single takes, Gilfillian’s soul album bets on the voice over polish. From rock spiral to country-soul thank-you, he means every…
 • Shatter the Standards and Kendra Vale
Mixtape Review: Naturally by Nectar Woode
Nectar Woode spends these soul songs on Naturally talking herself down from her own head, with Elton John guesting on piano for the one about lost…
 • Shatter the Standards and Maya LeRoux
Album Review: Precious Cargo by Maiya the Don
On her first full-length since Hot Commodity, Maiya the Don guards her body, her bag, and her worth like contraband, stacking luxury punchlines that are…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tabia N. Mullings
Mixtape Review: Diary of a Young Lit B*tch by PLUTO
On another tape for Motown, PLUTO writes from the spender’s seat in Atlanta strip-club rap and sorts the men by what they’ll pay.
 • Shatter the Standards and Cierra Marcel
Album Review: Offering by Ibeyi
By handing it to a crew of producers with songs of Yoruba invocation and four-language heartbreak, the sisters’ blended voices are the through-line that…
 • Shatter the Standards and Rosa Delgado
Album Review: Kill the King by T.I.
On the album he’s calling his last, T.I. turns out to be a better elegist than a king. It’s the most alive he has sounded in years.
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: TERRA COTTA by Joseph Solomon
A song cycle built on rebooked flights and half-apologies follows one couple from takeoff to the end of the world. Joseph Solomon turns the distance…
 • Shatter the Standards and Chinedu Faulkner
Album Review: O.Y.N by Maxo Kream
Handing every track to JPEGMAFIA, Maxo Kream writes from an older man’s vantage, and his bravado and his grief finally pull in the same direction.
 • Shatter the Standards and Murffey Zavier
Album Review: No Sleep In Paradise by Naomi Sharon
Sharon’s second album follows one relationship from the first pull to the door she takes. Her writing about power and the unsaid turns a familiar…
 • Shatter the Standards and Ameenah Laquita
Milestones: Songs In A Minor by Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys left Columbia at sixteen and bet her career on a piano. Nothing else in 2001 R&B sounded like it.
 • Shatter the Standards and Tori Hammond
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