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Album Review: People Are Not Your Friends by Another Planet & steel tipped dove
Rapping over dove’s loops with their childhood friendship as the only alliance left standing, Phiik and Lungs turn distrust into the densest, funniest…
 • Shatter the Standards and Koda Lin
Album Review: Dem Goats by Juicy J & Project Pat
After thirty years of trading verses on each other’s tapes, Juicy J and Project Pat finally make a full album together, a blunt-drum instruction manual…
 • Shatter the Standards and Fallon Reese
Album Review: TRY AS I MIGHT by SWAMP THUG
After a decade of nonstop Bandcamp releases, SWAMP THUG raps about the living he can’t make over Camoflauge Monk’s loops and GAWD’s sub-bass, and comes…
 • Shatter the Standards and Greg J.
The Handguide to Clavinet Funk
After “Superstition” went big, every keyboardist in Black music wanted that bite, and sixty songs follow the D6 from gospel quartets to Graterford…
 • Shatter the Standards and Brandon O'Sullivan
My Presence Is a Present and My Gift Is Rapping
Three nights at Yankee Stadium sold out, the third added for the overflow, and Saturday’s 45,832 broke an attendance record set 24 hours earlier by…
 • Blackpolitan and Alexandria Elise
Milestones: Sorry 4 the Wait by Lil Wayne
Out of Rikers and stuck inside Tha Carter IV delay, the rapper wrapped his return in twelve freestyles over summer hits.
 • Shatter the Standards and Javon Bailey
They Called Her Job Waste
DOGE closed itself down on July 4 after shrinking the federal workforce by more than 272,000 jobs. Black women were 12 percent of that workforce and a…
 • Blackpolitan and Seraphina Joy Clarke
Milestones: Maggot Brain by Funkadelic
George Clinton built a psychedelic funk band so volatile it couldn’t survive its own best work.
 • Shatter the Standards and Imani Raven
The Loverman Asks Permission Now
Tank flips a Floetry classic into a question only you can answer. Plus: Coco Jones’s two-minute glow-up, Masego’s basement-party invitation, and a…
 • Soulpolitan
30 JAŸ-Z Storytelling Records Ranked by Craft
In honor of JAŸ-Z 30, a countdown of the narrative songs that are built the best. Structure, pacing, dialogue, tension, perspective, characterization…
 • Shatter the Standards and Phil
Album Review: WHY EQUALS SELF by Raz Fresco
The Toronto rapper-producer turns Five-Percent lessons and a family split by borders into the deepest album of his career.
 • Shatter the Standards and Aicha Odilia
Album Review: Alchemy by Davion Farris
The eldest of Inglewood’s Farris brothers devoted years to writing songs for other singers to take home. On thirteen songs of grown two-voice R&B, he…
 • Shatter the Standards and Noura Haddad
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