Shatter the Standards

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Album Review: Skeletor by Chief Keef
A man who built Drill’s blueprint at 16 is 30 now. Chief Keef made his most autobiographically detailed album. It’s the best thing he’s done in a mighty…
 • Shatter the Standards and Nia Lattimore
Milestones: Return of 4eva by Big K.R.I.T.
The Mississippi rapper and producer’s magnum opus of a mixtape is Southern rap’s warmest, most self-assured free album of 2011.
 • Shatter the Standards and Noura Haddad
Album Review: EXTRA CHEESE by NAHreally
The Massachusetts MC’s tenth release wrings a whole album from the pleasures and anxieties of being pretty good. Nobody rapping this candidly about…
 • Shatter the Standards and Mina Abdel
Milestones: Fishscale by Ghostface Killah
The Wu-Tang veteran’s fifth solo album trades kingpin fantasy for basement stress, a late-career monument to urgency and unresolved damage.
 • Shatter the Standards and Fallon Reese
Milestones: King by T.I.
Between a film role and a presumptuous title, T.I. calls himself royalty, raps the same block biography three albums running, and dares anyone to argue.
 • Shatter the Standards and L. Ari James
Album Review: Whatever’s Clever! by Charlie Puth
Charlie Puth makes his most personal album with BloodPop®, and a guest list spanning three decades. The directness holds.
 • Shatter the Standards and Rosa Delgado
Album Review: Zavier by Fetty Wap
Fetty Wap’s first album after federal prison leans hard into romance and old loyalties. It’s slight and comfortable when it should be reckoning with the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tai Lawson
Album Review: MEMORIA, in blue by Noah Guy
The Philly singer’s debut is a warm, unpolished grief record made almost entirely with his roommate. It sounds exactly as close as that implies.
 • Shatter the Standards and Danica Ford
Album Review: Confessions of a Lonely Girl by Victory
Victory Boyd gave away her best songs and won a Grammy nobody expected. Her third record asks who profits from love and whether God’s answer is the…
 • Shatter the Standards and Tori Hammond
Album Review: Is There Anybody Home? by rum.gold
A divorce record from someone who never felt at home anywhere. Every room on it is empty, and he keeps walking through them anyway.
 • Shatter the Standards and Jhanel
Anniversaries: SEPT 5TH by dvsn
Toronto’s OVO duo made a sex album with church in its bones and enough gorgeous restraint to survive its own bluntness.
 • Shatter the Standards and Raya Sinclair
EP Review: Candy by Justine Skye
Justine Skye spent a decade auditioning for a lane that kept moving. She’s all the way in one now, and it fits like a thong she didn’t bother wearing.
 • Shatter the Standards and Rosa Delgado
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