While this album was delayed for a couple months due to COVID, Women in Music Pt. III arrives just in time for summer. This album is full of summer jams with a pop rock flair to them, similar in style to Vampire Weekend, a group that featured Danielle Haim three times on their latest album. “The Steps” especially sounds like a slightly more rock oriented version of Vampire Weekend. While the production is a bit messy, the tune is so catchy and well written that it negates any negatives. There are quite a few other straight up summer pop anthems, like “Don’t Wanna” and “Los Angeles”, but HAIM’s also able to make slower songs as well. “I Know Alone” features an almost garage style beat with a melancholic hook. “3 AM” is a more electronic and groove driven track that has a lot of soul. Women in Music Pt. III is an album that can appeal to anyone. It has the youthful energy that younger people want, the rock oriented sound that makes it easily accessible to older listeners, and enough experimentation that’ll draw weirder listeners as well.
Arca has made her impact on the music industry known with her production on Kanye’s experimental opus Yeezus, producing most of FKA twigs’s early material, and working with more music legends like Frank Ocean and Bjork. This album’s production shows once again why she’s held in high regard during the last decade, but Arca the vocalist isn’t quite up to par with Arca the producer. Arca tries everything from rapping, to operatic singing, to singing in Spanish, and even whisper singing, but none of them really land. When Bjork comes in on the sixth track “Afterwards”, it’s obvious that the vocal ability and talent level has changed. Every track with a feature is great, from the airiness of the aforementioned “Afterwards”, to the glitchy banger that is “La Chiqui” with fellow influential transgender electronic producer, SOPHIE. KiCK 1 will easily go down as one of the weirdest and most unique projects of 2020, but it’s up to the listener if it’s one of the best or not.
Louis the Child is one of the most mainstream electronic acts and even though you might not recognize their name, you’ve probably heard a song of theirs in a commercial or just in life in general. Even with their mainstream popularity already, this is their official debut album. Although many fans and critics agreed that it’s not exactly their best project, there are still some quality songs on here. They’ve started to sing on their own tracks on here, and not to good results, but when the features lend their vocals, the songs get better. “Big Love” with Earthgang provides a grand opener to the album. “Little Things” with Quinn XCII and Chelsea Cutler is just a quality electro-pop song. But even with the few highlights, it’s not an album that I would recommend to someone that’s not already a fan. I’d just stick to their most popular songs and hits.
I didn’t really have high hopes going into this. Posthumous albums can go poorly, especially with labels trying to put together random unreleased songs, but this ended up pretty good. There are still some random features and songs that feel like a label just adding things to get attention. “For the Night” with Lil Baby and Dababy and “The Who” with 50 Cent and Roddy Rich leave Pop Smoke feeling like a feature on his own song. Tyga, Swae Lee, and Karol G feel unnecessary with their features as well, but there’s a lot to love here. Pop Smoke shows his diversity on here more than before, with him venturing into more mainstream trap and R&B. He still sticks to his usual subject matter of violence, drug use, and gang life, which makes it especially sad considering he got killed because of this lifestyle. Even with all these things that could’ve gone wrong, including the album cover controversy, this is still a really good batch of songs from one of the most promising up and coming voices in hip hop, and it’s sad that his life got taken away at only 20 years old.
After being impressed by her opening performance for Kali Uchis last year, she finally came through with a new EP about a year later! While her brand of electro-pop isn’t that unique, she created some catchy melodies in both English and Spanish with some personal lyrics, and this project definitely holds true. She doesn’t use any Spanish on this project, but it doesn’t hold the project back. Songs like “Tension” and “In My Room” are these earwormy, synth-pop tracks that have the same quality as what larger artists have done this year, like Dua Lipa and Carly Rae Jepsen. Even though the project is only 8 songs, it does start to feel a bit like one long song towards the end, but this is still a quality project for anyone who likes electro-pop. She’s also a designer and has designed for artists such as Kali Uchis and Girl Ultra. I say this to quickly promote her shirt in her official store that she’s selling to raise money for the Brave Space Alliance, a Chicago, Black and Trans led LGBTQ+ Center.
This a sequel to a project he put out in 2018, IDK & Friends, where every song had a feature on it. This project is the same way, except this project is also the soundtrack to the new Kevin Durant basketball documentary, Basketball Country. He has quite a few high profile features on here, including A$AP Ferg, Juicy J, Ronny J, Denzel Curry, Maxo Kream, and many more. With his official studio albums being pretty concept heavy, it’s nice to hear him just rapping for the sake of rapping. Songs like “Mazel Tov”, “Bulletproof”, and “Riley” provide some energetic bangers with some quality rapping, but he does slow it down towards the end of the project. “End of Discussion” with PnB Rock is the prime example of this, although it doesn’t come out to the best results. Overall, it’s another quality project from IDK that shows his ability to make some really good and great rap songs.
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