Cleo Sol - Mother
It should honestly be illegal to make this much amazing music this quickly. Cleo Sol is the lead singer for the mysterious British soul group Sault, along with producer Inflo, who also produces this entire project. This is their fifth project released together in the last 18 months, and they made yet another incredible soul project! This one did take a while to grow on me, as the entire project is 65 minutes of piano ballads about being a new mother, but the entire project runs together flawlessly with so many amazing moments. Whether it’s the opening beauty of “Don't Let Me Fall” or the straightforward “Know That You Are Loved,” Cleo put her all into these vocals. There are three tracks on here that reach at least 7-8 minutes long, but those end up being some of the best ones! The instrumental build and choir on “Build Me Up” is one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year, and “One Day” takes the listener through many different avenues that justify the eight minute runtime. The slightly upbeat moments provide a bit of a relief to the runtime, like the anthemic “Sunshine” and the funky guitar lick on “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head”. The fact that Cleo also sang the majority of the vocals while holding her son just makes the themes of the record hit that much deeper. Cleo Sol and crew manage to make yet another incredible project that somehow differs from anything else they’ve made before.
Little Simz - Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Little Simz isn’t one of the best female rappers, she’s one of the best rappers period. The level of wordplay and flow while still managing to be introspective is something barely anyone ever reaches. SIMBI is her gigantic, magnum opus of a record so far in her career. At 19 tracks at 66 minutes, this thing is jam packed with intricate flows, life lessons, and incredible production! Speaking of which, the production is handled once again by Inflo, who continues his fantastic run of projects with this larger-than-life feeling that comes off of most of these tracks. It feels grandiose in the same way that Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid feels grandiose, it’s almost like watching a movie by just listening to an album. The interludes here make that feeling realized with Emma Corrin from The Crown speaking as a narrator over these gigantic string sections and choirs. The strings aren’t just relegated to the interludes either, as she raps over them on the beautiful “Standing Ovation”. Contrary to the Kacey Musgraves album, this album lives up to that expansive lead single intro track. Even after listening to SIMBI plenty of times, I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface when it comes to the detail and lyrical gymnastics she pulls on this album. There’s no arguing how amazing Little Simz is now, and only time will tell if she’ll go from here.
Drake - Certified Lover Boy
Honestly, this might be my most disappointing release of the year, and it’s mainly my fault. With everything he was saying about this album, it sounded like he was going back to a more hip hop oriented album that was more concise. The lead single last year, “Laugh Now, Cry Later,” was another perfect hit from Drake and his three song EP from earlier this year was another quality release, but this one is frustrating. Certified Lover Boy is only three minutes shorter than his previous double album at only 86 minutes, after he previously said he’d never make an album that long again. The production is solid in spots, and sleep-inducing in others. For example, the first two tracks have pretty great beats and have now been freestyled over by some of the best in the game, but then “Girls Want Girls” comes on with the most generic and lifeless beat I’ve ever heard, and it kills any momentum the album had. There are some moments that provide some relief though, mainly because of the features. Travis sounds great over a beat switch on “Fair Trade”. “Way 2 Sexy” is a terrible, but hilarious song, and the video is easily the funniest music video I’ve seen all year. “TSU”’s subject matter is really dumb, but that hook melody gets stuck in my head very easily. “Knife Talk” with 21 Savage and Project Pat was a Savage Mode 2 reject and it fits better on here with the slow, manoeuvring beat by Metro. Someone needs to tell Lil Wayne to drop a new solo album, because this feature on “You Only Live Twice” and many more this year have been nothing short of incredible! But overall, Certified Lover Boy might be the worst Drake project I’ve heard and I’m honestly not sure if I should expect anything better than this from now on.
Westside Gunn - Hitler Wears Hermes 8: Sincerely Adolf
The Hitler Wears Hermes series is finally coming to an end and Westside Gunn made sure to end the series with a bang. This project actually has two sides that total to over 30 songs and 100 minutes of music, but they can easily be split into two separate sides. Side A is full of his more underground, straightforward rap style with lots of those underground features. Stove God Cooks is on five separate tracks, but there are also people like Lil Wayne, Rome Streetz, Boldy James, and the other Griselda members on here as well. But for as good as Side A is, Side B blows it out of the water. This is both Westside at his most accessible, and most unique as ever. For example, the Griselda posse cut on this side has a fairly straightforward beat, but the transition between Westside Gunn and Benny the Butcher is the beat dropping out and a gospel choir singing “hallelujah” for a few seconds. It makes no sense, but it still works. And the features on this side are easily bigger than the first one with great performances from Tyler the Creator, 2 Chainz, Jay Electronica, Mach-Hommy, and many more. Westside may still be a bit behind Benny and Conway for my personal Griselda list, but there’s no denying that this is still easily better than most people’s best material.
Deb Never - Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
Deb Never has already released multiple of my favorite tracks of 2021 so far, so there was no way this EP was going to be less than great. Before even diving into how she’s technically improved, Deb Never’s just able to capture this longing melancholy feeling effortlessly. Whether it’s an upbeat anthem about being your own worst enemy or a diary entry about her deepest fears, the feeling that drips off these songs is what makes her special. But of course, that feeling didn’t mean much until she was able to refine the potential into actual well constructed songs, and that’s what she does here. The opener, “Stupid,” sets the tone for the project perfectly and works fantastically as an intro track. “Coca Cola” has a noise element in the chorus that works perfectly as a change of pace. The pitch shifting on “Sweet & Spice” makes it sound like a Brockhampton track in the best way. It’s likely just the way she released the project, but it still does feel more like a collection of singles than a full artistic statement. That’s not necessarily a detriment, especially with a project this short and songs this fantastic, but it’s somewhere to improve for next time. I would bet that this project will be on repeat for months to come.
Injury Reserve - By The Time I Get To Phoenix
This is easily the most unique project I’ve heard all year. I don’t even know how to describe the sounds they use on this album. I’ve seen people call it post-rap, but that’s not even a real genre at this point. But who knows, this album does sound like an entirely new genre. It’s extremely noisy and abrasive, but also very beautiful and heartfelt. The song structure is so loose and Ritchie’s voice sounds different on every track, both in pitch and delivery. I think there’s some unique flows on here, but it’s so hard to actually pick out the words themselves. What does jump out though is the emotional potency of this album, which was expected after the group lost one of it’s two vocalists last year. Groggs’s passing and themes of loss as a whole are the focal point for many tracks, but especially “Top Picks For You” where Ritchie delivers the most harrowing verse on the album. He’s not absent from this project though, as he makes vocal appearances on quite a few tracks, including the single “Knees” and the manic “Footwork In A Forest Fire”. Parker’s production on this album is literally mind-bending. He creates this ominous atmosphere that permeates throughout the entire project. There’s no escape from the sonic pain delivered on here, no “All This Money” or “Jailbreak the Tesla” for you to just vibe out to and ignore the bigger message. Injury Reserve delivered something I can barely describe and have never heard anything like it before, and for that, I thank them.
Baby Keem - The Melodic Blue
Baby Keem is one of the most unique young artists making their way up the hip hop ladder, and the melodic blue is both his most refined and all over the place album yet. This album leaves Keem at a much better position than his previous attempts, but it’s still wildly inconsistent. For example, a song like the intro track has no reason it should work, but yet it does. It’s separated into two completely different hard-hitting hip hop beats kept apart by a vocoder interlude with nothing else backing it. There’s also a hidden Rosalia feature of her repeating, “I’m a hot girl,” if the song wasn’t weird enough yet. “Range brothers” with Kendrick Lamar is just as weird, whether it be Keem wailing “I need a girlfriend” at the beginning of the track or Kendrick repeating “top of the morning” over and over during the final section. But even with those weird things, the beat most of the track revolves around is nothing short of amazing, with these beautiful string sections over an insane drum pattern. There are also songs on here that sound straight off of Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak, while other songs sound prime for Spotify’s Rap Caviar playlist. There’s clearly room for improvement for Keem to make a more consistent body of work, but this project helps separate him from anyone else that thought he was a normal artist.
Poppy - Flux
Not many artists have gone through a journey like Poppy. After beginning as a cult-like Youtube star, she’s gone from bubblegum pop music to screaming death metal in under 5 years. Flux is her newest release and it’s easily the most normal thing she’s released so far, and yet combines influences from everywhere in her career. But overall, Flux is a love letter to the grunge and alt-rock era of the 1990s. A track like “Lessen the Damage” sounds like it’d be a hit anywhere between the Nirvana and Green Day eras with its heavy guitar riffs and driving percussion. “So Mean” has Poppy bringing her pop-voice to this upbeat rock banger that easily has the most infectious hook on the record. In fact, most of this album is her singing like it’s a pop song, which helps the album stand out more than the instrumentals do. The live band aspect of the instrumentals is a really nice touch compared to how processed her previous projects have sounded. I’m not sure if this is her best album, nor will it likely please a lot of fans that love her weirder material, but Flux makes me more excited for where she could go in the future than ever before.
Kacey Musgraves - Star-Crossed
I didn’t expect to love Kacey Musgraves’s Golden Hour as much as I did. Granted, it took seeing her perform those songs live during golden hour with perfect weather to truly love them, but still. One divorce and three years later, and now we have Kacey’s break-up album, Star-Crossed. I will say that the teaser/intro track had me fooled for the entire album. The title track starts out this album as this grandiose, genre-less experience that made it seem like this album was going to be larger than life. Instead, Star-Crossed is a fairly lowkey album with a similar genre range of Golden Hour, but it’s about her relationship failing and healing from it instead of the glorious love-stricken jams of the previous album. The songwriting is straightforward, and not as emotional as one would think, but it does show Kacey’s ability to turn pain into easy earworms. Her vocal performances aren’t amazing, but her voice is never one to blow you away, it just fits the respective tracks really well. It’s interesting, looking at this album objectively, there’s really not that much great about it, but I still enjoyed listening to it. It might be another example of expectations getting in the way of actually enjoying the music. Star-Crossed may be a step down for Kacey, but it’s far from a giant misstep for the country-pop star.
Yebba - Dawn
Yebba is becoming an industry favorite singer the past few years, even so much as to be included on Drake’s new album, but this is her official debut album and it’s clear why people love her. Granted, it’s hard for her to go wrong with Mark Ronson producing the entire project and having instrumentalists like Questlove, Pino Palladino, and James Poyser playing all over this thing. That doesn’t even include the solid rap features from A$AP Rocky and Smino on this project as well. Her vocals are fantastic in an accessible way where everyone that hears this will enjoy it. With the album being named after her mother, much of the subject matter is super personal and revolving around that relationship. The more upbeat songs are where the album starts to stand out, with tracks like “Boomerang” and “Far Away”. But even with all that going for her, it doesn’t quite show anything super unique or incredible about her. Maybe her songwriting hasn’t quite gotten to me yet, or her live singing voice isn’t buried in the mix like it is here and is special, but I feel like I’m missing that extra special thing that’d make it one of the best projects of the year. It doesn’t feel like this gigantic or unique artistic statement the collaborators on here make it look like. Either way, Yebba shows that she’s here to stay with Dawn and will hopefully continue to improve from here.
Lil Nas X - Montero
This is an interesting one, because I’ve never really been a Lil Nas X fan, but I was still really curious to see how this turned out. “Old Town Road” was cool and I liked the Nas remix of “Rodeo”, but that’s about it. The singles “Montero” and “Industry Baby” especially grabbed my attention enough to give this album a fair shot. But unfortunately, I think marketing and trolling is still the best thing Lil Nas X does. The album’s solid, don’t get me wrong. The production is cohesive throughout, the hooks on almost all the tracks pop, and all the features (besides Elton John’s just piano playing and no vocals) deliver expected performances. But overall, this just feels like a well executed, generic pop album. Lil Nas X isn’t the best singer, the production isn’t groundbreaking or unique at all, and the hooks aren’t top tier throughout. He also does this thing I hate in the current pop music scene, which is to minimize all the verses as much as possible so the chorus can automatically pop. It’s not just him, that’s a criticism I have of most current pop music, but it’s evident here on most of the songs that nothing on the verses stands out at all. All of that makes this album a bit hard for me to get through, even after multiple listens. But I do wish him the best because he seems like a cool guy who’s pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a celebrity and LGBTQ+ at the same time.
99 Neighbors - Wherever You’re Going, I Hope It’s Great
It’s been more than two years since I unintentionally stumbled upon 99 Neighbors at Lollapalooza in 2019 after only hearing one track. They were clearly at the beginning of their career, but the talent and drive were present then and still are now. It took longer than it probably should’ve to get this, which is maybe why I don’t love this album as much as I should, but everything that they’ve promised is here and better than before. The bangers are more experimental and timeless than before, including the jazzy lead single “Live a Little” and the bombastic “Cards”, the latter containing lots of metallic percussion noises closer to a clipping track than a mainstream hip hop group. There are plenty of moments that show them meditating on their drug addiction, family relationships, and mental health issues. They’re not Lupe-level with the amount of intricate bars given, but they’re clever enough to get the emotion across while still making it sound interesting. There are some places that the project gets a bit samey or messy, like the track “Murder Mart” for example. Swank comes in with an insane verse over an incredible beat, but then it just switches at random to a singing outro/verse that kills all the momentum the album built up until that moment. In my opinion, they’re much better at the more unique moments on the album, like “Trunk”, which sounds both extremely unique but could also be played on the aux with friends easily. 99 Neighbors did come with a really good to great album, and have the potential to get a lot better with time.
D Smoke - War & Wonders
D Smoke won the Netflix hip hop competition show Rhythm + Flow in its first and as of now, only season. It’s rare that someone on these shows is as polished as D Smoke, but he came into the show as one of the most well-rounded rappers in the game today. Combine that with the fact that he’ll effortlessly switch to Spanish mid-way through his verse and that his brother is a fantastic R&B singer signed to TDE, everything was in his favor. And just like his debut album, War & Wonder is a quality west coast hip hop album. The conscious bangers are still the best thing that he does, especially with the first few songs on this project. “Shame On You” especially sounds like something off of Dr. Dre’s 2015 album Compton in the best way possible. But when he delves into the personal storytelling and brings the energy down, the project starts to suffer. It’s not that he’s a bad rapper, he’s not. In fact, he can actually sing fairly decently as well. There’s just nothing unique about these slower songs at all. It’s nothing that a dozen people right now aren’t currently doing better, even though D Smoke is likely a better technical rapper and storyteller than a lot of them. So if you want some technically good west coast hip hop with no part lacking at all, then D Smoke is here for you once again.
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