As society contends with sickness, anger, and fear, Donald Glover remedies the malignancy while fueling the anguish. 3.15.20 signals an important shift for Childish Gambino and secures the album's spot as one of the best of the year.
Son Little finds commonalities across jazz, hip-hop, soul, R&B, and rock. His latest album grew out of a setback, but he created a stronger, simpler, more ruminative set of songs. Here he talks about creativity and obstacles and how they work together.
José James has a rich, velvety voice that simmers and smolders. He takes it easy in a seductive way. The vibe is romantic and sexy on No Beginning No End 2.
For Black History Month 2020, we are showcasing films and videos featuring Black American artists. Enjoy them and learn about the origin of each Black music legend featured.
Exploring topics like poverty, Black consciousness, burgeoning love, and mortality, Jahshua Smith's latest album, They Don't Love You Like That, encapsulates some of the most difficult moments in his life.
Joining forces with Oddisee and Zenyth on "Trouble", New Zealand hip-hopper Raiza Biza asks, "Who is going to save humanity from itself?"
UK rap phenom Stormzy has a lot to say on his sophomore album. From career milestones to addressing grime beefs, to expressing the precarious position he finds himself in as a spokesperson for a generation of black British youth, Stormzy makes his case for king.
Versatile drummer Terri Lyne Carrington leads a date that sums up the jazz of the decade, from hip-hop influenced political songs to freely improvised instrumental music supplemented by orchestral composition.
Following Stormzy's run up the charts, 2019 proved to be a banner year for British hip-hop with a trio of masterpieces. America's myriad hip-hop scenes delivered the goods, and African rap gave us many stellar releases.
Kathy Iandoli's personable history, God Save the Queens, shows how women in rap face up to the battles.
How death, legal battles, and scavengers couldn't stop the legacy of Gang Starr, one of the most important pillars of hip-hop.
South London's MEI shares her brilliant new single for "DIM: Don't Ignore Me", which showcases her intriguing blend of electronic, hip-hop, and soul. MEI is truly an artist to watch.
A timeless artist and hip-hop legend, Kurtis Blow blazed the trail for early hip-hop artists and continues to carry the torch for hip-hop music in new arenas.
Brooke Candy's Sexorcism suggests a genuine, Freudian fixation on extreme pleasure and how it can be downright terrifying -- the shame and fear, the abjection and filth, the unpredictable transfers of power.
By abstracting the sounds and ideas of his earlier work, electronic/hip-hop producer Daedelus has created one of his most challenging works to date with The Bittereinders.
Detroit rapper Danny Brown's uknowhatimsayin¿ is a spare, principled record that's mostly about hard beats and harder bars.
On All My Heroes Are Cornballs, experimental rapper and producer JPEGMAFIA broadens his visceral online image and sounds into a more vulnerable, humanizing, and melodic project.
The Book of Traps and Lessons reveals Kate Tempest's disdain with contemporary society while also envisioning a future where it all can be changed. With a flair for hip-hop laced with Marxism, the album is poetic artistry.
Sampa the Great's The Return is both a willfully enigmatic and deeply revealing album. It serves as a dazzling celebration of her cultural and musical heritage that will resonate for years to come.
Enlisting the production prowess of Timbaland, Wili Hendrix, and Missy Elliott herself, Iconology is both a signifier of Missy's role in contemporary popular music while ushering in a welcomed opportunity to #throwitback.
The world's most inscrutable rapper, Young Thug makes clear what he's saying and where he stands on his most forthright release yet.
Salvador Santana and Asdru Sierra's video for the new RMXKNZ single "Canvas" is a vibrant celebration of personal expression that sets the spotlight on inclusivity.
Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins portray despair and hope in difficult times on Black Love & War.
On Azeem's Craft Classic, listeners get a window into an odd, shape-shifting pandemonium, in which the view on display is a sort of glamorous anarchy.
Breakup albums have a rare power; they mark the moment when an image-conscious artist is suddenly compelled to let his guard down. Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Tyler the Creator's IGOR are similar in their vulnerability.
Producer Ekiti Sound debuts with an ultra-modern take on Nigerian traditions old and new on the eclectic Abeg No Vex.
On any given day, you may see Kate Tempest working as a poet. Or maybe a playwright. Or a spoken-word artist with hip-hop connections. As she celebrates the release of her third album, she reflects on where her place is in Britain's powerful cultural moment.
For the man behind some of the most memorable hip-hop productions of the last few decades, a new challenge hits Daniel M. Nakamura in the form of coming up with the emotional soundtrack for the stellar new teen comedy film Booksmart.
Chris Schwartz's memoir on founding Ruffhouse Records attempts to be many things but doesn't fully deliver on any of them, making for a conventionally-structured memoir that often reads as slapdash and dry.
Through a discerning balance of Nekfeu's competitive rap instincts and the contemporary trend of embracing grief in sixteens, Les étoiles vagabondes excels as a multifaceted, exhilarating and ultimately inspired body of hip-hop.
The genre-agnostic "Old Town Road" rapper's lyrics are less interesting than the scenery Lil Nas X drops them in.
As we should expect from Mndsgn by now, he creates fantastic layers of atmosphere throughout Snaxx. The rest, though, is a lush, wondrous surprise, promising much more to come.
Flying Lotus' fifth album Flamagra contains plenty of strong material but ultimately lacks a unifying coherence.
Zoospa finds producers Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar finding plenty of shared musical ground, laying charges, and then detonating them.
Quiet and thoughtful, yet nimble in his poetic applications, hip-hop artist Porter Ray has much to say in our 20 Questions feature.
Congolese-Belgian musician and filmmaker Baloji revisits his kaleidoscopic 137 Avenue Kaniama album as a mixtape and short film.
Roy Christopher's dense book-length essay, Dead Precedents, takes much of what is now axiomatic about hip-hop and reminds us how revolutionary its innovations and practices really were.
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