This is the biggest Benny album to date, but he doesn’t lose what made him great and such a beloved underground rapper. His boasts are as strong as ever, and his flows are cold like the air in the Buffalo streets.

Once again, Gorillaz’s ability to infuse their immaculately polished and idiosyncratic production with the wide-ranging talents of their guests is commendable, too, ensuring that their work remains charmingly singular by default. Sure, its lesser moments are expectedly artificial and monotonous — that, too, knowingly comes with the territory — but there’s more good than bad here, and most Gorillaz devotees will surely adore it.

Fake It Flowers is a true evolution, a record that’s stronger and fuller than beabadoobee’s earlier EPs and exemplifies the ongoing growth of her artistry.

This latest record delivers everything we’ve come to expect from the Baltimore-based band — plucky synths, drama-dripping vocals, and a well-rounded backdrop of sound that sounds like something out of an outer-space orchestra, rather than something mixed over Zoom.

Griselda captain Westside Gunn remains as shocking as ever, and his ear for beats hasn’t lost a step despite his higher profile. Conway and Benny are both in fine form here, too, especially on closing song “98 Sabers”.

Listening to Shiver, it’s easy to imagine up-tempo tracks getting remixed as sophisticated, otherworldly club bangers. When we are eventually allowed back onto teeming dancefloors, Jónsi’s swings of melancholic euphoria and piercing wordlessness may hit just right.

The Album showcases their signature style of blending genres and influences to create songs that are just as classically pop as they are identifiably BLACKPINK.

Shamir’s music makes the listener want to wake up. Listening to it is like being shaken awake, blinds thrown open. And it’s not like learning that anything sad or dull or particular was a dream all along.

Serpentine Prison isn’t the drastic change of pace that many frontmen create when they do a project outside of their main band, but it does enough to justify itself as separate from The National’s catalog. At the same time, longtime fans of the group will undoubtedly feel at home here, too, while also admiring what Berninger does differently.

Chuck D’s hard-hitting lyrics and the album’s dynamic production can serve as a soundtrack for the American Dream (or nightmare, depending on your perspective) for the foreseeable future. Public Enemy seem here to stay, but the truth is — they have never really left.

Free Love is an album you wade through, one that carefully encourages you to move with it and move through it, challenges your existence and presses you to feel, then drops you off lightly just a few feet away. It’s a true testimony to the fertile partnership that is Sylvan Esso.

Deftones have only ever produced good albums, but they’ve also spent the decade since Diamond Eyes exploring textures and soundscapes, sometimes at the expense of songcraft. Ohms breaks that trend, with more focused songs, and a renewed love of hard-rocking guitar riffs that may rekindle the band’s relationship with fans that jumped ship after White Pony.

The Ascension is one of Sufjan Stevens’ grandest, most ambitious works yet.

Embury took this record as an opportunity to redefine what the band’s sound can successfully encompass. Together with Greenway’s thought-provoking lyrics, Embury delivered a set of songs so good that they made the band’s recent victories seem conservative in retrospect. Even the bonus tracks course with vitality. In 2020, Napalm Death remain — to quote one their series of cover albums — leaders not followers.

At its strongest, Ultra Mono offers a fresh set of urgent rallying cries for anyone interested in furthering workers’ rights, dismantling systemic racism, and knocking out a few Nazi teeth. The record’s missteps mostly come when Talbot finds himself on the defensive, a position that finds him turning out poison-pen responses to critics that probably felt better to sing than they do to hear.

A debut album can often feel like an announcement or an artist statement: something that says, This is me, and this is my music. Anjimile unites that self-consciousness with an exploratory intention.

From King to a GOD is arguably one of the best Griselda projects thus far and a viable contender for year-end lists. Conway’s versatility is on full display throughout the album, exhibiting his growth as an artist who is coming into his own in his late thirties.

Overall, the production, musicianship, and songwriting are among the best of Manson’s career.

American Head stands alongside The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots as one of the very best records The Flaming Lips have recorded and should be required listening for anyone who’s gone on their own quarantine-induced walk down memory lane in search of a way to survive this year.

It’s one of Big Sean’s strongest efforts and one that should make the Motor City proud.

Overall, everything is brighter here versus the original S&M. It’s a celebration of Metallica, their fans, and their music. Let this version of S&M2 be the one that’s remembered.

Perry has always been a top-notch entertainer, who tries on a range of styles and wants to make folks feel good. I’m not asking her to be anything else. But what comforted us before, both in pop and faith, doesn’t hit the same anymore.

Reinterpreting and rearranging a series of older songs with new tones and styles — especially songs off of an album widely acclaimed for its tone and style — is a vision that not everybody could pull off, but Olsen does.

From start to finish, this album ceases to stray from its main concept, and Nas doesn’t have to sacrifice the quality of his music to do so. Primarily produced by Hit-Boy, King’s Disease delivers a feel appropriate for the times and hits the mark as being one of the better rap albums of the year.

Considering that Project Regeneration Vol. 1 was pieced together from demos, it really is a commendable effort. What could seem like a cash grab is far from it. The album is a fully fleshed collection that properly cements Wayne’s legacy.

There’s a maturity in The Killers’ music that started to emerge on Wonderful Wonderful and really takes root here.

Now a certified pop vet, La Roux returns with a work that translates the hard-earned lessons of the past decade into another collection of radio-ready dance-pop whose best tracks manage to sound timeless and topical at the same time. It’s an eminently listenable album, and her best shot in years at recapturing some of those triumphs for herself.

The Neon delivers mostly carefree synth-pop comfort food calibrated to appeal more to our feet and our hearts than our already overtaxed brains. The record is certain to thrill devotees and potentially catch the ear of an unsuspecting Release Radar listener or two; whether we’ll still need it once these current hard times end remains to be seen.