The plush production of tracks like the Neptunes-produced centerpiece "good kid" hearkens back to Seventies blaxploitation soundtracks and Nineties gangsta-rap blaxploitation revivals, and good kid warrants a place in that storied lineage.

Is both simpler--in sound and scope--than Pirate and much more ambitious. [27 May 2004, p.80]

As a whole, 77–81 presents Gang of Four’s brilliance while putting it on context.

Is this an evolution from Lemonade? Not quite. But with Renaissance, Beyoncé is more relatable than ever, giving listeners all the anthems and sultry slow burners we love and have come to expect from her, proving that inclusivity is the new black.

The result is a raw quality with a sound akin to Bob Dylan and the Band’s Basement Tapes — an album that undoubtedly influenced these sessions (George Harrison, having recently hung out with the Band in Woodstock, describes his early take of “All Things Must Pass” as ‘Band-y’.) The mix also includes “Don’t Let Me Down,” tragically left off the original album but now in its rightful place, nuzzled between a loose, rowdy medley and the gem “Dig a Pony.”

Her full-length debut--about a robot-populated utopia based on Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis--is so ambitious, so freighted with sounds and ideas and allusions, it threatens at times to sink under its own weight.

The music is full of teenage dreams crashing up against reality, dusting themselves off and trying to figure out the next move. If we're lucky, it's a story that never stops.

It rings true to one man's unshakable vision.

Her excellent new Guts is another instant classic, with her most ambitious, intimate, and messy songs yet. Olivia’s pop-punk bangers are full of killer lines (“I wanna meet your mom, just to tell her her son sucks”) but she pushes deeper in powerful ballads like “Logical.” All over Guts, she’s so witty, so pissed off, so angsty at the same time, the way only a rock star can be. And this is the album of a truly brilliant rock star.

For now, the Strokes have mastered their style; they have yet to come up with the substance to match it.... But the music leaves no doubts - more joyful and intense than anything else I've heard this year.

A record rooted in anxiety and mourning, We Got It From Here remains musically as dark and electrically relaxed as 1996's Beats, Rhymes and Life and 1998's The Love Movement.

S.O.S., SZA’s long-awaited sophomore album, is even more enjoyable than her 2017 debut, CTRL. The songs are looser and more confident. And the worthy themes—retribution, nostalgia, ego—amount to the most intimate and juicy self-revelations since the Real World confessional booth.

Quadrophenia, as delivered the first time, is still one of his, and the Who's, greatest albums--and the better opera.

For a musician like Stevens, going too far and trying too hard is the point, the way to get beyond where a more austere songwriter could get with a more naturalistic pose. So the most pleasurable music here is the most ambitious.

Stevens strips his sound far enough to reveal his deepest anguish; neither the Disney-style orchestras of 2005's Illinois nor the synth-pop-as-craft-project of 2010's The Age of Adz peek through his acoustic fingerpicking and warm-milk voice.

The most exciting thing about No Cities is that Sleater-Kinney are one of those bands again--they sound as hungry, as unsettled, as restless as any of the rookies on their jock.

Eve is more than a sign of the times. Easily one of the best rap records of the year, it’s the sound of a skilled artist becoming a vital one, and asserting her place not only in the genre but in the world.

This five-CD box set features the band's three great studio albums, plus terrific bonus tracks and dub versions, and a slew of live recordings in which the Beat unleash their dance-floor fury and their Thatcher-era protest politics.

In tracing the way Mitchell’s songs mutated from bare-boned recordings to fully realized tracks with more musicians than she’d ever used before, Archives Volume 3 finally allows us to hear those steps along the way. That evolution is most apparent in the making of Court and Spark, an album that was both a beautifully crafted piece of adult pop on par with Steely Dan‘s work and a warm, intimate, emotionally conflicted meditation on love and relationships.

Punisher is more sure of itself than its predecessor, thanks to Bridgers’ sharpened and studied songwriting. Her couplets, even more biting this time around, are either brutally self-directed (“I’m a bad liar/With a savior complex”) or just quietly dazzling.

This Texas native (1940-2002) was a one-man song factory in the late Sixties, writing hits for Nashville royalty. But Newbury's hurt and searching, draped in chamber-country silk, bloomed best on the solo LPs in this box.

The only dicey part is an uneven disc of six remixes: some provide new insights, others fall flat. ... With three other discs and a book of the Edge's moving black & white portraits of the band in the California desert, the box is a thorough portrait of a band on the verge, ready to burst into the arms of America and the rest of the world.

By the fourth line — "Being this young is art" — it's obvious, the track ["Slut!"] is a stunner. .... The chorus [of "Say Don’t Go"] ("Why'd you have to lead me on? Why'd you have to twist the knife?") hits so tragically hard that it was destined to be screamed by stadiums full of fans at future Eras shows. "Suburban Legends" is a euphoric, dizzying rush to the head, with Antonoff's production making it sound like the soundtrack to the world's most addictive arcade game.

On the evidence of this excellent debut, few people can challenge Skinner right now except himself.

The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is another evolution: a mix of quotidian-yet-elliptical lyricism, classic country accompaniment, daring orchestral movements, and the musician’s unique brand of storytelling.

Dylan is the unquestioned star, the magnetic, assured center of the sprawl. ... The longer view afforded by Dylan’s full set lists, rehearsals almost to opening night (with songs that appear nowhere else in the set) and a disc of additional rarities from along the itinerary captures both the acute showman’s focus the singer brought to this enterprise and the accelerating, play-for-the-moment drive that climaxes in that “Isis” from Montreal.

Waits' ravaged voice surrendered all pretensions to melody ages ago; his throat is now pure theater, a weapon of pictorial emphasis and raw honesty.

More Blood, More Tracks does not contradict the choices Dylan made on the way to Blood on the Tracks. It fills in his road to wisdom.

Funeral aches with elegiac intensity.

The album holds up as one of the Eighties' smartest megapop statements, full of passion and surefire hooks.

This expanded reissue adds Not Forever the 1989 demo tape that got them signed.... It shows a vision startlingly complete, and its scrappiness occasionally serves the songs better.

For the die-hards, the ones who have charted the Classic Quartet's every move, from the early glories of the Coltrane LP to the fiery outpourings heard on albums like Sun Ship from 1965, it's another small but crucial puzzle piece in the group's still-stunning evolution during its roughly three-year lifespan. For everyone else, it's an unvarnished, day-in-the-life portrait of an icon--and the three musical giants that helped him achieve that status--at work.

The LP remains corrosively beautiful.

He's less pimp than craftsman, packing more style--and more substance--into his four-minute-long songs than other rappers deliver in an entire album.

All over The Record, they keep recombining their individual styles into a different kind of chemistry for each song. That’s why they transcend any kind of “supergroup” cliché. After all, supergroups are a dime a dozen compared to actual great bands. And boygenius leave no doubt about where they stand.

woods fulfills the literary expectations he’s often saddled with. Each work is a different chapter in an impressively consistent collection, and Maps finds him in repose, taking stock of the world of him.

The Live Anthology redresses that wrong with a panoramic picture of the Heartbreakers' indestructible groove.

Somehow, the Primals' fury never seems misguided: This is one ball of aggression that hangs together, thanks to the band's smarts and funk.

There is an emphasis on keyboards, in pulse and architecture, that adds buoyancy and color to James' writing and flatters his keening, stratospheric tenor.

St. Vincent is her tightest, tensest, best set of songs to date, with wry, twisty beats pushing her lovably ornery melodies toward grueling revelations.

Nine songs, 32 minutes, no false moves.

On their second album as Run the Jewels, noise-loving Brooklyn rapper-producer El-P and Atlanta's Killer Mike make the most explosive hip-hop you'll hear all year.

Rounds is almost accidentally poignant--it's like hearing shattered transmissions of sentimental old music. [15 May 2003, p.134]

What keeps it from being a crackling mess is Markus Acher's sweet, plaintive voice pushing these selected ambient works toward song structure and melody.

A record this layered and quirky is easier to make than it was when Prince Paul first started cutting up old 45s (case in point: the Wiseguys), but to do it well - keeping intact an aesthetic that threads together all these disparate sounds - is true talent.

Like a great DJ set, songs morph into one another thematically and structurally, most notably in the album’s central triptych. ... The music works its magic, and like a perfect night a clubbing, the uplift is ultimately irresistible.

With its carefully-crafted sequencing and seamless interludes, Kiwanuka feels like a proper old-fashioned album constructed as such, with some of its brightest highlights buried deep into the record’s latter half.

His third straight masterwork. [7 Sep 2006, p.99]

The banter's remarkably jocular, Young shouting out Fifties superstar stripper Candy Barr and cracking wise like a tipsy hippie Henny Youngman ("Welcome to Miami Beach! I'd like to thank my managers for introducing me. … Ten years in the business, folks. I feel like Perry Como!") But the songs are dark as a moonless night.

It’s certainly not overlong at 10 tracks, but That! Feels Good! does seem frontloaded with its punchiest tunes. Still, there are moments in the back half that really work. ... That! Feels Good! is at its absolute best when it pinpoints that intoxicating connection between body and emotion.

There’s a Flannery O’Connor story collection worth of Southern fucked-up-ness going on here. But Wednesday are just as interested in sucking you in with a walloping guitar banger as they are in freaking you out with their snapshots from the ruralburban coming-of-age abyss. These songs are so catchy you almost don’t notice the body count.

Like The Social Experiment project, as well as her last record, Legacy! Legacy! is about community, about legacies as heritage but also as that which is forged on the ground in the moment. Woods is a teacher and organizer, so it’s not surprising she encourages her guests to shine.

Apex Predator: Easy Meat is a pummeling listen that doesn't get old.

Miss E is a mess, of course, and not all the experiments work as brilliantly as the single. But if you prefer risky messes to tidy formula, tracks like "Scream a.k.a. Itchin' " and "Step Off" will freak you up something fierce.

A luxuriant union of black-ice electronics and chamber-pop instrumentation. [14 Oct 2004, p.98]

RTJ4, which the band rush-released a few days ahead of schedule, is laser-focused. ... Mike unloads on racist cops, systemic poverty, corporate media, and other eternal enemies. But the album never feels preachy, because the music bounces as much as it brays, with an elastic flow and deep history.

It's a museum piece, a record that merits a display in the Smithsonian.

Combining crunchy nu-metal guitar riffs with a penchant for early-aughts R&B-pop production in the vein of Aaliyah and ‘NSync, Sawayama sounds like Britney Spears’ Blackout by way of Korn — and it inexplicably works.

It's an album of tuneful, intimate pop-rock songs...

Olsen’s up to something different here, inviting a different sort of attention to fully absorb. It’s worth the investment; the emotion’s as visceral as it is complex, and it ranks among the best sounding records this year, deserving to be cranked on a good sound system — an album to spend time with, to fall into, to shut up and let yourself be kissed by.

Mannequin Pussy’s lyrical prowess is on full display with I Got Heaven.

"Here we go to the main course!" ad-libs Van Morrison on an extended "Caravan," one of the shaggy outtakes on this five-disc unpacking of the Belfast bard's 1970 jazzy-pop masterpiece. That LP is nearly all main course, and if the numerous alternate takes here often feel incomplete without their sublime, brassy final arrangements, they compensate with intimacy.

This box set is the type of treatment usually reserved for Beatles reissues, but because it’s Zappa The Hot Rats Sessions is a more delightfully quirky. It doesn’t contain everything, the way something like the Stooges’ 1999 box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, did, but because of the Zappa-esque details, it feels more comprehensive, for better or worse.

Coloring Book is the richest hip hop album of 2016 so far.

Sure, it's less focused than the reportage of 2015's Summertime '06, but the varying emotions and outlooks mark a full step forward into becoming a multi-layered, genre-crossing, emotion-spilling pop auteur in the vein of West, Drake or Childish Gambino.

Ignorance, solidifies the 36 year-old as one of the most audaciously inventive auteurs working in the broad singer-songwriter tradition. This ten song collection broadens the Weather Station’s sonic palette by foregrounding fluttering flutes, crisp orchestral sections, and, most importantly, a propulsive rhythm section.

Though Golden Hour might take time to relax into, the set is a fine lava-lamp soundtrack, and if "country" suggests engaging American musical traditions with respect and pioneer spirit, then this album is as country as it comes.

A record more extroverted, flamboyant and hooky across the board, and which, depending on how you categorize Dirty Computer, feels like a frontrunner for the year’s hottest pop album.

Tigers Blood is an album that makes you marvel at how much Katie Crutchfield has accomplished, over all the miles she’s traveled so far. But it’s also an album that makes you excited for wherever she goes from here.

Her minimalist distillation of R&B, which takes into consideration not just the genre's rich musical history but also its penchant for social commentary, has resulted in a stunning statement that redefines the old chestnut about the personal being political.

Elegant tech-house, sexy without being stoopid. [28 Oct 2004, p.100]

Solange’s growth as an artist has been one of music’s most fascinating stories, and, like A Seat at the Table, When I Get Home serves as a thrilling reminder that this is just the beginning of the futures she still has yet to unpack. If she can make a party-friendly album so meaningful, we’ve barely even witnessed the tip of her vision.

With all of the band’s nu-metal hallmarks at the forefront this time, We Are Not Your Kind sounds the more like the head-turning, self-titled debut they put out 20 years ago than any of their releases since. But what’s different here is a new sense of (gasp!) sophistication.

The Idler Wheel... is a challenging album. The songs are intricately arranged but sonically stark, foregrounding Apple's piano and the stupendous drumming of Charley Drayton. There's not a single big, chewy hook on the album. Sometimes the songs drag... But Apple's kooky energy pushes through the slow spots.

The ninth disc from this Brooklyn/Baltimore crew tries balancing shameless beauty with ecstatic weirdness, and when they nail it, it's breathtaking.

Whether the ace metal is speedy or onerous (or both, as in the case of "Six Shooter," with its shrieking insanity), it is always deployed in the service of the eccentric song structures, and every track becomes a splendid, mysterious thing.

Mostly her ear is unerring and her characters true--the kind of talent who makes the term "alt-country" unnecessary.

It’s a tight 10-track collection that lyrically and musically probes the concept of freedom—what it means, whether it’s a blessing or a curse.

Mostly, her new album is businesslike, serious, sane.

So why is it one of the best hip-hop albums of the year? For one, nobody gets the beats -- dry, hard and evil -- that Clipse get from Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.

It's two discs of steady brilliance.

The most interesting stuff here is in the Blackberry Way Demos, some of which came out on a previous expanded edition of the album. ... Even the collection’s rough mixes — usually the most over larded part of a box set — offer new insights.

Rosalía’s new album, El Mal Querer, is less rigorous than its predecessor, though even easier to like. ... It’s also extremely effective.

It’s music that evokes the terror we all share in just being alive, and the way that fighting through it is a form of constant rebirth we all share, too. That’s the kind of truth this album excavates and celebrates many times, and why this is some of Annie Clark’s most satisfyingly urgent music yet.

The album is an immediate gem in their still-expanding catalog; it’s a resonant reflection on pain, depression, love and home that forsakes some of their big, drum-heavy pop leanings for a smoother, more inward experience.

Even without any very particularly illuminating extras, though, Superunknown is a Nineties benchmark.

This lavish multidisc set is as eccentric and compelling as its subject.

The album showcases a songwriting voice you won't hear anywhere else in pop: young, female, downwardly mobile, fiercely witty.

Rarely does an act so flatteringly curate its own brilliance.

But the real surprise is the music itself — the most head-spinning, heart-breaking, emotionally ambitious songs of her life.

Doesn't quite have the ragged charm or the wry humor of 2001's outstanding The World Won't End; the occasional dose of guitar bombast ("One Foot in the Grave") doesn't serve Pernice well.

These days, they don't just crush--they hypnotize.

Jordan’s second record proves that the singer is capable of oh-so much more.

It's political rock that never confuses passionate commitment with smug certainty, asking more questions than it answers on a hero's journey into our darkest national impulses, and maybe in some small way, beyond them.

This one will make heads from Shaolin to San Diego happy.

Future Nostalgia is a breathtakingly fun, cohesive and ambitious attempt to find a place for disco in 2020. Incredibly, Lipa is successful: the upbeat album that she decided to release a week earlier than planned is the perfect balm for a stressful time.

Ultimately, Divers, is about things lost with age and progress--wisdom, beauty, innocence, love, mystery. Yet this music always seems to look ahead.... Questlove, Kanye, Kendrick and all other curators of hyper-literate avant-pop: Ball's in your court.

Adele has never sounded more ferocious than she does on 30—more alive to her own feelings, more virtuosic at shaping them into songs in the key of her own damn life. It’s her toughest, most powerful album yet.