The meat of the set almost certainly wouldn’t have been released if Prince were still with us. ... They add up to arguably the strongest new set of Prince recordings since Lovesexy. [Aug 2017, p.70]

After four decades, the album's concentrated blend of brutalism and intricacy, fluidity and fracture, sound as uncompromising as ever. [Nov 2011, p.69]

Prince didn’t put a foot wrong in his golden era, right down to what was left in the vault. [Jan 2021, p.94]

These performances have been rightly cherished by collectors for decades. [Oct 2011, p.54]

Instead of disappearing amid the back stories and deep cuts, the hefty additional content and context only acts as so many glittering foils for the enduring, singular force of their crowning achievement, the album itself. [Apr 2014, p.70]

The music has an originality that sounds remarkable even now. [#248, p.52]

The audio material is an illuminating reflection of the group’s transition from pop copyists to psychedelic adventurers, en route to becoming champions of rock’s progressive faction. [Jan 2017, p.82]

Lamar offers a commitment to effect change through the work itself. Whether or not that's realistic ideal the delivery is so powerful it's hard not to get caught up in the rapture. [May 2015, p.50]

Unsurprisingly the mood is melancholy and the louche, theatrical sexuality or carnal drama of earlier albums is replaced by a battered and searching tone, striving to make sense, or failing that, some poetry or beauty out of the tragedy. The narratives take on a less devilish tone here. [Nov 2019, p.46]

A less deranged response to celebrity than Kanye West’s Yeezus, more imaginative than Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP or Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III, it shares with the former an economy of form, and with the latter two the giddy energy of an artist coming into perfect sync with their audience. It’s also a sumptuous sounding pop record, polite streamlined mass market psychedelia. [Jun 2017, p.64]

This ludicrously exhaustive deluxe edition includes hour after hour of live takes, demos and interviews. Fascinating, but none of it overshadows the original album. [Dec 2017, p.70]

Rough And Rowdy Ways is undoubtedly the work of an artist with one eye on his legacy, yet it’s so full of wit, mischief and life that it positively sings. [Sep 2020, p.52]

The most triumphant volume in the series, an at times nearly orchestral realisation of Branch’s unique compositional vision. It’s a shame there won’t be further volumes, but this caps off one of the great catalogues in 21st century jazz. [Oct 2023, p.46]

This constellation of miniature masterpieces is arguably the finest introduction to the Ra universe there is. [Jan 2017, p.84]

UK rap’s first masterpiece of 2021. [Apr 2020, p.56]

It feels distasteful to rate so powerful, so raw an album in any aesthetic terms and yet it brilliantly, blackly, radiates life. Skeleton Tree is a work of mourning, yes; a work of reverie, yes; and also an immensely moving attempt to reach out of blackness towards life. [Nov 2016, p.65]

While it might be hard to hear this music as revolutionary now, there's no denying how commanding and demanding both the tuneful and flat out noisy sections are on modern ears. [Oct 2014, p.70]

Were it only instrumental, Dopesmoker would be some kind of masterpiece. [Aug 2012, p.55]

There probably isn’t a better sequenced album on your shelves. ... The remastering is immaculate, tightening up the jangle and twang, cleaning up Russ Kunkel’s drums and improving the separation of instruments throughout. Some of the alternative versions are a little slower than others; take three of “Some Misunderstanding” might just possibly be superior to the issued take, in the usual sense that sometimes musicality was sacrificed to technical perfection. [Jan 2020, p.78]

The biggest problem with Noname’s Room 25 is that the opening two tracks, adding up to barely four minutes of music, are just too damn good. ... The rest is merely exceptional. Essential. [Nov 2018, p.68]

The vinyl pressing is high quality and these albums deserve every extra crumb of clarity analogue can muster. ... Clear the shelves. [Dec 2017, p.74]

This box is not an artefact but an act, a decisive statement of Czukay’s immutable id bereft of egoistic nostalgia or sentiment. ... Cinema is a beautifully appointed and stylish tribute to a sampladelic pioneer who changed the sound of popular music forever. [Apr 2018, p.72]

This miscellanea contains premonitions of Pylon’s future greatness and fills in the gaps of a catalogue overdue for reassessment. [Jan 2021, p.94]

What makes this set so compelling is its mapping of the rapid shifts in Davis's music within shorter periods. [Oct 2015, p.68]

Six decades later, this 90 minute slab of previously unreleased Monk reveals some strikingly fresh angles on his working methodology. [May 2017, p.68]

In emotional terms Titanic Rising is immense – names like Annette Peacock, Linda Perhacs and Judee Sill come to mind, but only because it feels like so long since you’ve heard pop this epic yet unmannered. ... With tracks like the stunning “Something To Believe” lodging themselves into your heart with the sure knowledge that your relationship with this music will only deepen as the year unfolds. [Jul 2019, p.52]

Despite its complexity, the album is full of ravishing, soulful production and vocals--as catchy and emotionally stirring as it is subversively and intellectually thrilling. [Dec 2012, p.75]

As interesting for what it carries over from the past as for the future it foreshadows. [Feb 2013, p.47]