Tag Archives: hear-this

If modern R&B were a Nineties teen melodrama, SZA would be the cool girl with a Trapper Keeper full of receipts on everyone. She’s the queen of revenge fantasy—exes get offed (before being told in no uncertain terms that their stroke is weak), and toxic rivals get dragged for fun …

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. RM, the leader of BTS, seems to know this truth all too well. As the seven-member group skyrocketed to the world stage, the 28-year-old singer, songwriter, and producer found himself becoming not only as his band’s de facto spokesperson due to his …

Villano Antillano had the kind of summer most rising artists would sell their souls for: In June, the rising Puerto Rican rapper made her BZRP Music Sessions premiere with a furious freestyle that went viral and blew people’s minds, garnering a cool 155 million views. A month later, she was …

Five years after the release of David Bowie‘s first masterpiece, Hunky Dory — which replaced the perception of Bowie as a one-hit space oddity with the idea Bowie as an ever-ch-ch-changing moon-age messiah — he offered up some characteristic mythmaking. In a 1976 Melody Maker interview, Bowie claimed Hunky Dory‘s …

From the Beatles to Odd Future, when a beloved, successful, and ceiling-shattering group parts ways, it always feels bittersweet. Since arriving in the early 2010s, Texas-bred alternative hip-hop crew Brockhampton have been one of rap’s most artistically and socially progressive groups. But considering their record-label woes, the 2018 sexual-assault allegations …

“It’s been a long, strange year/ everyone is sad,” Natalie Mering notes near the end of her musical project Weyes Blood’s fifth album. That observation comes at the outset of “The Worst Is Done,” which finds Mering taking stock of recent history’s bleakness and casting a weary glance upon any …

Rauw Alejandro has been known to spin off in unexpected directions. The Puerto Rican star, recognized for his quick-footed, anti-gravity choreography, has danced his way through a dizzying mix of genres: Risque, racy raps on his two-part EP Trap Cake, thudding old-school reggaeton on Afrodisiaco. Last year’s Vice Versa was …

Tu Historia, the eighth album from venerable Mexican singer-songwriter Julieta Venegas, finds her sounding at once reassuringly familiar and totally brand-new. Over the past 20 years, Venegas has seamlessly transitioned from Latina alterna-rock firebrand to pop songstress and rock en español icon, as evidenced by her show-closing profile on Netflix’s …

Christine and the Queens‘ frontperson, Chris, has spent most of his life yearning for simplicity — to understand his own sexuality and gender but longing mostly for the simplest emotion: love. Unfortunately for Chris, yearning is what he does best. That anxious feeling is what makes his music so invigorating. …

Nigerian crooner Wizkid is the king of unignorable dinner-party music: He makes melodic songs that become part of the background but make you want to put that salad fork aside and engage in at least one dance. His voice — a soft warble — is both bold and seductive, enlivening …