Tag Archives: music-album-reviews

An extravagant tapestry of slick Afro-Latin pop, Ozuna’s much anticipated fifth album ‘Ozutochi’ delivers more of the laid-back grooves and nocturnal hooks that made the Puerto Rican vocalist’s ascent to global stardom look like a natural consequence. This sprawling 18-track collection has a luxurious, tropical-flower-in-bloom feel. It’s a poignant, occasionally …

Since she began releasing self-produced bedroom pop in the mid-2010s, Willow Smith has been guided by her own muse, smashing genres into one another while telling her story in painstaking detail. All the while, she’s been dragging pop into weirder, darker spaces. The wobbly 2015 bedroom-funk cut “Wait a Minute!” …

Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi’s generation-defining debut mixtape, 2008’s A Kid Named Cudi, showcased a unique artist at the forefront of a generation of rappers who made it feel OK to wear one’s heart on their sleeve. It was a daring look in the late aughts, when coke rap and snap-and-pop …

It’s been three years since Björk premiered the maximalist Cornucopia in New York, a psychedelic environmental cautionary tale that climate change has made permanently resonant (the ongoing tour is slated for Japan next year). If that project looks at our troubled planet with a macro lens, her new album Fossora …

Two decades ago, the trio of Karen O, Nick Zinner, and Brian Chase were leaders of New York’s downtown post-punk revival scene, taking on the malaise that hung over the early aughts with slashing riffs and yelp-along lyrics. On Cool It Down, their fifth album and first since 2013’s gritty …

At the center of Freddie Gibbs’ $oul $old $eparately is “Rabbit Vision,” which finds him regretting moments in his life. “Me and Jeezy haven’t spoken in years, but I got love for him/Coulda talked it out, but I spoke out, I let it get to me,” he raps, offering an …

Protoje is in his head. One of modern reggae’s most important figure is in a contemplative, almost melancholy mood on his latest album, Third Time’s the Charm. Gone are the aspirational anthems and the superstar crossover collabs from previous records. This time, Protoje is leaning back, getting lost in his …

Blackpink are the world’s biggest K-pop girl group, the essence of swagger in human form: a four-woman swirl of glam energy. Jisoo, Rosé, Lisa, and Jennie have blown up into a global pop sensation, even invading America—without the slightest hint of watering down what they do. Their hotly awaited new …

Though vocal groups are a longstanding tradition in country music, the quartet Little Big Town have been compared to Fleetwood Mac just as often as they’ve been compared to the Oak Ridge Boys. That’s due in part to their mix of male and female voices, as well as the way …

Noah Cyrus opens her debut full-length with a stark lyric: “When I turned 20, I was overcome/With the thought that I might not turn 21,” she murmurs over fingerpicked guitars and whispers of feedback. It’s a grab-you-by-the-throat introduction that is a fitting opening for The Hardest Part, a compact yet …