In 2022, the Dallas MC BigXthaPlug released “Texas,” a slide-guitar-accented boast celebrating his home state’s largesse (“We still ride in swangas and put diamonds in our necklace”) and his own hardness (with a shout-out to former Dallas Mavericks player Luka Dončić). Its Southern-fried vibe and BigX’s booming, honey-dipped voice helped …
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On “Back in the Mode,” a smooth banger on his stellar new album Kiari, Offset admits, ”Lost a bitch last year and got another one,” making it clear that he feels like getting more than a few things off his chest. Having suffered a public divorce from Cardi B last …
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When listening to Escape Room, Teyana Taylor’s fourth studio album — which announces her return to music since retiring in 2020 — it’s as if she took a page from Toni Morrison’s classic novel Beloved. Morrison wrote, “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another,” …
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Sombr has New York City under his spell. The 20-year-old had jusr stepped onto a stage assembled on Canal Street to the sound of piercing screams. His debut album I Barely Know Her was scheduled for release in a few hours, but the musician wanted the first introduction of these …
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The emergence of Laufey, the Icelandic-Chinese singer-songwriter who has become one Gen Z’s chief flag-waver for throwback pop, is largely attributable to her abundant talent. She has a sculptural alto that easily curves into her heart-on-sleeve lyrics, a knack for marrying 21st-century problems with fishhook melodies that recall standards from …
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The U.K. band Wolf Alice have been making eclectic pop-rock for a decade, specializing in textural music that swings big emotionally while moving within different sonic settings, proving what a guitar band can do to stay on its game in a post-guitar world. They’ve never put it together with the …
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When Chance the Rapper announced the release of his first album in six years, the long-gestating Star Line, one couldn’t help but wonder if the 32-year-old Chicago rapper and singer who tasted superstardom during the sunset of the Obama administration had anything interesting left to offer, much less music that’s …
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An accident that’s been waiting to happen since 2003: the sound of Radiohead onstage, five madmen attacking the Hail to the Thief songbook. The British rock kingpins’ new Hail to the Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) is basically a track-for-track remake of their politically charged 2003 prog-punk gem, except with live …
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After two decades of pop ubiquity, Maroon 5 are digging deeper into the crate than expected on their eighth album.Love Is Likeweaves a surprising number of Seventies funk, soul, and R&B samples into their sleek pop sound — Barbara Stant’s 1972 obscurity “You Know I Love You,” Loleatta Holloway’s storming …
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It’s in the tight confines of a spare room in his Los Angeles home that singer-songwriter Dijon Duenas, known professionally as just Dijon, constructed his 2021 debut, Absolutely, a delicate patchwork of sonic vignettes, bursting at the seams with emotion. The record was suffused with the texture of the environment …
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