Beyond his mic skills, King also hints at Tyga's more seriously minded side, a side that surfaces again and again throughout the album.

The young Somalian is far from the first artist to have to figure out "their" sound while sweating under the spotlight, and by the sound of Silence he's still figuring things out.

Ultimately V&A is an album that presents a fearlessly original and coherent, if distorted, vision, something that's become an endangered species in the age of the hit single.

It may have its moments of aggression, but ultimately Habits & Contradictions is often a more quiet and thoughtful album.

The point is that despite the delays and false starts and question marks, ultimately Young Jeezy has continued an impressively consistent run of quality albums.

Together the two vets have created a work that's worthy of some serious recognition.

The simple truth is this is the kind of music you're best off not thinking too much about.

Her talent and voice makes up for the fact that Lioness isn't really an album, but more like a collection of unfinished business.

undun clocks in at well under an hour, Questlove said he wants it to be "ADD proof", a running time that also magnifies the importance of the third of the album that's purely instrumental. It's on these vocal-free tracks that The Roots truly show what they're capable of.

Love and Rockets is a chance for hip hop to transform back to its roots; the real, musical, easy to listen to simple beats and lyrics that we all grew to love.

I don't think My Life II in and of itself will go down as one of Mary's best albums; for all its quality it just doesn't have the focus and vision of a classic and occasionally seems to pander to the hot house/techno/club trend.

Radioactive [is] simultaneously the most and least mainstream friendly album of the year. It's a seeming contradiction that only someone who was supremely confident in their identity as an artist could pull off.

Gambino's strength is also his weakness. As a TV writer and a comedian he's naturally focused on punchlines and creating moments, which at his best is enormously entertaining and at the worst forced

Talk That Talk is both a sharp departure from her dark, rock-infused last two albums Rated R and Loud and a more easily enjoyable work.

We're still a long way from a classic, but Take Care once again proves that he's just too good to disappear anytime soon.

You know that breathless feeling you had when you ran from the cops after they broke up a house party? This album is that feeling in musical form.

Most of Fear of God feels like detached, competent, common-denominator, major-label hip-hop, which would be fine if we weren't already aware what he's capable of.

The overall result is an album that's easily enjoyable, but not particularly interesting.

9th's created an album that slowly backs away from the bigger, heavily soulful tracks he's best known for and delivers some more subtle, softer work.

How Do You Do is a great listen, but...there's just no getting around the fact that Mayer Hawthorne isn't an especially strong singer.

That leaves us with a placeholder project while Dream sorts out some contractual "issues" with Def Jam over his delayed fourth album Diary of a Madman, and frankly I'll take this placeholder over 90% of R&B's official projects.

Cole World is full of evidence that when Cole sits down to write a hit, he mysteriously loses that intangible quality that first earned him these weighty expectations.

Maybe he's burnt out, maybe he just doesn't care as much anymore, but whatever the reason, Tha Carter IV just doesn't feel like one of the biggest albums of the year – at all.

To play the devil's advocate to the devil's advocate I just played, Thursday does shown a sonic growth from House of Balloons. It even dares – gasp – to up the tempo, bringing in a rapid fire hi-hat to propel the hook of Life of the Party and giving Heaven or Las Vegas a multi-instrument, layered sound we hadn't heard from them before.

There's no doubt about it, there's greatness lurking in Game, and in R.E.D. Album. Let's just hope that from here on out he'll find the consistency he needs to truly claim that greatness.

The truth is that while far from perfect, this is a more complex and well executed album than the vast majority of anything we'll get this year. Or put more simply, who's really challenging Kanye West and Jay-Z for hip-hop's throne. Seriously. Who?

Listeners may be able to follow Rock home and live vicariously through him, but for thousands that is their home. There's no leaving, and those are the people who Follow Me Home was truly made for.

There's just no contemporary precedent for music like this. And that might just be the best sign of all.

While Rowland continues to define her own sound, it still feels like she's giving us who she thinks we want to hear, not who she is.

King of Hearts, his fourth studio album, is strictly for the grown and sexy. It may not be a new school classic (it's not) but this is a damn good album.

There's a fine line between consistency and monotony, so while The Cool Kids' style can, over the course of a project, begin to feel like a drone, these bursts of change keep When Fish Ride feeling fresh.

We'll simply have to look at I'm Gay as a sign that B might not prove to be the flash in the pan that so many haters hope he is.

Section80 may not be a sacred text but I've got the feeling that in five years it may just prove to be prophetic.

No doubt about it, Finally Famous is full of good music.

If every album from here on sounds like Planet Pit the public will begin to forget just what made him so special in the first place, but right here, right now, it's Pitbull's world and we're just living partying in it.

If you consider dressing up putting on clean socks, if you know what the streets smell like at four in the morning, if you consider Shook Ones Pt. II the perfect track to kick back to, you'll have Random Axe on repeat for weeks.

If you've ever found yourself pouring over the lyrics to a Eminem or Royce song, trying to break down each metaphor and punchline, you'll eat Hell up.

6's & 7's is a hard album to deliver a final verdict. It's an album that was made for a very specific group, everyone else be damned, and so while I honestly can't say I'm a full fledged Techaholic, I do have to acknowledge that for many this album will be nothing short of epic.

While Tinie's obviously talented, I honestly can't hear what all the excitement is over. Sure something will get lost in translation, but even on mega hit Written in the Stars I'm just not catching any lyricism that stands out. Then again, maybe that's what makes Tinie so popular.

If he was hoping to prime his artists for individual success, he's got a long way to go. But if he was simply looking to keep Maybach's name on everyone mind via a loosely defined collection of bangers, well then it looks like Rick Ross still can't do wrong.

While other artists have struggled to contain both their lofty ambitions and animal instincts on the same album (see also, David Banner), and while it does have its low points and high points, Pl3dge sounds remarkably cohesive.

At first listen, you'll think this album is a disappointment and didn't live up to the hype. And maybe it didn't, but this isn't Bastard--it's an album with a much deeper theme and message, with just enough blood-thirsty lines and misogyny to hold the kids over.

You may not love this album, and I'm not sure I do, but you do have to respect it.

Thankfully we finally have some more new Quik in our lives in the form of his eighth solo album, The Book of David, an album that finds the legendary DJ going back to his roots, and creating some nice music in the process.

W.A.R. is only his third project in over ten years. If you're going to pursue quality over quantity you better deliver quality, and thankfully W.A.R. is nothing but quality.

After Rolling Papers Wiz' fan base should expand significantly, as should the number of rap purists angry about his lack of rhyme skills, but complaining about his "rap" skills completely misses the point.

This album is about keeping Brown relevant and making the musical man child marketable again, and on that level it's a moderate success. He's still got a long way to go before he regains his previous stature.

Whatever, the point is that instead of snare hits and cymbal crashes Barker's real contribution came from behind the boards--he's got a production credit on every one of the album's tracks. By the same token he's often paired with other producers, and when it works, like on the RZA influenced Carry It, it really works. Unfortunately, when it doesn't work, it really doesn't.

Lupe seems to have accepted that Lasers is not the masterpiece he originally set out to make and is prepared to move on. Maybe we should follow his lead.

Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, his fifth solo album, is dope.

Instead being flooded with a viral marketing campaign and absurdly hyperbolic praise or scorn, listening to this album feels like a discovery, like finding a dope album in your friend's collection you'd never heard before.

The best moments on Gutter Rainbows actually come when Kweli pushes the hardest unto uncharted territory.

While I suspect 4 was made in large part to sound more natural and real, it doesn't succeed entirely. The album is a refreshingly understated change from the constantly banging and bumping sound of modern R&B, but it doesn't really bring us closer to the Queen B.