The 2015 tape may have felt more revolutionary as a shift no one saw coming, but musically, BEASTMODE 2 has the edge. And in its best moments, the unknowable rapper lays his cards on the table, vulnerable in a way he’s never been before.

At eight songs and just over 40 minutes, Filo is a fine thank you to friends--human and machine--who’ve stayed true over the years.

Malone is an unmistakable presence on his songs, his otherworldly croon an essential element to his genre-hopping sound. Despite the considerable leaps in quality taken on Astroworld, it still doesn’t feel like Scott can muster that level of individuality.

In its squelching synths and vocoded voices, Dorian Concept creates something that ’70s and ’80s electro-funk auteurs like Kraftwerk, George Clinton, and Roger Troutman hinted at: computer music that uncannily imitates the funk, rather than just faking it.

The Gold Fire Sessions combines Santigold’s musical past with a passion for spontaneous experimentation. It plays like a distillation of joy.

For YG, an artist we’ve come to expect the unexpected from, someone currently standing at a career-defining intersection, Stay Dangerous is an exercise in predictability.

Even at her most damaged, Hauff’s take on noise is nothing short of opulent, and it’s that alternatingly grating and sparkling attention to detail that makes Qualm so exciting. What might at first sound retro turns out to be simply timeless.

Swimming is less virtuosic than those artists’ [Chance the Rapper, Anderson.Paak and Frank Ocean] recent works, but no less heartfelt, and the album’s wistful soul and warm funk fits Miller like his oldest, coziest hoodie.

The sonic makeup of Nova is split between nasty bass workouts and straightforward pop, but Steinway seems incapable of distinguishing himself as a producer in either mode. ... These by-committee moments on Nova only further the theory that Steinway’s still in search of his sound.

Underworld’s compositions are lush and polished, while Iggy’s ad-libs tend to spin their wheels, at times pausing and sputtering while he searches for the next word or phrase.

It’s clear Molina has grand ambitions here. But by confining them to a flyer-sized canvas, Kill the Lights becomes his first record that will have you not just marveling at everything Molina can pack into a 60-second song, but also lamenting what he might be leaving out.

Weatherall has created ever more highly textured tracks, moving beyond that “old-school sound” for something denser and more contemporary. But with all of Ross’ attention to detail on Family Portrait, sometimes the tracks don’t fully cohere or else their sentiment feels half-baked.

Closing track “New Moon,” whose title signals the completion of a cycle and rebirth, might have come off as meandering and repetitive at the beginning of the record. But in its final moments, once you’ve adjusted your ears, Bachman’s delicate gestures sound at once extremely private and cosmically vast.

The first third of the mix is particularly strong. ... But the back half feels directionless, tugged this way and that across a succession of nervous techno and electro cuts; a shift back toward more atmospheric climes, a few tracks from the end, doesn’t quite gel.

A bloated and expensive version of the rap he’s always made but without that signature effortlessness.

Even sharing a track with current it-man Ty Dolla $ign on the mellow celebration of “Hey Up There,” he’s able to hold his own. Conversely, when he leans into rapping, he achieves an emotive style of delivery that injects his words with extra resonance. Still, Buddy is at his best when he lets himself be carefree.

Like all agreeable ambient music, it burbles away in the background, invisible right up until the moment you notice it--a little like the ambient revival itself.

Shilonosova’s corner of Moscow is bubbly and fantastical--a place where you want to live and explore every nook and cranny.

While Ovlov are still as wonderfully wooly ever, they’re unleashing the noise in more purposeful, sculpted spurts and displaying a greater willingness to let their melodies sparkle through the clouds of distortion.

This egalitarian spirit and anti-hierarchical approach to song-making fuel the sleekest, most robust music of their career.

The album yielded a substantial return on whatever that audience invested. But Wild Pink ultimately came across like a conversation Ross preferred to keep to himself. Yolk in the Fur can’t wait to share it.

Forever requires sieving through plates of glinting sediment before discovering treasure. The album is best when luxuriating in its own divine intensity, when an earnest Popcaan reconciles the hunger of his past with the feasting of his present, hands clasped in grace.

Sure, fans who swear by Skeletonwitch’s early work might take a while to warm up to anthems like “Temple of the Sun,” a tightly constructed barnstormer in which the band dares to toss clean-sung vocal harmonies into the mix, or “The Vault,” a Pallbearer-esque doom experiment that grows more blackened with each wailing note until its entire soundscape is torched to a crisp. And yet, even when their creative lodestar shifts its orbit, the Ohioans’ cornerstones remain intact: their virtuosic riffs, their robust production (once again courtesy of Converge guitarist and board wizard Kurt Ballou), their endearingly adversarial presence on-record--and, most of all, their diabolical joie de vivre.

Joy is an album to be combed through and prodded. It’s a testament to their shorthand with each other, which somehow ties all the fraying, crusty, silken, wiener dog, kitty cat threads so seamlessly together.

How Many Times is an intriguing glimpse of an artist at the beginning of a skillfully carved path--even if it leaves you wondering what it was that made her cry in public in the first place, what makes her tears dry.

The real feat of Cloud Corner is how well Anderson has learned to fuse the musical traditions she favors without drawing attention to the juxtaposition itself.

Sculptor postures as a manifesto of independent thought, without saying anything specific or of substance.

Raw Silk Uncut Wood marks a departure from her usual mode of thorny, cerebral electronic compositions, but as her most ambient record to date, it also boasts some of her most unabashedly beautiful music.