The rest of the record isn’t as brassy as "Foreign Object", an obvious crowd-pleaser, but it’s occasionally as bold.

What Fantasy is missing isn’t any one synth preset, or a cultural reference for the next season of Stranger Things to popularize. It just lacks urgency.

With much of Certified Lover Boy, Drake seems to be doing what he thinks Drake would do, and ticking the box is taking its toll.

If Durand Jones & the Indications was the party, their second album and first since signing to Dead Oceans, American Love Call, is the slow dance.

Too often the rawk they bring feels terribly labored.

Lindstrøm may have timed these tracks to fit on a vinyl record, another sign of putting material concerns over creative vision, but there’s a good 15 minutes of so of beauty within those grooves that just might make a believer out of you.

For all its blatantly ill-conceived moments, there's something charming about the sheer audacity of Derulo's often bizarre choices. Even when it falls flat, there is character here.

Blueprint can be so effective when he's down to earth, it's a shame he feels the need to step up on a soapbox.

Angel Guts is yet another strong, occasionally frustrating record restrained by Stewart’s consistency.

Her ambitions are bold, but the album has a sense of polished remove that prevents it from scaling real emotional heights.

Some tracks are more compelling than others, but that’s to be expected when an artist writes by throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. The melodies on Hammond’s album are in ample supply; it’s the urge to self-edit that’s taken a breather.

This uneven album is mostly a vehicle for “Legos (for Terry)”, an accomplishment that’s not only worth hearing but good enough to leave you hoping for more like it, too.

Because she never fully commits to one mood or genre, it is difficult to feel fully immersed. Gika’s songwriting is sometimes too vague to resonate emotionally, and her delivery, though gorgeous, never feels fully unencumbered.

While it showcases the breadth and the peaks of her capabilities, My 21st Century Blues lacks a clear thematic throughline.

"Why Did You Leave Me' and 'Can't Say Goodbye' are some grown-up songs, and Snoop probably has a whole album of them somewhere in him. But as long as the pothead-pimp shtick keeps selling, we'll probably never hear it.

While the productions are animated and spacious, creating openings for his jam-packed phrases, the sound doesn’t take the full step forward that would help spotlight and redefine Seattle rap.

NYC, Hell 3:00 AM isn’t going to be your thing if you’re on the hunt for the next edgy crooner about to blow up--you’re only going to hear it in DJ sets if the DJ is extremely brave or suicidal or both. But if what you’re looking for is an experience, one that can offer something extremely rare and powerful, if not exactly fun, then this is it.

So though Lungu Boy will deliver on Asake fans’ expectations, what’s missing is something more personal.

While Funplex's super-sized dance pop can't quite compare with the band's best moments, there's plenty of residual B-52's-ness to satiate longtime fans.

There’s an album’s worth of tracks here that put Clavish head and shoulders above his peers, which only makes the other album’s worth of misfires more disappointing for their inclusion.

The songs on Offering are fuller and brighter than they’ve ever been, leaving behind sinister samples and moribund imagery and making good on the promise of uptempo revelry that “Go Outside” offered.

While four songs clocking in at 14 minutes is slight by design, Ariel is wise to accentuate Mering’s voice.

Unfortunately, The Art of Hustle is mostly forgettable as a major-label rap record, but it bears out a teachable truth about Gotti's career: sometimes showing up is more than half the battle.

The album needs the percussive abrasion of his voice, and digging into some of the more typical slabs of Death Grips' instrumental tendencies doesn't unearth much more than a pretty solid workout soundtrack.

Ultimately, though, Pressure Machine rarely escapes Flowers’ Brandon Flowers-ness: try as he might—and you do get the sense that he’s trying so, so hard—his usual wide-tipped brush can’t do justice to what should be finely detailed scenes.

Halstead's knack for stunning arrangements is in top form on Spoon & Rafter, and in this capacity, his music remains compelling, if no more or less than on any of his previous trilogy of Mojave 3 releases.

Lyrics aside, there's nothing distinctly unappealing or half-assed about this album.... It just feels awfully familiar.

He sounded breezy and at ease [on 2014's "Good Kisser"], finally confident enough to date women his age. So it’s a little disappointing that on Hard II Love, Usher’s eighth studio album, he hasn’t managed to hang onto that effortlessness. But there’s plenty to like, starting with his voice, which sounds better than ever.