The versatility on show gives a sheen of adventurousness that isn’t quite backed up by the beat selections—the majority of which feel like safe choices for an artist otherwise known for his accelerated ambitions.

Despite such extraordinary highs, Ballet Slippers is not essential. If you’re not a zealot, chances are that these recordings—as with most live records, a tad distant and dependent on the power of suggestion—won’t convert you.

Manic as the source material may be, Lopatin’s score remains entirely surprising, which doesn’t mean shocking, per se. It’s more that it has a large blast radius in the movie, itself a funny character in an ensemble of unintentionally funny characters. Lopatin is brazenly and consistently there.

Bubba is another set of coherent, well-sequenced set of tracks without any major drop-offs, all the more impressive as the album runs more than 50 minutes. It’s flexible, ever-moving, a dance record that could have come from no one else.

These feel less like songs than experiments in pushing Stott’s habitual techniques to the breaking point.

Ultimately, the songs XXXTentacion has left behind are insubstantial and narrow, and Bad Vibes Forever only weakens the case that his view of himself was ever a worthwhile lens with which to process his art.

He relies on inane songwriting concepts, rote misogyny, and feelingless flexing. The lyrics are puerile and half-baked.

Cabello’s willingness to assist in [the music industry’s embrace of the “Latin” sound] caricature elsewhere distracts from the otherwise interesting Spanish-classical and Santana-esque riffs on Romance.

The actual sound of Fine Line is incredible, and most songs have at least one great moment to grab hold of. ... While the music wades into the mystic, his songwriting, pointedly, does not. ... Styles doesn’t have the imagination of Bowie or another pop-rock touchpoint here, Fleetwood Mac, who took their lives and transfigured them through cosmic fantasia or Victorian grandeur.

Ism reflects its many homes and the many sounds that feed into the music of the Windy City. Which might sound restless, except Paul exudes such confidence that no matter the session, his bass makes it all hang together.

She inhales and exhales life into memory so as to make it new—or, maybe more accurately, she affords history the brief freedom to breathe.

We Are Beat Happening, a new vinyl box set that collects all of the bands’ records in one place for the first time since 2002, is a crucial step in recognizing the trio’s seismic influence. Though Beat Happening are frequently written off as cloyingly twee (which, to be clear, should not be an insult), in truth, the band created a crucial link between the minimalist experimentations of post-punk and Riot Grrrls’ demystification of perfection.

What mostly comes through on Dusty is what he’s already communicated, over and over again—he’s a technically accomplished rapper, and...well, that’s about it. If you’re looking for someone who will cram words like “hypotenuse” into verses, this is the album for you.

While his lush harmonies are occasionally quite striking (as on the slow-motion Fleet Foxes pastiche “Butterflies From Monaco”), this tendency leaves lethargic material like “Somerville Demo” feeling especially listless. On an album as rich with the spirit of teenage discovery as Jules, these are forgivable sins.

The first half of CD2 is the apex of Burial’s dancefloor material, truly as good as it gets.

Over the course of its thirteen tracks, Labyrinth loosely chronicles growing anxiety and its dissolution, peaking at “Mino” before settling into a level of serenity at “Bunny.” Kanda is most successful when he interrupts the album’s emotional arc.

P’s vast catalog could have accommodated a more balanced mix. Despite these issues, the compilation stands as a grand monument to the dancehall era and the triumphant efforts of an enterprising family to share Jamaican music with the world.

It’s one of their most contented and effusive albums, and as a result one of their most immediately accessible.

It isn’t the strongest work from either artist, but the white EDM DJ turned rap producer and the face-tatted trap rapper from Watts make a good odd couple. ... The vibe is more couch potato than cinephile, and the tape works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Her striking lyrics take aim at present-day bigots who clamor for closed borders—“Look how these brown hands cook all your meals/But mama says you want us all to disappear”—but she’s more concerned with the persistence of this foundational hatred, and with the people she loves, who have thrived “through so many moons” and continue to thrive in spite of racist brutality.

It isn’t fair that it took years of label mishandling to get here, but Tinashe has finally found equilibrium.

The 12 compositions that make up Information have evolved his sensual, liquid style into one that distills the contradictory logics of the digital age—it’s tense, airless, and paranoid without losing an inch of his comic swagger or mischievous irony, a sensibility cultivated by bone-deep cultural exhaustion.

For all its surface simplicity, Cotillions is saddled with its own peculiar Corganian paradox: the lightest, breeziest songs of his career add up to a demanding slog of a record.

Sometimes he hits pure signal, and sometimes it’s just background noise as he gets to wherever he’s going next.

At every point, you hear a band going somewhere new, hurtling towards a forever-receding spot in the consciousness.

If you hate PC Music, you will continue to; if you love them, Reflections will not change that. But producer A. G. Cook’s done a lot since 2013, so inevitably, these tracks register less as individual Cook songs than as types of Cook song.

The rare record that has come to define its era while also existing outside of it, a masterpiece that immediately precedes the albums Prince fashioned, conspicuously, as masterpieces.

At over an hour long, the album suffers from sag and bloat. Each song loses momentum after the first minute, despite the endless parade of guest stars – Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Mario — popping by. Still, there are moments where the experiment almost works.