This album will take you on an emotional roller coaster but it won’t give you a stiff neck or scare the living shit out of you. It’s a ride you’ll want to go on again and again.

“Don’t Be Dumb” certainly doesn’t feel like something that has been multi-drafted, painstakingly thought out or perfected with time. Instead, it plays like a subpar effort from an artist we have all seen deliver notably stronger work in the past.

“Light-Years” is a good album, but not the best in Mass Appeal’s 2025 roll-out. Nas is an elite lyricist, no question. And Premo? He’s an elite producer. But for “Light-Years”, he laced several tracks that were simply “just OK.”

This is just great Hip-Hop. .... It had no right to be good, let alone excellent. It’s the best Mobb Deep album since “Murda Muzik”.

“The Coldest Profession” is certainly Roc Marciano and DJ Premier doing their thing, but it turns out that two greats of Hip-Hop combining doesn’t guarantee greatness.

Pusha is more thoughtful and Malice is more cocksure. Through the alchemy of Pharrell Williams the result is their finest work to date.

While it could’ve benefitted from at least one RZA-produced track, I will say that with the production and trademark rhymes, Ghostface Killah has given one of the more unmistakable New York City rap albums for 2025.

“JackBoys 2” isn’t a bad JackBoys album or a bad Travis Scott album — it’s just repetitive and monotonous.

If there’s any album to compare this to, it would have to be The Clipse’s recently released “Let God Sort Em Out”, as both are similar and uncompromisingly raw in sound and content. But “Alfredo 2” differs in style and tone. The album’s edge? It has a narcotic swagger with flash and no polish, as well as being a very welcome and well-timed contemporary follow-up.

An album that feels more akin to an oddly shaped misfire of a satirical take than it does the latest installation of an ultra-successful series of rap albums.

The monotonous lack of infection in his voice is prevalent throughout the album, to the point where it sounds like he loses interest in his own words.

In Bad Boys, Smith was cool. In Hitch he was funny. In Twelve Pounds, he was vulnerable. He doesn’t seem to retain any of these qualities in his raps, instead opting for a smorgasbord of soundscapes designed to mask what could have been a revealing, emotionally interesting rap album.

While Mac Miller’s latest posthumous release does accomplish something interesting and worthy of accolades, and is ultimately a strong album, it should be held to its own limits.

It’s the definition of “it’s fine.”

Is “Missionary” the greatest Snoop Dogg album of all time? No. Is it at least as good as “BODR” though, the album that announced his purchase of Death Row? Absolutely.

Kendrick Lamar’s “GNX” wrestles with rage, frustration and inner-conflict. All of these elements and the way the Compton artist binds them together are what makes it an intriguing and impressive album.

“Alligator Bites Never Heal” makes sense as a mixtape designed to showcase a star in the making, even if some of the bites of famous rappers may feel a bit on the nose for long-term listeners.

Like any successful artist, he’s willing to take risks, and he’s doing it more than I’d expect this far into his career. He’s singing on “Gold Crossbow” for a start, an irresistible set of drums that slap you round the face, with a lovely piece of piano that gives it an underlying sense of horror.

“The Force” is a successful return for the 56-year-old, and possibly the most impressive example of a rapper approaching sixty, demonstrating why he’s one of the greats. Q-Tip frontloads the record with some stellar sounds, and it’s an album open to repeated listens, but it gets a bit bogged down in proving LL can still rap his ass off. A strong return, but doesn’t quite match those classics from yesteryear.

I’m glad he found a lane, stuck to it, and rode the hell out of it until he had to go to the clinic for a shot. On the other hand “Play Cash Cobain” is nearly one straight hour of listening to another dude read me the letters he wrote to Playboy. I prefer that to a rapper bragging about how many people they’ve killed, but an hour straight of either one with no variance is monotonous. He’s a solid producer, and while pitch corrected rap singing isn’t my favorite thing, he’s better than average at that too.

This album feels like “how do you do fellow kids” in rap form. It’s trying so hard to be slutty that it’s transparent in its aims and it robs Latto of the power she once had.

Ice Spice provides very little in the way of significant or substantial thematics on this album and that lacking is certainly felt as her technical ability takes a dive and her beat selection goes down with it. With little to look to on this album, it falls flat on the floor.

It’s evident that his pen game remains sharp, but the aforementioned polarization causes Eminem to also remain as an acquired taste even now: You either like him or you don’t.

Wasting no time and not adding any filler, the psychedelic soul of “Dreamin’” kicks off the album with Common sounding as though he hasn’t aged vocally. .... The album title has “Vol. 1” as a suffix, indicating there’s more to come. I hope so because “The Auditorium, Vol. 1” is the kind of listen that makes one wonder what’s next from the two.

It’s difficult to gauge its direction, and it often seems aimless and forgettable, despite some interesting experiments here and there. Overall though, it’s a continuation of their gradual decline since their stellar debut, resembling more a mixtape of half-formed ideas than a cohesive, fully realised project.

Knxwledge really knows how to bring the best out of Brandon. “HereIAm” swells with organs that make you feel like you’re at church for Sunday service. .... “Why Lawd?” proves it’s possible to remain true to your vision and bring the haters to you instead of the other way around.

As far as I’m concerned “We Still Don’t Trust You” is a solid hour of music that came with an unnecessary bonus disc.

All of these guests can be distracting, but Ghostface’s performances are as you’d expect. It’s not quite as precise with the abstract vocabulary, a bit diet-Ghost if you will, but his flow remains sharp and his energy levels are high for a 54-year-old. .... The frustrating thing about “Set the Tone” is I have no idea who it is even aimed at.