Evan Dale // Dec 30, 2021
Joyce Wrice | Overgrown
A sun-soaked reminiscence has always tethered the auditory aesthetic of California soulstress, Joyce Wrice not only to the Golden State, but to the Golden Era. It’s not to say that she’s not a figment of Neo-Soul modernity – having been a collaborative name and a standalone artist on the rise for something like half-a-decade – yet, her music could have ornamented the wavy birthstones of R&B as we know it, and no listener would dare question its placement in the 90’s or early 00’s. It’s her era of influence, after all. A young talent with the immeasurable grace and grip of the veteran she really is, growing up a fan of R&B and hip-hop during the eras that made the two spectrums’ collaborative partnership eternally intertwined, makes her modern take on it unavoidably reminiscent, yet daringly timeless. And her debut album – three years in the making, and more than five years since her debut single – bridges all the time she’s spent – all the space she’s known – as a fan of music, a creator of it, and a beneficiary of its healing powers.
Our Full Write-Up on Overgrown:
Why is Overgrown the Best Project of 2021?
Pink Siifu | GUMBO'!
Pink Siifu has always been a purveyor of the experimental, and so much of his own craft has already helped progress hip-hop’s artful taste. GUMBO’! is simply Pink Siifu doing that again in 2021, and he manages it by adhering to the album’s namesake. A myriad, hodgepodge, yet tantalizing mosaic of tastes, weaving in the influence of dozens of collaborative forces, all boiling down to one greater, cohesive profile, GUMBO’! is, well… gumbo in auditory form. It’s raw. It’s savory. It’s detailed and layered. It’s Southern. It’s undeniably old-school at moments, reminiscent of listening to mixtapes through the coupling of distortion a mixtape used to go through – first through the re-recording process, then again through your friend’s rigged sound system. And yet it’s merged with the artsy, SoundCloud tape kind of aesthetic that brings it into a modern light; that hangs it on the walls of a contemporary photo gallery. It is an auditory image – a self-portrait – of Pink Siifu himself.
Our Full Write-Up on GUMBO'!:
Summer Walker | Still Over It
How do we feel about Summer Walker? How do we feel about Still Over It? Like everyone else, we suppose, and why not? The album was number one in the world by way of ostensibly every measure possible when it was released, and though that marker and the idea that an album truly is a masterpiece aren’t mutually exclusive, this here isn’t the case. Summer Walker has truly delivered a masterful collection meandering through the auditory channels of R&B, and rocketed her way platinum bound while detailing – through the less than rose-colored glasses of her emotional expanse – the tugged heartstrings of love, lust, fame, and the roller coaster of unpredictability that her mental health has been subjected to in consequence. She’s an open book, which is something that she’s spoken on struggling with in the past, especially when it comes to battling social anxiety that has only become a larger obstacle the more infamous she and her music have become.
Our Full Write-Up on Still Over It:
Snoh Aalegra | Temporary High On The Violet Skies
Eternally a composer of the retrofuturistic R&B lane, Snoh Aalegra’s is a sound defined by a well-curated balance between a timelessly wide-ranging register, an affinity for the kind of synth strokes and playful keys that have long defined the light-hearted nature of R&B music, and the bass-strewn modern production that brings to mind a wave of particularly retro-modernist Neo-Soul architects and their accompanying instrumentation spanning names from DVSN to Devin Morrison. Hers, too, is a key moniker in the same prestigious modern R&B royalty and Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies is the deep kind of work that’s symphonic intricacies call for some proper auditory prowess. From there, as long as a listener is really dedicating themselves to listening to the layers, and relating to the emotion, Temporary Highs in the Violet Skies is yet another classic R&B album from Snoh Aalegra.
Our Full Write-Up on Temporary Highs In The Violet Skies:
Reaux Marquez | NO ROADS
From the ashes rise the phoenix, and into that which steals life and destroys, the lyricism of Reaux Marquez breathes life and creates. Over the crackling of a fire, Cracked – the introductory inclusion of the Tennessee rapper’s debut album, NO ROADS opens its auditory doors. As if at first, its listeners are immersed in the Tennessee woods, lucky enough to be listening to Reaux Marquez spit flame around campfire, the bliss and solace quickly drown with the sample of a news reporter disregarding what seemed a calm campfire and introducing the brutal flames and toxic smoke of a massive blaze in North Nashville. From North Nashville – from Bordeaux, Tennessee specifically – Reaux Marquez is rooted. And from the smoke and flame, he, too, rises, the torch bearing lyricist of hip-hop’s hottest cultural underground. NO ROADS but those that Reaux Marquez has walked could have gotten him here. NO ROADS are paved with such ubiquitous poetry.
Our Full Write-Up on NO ROADS:
VanJess | Homegrown
The duo, who are actually sisters calling home to California by way of Nigerian roots, found the inspiration for the original collection not only in the incalculable influence of their musical range, but also in the solitude and creative subsequence of 2020’s pandemic and lonely quarantines. Born form their time spent in their house, Homegrown has literal roots that still feel particularly vulnerable, relatable, and necessarily danceable for so many looking for an emotion-fueled groovy outlet in the quiet of their own house; for so many looking to tend to their own garden in the solace of home alone. The expansion of that foundation, which totals four new songs and a remix of sultry anthem, Slow Down, featuring the one-and-only Lucky Daye, round out the Deluxe Edition of Homegrown. Just like its original form, the album is one of this year’s best, unapologetically setting a tone that new sounds, rooted in the old, still leave so much room for the established boundaries of Neo-Soul and R&B to bend and bleed.
Our Full Write-Up on Homegrown:
Isaiah Rashad | The House is Burning
The House Is Burning bleeds of its title, metaphorically capturing and substantively recounting the struggles Isaiah Rashad has dealt with during his blistering encounter with what is now almost a decade of top-tier hip-hop fame. But it also – particularly in its sound – exalts of new beginnings, shining the once signature mellow beam of his introspective psychiatry session style of hip-hop, as something now altogether more wide-ranging, more than marginally unique even when weighed against past versions of himself. And for the most anticipated hip-hop album of the year – perhaps sharing that space with Kanye’s long-awaited collection, DONDA – the self-renaissance of Isaiah Rashad is one of the boldest, yet ultimately successful exhibitions not only in his own canon of masterpieces, but in the cloth of modern hip-hop at large.
Our Full Write-Up on to The House is Burning:
Tyler, The Creator | Call Me If You Get Lost
A new chapter. And yet, reminiscent of its – of Tyler’s – roots. Call Me If You Get Lost feels as though it exists in title as a calling card to modern hip-hop at large, shining a light on the bass-thumping, oft-spoon-fed banger circuit of the late 2000’s and early 2010’s rap foundation where horn intros signaled an incoming party anthem, and the noise of the resident mixtape DJ’s sound-off was stamped on every Datpiff download. Just to really reinforce the album’s roots here, he’s got DJ Drama on board to produce its entirety like it’s a Gangsta Grillz mixtape. And really, from the album’s own rollout foundations in leading single, Lumberjack, Call Me If You Get Lost’s direction seemed destined for circularity in Tyler, The Creator’s decade long exploration of his own creative range; in his exploration of hip-hop composition’s ever-widening breadth.
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Jazmine Sullivan | Heaux Tales
'An album is coming…,' writes Jazmine Sullivan whose Reality Show – her last album – came out in 2015. But the world has changed in the half-decade since that release, and for all intents and purposes, her new EP, Heaux Tales is a more complete conceptual, storytelling, and artistic banner than most artists today are capable of creating underneath. Nonetheless, with a promise of an album on the way, Jazmine Sullivan’s Heaux Tales breathes, too, of the kind of complexities, rawness, and brash feminine energy that modernity is coming to expect more and more as counterpoint to the masculinity and overt sexualism that has defined mainstream hip-hop and R&B albums for years. And though Sullivan is no stranger to relatable tales of relationships, heartbreak, sex, and prevailing trauma, this project is particularly poignant, relatable, and thought-provoking.
Our Full Write-Up on Heaux Tales:
Topaz Jones | Don't Go Tellin' Your Momma
Riding the rails of the same expansive creative and social tenets that pave the direction of the very personal, immersive film, the Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma album, too, feels pulled firmly from the rangy influence that Jones’ upbringing belayed on him both personally and creatively. Through that pointedly personal approach, and yet through what that approach means for Jones’ ability to also connect to so many other young creatives and viewers and listeners of color, it emerges as a bridge from Topaz Jones’ earliest days to his current ones; a bridge, too, crossing and interweaving the generations of decidedly Black music that soundtracked the moments of his – and that of others – family-oriented upbringing turned into clips in his short film; a bridge finally culminating at the core of its creative inception where Jones’ current existence as a Sundance award-winning director and acclaimed stylistically meandering musical artist allowed the creation of the project in the first place.
Our Full Write-Up on Don't Go Tellin' Your Momma:
