Lav's Music Corner

Review by Lavender: JID is an Atlanta MC who spent the latter half of the 2010s establishing himself as a versatile and endlessly talented MC with a series of memorable mixtapes and features. His rise all culminated in the 2022 album The Forever Story, one of the best rap albums of the entire decade so far. In the 3 years since, JID has risen drastically in popularity due to a bizarre crossover with Imagine Dragons and an unpredictable TikTok hit in the Forever Story deep cut “Surround Sound.” Now he's back with a frequently promised new record, God Does Like Ugly.  The lead single is as good a place as any to start because it affirms the level of talent JID is working with. “WRK” didn't necessarily blow me away, mostly because its beat feels painfully standard and the chorus is very much nothing. But the longer JID goes on in his verses, it feels like he develops more and more to say. So even though the song is far from a highlight, it's a great example of how, even at th...

I did like 1 EP review for the entire month of February so let's catch up on what's been going on in the short form.  Club Shy  EP - Shygirl You could certainly describe me as a Shygirl skeptic for quite a while now. While her talent is obvious and her versatility is a strong suit that very few of her contemporaries possess. Though her vocals are often compelling and she has tapped into some interesting sonic fusions, too much of her material just feels like such a mash-up of random styles that it becomes nothing. The one track I really liked from Shygirl up to this point was BDE  which features Slowthai, and we're not going there right now.  So I didn't exactly go into this new 15-minute EP expecting some of Shygirl's best material yet, but that's exactly what we ended up with. Of all the styles she's dabbled in really directly in the past these clubby pop songs seem to fit her the best. The first one that hooked me was tell me  with Boys Noize whose repeat...

While the singles list is burdened with rules about one song per artist and the insistence on taking every single element of a song from a cultural and promotional standpoint into consideration, the songs list has none of that. This is just the best songs from every single album, mixtape, and EP I heard this year. Anymore context than that is unnecessary, enjoy. <3 100. More Pressure  - Kae Tempest (feat. Kevin Abstract) I fell foolishly in love with this song early in the year and while I was ultimately disappointed by what Kevin Abstract brought to the final two Brockhampton projects, he makes a great contribution here. On top of that Kae's mind-bending lyricism is as compelling and mystifying as ever, not to mention catchy as the refrains throughout have stuck with me all year. Key Lyric: "Less instruction, more comprehension" 99. So Much More  - Conway The Machine This year Conway made a statement with a record that not only elevated him from much of his previous w...