Lav's Music Corner

Earl Sweatshirt really needs no introduction for hip-hop fans at this point. The Odd Future alum has transitioned his edgier, more provocative rap style into a much more earnest and human darkness as the years pass and collected heaps of critical acclaim every step of the way. I'll tip my hand and say that I got to catch the record early at a listening party Earl threw in LA. Because of that I went into my first proper listen already knowing that Earl recently became a father. As a result, both the sonic and thematic palettes have taken a turn for the brighter, but none of his unmistakable talent has faded in the transition.  That's how the album starts, with "gsw vs sac." It has this vibrant psychedelic instrumental that sets up the record's woozier sonic palette. It also concludes with a spoken word passage about introspecting and facing problems rather than running away from them, which feels perfectly aligned with the album's themes of fatherhood and matur...

Reviews by Lavender: For this week's rapid fire reviews, I'm taking a look at some rap albums I missed from earlier this year, with the underlying theme of artists who I absolutely adored at one point in their career. That's pretty much it, glad I finally got to talk about a lot of these. Enjoy! 13 Months Of Summer  - Amine My soft spot for Amine has been around for basically his entire career. Since the moment I first heard his song “Caroline,” overflowing with Amine's own charm and charisma, I was hooked on his catchy flows and sense of humor. On the flip side of that, I think most of his projects tend to be on the inconsistent side, including the last time we heard from him on a collaborative record with Kaytranada that seemed like a slam dunk, but didn't quite live up to it. In fact, 2020’s Limbo remains the only time in Amine's career that he's put it all together and made a truly great album.  13 Months Of Sunshine led off with a pair of vibey single...

Review by Lavender: Tyler, The Creator is a California rapper, singer, producer, and all-around creative who has been an iconoclast of music for 15 years now. Though he's certainly had his ups and downs along the way, albums like his timeless embrace of pop, 2017's  Flower Boy , have stood the test of time remarkably well. DON'T TAP THE GLASS  is Tyler's 9th album, and it arrives with virtually no rollout less than a year after 2024's CHROMAKOPIA . That album dug further than ever before into Tyler's vulnerabilities and insecurities, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. But on his new album, Tyler insists that you leave the feelings at home and try dancing instead. While the results aren't as memorable, a lot of his charm persists.  The first song in the tracklist that really blew me away was "Sugar On My Tongue." Longtime Tyler fans will recognize this immediately for what it is: a munch anthem. I love the rumbling drums in the beat and the extremely una...

Review by Lavender: Backxwash is a rapper who garnered tons of attention and acclaim for a trilogy of albums she released between 2020 and 2022. The projects combined a thunderous style of hip-hop crossed with an embrace for classical metal stylings and screamed vocals. In combination with her vulnerability and willingness to discuss harrowing subject matter, the resulting music was extremely intense and extremely unique. The trilogy ended with my favorite release of the bunch HIS HAPPINESS SHALL COME FIRST EVEN THOUGH WE ARE SUFFERING  which is among my favorite rap albums of this entire decade so far. So needless to say I was pretty excited for her return.  The two singles this album led with had my expectations as high as ever. "Wake Up" is a thunderous epic of a song that really blew me away last year and I still absolutely love it. It's a multi-faceted composition that slips in and out of its different passages flawlessly and the way it always circles back around to ...

Review by Lavender: Clipping  is a rap trio that in certain circles needs absolutely no introduction. One of those circles being my long-time readers as I've always been a huge fan of the band. I dished out a lot of retrospective acclaim to their progressive rap masterpiece from 2014 and their highly conceptual follow-up a few years later. I was also a big fan of their multi-album indulgence into horror-core which resulted in the excellent 2020 album Visions Of Bodies Being Burned , their best record yet and one I called my album of the year for 2020. But it's been a long 5 years since then and what the group returned with is a shift in style to the equally conceptual world of cyberpunk. While they tackle the new sound and style with just as much commitment, it's far and away the dorkiest thing I've ever heard them do, which is an issue at points.  Dead Channel Sky  isn't precisely a tale of two halves but a majority of the highlights pop up on the first half, which...

Review by Lavender: Playboi Carti is a rapper who rose rapidly to popularity around 2016 on the back of a few viral hits on his self-titled debut mixtape. That was followed by two records that played with unique sounds in the highly-populated world of trap music and both garnered substantial critical acclaim. 2018's Die Lit remains a personal favorite of mine whose woozy psychedelic beats remain undeniable to this day. That was followed in late 2020 by Whole Lotta Red  which substantially switched up Carti's sound and became highly influential in the worlds of vamp and rage. After several release dates were announced and never followed up on and a series of singles were uploaded to YouTube last year, we've finally arrived at Carti's follow-up. Music , by comparison, is even more all over the place than its predecessor though it delivers a comparable energy. What it doesn't deliver is anywhere near as dramatic a progression in his style or ethos as I was hoping for. ...

Lil Baby Lil Baby is an Atlanta rapper whose music I've never particularly cared for. I have stuck my neck out twice to at least pay him a little bit of love on a pair of collaborative projects. That included his breakthrough Drip Harder  alongside Gunna in 2018 and his album The Voice Of The Heroes  alongside Lil Durk a few years later. But as far as his own studio albums go I can't say I've enjoyed any of them a bit. Hit completely flavorless style and AI-generated lyricism almost do enough to mask just how unpleasant his voice is to listen to, almost. But on WHAM  he takes a risk or two that pays off, not enough to make the album good but enough to make it marginally more enjoyable than some of his others.  This is gonna be a quick review, because if you've ever heard any Lil Baby music before you already know exactly what most of this album sounds like. Let me bring up some of the highlights though. "Dum, Dumb, And Dumber" has been one of the breakthrough ...

Rap is one of those genres where I'll never be able to keep up with all the relevant releases. I do my best and there are still way more than just these 5 records that slipped through the cracks, so let's try and catch up.  The Thief Next To Jesus  - Ka This one hurts. I wanted to cover this record but it came out in a busy week and slipped past me when I took vacation but I certainly would have prioritized it if I could go back in time in the wake of the news of Ka's tragic death. Through that lens it's worth looking at this record with a closer gaze than what I'm able to here. In fact, it's probably worth pouring over his entire excellent discography to pull out highlights. His finale album The Thief Next To Jesus  is fittingly soaked in Christian themes, something he's indulged in before on records like 2020's Descendents Of Cain . But in particular on this record through both his own lyrics and several perfectly selected samples, he examines the hist...

Last year I covered some of the biggest releases in rap music from the boys in one big rapid fire review. Now, the women have been throwing out some of the most notable moments of the year so let's dig into what they have to offer. MEGAN  - Megan Thee Stallion I like Megan Thee Stallion a lot but it isn't because of the quality of her projects. Calling someone a "singles artist" is deeply patronizing but there isn't really another way to explain why Megan has so many amazing songs and no full projects that I can say I genuinely enjoy. Savage , Thot Shit , Hot Girl Summer , Plan B , these are the kind of songs that launched her to fame, and yet all of the projects they landed on were muddled messes with as many bad ideas as good ones. That could have even been the case with this record, which featured one single in particular, the lethal diss track and opener HISS , that I absolutely love. Unfortunately though, MEGAN  has some of the same pitfalls that have plagued...

Review by Lav: Little Simz has EASILY been one of my favorite artists of the 2020s so far. The intense and lyrically sharp rapper kicked the decade off with her impressive Drop 6  EP which I liked a good bit and landed on my EPs of the year list at the end of 2020. But following that project she kicked it into another gear. In 2021 she dropped her masterpiece Sometimes I Might Be Introvert which would easily land among my favorite albums of the decade so far. She followed it up with the more direct and also pretty impressive No Thank You  just over a year later. Now she's returning to the EP format for a series of shorter songs that see her working out some impressive new directions. The most defining shift on the album is a turn towards darker beats and stiff drum machine. That starts right out of the gate with Mood Swings  which sees Simz matching that sonic palette with a quieter but still intense delivery. It frequently erupts out of that sonic style only to return to...

Review by Lav: A few years ago when I did my deep dive into Griselda the member who most impressed me was Westside Gunn, who was fresh off his excellent Pray For Paris  at the time. Since then Conway The Machine has indulged on an incredibly prolific run of music sporting massive highlights of his own like his 2022 effort God Don't Make Mistakes , likely my favorite project from any of the trio yet. Despite being arguably the most consistent of the bunch, I've still been waiting for the DEFINITIVE Benny The Butcher album. And even though Benny spent the last year hyping up this project, it still doesn't feel like the best work he's capable of.  Sonically I can say Everybody Can't Go  has more variety than I was anticipating, but it all still exists within the tight spectrum of Benny's comfort zone. Opener Jermaine's Graduation  has a glistening piano beat that feels like The Alchemist doing his best Madlib impression with strong results. The production on TM...