Lav's Music Corner

Young Thug has been one of trap music's biggest stars for the past few years. Hailing from the genre's inception city of Atlanta and participating in collaborations with all of it's biggest stars as well as high profile crossovers with more pop oriented acts like Drake and Camila Cabello have all risen Thugger's profile dramatically. Now after releasing the most commercial album of his career back in 2019 he's following it up with a lightly indulgent venture into acoustic and singer-songwriting music, though it's all still heavily steeped in trap influence.  Review By Lav: *sigh*, I really like Young Thug. While his occasionally transphobia is, lets call it alarming, he's hip hop's ultimate charmer. His brash willingness to experiment with his personal and musical style compared with his capacity to write charming and silly lyrics that go over perfectly on song after song has made him one of contemporary rap's most protected voices. After a high prof...

Migos are an Atlanta rap trio consisting of Quavo, Offset and Takeoff whose sound in the middle of the 2010's was extremely influential to the culture and style of mainstream trap rap that still persists to this day. The duo first broke out with a series of hits from their early mixtapes and cemented their status with their universally acclaimed 2017 album Culture . After the follow-up Culture II  along with each of the rappers solo records were all critiqued for the bands routine and omnipresent sound, they took a few years of studio album silence.  Review By Lav: At this point, the Migos are who they are. I wasn't expecting Culture III  to be any kind of major change of style for the trio and it isn't. If you're familiar with the band you pretty much know what you're getting with this record, which can be a blessing and a curse. There are plenty of tracks here particularly on the first half that see Migos executing their formula very well, but when there's a f...

Juice WRLD is the musical pseudonym of Jarad Higgins who died tragically last December at the age of just 21. With rumors swirling that he left behind a massive collection of songs Legends Never Die  is the first of what may be multiple posthumous albums from Juice.  Review By Lavender: Listening to this record and writing this review has been difficult for a couple reasons. Not only that Juice passed away but at the young age of 21, the age I am at the time of writing this. And also that people can be very sensitive about posthumous records particularly from artists that had an emotional impact on their fans during their lifetime. While I was never a die hard Juice fan I did love many of his singles and my main issue with his projects were bloated tracklists that covered similar territory. Legends Never Die  suffers in the exact same way with a handful of songs that feel completely unnecessary, yet some of Juice's best tracks appear here.  The records opening segmen...

Trippie Redd is an Ohio rapper who has become one of the most recognizable stars of the SoundCloud trap era of rap music. His Love Letter To You series of mixtapes helped tremendously to put him on the map and he has returned one every year since 2017. Review By Lavender: Trippie Redd has always been an artist that can be tough to pin down. I enjoyed him when he was first breaking out with his hugely popular feature on XXXTENTACION's Fuck Love  and his 6ix9ine diss track Dark Knight Dummo. Despite my enjoyment of them I wasn't a huge fan of his ojnly mixtape at the time, the first A Love Letter To You . But later in 2017 he made a big improvement on the second edition of the series and I thought he was going in the right direction. 2018 was surprisingly identical as he started off with the disappointing studio album Life's A Trip , but later in the year turned out his best project yet with A Love Letter To You 3 . While many reacted quite negatively to his second stu...

Smokepurpp is a Florida SoundCloud rapper who blew up on the back of his 2017 single Audi  which would eventually land on 2017 moderately well received Deadstar  mixtape. After a less favorable collaboration with Murda Beatz on Bless Yo Trap  Smokepurpp is prepping to release his proper debut album and dropped two singles along with this EP to help tide fans over until the full album drops. Review By Lavender: Smokepurpp has spent the last two years coming close to sounding special. I've really enjoyed some of his singles and he's gotten really creative on some deep cuts that helped separate him from the field. The problem is that every project Purpp has dropped so far has drowned these great creative tracks with painfully generic and indistinguishable trap tunes. Quite literally like clockwork Lost Planet follows this formula, with two singles one of which I loved and the other I hated and a set of tracks split right down the middle in terms of quality, this w...

Juice WRLD is the stage name for Jarad Higgins the Chicago trap rapper and singer who blew up to stardom last year with his Lucid Dreams  single, debut album and subsequent features including Ski Mask The Slump God's Nuketown , Travis Scott's No Bystanders , and Lil Yachty's Yacht Club . In 2019 he has kept busy dropping two singles in the weeks leading up the the release of his massive 22 track and hour plus length sophomore album Death Race For Love .  Review By Lavender: I'm willing to admit what many more headass critics won't. Juice Wrld's Lucid Dreams  is a fantastic song. It landed near the middle of my top 100 singles of the year last year and for a huge radio hit it is both trendy and fantastically performed. Juice clearly as talent and on his debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance  he desperately needed help channeling his talent into songs that are unique and well formed. In my review for the album, which some personal friends of mine were n...

Lil Skies is yet another in the line of emerging trap stars who had moderate success with two big singles in 2017 Red Roses  and Nowadays  and scored his biggest hit to date with i the lead single to his second studio album Shelby . Riding a similar wave of many of his contemporaries Lil Skies needed to find a way to separate himself and give people a reason to listen while the spotlight was still on him.'' Review By Lavender: My expectations for this album were admittedly not very high, Skies first album Life Of A Dark Rose  was decent but very forgettable and despite being a hit the big single for Shelby which came in the form of i  is one of the least essential hip hop songs I've heard all year and unfortunately Lil Skies proves on this album that he is exactly who we all thought he was.  So let me jump into a handful of the problems that plague this album from start to finish. Starting off with the fact that far too many of these songs are obvi...

Everyone comes from somewhere new when the timer ticks from December 31st to January 1st and what they do in the next 365 days can change their image permanently.  This list is where we highlight the artists that have set a new standard for the music industry not only with their releases but their personas and public image. Honorable Mentions: Ty Dolla $ign This year Ty Dolla $ign only released one real studio album, his collaboration with Jeremih Mihty . But in the background he was one of the best feature artist of the year, if an album was important you can imagine Ty provided some vocals whether credited or uncredited. Hopefully his status can help him going forward to create a fantastic solo studio album.  Parquet Courts Parquet Courts had themselves a time in 2018. Moving from an underground garage rock success to mainstream appeal with the help of a new producer in Dangermouse. They walked a a fantastic balance between pleasing long time fans and making new ones...