She rose from poverty to become the first woman to sing taarab, a cross-pollination of Arab and Indian music originally performed in the palaces of Zanzibar's Omani sultan.
On long-awaited SOUTHSIDE, Hunt proves why he's QB 1 of the genre. Call it irony.
His compositions and arrangements form a sublime, metamorphic sprawl of sounds and styles, and his vocals, unbounded in their range and eloquence, trace the contours of a world of possibility. —Nate Chinen (WBGO), Listen: Spotify / Apple / Amazon / YouTube, Six years ago, three beloved African artists — Mamani Keïta, Oumou Sangaré and Mariam Doumbia — conceived of Les Amazones d'Afrique in Bamako, Mali. Parker's 17-year-old daughter Ruby sings a lovely, hypnotic melody over the album's opening track, "Build a Nest."
A list of all music releases for 2020. Nuanced and deliberate, Hunt deploys his influences with dexterity — take the slick Webb Pierce sample on "Hard to Forget," or the of-the-moment update to the country anthem "Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90's," or the confessional apology "Drinkin' Too Much." L.A.'s self-styled "flu flammer" has been doing time at the Men's Central Jail for the last 30 months while awaiting a second trial on a pair of charges that left a jury hung in 2019 (he was acquitted of murder and attempted murder in that same trial).
Today, with ongoing protests and an indefinite pandemic, Dark Matter is the perfect soundtrack for the times.
On his double album grae, he auditions a language of fluidity with the playful but precise poeticism of his lyrics and the recitations of such guests as writer Taiye Selasi. SOUTHSIDE is an expertly executed redemption story that only Hunt could make. —Raina Douris (World Cafe).
Here’s our unranked rundown of the year’s most noteworthy releases.
With its breezy soulful sound and hopeful timbre, Innocent Country 2 is a life-affirming and optimistic look at what it feels like to be Black in America. From writer Audre Lorde's "A Poem for Women in Rage" to Body Count's "Cop Killer" to Rihanna's short film for "Bitch Better Have My Money," Black artists illustrate their feelings, real-world experience and what Lorde called an "ancient nightmare" through revenge fantasies against white supremacy. At its heart, though, Likewise is a collection of songs about empathy: about asking hard questions without expecting easy answers; about trying to understand ourselves and each other.
Adès was inspired by a 15th-century frieze depicting the figure of death waltzing with representatives of each rung of society, from Pope to peasant and finally an infant.
There's a ramshackle quality to these shaggy, deeply human songs as Apple settles scores, reassesses her past and summons her own liberation from demons both internal and external.
There's also "alone with," the stops and starts of unfolding intimacy — the unbearable lightness of maybe being together: "You're sick and you're married and you might be dying, but you're holding me like water in your hands."
An innovator, Hunt's already inspired a cohort of upstarts — the kind of guys who namecheck '90s country and 2010s hip-hop on the same track. —Ann Powers, It's the long, hot summer of 2020 and the hardest album out is by an incarcerated rapper who recorded the whole thing over a prison phone. It's both urgent and patient, and changes like weather coming in the open window of a small room.
"I feel in love with the in-between," Sumney rhapsodizes during "Neither/Nor," which morphs from West African folk into sleekly polyrhythmic jazz-soul. These artists had their lives upended as well – it's amazing to look back on this six months of music and realize they made nearly all of it before the year even began.
The strings behind her in that last line, from her love letter to eternally lost muse Elliott Smith, form every connection Bridgers says she can't make. The following is a list of albums released or scheduled for release in 2020.The albums should be notable, which is defined as significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
Most Anticipated Hip-Hop Albums Of 2020… —Rodney Carmichael, It's fitting that Sam Hunt's a former college quarterback. Nihilistic tracks like "Commercial" and "Woah" offset the introspective cuts like "Emotionally Scarred" to balance the artistic scales, showing the full shades of what trap game crusader has to fight for.
His band, The 400 Unit, sustains the tension over nearly seven minutes, as he repeats the phrase until it becomes a mantra. Originally titled To Be Angry, the Alabama-born, L.A.-based rapper, singer and producer Pink Siifu looks to Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka, Ras G, Death and Bad Brains — radical expressionists of Black thought and sound — to create a blasted meditation on state brutality and systemic racism. Reunions is an album that, just like a real-life reunion, brings together the past and present, with an eye towards the future. —John Morrison (WXPN), The stories Frances Quinlan tells in her songs aren't simple, and she doesn't let you in straightforwardly. Prosecutors are hanging their case against Drakeo on his lyrics, which only proves how much he's killing the game. —Bob Boilen, Slavery was still legal on the East African archipelago of Zanzibar when Siti Binti Saad was born in 1880. Instead, you're hearing a gifted songwriter looking at the Big Picture: how where you've been affects where you are, and where you might end up. —Bobby Carter, In a 2018 interview with The Creative Independent, Emily Sprague was asked how she began her relationship with modular synthesis and sound design, especially given her established career as something closer to a singer-songwriter. From R.A.P Ferreira to Lil Uzi Vert, here’s where the best hip-hop albums of 2020 ranked. These albums do not yet have a firm release date, but are in various stages of development.
It's a triumph both personal and professional. An illness left her unable to sing, and what we hear on Mia Gargaret are mostly instrumental meditations, sounds of comfort, a beautiful exercise in turning limitations into strengths.
—Marissa Lorusso, Run The Jewels has built its reputation on a potent mix of satire and poignant social commentary, taking aim at everything from religious hypocrisy and economic injustice to systemic racism and the myriad ways we brutalize each other.
But now that we're several months into pandemic living, the album feels more like tenacious, hazy grief over lives lost. On previous records, he wove mythologies of samurai and chess and the ancient Greeks into his lived experience.
They certainly have. Because times have changed." But there are also moments of vulnerability and tender beauty on RTJ4, like the epic closer, "a few words for the firing squad (radiation)," as El-P opens up about the love of his wife and living with anxiety, while Killer Mike reflects on the death of his mother and his own responsibilities as a father.
But his manifesto on multiplicity is hardly confined to words. After 10 months of blockbuster releases… Both wiry and humidly ambient, "Fusion Swirl" is almost disorientingly immersive, built out of layers of drone, beats and melody played by Parker alone. If an artist appears multiple times, that means multiple albums by …
She rose from poverty to become the first woman to sing taarab, a cross-pollination of Arab and Indian music originally performed in the palaces of Zanzibar's Omani sultan.
On long-awaited SOUTHSIDE, Hunt proves why he's QB 1 of the genre. Call it irony.
His compositions and arrangements form a sublime, metamorphic sprawl of sounds and styles, and his vocals, unbounded in their range and eloquence, trace the contours of a world of possibility. —Nate Chinen (WBGO), Listen: Spotify / Apple / Amazon / YouTube, Six years ago, three beloved African artists — Mamani Keïta, Oumou Sangaré and Mariam Doumbia — conceived of Les Amazones d'Afrique in Bamako, Mali. Parker's 17-year-old daughter Ruby sings a lovely, hypnotic melody over the album's opening track, "Build a Nest."
A list of all music releases for 2020. Nuanced and deliberate, Hunt deploys his influences with dexterity — take the slick Webb Pierce sample on "Hard to Forget," or the of-the-moment update to the country anthem "Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90's," or the confessional apology "Drinkin' Too Much." L.A.'s self-styled "flu flammer" has been doing time at the Men's Central Jail for the last 30 months while awaiting a second trial on a pair of charges that left a jury hung in 2019 (he was acquitted of murder and attempted murder in that same trial).
Today, with ongoing protests and an indefinite pandemic, Dark Matter is the perfect soundtrack for the times.
On his double album grae, he auditions a language of fluidity with the playful but precise poeticism of his lyrics and the recitations of such guests as writer Taiye Selasi. SOUTHSIDE is an expertly executed redemption story that only Hunt could make. —Raina Douris (World Cafe).
Here’s our unranked rundown of the year’s most noteworthy releases.
With its breezy soulful sound and hopeful timbre, Innocent Country 2 is a life-affirming and optimistic look at what it feels like to be Black in America. From writer Audre Lorde's "A Poem for Women in Rage" to Body Count's "Cop Killer" to Rihanna's short film for "Bitch Better Have My Money," Black artists illustrate their feelings, real-world experience and what Lorde called an "ancient nightmare" through revenge fantasies against white supremacy. At its heart, though, Likewise is a collection of songs about empathy: about asking hard questions without expecting easy answers; about trying to understand ourselves and each other.
Adès was inspired by a 15th-century frieze depicting the figure of death waltzing with representatives of each rung of society, from Pope to peasant and finally an infant.
There's a ramshackle quality to these shaggy, deeply human songs as Apple settles scores, reassesses her past and summons her own liberation from demons both internal and external.
There's also "alone with," the stops and starts of unfolding intimacy — the unbearable lightness of maybe being together: "You're sick and you're married and you might be dying, but you're holding me like water in your hands."
An innovator, Hunt's already inspired a cohort of upstarts — the kind of guys who namecheck '90s country and 2010s hip-hop on the same track. —Ann Powers, It's the long, hot summer of 2020 and the hardest album out is by an incarcerated rapper who recorded the whole thing over a prison phone. It's both urgent and patient, and changes like weather coming in the open window of a small room.
"I feel in love with the in-between," Sumney rhapsodizes during "Neither/Nor," which morphs from West African folk into sleekly polyrhythmic jazz-soul. These artists had their lives upended as well – it's amazing to look back on this six months of music and realize they made nearly all of it before the year even began.
The strings behind her in that last line, from her love letter to eternally lost muse Elliott Smith, form every connection Bridgers says she can't make. The following is a list of albums released or scheduled for release in 2020.The albums should be notable, which is defined as significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
Most Anticipated Hip-Hop Albums Of 2020… —Rodney Carmichael, It's fitting that Sam Hunt's a former college quarterback. Nihilistic tracks like "Commercial" and "Woah" offset the introspective cuts like "Emotionally Scarred" to balance the artistic scales, showing the full shades of what trap game crusader has to fight for.
His band, The 400 Unit, sustains the tension over nearly seven minutes, as he repeats the phrase until it becomes a mantra. Originally titled To Be Angry, the Alabama-born, L.A.-based rapper, singer and producer Pink Siifu looks to Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka, Ras G, Death and Bad Brains — radical expressionists of Black thought and sound — to create a blasted meditation on state brutality and systemic racism. Reunions is an album that, just like a real-life reunion, brings together the past and present, with an eye towards the future. —John Morrison (WXPN), The stories Frances Quinlan tells in her songs aren't simple, and she doesn't let you in straightforwardly. Prosecutors are hanging their case against Drakeo on his lyrics, which only proves how much he's killing the game. —Bob Boilen, Slavery was still legal on the East African archipelago of Zanzibar when Siti Binti Saad was born in 1880. Instead, you're hearing a gifted songwriter looking at the Big Picture: how where you've been affects where you are, and where you might end up. —Bobby Carter, In a 2018 interview with The Creative Independent, Emily Sprague was asked how she began her relationship with modular synthesis and sound design, especially given her established career as something closer to a singer-songwriter. From R.A.P Ferreira to Lil Uzi Vert, here’s where the best hip-hop albums of 2020 ranked. These albums do not yet have a firm release date, but are in various stages of development.
It's a triumph both personal and professional. An illness left her unable to sing, and what we hear on Mia Gargaret are mostly instrumental meditations, sounds of comfort, a beautiful exercise in turning limitations into strengths.
—Marissa Lorusso, Run The Jewels has built its reputation on a potent mix of satire and poignant social commentary, taking aim at everything from religious hypocrisy and economic injustice to systemic racism and the myriad ways we brutalize each other.
But now that we're several months into pandemic living, the album feels more like tenacious, hazy grief over lives lost. On previous records, he wove mythologies of samurai and chess and the ancient Greeks into his lived experience.
They certainly have. Because times have changed." But there are also moments of vulnerability and tender beauty on RTJ4, like the epic closer, "a few words for the firing squad (radiation)," as El-P opens up about the love of his wife and living with anxiety, while Killer Mike reflects on the death of his mother and his own responsibilities as a father.
But his manifesto on multiplicity is hardly confined to words. After 10 months of blockbuster releases… Both wiry and humidly ambient, "Fusion Swirl" is almost disorientingly immersive, built out of layers of drone, beats and melody played by Parker alone. If an artist appears multiple times, that means multiple albums by …
Siti Of Unguja is a transfixing listen, full of deep bass, celestial strings and Muharam's virtuoso-in-the-making vocals. But the year that was to come was even harder, so hard that Gia Margaret could barely sing about it. "Gnarciss" is a loping, laid-back track that recalls '70s funk and soul as well as its revival in '90s hip-hop samples. It's a stark reminder that suspended disbelief is a privilege off limits to artists in a genre where even Black creativity is criminalized. Baritone Mark Stone sings the role of death with self-assured devilry, while mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn sensitively interprets his impotent victims. His latest and best, Descendants Of Cain, finds him turning to the Old Testament for guidance through generational trauma. Three years after releasing their lauded, electronically textured, traditionally rooted (and Obama-approved) debut album, Les Amazones d'Afrique returned this January with its follow-up, Amazones Power. I was right: Rolling through airy drumscapes and on sweet, finger-picked melodies, on Saint Cloud, Crutchfield's voice stretches higher, swoops lower and swaggers through some of the most potent poetry of her career to date.
She rose from poverty to become the first woman to sing taarab, a cross-pollination of Arab and Indian music originally performed in the palaces of Zanzibar's Omani sultan.
On long-awaited SOUTHSIDE, Hunt proves why he's QB 1 of the genre. Call it irony.
His compositions and arrangements form a sublime, metamorphic sprawl of sounds and styles, and his vocals, unbounded in their range and eloquence, trace the contours of a world of possibility. —Nate Chinen (WBGO), Listen: Spotify / Apple / Amazon / YouTube, Six years ago, three beloved African artists — Mamani Keïta, Oumou Sangaré and Mariam Doumbia — conceived of Les Amazones d'Afrique in Bamako, Mali. Parker's 17-year-old daughter Ruby sings a lovely, hypnotic melody over the album's opening track, "Build a Nest."
A list of all music releases for 2020. Nuanced and deliberate, Hunt deploys his influences with dexterity — take the slick Webb Pierce sample on "Hard to Forget," or the of-the-moment update to the country anthem "Breaking Up Was Easy in the 90's," or the confessional apology "Drinkin' Too Much." L.A.'s self-styled "flu flammer" has been doing time at the Men's Central Jail for the last 30 months while awaiting a second trial on a pair of charges that left a jury hung in 2019 (he was acquitted of murder and attempted murder in that same trial).
Today, with ongoing protests and an indefinite pandemic, Dark Matter is the perfect soundtrack for the times.
On his double album grae, he auditions a language of fluidity with the playful but precise poeticism of his lyrics and the recitations of such guests as writer Taiye Selasi. SOUTHSIDE is an expertly executed redemption story that only Hunt could make. —Raina Douris (World Cafe).
Here’s our unranked rundown of the year’s most noteworthy releases.
With its breezy soulful sound and hopeful timbre, Innocent Country 2 is a life-affirming and optimistic look at what it feels like to be Black in America. From writer Audre Lorde's "A Poem for Women in Rage" to Body Count's "Cop Killer" to Rihanna's short film for "Bitch Better Have My Money," Black artists illustrate their feelings, real-world experience and what Lorde called an "ancient nightmare" through revenge fantasies against white supremacy. At its heart, though, Likewise is a collection of songs about empathy: about asking hard questions without expecting easy answers; about trying to understand ourselves and each other.
Adès was inspired by a 15th-century frieze depicting the figure of death waltzing with representatives of each rung of society, from Pope to peasant and finally an infant.
There's a ramshackle quality to these shaggy, deeply human songs as Apple settles scores, reassesses her past and summons her own liberation from demons both internal and external.
There's also "alone with," the stops and starts of unfolding intimacy — the unbearable lightness of maybe being together: "You're sick and you're married and you might be dying, but you're holding me like water in your hands."
An innovator, Hunt's already inspired a cohort of upstarts — the kind of guys who namecheck '90s country and 2010s hip-hop on the same track. —Ann Powers, It's the long, hot summer of 2020 and the hardest album out is by an incarcerated rapper who recorded the whole thing over a prison phone. It's both urgent and patient, and changes like weather coming in the open window of a small room.
"I feel in love with the in-between," Sumney rhapsodizes during "Neither/Nor," which morphs from West African folk into sleekly polyrhythmic jazz-soul. These artists had their lives upended as well – it's amazing to look back on this six months of music and realize they made nearly all of it before the year even began.
The strings behind her in that last line, from her love letter to eternally lost muse Elliott Smith, form every connection Bridgers says she can't make. The following is a list of albums released or scheduled for release in 2020.The albums should be notable, which is defined as significant coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the subject.
Most Anticipated Hip-Hop Albums Of 2020… —Rodney Carmichael, It's fitting that Sam Hunt's a former college quarterback. Nihilistic tracks like "Commercial" and "Woah" offset the introspective cuts like "Emotionally Scarred" to balance the artistic scales, showing the full shades of what trap game crusader has to fight for.
His band, The 400 Unit, sustains the tension over nearly seven minutes, as he repeats the phrase until it becomes a mantra. Originally titled To Be Angry, the Alabama-born, L.A.-based rapper, singer and producer Pink Siifu looks to Sun Ra, Amiri Baraka, Ras G, Death and Bad Brains — radical expressionists of Black thought and sound — to create a blasted meditation on state brutality and systemic racism. Reunions is an album that, just like a real-life reunion, brings together the past and present, with an eye towards the future. —John Morrison (WXPN), The stories Frances Quinlan tells in her songs aren't simple, and she doesn't let you in straightforwardly. Prosecutors are hanging their case against Drakeo on his lyrics, which only proves how much he's killing the game. —Bob Boilen, Slavery was still legal on the East African archipelago of Zanzibar when Siti Binti Saad was born in 1880. Instead, you're hearing a gifted songwriter looking at the Big Picture: how where you've been affects where you are, and where you might end up. —Bobby Carter, In a 2018 interview with The Creative Independent, Emily Sprague was asked how she began her relationship with modular synthesis and sound design, especially given her established career as something closer to a singer-songwriter. From R.A.P Ferreira to Lil Uzi Vert, here’s where the best hip-hop albums of 2020 ranked. These albums do not yet have a firm release date, but are in various stages of development.
It's a triumph both personal and professional. An illness left her unable to sing, and what we hear on Mia Gargaret are mostly instrumental meditations, sounds of comfort, a beautiful exercise in turning limitations into strengths.
—Marissa Lorusso, Run The Jewels has built its reputation on a potent mix of satire and poignant social commentary, taking aim at everything from religious hypocrisy and economic injustice to systemic racism and the myriad ways we brutalize each other.
But now that we're several months into pandemic living, the album feels more like tenacious, hazy grief over lives lost. On previous records, he wove mythologies of samurai and chess and the ancient Greeks into his lived experience.
They certainly have. Because times have changed." But there are also moments of vulnerability and tender beauty on RTJ4, like the epic closer, "a few words for the firing squad (radiation)," as El-P opens up about the love of his wife and living with anxiety, while Killer Mike reflects on the death of his mother and his own responsibilities as a father.
But his manifesto on multiplicity is hardly confined to words. After 10 months of blockbuster releases… Both wiry and humidly ambient, "Fusion Swirl" is almost disorientingly immersive, built out of layers of drone, beats and melody played by Parker alone. If an artist appears multiple times, that means multiple albums by …
