Moments in Timelessness

black british music (2025) Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Jim Legxacy Deft sampling, hooky lyrics, and stark vulnerability from the UK rap star.

BITE ME Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2025 Reneé Rapp Set the table for the pop star’s new album and pre-add it now.

ADHD 2 Album ∙ Hip-Hop ∙ 2025 Joyner Lucas The MC puts on a striking display of a mind and talent in overdrive.

Rockstar Junkie Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Loe Shimmy Some may have balked at Loe Shimmy’s prodigious 2024, which featured no less than three projects and an opening spot on Lil Baby’s tour. Yet the payoff to this prolific rap hustle became abundantly clear as his Brent Faiyaz collab “For Me” charted strong and foreshadowed his subsequent placement on XXL’s coveted Freshman Class list. His second album to move away from a long-held Zed-centric title scheme,  Rockstar Junkie  finds the Florida native settling into fame without departing radically from the sound that got him to this level. From the cinematic scene-setting of “Tubi Movie” and “Private Party” to the reward-reaping hedonism of “Kill the Scene” and “Zuper Sonic,” his nonchalantly melodic delivery suits his distinctive instrumental choices. Furthermore, the robust features list connects his recent past with his elevated present, with established stars like Quavo and Trippie Redd joining returning figures NoCap and ff...

Summertime Butch 2 Album ∙ Hip-Hop ∙ 2025 Benny the Butcher For Benny the Butcher, feeding the streets is more than just a business strategy. As the Buffalo rapper builds his Black Soprano Family brand, he concurrently makes clear his determined aspirations towards earning a spot in the top-five-dead-or-alive vanguard of elite MCs. With the release of  Summertime Butch 2 , a sequel to his well-received 2024 project, he adds another audio document to the growing dossier comprising his craft. After letting Griselda comrade Westside Gunn get a few Flygod bars off on “Jasmine’s,” he proceeds to lay into the current state of rap music, lambasting the lyrical laziness and pop aspirations of a mercifully unnamed cluster of subpar artists. On “Told You So,” he deflects criticism from those who overvalue mainstream chart placements while cruising down his personalized path to hip-hop greatness. Later, he reaffirms both his dope-boy bona fides and his underground classics on “77 Club,” demon...

REST IN BASS Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Che

The Emperor's New Clothes Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 Raekwon There’s aging like fine wine, and then there’s Raekwon. The Wu-Tang Clan legend’s solo debut,  Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… , is rightfully revered as one of the greatest rap albums of all time, a benchmark release for the mafioso rap that so many other MCs would attempt to emulate in the decades that followed. But aside from that, his albums from the late 2000s forward unlocked a sharper curatorial ear and are largely more consistent than his works that preceded them. Early Wu-Tang music had an indispensable feeling, and the rapper known as The Chef has found ways to recreate it without allowing it to feel stale. The Emperor’s New Clothes  finds Raekwon delivering more of the lucid street raps that make him great: crystal clear portraiture of characters down to the details of their clothing or the amount of money in their pockets, fluid storytelling, and popping shit while depicting a life of luxury. He’s strongest here while f...

ISLAND BOYZ Album ∙ Latin ∙ 2025 Myke Towers By now, Myke Towers’ fans know that his artistry defies easy categorization. Even still, on 2024’s  LA PANTERA NEGRA  and its successor  LYKE MIIKE , the Puerto Rican star summarily illustrated the two most prevalent sides of his catalog. The global pop of the former and the rugged hip-hop of the latter spotlit just how far he’d come from his Latin trap roots. For others lucky enough to be in his enviable position, that might be enough of a musical foundation to spend the rest of a career honing and tweaking. And yet the frequent departures that make up  ISLAND BOYZ  show Towers valuing fulfillment over mere contentment, providing another series of lenses through which to view him. That first word of his latest album’s title offers the most glaring hint as to its contents, a tropical assortment of inherently summery songs that significantly diversify his established hitmaking sensibilities. The distinctive dancehall r...

Westward Album ∙ Country ∙ 2025 Dylan Gossett Dylan Gossett’s debut album opens a prayer. With minimal accompaniment, the Austin, Texas-based singer-songwriter wonders if he’s too far gone on the LP’s old-timey opening track, pairing gospel-tinged harmonies with rootsy guitar to dramatic effect as he asks, “Lord, will you carry me?” Only a minute and a half long, the song sets the tone for the searching and heartfelt collection, which Gossett wrote and produced himself. That tune leads into “Hangin’ On,” a bright and buoyant folk-rocker reminiscent of early Mumford & Sons with its quick-strummed rhythm guitar and anthemic feel. The road song “American Trail” dips into newgrass, complete with banjo, fiddle, mandolin, and multi-part vocal harmonies, a sound that differentiates Gossett from peers like Zach Bryan. And the album, of course, features one of Gossett’s biggest hits, the stripped-down and vulnerable “Coal,” on which he wonders if the pressures of life will ever bring forth ...

The Cosmic Selector Vol. 1 Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Lord Huron Lord Huron’s reverb-soaked, sepia-toned Americana has worn several faces over the years: the wide-eyed pioneer ( Strange Trails ), the lovelorn drifter ( Vide Noir ), the wistful cowboy just looking for a cold beer and place to hang up his spurs ( Long Lost ). As its title suggests,  The Cosmic Selector  leans into the spacier side of their sound, channeling moody, Lynchian atmospheres (“Looking Back”), ’50s ballads (“It All Comes Back”), and front-porch hymns (“Looking Back”) with the kind of gauzy, interstellar remove of late-’90s bands like Mercury Rev and Sparklehorse. Part of the project’s charm is that it never tries to sound too earnest or authentic in the moods it captures, instead embracing them for the cinematic archetypes they are, whether it’s the lonesome highway of “Who Laughs Last” (narrated by the incomparable Kristen Stewart) or the washed-up performer longing to see their name in lights one last...

Headlights Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2025 Alex G Alex G’s cryptic, heartfelt indie rock has earned him friends in interesting places: He contributed guitar and arrangements to Frank Ocean’s  Endless  and  Blonde , he co-wrote and produced about half of Halsey’s  The Great Impersonator , he’s toured with Foo Fighters, and he soundtracked Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 movie  I Saw the TV Glow —a movie that, like G’s music, seemed almost instantly destined to be a cult classic, playing with nostalgia for early-’90s pop culture in ways that felt both comforting and deeply unsettling. He’s not a household name, but he touches a nerve. His first major-label album (whatever that really means in 2025),  Headlights , isn’t different from his run of Domino albums (2015’s  Beach Music  to 2022’s  God Save the Animals ) in kind so much as in degree. “Every couple weeks, I’d have a new song and just start working on it,” he tells Apple Music. “And then, at the end o...

Mixteip Album ∙ Latin ∙ 2025 J Balvin Back in the summer of 2024, when J Balvin dropped the refocused and revitalized  Rayo , he revealed to Apple Music that he had three more albums’ worth of material at the ready. Given how diverse that full-length was, the Colombian hitmaker hinted that what could follow might be similarly expansive from a genre perspective. Yet regardless of whether or not  Mixteip  contains any of those recordings, this relatively shorter follow-up seizes upon the flexibility of its titular format to show a range of styles over which he can shine and thrive. Well-timed with a certain cinematic superhero’s reboot, opener “Bruz Wein” harkens back to his rise during the Latin trap surge of the mid- to late 2010s as he proffers hazy, nocturnal bars. Naturally, his status as an elite reggaetonero ensures there are plenty of dembow-driven moments like “No Te Olvido,” the slinky single “Rio,” and the comparatively poppier “Zun Zun” with Lenny Tavárez and Ju...

League of My Own Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 GELO

BIG 5 - EP Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Artie 5ive

Go Back To The Future Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2025 NCT DREAM Ever since  Back to the Future  was first released in 1985, the phrase “Back to the Future” has evoked a sense of boundary-breaking adventure. The Hollywood blockbuster works surprisingly well as inspiration for K-pop boy group NCT DREAM’s fifth studio album. As part of the sci-coded SM Entertainment project Neo Culture Technology (aka NCT), the septet has experience taking on a high-concept theme. But more than that, NCT DREAM is a group that started with one concept—an ever-rotating lineup of teen idols—before settling into a fixed, seven-member lineup. The fates of members MARK, RENJUN, JENO, HAECHAN, JAEMIN, CHENLE, and JISUNG could have been much different, and NCT DREAM uses the movie, about a teen boy who travels back in time to when his parents first fell in love only to inadvertently erase his own existence, to inspire a look back at their own group origins. “BTTF” (short for “Back to the Future”) fully embraces its...