Moments in Timelessness

Flash and Core Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2025 Yerin Baek

Not Just Pretty - EP Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2025 izna

Sanity Album ∙ Afrobeats ∙ 2025 Bella Shmurda You’d be sorely mistaken to think Bella Shmurda doesn’t understand the weight of his voice, but the magic of the Ghetto Preacher’s sermons is that they aren’t preachy. They land because they’re drawn from lived experience, not distance. The emotional core of Shmurda’s sophomore album  Sanity  is its brooding title track, where the singer can be found wrestling with purpose: “Everything we chase is vanity/My mind needs more clarity/For the wars I won, I’m proud of me.” The sonics across  Sanity  are as restless and adventurous as ever. Shmurda stretches street pop into fresh shapes, layering amapiano’s logdrum on “Holy Jah” and “Bygone” with CKay, and then maintaining the communal vocals and robust percussion of fújì and apala on “Appraisal,” “Fuji Fusion” with K1 De Ultimate, and “Apala Fusion.” Dalliances with R&B are present as well in “Turn Me On,” with its clean, 2000s-indebted guitar lines, and on “Verily,” which...

Kilometer II Album ∙ Afrobeats ∙ 2025 Mavo When Mavo released  Kilometer  in April 2025, the 21-year-old, born Marvin Ukanigbe Oseremen, could not possibly have envisioned how the rest of his year would unfold. “Escaladizzy,” a record he conceptualized and partly wrote in his dormitory at Afe Babalola University in Ekiti State, launched him to the upper reaches of the charts across Nigeria, becoming an unofficial soundtrack of the summer. The success of the song rested on the artist’s inversion of popular words for his “Bizzy style,” a flow dense with contemplations on heartbreaks and betrayal, as well as his hopes for dizzying material success. Building on the success of “Escaladizzy” and an ever-growing fanbase,  Kilometer II  arrives five months after its predecessor, a celebration of Mavo’s blistering rise to the top. On opener “Shooting Star,” he’s noncommittal about relationships, boasting about his success in the same breath. Not long thereafter, Benin-born st...

CAPTAIN Album ∙ Afrobeats ∙ 2025 BNXN The two years that followed BNXN’s forthright 2023 release  Sincerely, Benson  only seem to have cemented the singer-songwriter’s OG status. That time is what sets the stage for  CAPTAIN , a sophomore album that finds BNXN coming to terms with his place as an Afropop juggernaut. “‘Captain’ is the name one of my friends used to call me,” BNXN tells Apple Music. “He would often say that as a sign of respect, leadership, and to signify who was in charge. I keyed into it deeply in the sense that I started to see myself as a crucial player in the industry, especially the Nigerian music industry. I don’t have to be at the forefront of it all. I just believe the sound or the kind of music I make is up there. It’s important.” That sense of self-assurance is palpable across  CAPTAIN , where BNXN asserts his place as an Afropop lodestar without sacrificing the thematic rigor and tonal deftness that stood him out from the start. “There’s a ...

INDUSTRY MACHINE Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 ODUMODUBLVCK Success breeds enmity, and Abuja rapper ODUMODUBLVCK has a fair share of haters to address in light of his outsized wins. Some of the more searing tracks on  INDUSTRY MACHINE , the follow-up to the MC’s surprise March mixtape  THE MACHINE IS COMING , land with the conviction of a post-fight interview. Pa Salieu joins in a sneering celebration of dominance over a colleague on “UNAWARE,” and then there’s “LAYI WASABI,” a booming collab with Reminisce rife with disdain for MCs he considers beneath him. There’s a homecoming collab with fellow Abuja star PsychoYP on trap-influenced “TIFFANY” and a gripping grime linkup with British don Skepta and Anti World Gangstars on “ADENUGA.” And yet, ODUMODUBLVCK keeps Afropop on its toes as the rare chart fixture who can deliver bars speaking to the terse realities of urban life in Nigeria, while couching those stories in melody cut from his self-titled “Okporoko” style. And while plen...

Jeunesse Dorée Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 Guy2Bezbar

The Last Race Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 GP Explorer

Sonder Son Album ∙ R&B/Soul ∙ 2017 Brent Faiyaz Toward the end of the 2010s, Brent Faiyaz emerged as R&B's new face of dazed cool. Merging a feathery falsetto with stylishly ambient soundscapes and themes of fractured love, he announced his arrival with  Into , an EP he dropped as part of the trio Sonder. Riding the momentum of a memorable hook on GoldLink's "Crew," he secured his position with  Sonder Son , a debut album coated in sullen croons, introspection, and brooding atmosphere. Released amid his rise to stardom, the project dives into the world of an everyman dreamer—a haze of impressionistic memories, big ambitions, and vignettes of life-changing transition. Easing into lithe Spanish-guitar strings of "First World Problemz / Nobody Carez," Faiyaz discovers tranquility in aspirations and temporary poverty. The details are as symbolic as they are Earthly, rendering a portrait of the quiet appreciation you can find in washing your clothes in th...

  How to Know When It’s Time to Scale or Bail Podcast Episode ∙ Entrepreneurship ∙ 2025 ∙ 3 minutes, 57 seconds The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex Paul Alex Espinoza Scaling too soon can sink you. Holding on too long can drain you. In this episode of The Level Up Podcast w/ Paul Alex, learn how to spot the signs that tell you whether to double down—or walk away. Paul shares a powerful story from his early ATM business where pride kept him stuck in a losing location. Once he finally bailed and shifted resources into a winning site, his profits doubled in just one month. That lesson became a blueprint for making clear, data-driven decisions. 🔑 Key takeaways: The difference between real pull (demand, momentum, energy) and fake pull (dread, chasing, draining work) Why bailing isn’t quitting—it’s choosing a better fight How to use numbers, mission, and team energy to decide if something deserves scaling Why scaling is simply repeating what already works—not forcing what doesn’t The bott...

Fuji Album ∙ Afro-Beat ∙ 2025 Adekunle Gold Adekunle Gold’s sixth album may be named after the improvisational Nigerian genre that emerged in the late 1960s, but it’s as much a reflection of Gold’s life as it is a full-throttle embrace of Yoruba oral music culture. “Fújì is just the sound of Lagos,” Gold tells Apple Music. “I grew up on fújì. I guess I should say thank you to my auntie, for constantly playing it when I was a child. It’s at every party, every event, they play it everywhere. It’s ingrained in me.” With just over a decade of stardom under his belt, Lagos’ Adekunle Gold has lived many lives—and written even more hits. Since breaking out in 2014 with “Sade,” Gold has proven adept at pulling distinct strands from eras past to incorporate into his interpretation of Afrobeats. Early releases like “Orente” and “My Life”—propped up by their callbacks to genres such as jùjú and highlife—established Gold as a singer with a griot’s soul and sentimentalities. He’d broaden his reach ...

Archangel Album ∙ Electronic ∙ 2025 KETTAMA Powerful genre-hopping and top-tier collabs from the Irish DJ/producer.

Fight Another Day Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2025 James Morrison Soul-baring songs of tough times and resilience from the singer-songwriter.

The Life of a Showgirl Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2025 Taylor Swift What’s a girl gonna do after the record-smashing Eras Tour? Well, its success sparked the flame inside Taylor Swift that led to her reunion with former collaborators Max Martin and Shellback for her 12th full-length  The Life of a Showgirl . “I’ve never been more proud of anything than I am of the Eras Tour,” Swift says. “And I just thought, ‘I want to make an album that I’m that proud of.’ And that was the catalyst for this record and calling up Max and saying, ‘Do you guys want to do this? I’ll come to you.’” Indeed, in a very showgirl manner, Swift flew back and forth to Sweden between stops on her European leg—remember, the singer-songwriter believes “jet lag is a choice”—to join Martin and Shellback, Swift’s co-writers and producers on some of the most memorable and popular hits of her career (“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space,” “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Delicate,” to name a few). T...

Solace & The Vices Album ∙ Soul ∙ 2025 Bryson Tiller With Bryson Tiller’s 2024 self-titled album, the Louisville crooner crafted a genre-bending departure from his comfort zone, experimenting with the soundscapes of dancehall, drill, and pop next to his signature mixture of hip-hop and R&B. Tiller fully embraced himself and where he was at within his artistry, so much so that he decided to take a hiatus from music after its release to pursue his passion for video game design. But now he’s back with  Solace & The Vices , a double album that lets go of the pressures of the industry and starts a new chapter of his ever-evolving sound. On the first half of  Solace & The Vices , Tiller looks inward as he gets somberly vulnerable about his struggles with romance, handling fame, and more. On the album opener “Strife,” he croons about wanting his lover to give him another chance, while on “Workaholic,” he exposes his own shortcomings as a partner due to obsessing over ...