Moments in Timelessness

B4EM Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Nine Vicious

BE MORE GRATEFUL Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 DaBaby Affirmations and resolutions can prove to be helpful self-empowerment tools, and DaBaby seems like one of those people. For the Charlotte rap star’s fifth proper album—his first since 2022’s  Baby on Baby 2 —he symbolically steps back into the spotlight after a tumultuous period with  BE MORE GRATEFUL . The titular attitude of gratitude permeates the proceedings here, manifesting via the erudite rap game rejoinders of “ PAPER LOW ” and the highly personal musings of “RAIN RAIN.” He opens up about his own pain on the melodic and melancholic “ WHAT ABOUT ME ” and exposes his interpersonal vulnerability amid the reflections of “MARINATING” and “MIC CHECK.” Speaking more on his own experiences, he proffers unsolicited albeit useful advice for others on “LETTER TO MY YN” and the snarky, soulful “OUT YA BUSINESS.” That said,  BE MORE GRATEFUL  is hardly some resolutely somber affair from the rapper who gave us “ ROCKSTAR ”...

OCTANE Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Don Toliver Since breaking out on the Travis Scott  ASTROWORLD  highlight “ CAN’T SAY ,” Don Toliver has propelled himself into hip-hop’s mainstream with melodic stylings that willfully and efficiently blur the bounds between rap and R&B. Following the leather-clad rock star moves of his 2024 album  HARDSTONE PSYCHO , the Houston rapper returns roughly a year and a half later with an album that enhances that larger-than-life aesthetic while remaining committed to the ultramodern sound he’s spent half a decade cultivating. He opens  OCTANE  with a fuzzy, Isley Brothers -esque funk rock flair on “ E85 ,” a track that soon renews itself in a more maximalist mode. With a seemingly unstoppable energy, he catalogs romantic exploits and sexual conquests with aplomb on revved-up tracks like “Gemstone” and “Rendezvous.” Continuing the Neptunes worship from  HARDSTONE ’s hit single “ATTITUDE,” he borrows from Justin Timberlake ’...

Khaotic Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 Wiz Khalifa If 2025 was a victory-lap year for Wiz Khalifa, during which he celebrated the 15th anniversary of his seminal  Kush & Orange Juice  with both a reissue and a guest-heavy sequel, the seasoned lifestyle rapper had a clean slate entering into 2026 with  Khaotic . Packed with features from other notables and hitmakers in hip-hop, the roughly half-hour-long outing pushes his extravagant 420-friendly narrative signature over decidedly hard-hitting trap beats. Save for two truly solo tracks, “I Put That Shit On” and the ethereal “ La Vida ,” he’s scarcely ever on his own here, mixing it up with repeat collaborators Juicy J and 2 Chainz on “ If You Know You Know ” and “ Wit My Twin ,” respectively. Notably, RMR appears no fewer than three times, fixating on sex and success for “ Head Money Trees Clothes ” and flexing alongside a freshly freed Max B on the 808-bumping throwback “ Back Against the Wall .”

BEFORE I FORGET Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2026 The Kid LAROI When The Kid LAROI popped out for a surprise performance at the National Rugby League ’s grand final in Sydney in October 2024, the Gadigal (Sydney)-born Kamilaroi artist sported a hoodie printed with the original title of his next album,  Watch This! . That album was ready to turn in by the middle of 2025, but suddenly, the 22-year-old musician had a change of heart. Scrapping all but one of the songs that he had already completed, The Kid LAROI spent the next three months recording a brand-new album inspired by a recent breakup. On the final version,  BEFORE I FORGET , LAROI wears his broken heart on his sleeve with wistful, nostalgic R&B ballads that wonder where it all went wrong. He riffs on Coldplay ’s “ Fix You ” over a moody KBeaZy production on “ A COLD PLAY ,” sends faded late-night texts on “ COME DOWN ,” and vows to keep his next love out of the spotlight on “ PRIVATE .” “ I’M SO IN LOVE WITH YOU ,” the sole s...

Slime Cry Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2026 YoungBoy Never Broke Again Knowing YoungBoy Never Broke Again, it wouldn’t be long into 2026 before the wildly prolific MC dropped his first project of the new year. Indeed, just 16 days into the thing, YoungBoy delivered with  Slime Cry , a 30-track epic that finds him getting ever closer to the ideal form of his diaristic, heartbreakingly honest pain rap .  Slime Cry , like most YoungBoy releases of the past few years, finds the rapper moving between shockingly vulnerable reflections on his struggles and the somewhat regular breath of fresh air where he allows himself to look back on how a broke kid from Baton Rouge hustled his way onto the Mount Rushmore of rap . “Anti-Social” represents one end of that spectrum, with YoungBoy reflecting on how the traumas of his childhood have manifested themselves in adulthood. Despite the occasional victory lap, this is a theme that appears again and again in the rapper’s music, and one that will nev...

Don't Be Dumb Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2026 A$AP Rocky When A$AP Rocky first emerged online in the early 2010s as the face and figurehead of the trendsetting Harlem collective known as the A$AP Mob , he was already primed for stardom, with model good looks, a strong curatorial eye, and a sound that drew from brolic New York street rap, DJ Screw tapes, and trippy underground electronics alike. Parlaying the hype from his acclaimed debut mixtape, 2011’s  LIVE.LOVE.A$AP , the Harlem native soon found himself in hip-hop’s upper echelons, testing the boundaries of genre and style. But for years, Rocky mostly applied his ambitions elsewhere: He embraced acting, taking on roles in 2025’s  Highest 2 Lowest  and  If I Had Legs I’d Kick You , co-chaired the 2025 Met Gala (for which he designed his own look), and meanwhile, became half of pop culture’s coolest power couple, starting a family with his partner, Rihanna . Some wondered if the fashion killa had outgrown rap entirely. His l...

With Heaven On Top Album ∙ Country ∙ 2026 Zach Bryan Oklahoma singer-songwriter Zach Bryan remains something of a cipher four years after his triple-album major-label debut  American Heartbreak : an introspective, headstrong superstar who rejects the trappings of fame while selling out arenas, a Navy cadet turned folk hero who now finds himself atop the pop and country charts despite not really making country music, or pop songs, or “hits.” Bryan’s songs are intense and writerly, inclined towards nostalgia and grief and favoring bare arrangements, live takes, and studio chatter. He embraces contradiction, avoids sloganeering, and is not soon to die on any one particular hill. He also likes to begin his albums with spoken-word poetry, as on 2023’s self-titled album and 2024’s  The Great American Bar Scene . His sixth album,  With Heaven on Top , opens with a spoken-word story where a long talk with the former owner of his new NYC home leads him to a dream where he is stan...

DINASTÍA Album ∙ Música Mexicana ∙ 2025 Peso Pluma  &  Tito Double P “I think it was only a matter of time, right?” Peso Pluma tells Apple Music . “I’d been wanting to do this project ever since he [Tito Double P] was my songwriter. I wanted to show the world what he was capable of, too. He built his own path as a solo artist, and we’re very proud of the direction he’s taken.” By now, there’s no need to retell the full Laija story . Two cousins who, each through their own strengths and skills, reworked the corrido formula and brought it to an increasingly global audience. Under the Doble P banner, they’ve become architects of one of the most visible movements in contemporary música mexicana , defined by a clear aesthetic standard that began with a fruitful vocalist-and-songwriter partnership, later split into separate artistic paths and ultimately reunited at the peak of their careers to celebrate their  DINASTÍA . Hassan /Peso and Roberto /Tito. The younger cousin a...

locket Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2026 Madison Beer Madison Beer decided on the title of her third album before she even wrote the songs. “I wanted it to feel very personal to me and tangible,” the singer-songwriter tells Apple Music’s Travis Mills . “So I wrote down a list of things that felt like they were a part of my life naturally. I really wanted something that was vintage-sounding, something that felt delicate and girly. ‘Locket’ was one of the words that was there from the start.” After heading to the dance floor on previous singles “ 15 MINUTES ,” “make you mine,” and “yes baby” (the latter two of which appear on the album), Beer leans into more acoustic textures and introspective, vocal-highlighting ballads on  locket , where she’s a hopeless romantic drifting through a world of whimsy and melancholy. Written in the wake of a breakup, the album cycles through a wide range of emotions and self-doubt, showing that growth isn’t always linear. Where the opening track “locket theme” shows...

everything is a lot. Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Wale everything is a lot.  marks Wale’s first full-length since his 2021 album  Folarin II , titled after his nickname. While  everything is a lot.  shares some of the joyful DNA that courses through the project named after his alter ego, Wale Folarin , it showcases another side of the D.C.-born rapper’s personality—more introspective, alone, and yearning than ever before. Throughout the album, Wale works through relationship struggles while readily admitting that he’s part of (if not all of) the problem. On opener “ Conundrum ,” he notes that his heart is colder than most, before explaining why it’s this way: “My ex, I was in love with her/Passionate sex but couldn’t cuddle her/Tell me, was it lust or did I love for her?/Her clothes off, I’m closed off, which one is worse?” On “ Power and Problems ,” Wale croons over live drums and gentle keyboard chords. He implores himself to slow down, noting that life in the fast l...

Light-Years Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 Nas &  DJ Premier Any telling of Nas’ story would be woefully incomplete without mentioning DJ Premier. Back in the day, the esteemed Gang Starr producer laced the then-rising Queensbridge MC with three beats that made his game-changing 1994 debut,  Illmatic . That professional connection continued with placements on albums like  I Am…  and the triumphant  Stillmatic , further linking the two artists in the annals in hip-hop history. As such, the arrival of  Light-Years , fully produced by Preemo at the virtual halfway point of Nasir ’s improbable 2020s run, seems like the fulfillment of rap destiny. Naturally, these men have grown and evolved in the three decades since their first team-up. Nas’ references to crypto portfolios and Saudi investments on “ GiT Ready ” and “ Welcome to the Underground ” are exceedingly far from those found on their initial studio collaborations, a better reflection of the artist as c...

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STREETS? Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2025 21 Savage Since breaking through with 2016’s icy  Savage Mode , a joint EP between himself and Metro Boomin , the Atlanta-based rapper has countered menace with candor, revealing his story in glimpses between scenes of cold-blooded murder and exorbitant flexing. It’s not that 21 Savage has let his guard down exactly, though on his third solo album, 2024’s  american dream , he let go of the pure nihilism of his early work to begin to open up about his family and his past. The 33-year-old rapper’s fourth album, announced just four days before its release, centers around familiar themes—chiefly, trying to make it in a bleak and cutthroat world. On “ DOG $HIT ,” featuring GloRilla , 21 makes balling out sound sinister, and on “ HA ,” he turns a supervillain laugh into a hook over a Zaytoven production straight out of the aughts (with a sample of a 2007 Gucci Mane mixtape cut for good measure). But on closing track “ I WISH ,” with...

The Leaks Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2025 Lil Baby Lil Baby’s most die-hard fans know that some of his best work never made it onto his albums. Whether shared as snippets or leaked in some form or another, several such songs have become the stuff of legend in the Quality Control Music artist’s wider catalog. Dropped auspiciously on the occasion of his 31st birthday,  The Leaks  gives many of these cuts, as well as some unexpected tracks, a proper release for the first time. In the preceding weeks, a handful of these tracks appeared in an official capacity as  Wham Wednesday  singles, including “ Otha Boy ,” “Try to Love,” and the success self-assessment “Middle of the Summer.” These and the rest of the collection take a looser approach than his better-known material while remaining representative of various stages of his career, from his exciting beginnings to his hit-making era. Songs like “Violation” and “What She Like” reflect a range of his solo stylings, though man...