Music Reviews

On G Perico's new album, G Slim's Revenge, a certain rap archetype that has faded since its '90s ubiquity appears to be alive and well.

Music & Culture

Whither the West Coast gangsta?

6:12pm April 25, 2024

by Sheldon Pearce

A familiar rap character, the Cali hustler cruising in a low-rider, has faded in the 21st century. On new albums by G Perico, Mozzy and Gangrene, that figure is alive and well, living in the margins.

Music & Culture

Taylor Swift's confessional 'Tortured Poets' would have benefitted from an edit

1:51pm April 24, 2024

by Ken Tucker

Though Swift performs a range of experience and emotions, the music on her 11th album feels thin and is often in service of lyrics that could have used a red pencil.

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On Taylor Swift's 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department, her artistry is tangled up in the details of her private life and her deployment of celebrity. But Swift's lack of concern about whether these songs speak to and for anyone but herself is audible throughout the album.

Music & Culture

Taylor Swift's 'Tortured Poets' is written in blood

2:18pm April 19, 2024

by Ann Powers

With The Tortured Poets Department, the defining pop star of her era has made an album as messy and confrontational as any good girl's work can get.

Metro Boomin and Future perform during 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. The producer and rapper have linked for two sprawling new albums this year, released weeks apart.

Music & Culture

Why Future trusts Metro Boomin

12:04pm April 18, 2024

by Sheldon Pearce

After a decade ruled by their influence, the buzzy reunion of two hip-hop giants finds one imbued with a startling new power.

Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter has ignited discourse about the place of Black musicians in country music. But it's also evidence of its creator's desire to break genre walls by following her most eccentric impulses.

Music & Culture

Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' is a portrait of the artist getting joyously weird

5:33pm April 10, 2024

by Ann Powers

Cowboy Carter has spurred plenty of discussion for being a groundbreaking country album. But for one critic, it calls to mind is a cult favorite '70s psych-rock concept album.

Cellist Maya Beiser has reimagined Terry Riley's pioneering work In C, which helped launch the style of music called minimalism.

Music & Culture

Cellist Maya Beiser's variation on a minimalist manifesto

7:17pm April 05, 2024

by Tom Huizenga

Armed with just her cello, a looping machine and a pair of percussionists, Beiser crafts a rendition of Terry Riley's pioneering In C that is equally mesmerizing and graceful.

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MGK (Machine Gun Kelly) and Trippie Redd at the March 21 listening party for their collaborative EP, genre : sadboy, at Harriet's Rooftop in West Hollywood.

Music & Culture

Emo rap at its limits

2:12pm April 04, 2024

by Sheldon Pearce

Embedded in genre : sadboy, a collaborative release by rappers MGK and Trippie Redd, is an accidental lesson in what once made the collision of rap and pop-punk so electrifying.

Music & Culture

Beyoncé bucks the country industry establishment with sprawling 'Cowboy Carter'

2:07pm April 03, 2024

by Ken Tucker

While Beyoncé's new album suggests the country-music industry's problematic history of excluding Black artists, the collection as a whole is as much a celebration as it is a critique.

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Music & Culture

Celebrating singer Sarah Vaughan, on what would have been her 100th birthday

2:17pm March 27, 2024

by Kevin Whitehead

Born in 1924 in Newark, N.J., Vaughan came up in the '40s, alongside bebop, a new jazz style she instantly took to. In the following decades, she proved to be one of the best singers of any genre.

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Music & Culture

Tierra Whack springs to the forefront of hip-hop creativity on a new album

1:44pm March 26, 2024

by Ken Tucker

The Philadelphia rapper and singer is known for her playful side, but she widens her subject matter on World Wide Whack, with emotions ranging from ecstatic happiness to the deepest despair.

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