I heard someone say that life never becomes less scary; you’re just supposed to become more brave. Well, Angel is trying to be brave. Even though her voice quivers, she holds her notes as she confronts the hard truths. The results? Mixed. On one hand, her lines about humility are spot on: “Doesn’t matter who you are or what you do/ something in the world will make a fool of you.” On the other hand, there’s something naïve, and thus tragically ironic, about her romantic desires. “Falling in love and I swear it’s the last time.” Because she swears it’ll be the last time, you know it won’t be the last time.

I like how honest Alice is in her desire for an impossible moment. I kind of respect her fantastically high standards. To her, love should feel like a jolt to the body and a warm blanket around the mind, like contact with a higher power, like “something holy”. Her and the song sonically climax at 2:53, but things don’t end there. We get the post-sex, human moment, where desire for transcendent pleasures fades into honesty: “it hasn’t been so easy being lonely”.

A boy wondered about the wider world as he watched the one train pass through his country town. I loved the trumpets before I translated the Portuguese , though. I love the dominating way that they rumble into the song and then whiz by again on a later chorus, like a big, metal locomotive. After their appearance, it seems as if the singer’s soulful shouts are just too big for the idyllic jazz piano, flutes, and guitar.

The lack of vocal layering and stuttering drums match Bennie’s perspective on love. It’s one of youthful inconsistency. He can’t decide whether he’s a romantic or skeptic. One end of the mental pendulum is: love is the ultimate goal and is worth all the confusion and struggle. On the other is doubt: “all we do for love/ is it worth it?” I’m sure a lot of people did this kind of thing in high school, and I enjoy the light-hearted reminder of all the wasted hours deliberating over crushes that never amounted to anything.

With Paak’s boyish voice, shrieking kids, 90’s scratches, and some subtle voice distortion, BJ sonically sketches a warm memory: family dinner on a summer night. Just like your mom when the streetlights were turned off, the track calls you into domestic comfort.

Beginning with a lone trumpet tuning up over crowd chatter, the audience breaks into applause and whistles as the whole brass section triumphantly leads an orchestral charge. Then things get smaller. There’s a sonic shift from live symphony to studio band. Paired with a quick-jab drummer and dabs of scat singing, Bobbi Humphries goes off on a six-minute flute solo in this jazz fusion epic.

Brandy’s feathery background vocals drift like dandelions and daydreams.

In between the catchiest hook of the year, The Brockhampton boys are ironically united in their forlorn pleads.

Top 3 cutest lines:
1. We’ll play Nintendo
Though I always lose
‘Cause you’ll watch the TV
While I’m watching you
2 . We’ll watch The Notebook
For the seventeenth time
I’ll say, it’s stupid
Then you’ll catch me crying
3. We’ll take off our phones
And we’ll turn off our shoes

“Where would he go for fun in this town?/ How would he sit and bookend days?” could and should be the opening lines of a novel.

Hums create a sense of introversion within a song. They make it seem like you are listening to an artist singing to themselves. Yet, Francis & the Lights take humming to a next level. Instead of one person, their hums sound as if a crowd, a choir, a spiritual gathering of some sort, are releasing a collective “ooohhmmmm”, which is perfect for an album with a Christian streak. It’s also perfect for the song’s theme, as Chance is not nostalgic about only one lost friend. This is about a pattern of losing friends every summer, so, echoing his lyrics, the hums feel like the ghosts of all his lost relationships calling him back to good memories.

I always like “The Psychedelic Trip Song” on an album because it means the artist is trying something weird, something experimental. On this one, Gambino sings and ad-libs, sometimes in the same breath, between five different characters: him during a shrooms trip, him as the narrator, the girl who gives him the shrooms, nosy observers, and Tony Braxton. That happens for the first 4:00. The song then leaps around singers and beats, as if Gambino was flipping through a radio, before it melts into robots and lasers.

During the cyber mixtape era, there were a lot of rappers that puffed out weeds songs, but I think Curren$y best embodied the millennial stoner in his appreciation for simple millennial conveniences: “Xbox web browser, download an updated NBA roster Play an eighty-two game season Condo full of snacks, Spitta not leaving.”

Dreamy strums. Flippant Bass. A sweet voice pondering the end of all things without a note of urgency.

There are plenty of reasons to like music. Sometimes we like the album’s journey. Sometimes we like a verse’s emotion. Sometimes we like a hook’s catchiness. Sometimes we like a single phrase’s relevance. But, most times, what we like is so abstract, the best word we have to describe it is “a moment”.

One of these “moments” happens between 1:53-3:03, where the beat ditches the nightclub bass. Leaving everything but it’s dance-shoe chords, the song feels as if it steps out to daylight. The chime vibrations, the human claps, and, most significantly, the way Diawara’s warm vocals seem to come from above, like a ray of sunshine, create an atmosphere of space, of freedom. And, when the bass eventually returns, you’re no longer shuffling on a sticky floor, fist-bumping in a dark basement—you’re grooving on the grass, hands stretched to a cloudless blue sky.

When the piano octave drops, Lyrics go introspective. And when the beat gets frazzled, Drake confronts unsettling memories. the gibberish at the end is an off-theme attempt to recover “tough rapper” status.

The song flips traditional hip-hop duets; it’s the opposite of an Ashanti and Ja Rule song. The classic set-up used to be the male rapper’s rough and low voice projecting a cash-first, steady, stoic, and independent boyfriend while the female singer chimed about being irrationally in love, ready to “ride or die”. However, on this hit, it is Drake who is dependent “Say you’ll never ever leave from beside me, ‘cause I want ya and I need ya” and City Girls putting money and status over love: “Fuck that Netflix and chill—what’s your net worth?”

The Weeknd was a broken-hearted partier on House of Balloons. A decade later, on After Hours, The Weeknd is no longer Abel; he is a fictional villain; a Vegas vampire skulking under disco balls, preying on hot girls, seeking vengeance against beauty and sex, the pleasures he believes are responsible for his mutation. “Nocturnal” was made in 2015, the midpoint of The Weeknd’s transition from druggie to demon. Playing with light/dark imagery, his lyricism is sharp, more focused, uncharacteristically sober.

Quarantined by not-calling-mama shame, Earl’s angry that he’s crumbling under self-imposed pressure.

Earl has bones in his closet, icicles in his heart, poison in his veins, and shrapnel in his soul. He clawed out from the underworld, but he still lives with death’s leftovers.

Get passed how familiar the guitar sample sounds (it’s Dre’s “Xxplosive”) and soak in how great “Bag Lady” is as an allegorical subject. Whether she’s addressing the lady who carries too many plastic bags or the lady who travels with too many bags or the lady who spends too much on handbags, she’s telling them all to let go of their metaphoric baggage. When Erykah warns the lady that the baggage will crowd a future lover’s space, the drums drop. When Erykah encourages her to breathe and let it go, let it go, the supporting vocals enter.

Something in the production makes you feel as if you’re a plasma flowing through Tracey Thorn’s heart.

As someone who doesn’t habla español, I actually enjoy not getting half the words. Great singing is about subtlety, and sometimes interpreting lyrics distracts me from enjoying the voice as an instrument: the cracks, the breaths, held notes, pitch changes, layering. Also, “no hablará de mí, ni hablará de esto” (he won’t talk about me, nor will he talk about this) makes me wonder if the two languages on a single track is a comment on misinterpretation — two people not understanding each other — being a main reason for heartbreak, Frank’s favorite subject.

Three lyricists on a classic beat and the classic rap theme: society’s broken so I’m gonna get mine.

Trapped in a cavernous void, where bells and horns echo endlessly, George searches for words to end loneliness.

Ginuwine embodies the creamy croons of 90s RnB, but Timbaland offsets the mushy passion with sharp boom-bap snares and an arsenal of computerized bleeps and bloops.

Waiting for a house beat to come together is like watching a cake rise– slow and, eventually, unhealthy. But this song has a smooth, satisfying build into an uplifting (slightly fluffy) message.

On first listen, you might think of “summer girl” as “temporary fling”. However, Haim means it more as “I’m the sun in your life”, and not in a romantic way, more in a comforting friend way. The first two verses are about the friendship in general, but her support is most clearly conveyed in her last verse, when she directly addresses her friend. She says, “Walk beside me”. Then pauses and gives space, for her friend to catch up, for her friend to understand, for that gorgeous saxophone riff. Then she says, “Not behind me,” which is pretty much what true friendship is all about.

“It Was A Good Day” turned these guitars into Ice Cube’s L.A., but the Isley Brothers originally played them in the name of paranoid hearts, as the lyrics go back and fourth between reviving or ditching an expiring romance.

The elegant piano on the intro contrasts the beat that follows. After it dissolves, the track plunges into a kind of head over the toilet-bowl abyss where everything is spinning and reality is fading in and out and there are so many Isiah Rashad voices you don’t know which one to listen to. There are his guttural ad-libs. There are his pugnacious yells. There are his hammered jokes. There is an urgent voice screaming, “Wake up!”. It’s all happening at the same time, and the only way Rashad knows how to find clarity through this inner-voice-vomit is to spit out his verse with urgency and bottom-of-the-belly confidence.

Overshadowing Isiah, Kendrick’s so confident on his verse that he lets go of self-control for a second (“Any N***A that disagree is a f*****g liar!”) just because he knows he can get it back.

I think Cole did a disservice to this song by titling it “High For Hours”. It’s clear, it’s well thought-out, it’s brave, and it’s one of the smartest songs I’ve heard. His first verse is about the hypocrisy of America’s founding ideals. Like how a country that touted freedom was built on slavery. Like how Christian white ladies, who believe in “Thou shall not kill”, were high-fiving after hearing about Bin Laden’s death. This made him mistrust the government, which he addresses in the second verse where he recounts meeting Obama. After Cole vents his frustration, he’s unsatisfied with former president’s response of “don’t stop fightin’ and don’t stop believin’/ you can make the world better”. In the third verse, Cole confronts his “revolutionary heart”. Growing up, he’d always supported destroying the system because he thought it would eliminate greed. Yet, he then changes his mind, likening this method to domestic abuse, “The children in abusive households grow up/ knockin’ girlfriends out cold—that’s called a cycle”. And, interestingly, Cole concludes the song by echoing Obama’s call to start within, “The only revolution happens rights inside of you”.

A break from the album’s preachy tone, drugs tug an unfaithful J. Cole between guilt and getting more high.

“Finishing this EP was a response to how frustrated I was not being able to go to clubs,” James Blake said about COVID ruining his fantasies.

You can tell. Listen to the metronomic base begging for big speakers, the dance clap wishing to guide feet. But then listen to the last two-thirds of the song and how it seems shaped by the emotionally reflective quality of quarantine rather than the numbing fantasies that spin off your typical turntable.

Club songs are a series of unashamed climaxes, loud attempts to sustain bliss. While “Do You Ever” starts with this kind of outward love profession, it then quiets down: first in a lustful way, second in the sorrowful way a sole violin quivers. From then on, James Blake is half-conductor and half-DJ, removing and adding flutes and vocal samples, cross-pollinating sensitivity with numbness, longing and reminiscing, public and private.

Even if this song never touches a club, James should know that this tune made a man in socks, and not much else, two-step around his kitchen, sometimes with a glass of Chardonnay and his girlfriend, but mostly alone. It’s the inspiration behind a sturdy mental shelf labelled: quarantine bangers.

Flute breezes, drum scutters, keyboard echoes, bass puddles–it’s as if the melodies are drifting around a rainforest.

Emotes the purest, most fragile part of adoration. The “too” in “you’re too precious” overwhelms James into a stuttering chant until the song’s end, when he puts himself together and lets it out.

It almost sounds like a terrible writing prompt: make a love song centred around fertilizer. James pulls it off by personifying himself as a snubbed flower begging to his girl for anything, “I’ll take bullshit if that’s all you got”.

Poetic because it extracts so much from a moment: two kids put to silence by fireworks, history, and “the feeling of finding my heart in my hand”.

This track is so classic pop. Familiar bass groove and voice. The chorus is built around a simple phrase: “Ooh La La”. The lyrics are love platitudes. And yet, “classic pop” rarely stuffs this many sounds into a song. A left-field noise seems to pop out from every brief pause: guitar twang, guitar shriek, crash, space laser, bang, cow bells, funk riff, or 90s Rnb drum pocket. It’s ambitious production, but, as these sounds belong to the “background”, their randomness never becomes distracting.

From the beat, you’d never guess that Jill Scott is threatening her boyfriend’s ex. The piano and drums are patient, and we don’t expect the words behind a pretty melody to be “you better back down before you get smacked down”. But the subtle addition of horns, which convey the rough exhale of anger, and Scott’s unconventional, spoken-word-like rhythm make it work.

He’s not rich, popular, smart, or interesting. He’s been left behind by a crush. Why I love this song: he’s ok with it all.

19 years old at the time of recording, but there’s nothing youthful about this song. The keys are dusty, the base is grimy, and Joey’s whole vibe is an East Coast brand of mean. His growls have substance, though, as the verses are rammed with internal rhymes, the best being: To excel, this shit never fails, always excels They been swallowing sons since before the double XL Sex cell, ex ask why (XXY) it never work out I guess I exercise too much when I work out Shows too turnt out, return home burnt out Never heard someone rap the “x” sound in so many ways, and that’s got to be the best chromosome line ever.

The contrast of classic piano over boom-bap drums parallels John’s debonair tone exhibiting dirty desires.

I’m convinced that John Mayer has mastered the soft-rock formula: lyrical simplicity, a buttery voice, cute background vocals, charming guitar solos, and an inexhaustible ability to keep falling in love.

A nostalgic ballad just wouldn’t fit Joni Mitchell. I couldn’t imagine her penning four minutes’ worth of longing-for-the-good-times. Realism is her style. Instead of yearning, she focuses on the true state of things. Her lyrics are unwaveringly pragmatic: no doubt, no shame, no regret. It’s like she sees herself as a character whose story couldn’t have been written any other way.

So while this song orbits around nostalgia-inducing things, like her old friend Carol, grown children, replaced buildings, Christmas, and 60s radio hits, there’s never any longing for the good old days. Her voice carries emotion, but the words themselves read like an unflinching report of her own life.

Singing over only a bare guitar and piano on Blue, her most famous album, that level of honesty was intense, too intense for many. 11 years later, she’s backed by a proper band on this song, and their soft sonics pair well with her stinging words. A lyric like, “And my child’s a stranger/ I bore her/ But I could not raise her” doesn’t burn as bad when you get a light piano, rippling guitar, and bubbling bass to chase it down.

The song’s theme is “nothing lasts for long. “Unchained Melody” the song which she covers on the outro is about needing love. Chinese Café is the mix of these themes: both the pain and joy that arise from desire are temporary. Time is both healer and torturer. And while Joni uses her friend and daughter as examples, she remains an unbiased commentator on her own life, letting its lessons become universal.

Anyone who’s bored of traditional song structure should listen to Joni Mitchell. She throws verse-chorus-verse structure out the window, and instead only uses repetition for her message’s sake—not to coddle a listener. Yet, for me, this song stuck because, in between her radio analogy, she whips out a throwing-knife take at all romantically complacent dudes: “I know you don’t like weak women/ You get bored so quick/ And you don’t like strong women/ ‘Cause they’re hip to your tricks.” You know you’ve nailed a human truth when it’s still relevant 48 years later.

The platitudinal encouragement stays fresh due to Kali’s varying flows and Tyler’s throaty and flirty intrusion.

Etta James’s version of “My Funny Valentine” perfectly captures the devious and sorrowful flavour of addiction. Kanye’s focused on addicted love, and does a good job creating an intimate, closed-bedroom-door vibe by leaving in heavy breaths. Conceptually, he is both addicting and addicted. A girl is addicted to the thrill found in their adulterous weed and wine nights. He is addicted to sex, and, hilariously, proposes a threesome at the song’s end.

Behind a lot of Kanye lyrics (and, recently, public statements) is the general idea that, “No one’s allowed to control my thoughts, so I’m going to say stuff I think you guys are scared to admit, so I can prove I’m a free thinker!” I felt this track was about the tragic arc of that philosophy.

The beginning, the spoken-word part, has Kanye musing on the taboo topic of suicide and murder, although it remains unclear whether he wants to kill an actual person or a part of himself. The voice-pitch switches give the impression that this is going down inside his skull, that this is a conversation with himself. The angelic-hums imply this lawless contemplation brings him peace.

Yet, when he shifts from spoken-word to rapping, his thoughts turn outward. And that’s when things start to go wrong. Drums enter, and, now, instead of seeking understanding, he is announcing intentions, trying to define himself to the public. At 3:33, a harsh beat switch conveys his fall into a negative headspace. It’s disjointed and you can hear screams in the background. In turn, Kanye’s lyrics turn aggressive and threatening, as if he’s in fight or flight mode.

This has always been the strange thing about Kanye. His music has always been stuffed with admissions about his flaws and failings. On this track, he’s open about how his search for understanding initially brings him peace, but, when mixed with a desire for validation, causes him to spiral. Unfortunately, that level of self-awareness and humility doesn’t come across in his public statements. Which is why I just listen to the music and ignore the comments.

It’s bongos, it’s subdued synth piano chords, it’s disco strings, but most of all it’s Kali Uchis: sweet voice under shrewd words.

To Pimp A Butterfly explores how systemic racism infects all areas of Kendrick’s life. The album is a heavy listen, as it takes on representing both the conceptual and emotional experience of being black in America. Similarly, the 13th track expresses two sides of one emotion: anger. The first kind is outward, antagonistic. Across three furious verses, Kendrick embodies “White America’s” nightmare: a powerful black man who hasn’t forgotten or forgiven all the racist shit he’s had to live through and now wants revenge. Kendrick is resolute in his hate (“… fuck you — no, fuck y’all, that’s as blunt as it gets”) and desires to burn everything down (“Burn, baby, burn/ that’s all I wanna see”). The second kind of anger is less blatant. It’s an inwards anger, a frustration rooted in guilt. Each verse begins with Kendrick claiming to be “the biggest hypocrite of 2015”. His hypocrisy is revealed in the song’s last line: “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street/ when gang-banging made me kill a n**** blacker than me? Hypocrite!” It’s such a powerful moment because, even though there are understandable reasons to be consumed by injustice-inspired anger, he channels the emotional energy to check himself and assume responsibility towards helping, not perpetuating violence. After this admission, the tense sirens and strings are replaced by jazz—a nod to working out emotions through speech or art.

Kendrick’s first two albums were intense dissections of his past, where he aimed his lyrical talents at complex concepts like guilt, addiction, and peer pressure. For this unconventional and refreshing approach, critics and most casual fans anointed him the best rapper. In the rap game, where most songs are built around artists projecting power, ruthlessness, and infallibility, the past provided safety for Kendrick to be more vulnerable. He could admit, “I was weak, confused, and poor”, as long as it came with the understanding that he’s now strong, certain, and rich.

He didn’t stick to the past on DAMN. That album was about current, not young Kendrick. But, without the safety of the past, I thought he went away from his commitment to “being real”. HUMBLE, DNA, and ELEMENT, the big singles, felt conventional, a little shallow. Of course, this is relative to Kendrick’s standards, as the tracks do have nuance (HUMBLE is sneaky subversive), but those song’s overall vibes slotted into the familiar, confrontational, ego-driven “I AM BETTER THAN YOU”.      

Yet, in between these bombastic tracks is a less flashy but more profound work: “FEEL.” Instead of pounding 808s, ambient piano and sorrowful strums set the scene for Kendrick to let of steam. And, damn, he lets it all out like someone who’s been quietly sitting in the corner, nodding his head, listening to other people’s problems for years, until, one day, he erupts and asks why no one asks him how he’s doing.

On the technical side, Kendrick structures his verses around the word “feel”. He relentlessly repeats it, as if he’ll lose his way if he doesn’t. Most bars start with, “I feel like…”, but as the words keep pouring out and his pace and emotions mount, he begins to twist the word “feel” around, most notably into “fill”, a sign that’s he taking all he can take. 2:10 to 3:10 is an incredible display a verbal skill. It’s when he’s at his boiling point. As a listener, you keep thinking that Kendrick can’t keep going, can’t get more overwhelmed, can’t keep fitting all these syllables into so few seconds, but he just keeps going until he yells everything he needs to yell.

And then you rewind the song and pay attention to the lyrics, and not only do they make sense, but you realize he just created a dizzying symbolic collage out of the personal, the societal, the judicial, the mythical, and the philosophical. Insane. There are a lot of artists that can make me bob my head. But Kendrick is one of the few that makes me pause and reconsider what is going on inside my head.

This song is a marketer’s wet dream. Into impressionable young minds, Khalid inceptions the idea that the cute-guitar-playing body who you smoke with on the weekend cares about you more than your parents. That is straight ear candy to a suburban high-schooler who slams her room door and puts on her earphone after dad tells her that she’s not allowed to go to Mike’s cottage if there is no parental supervision.

Man on the Moon dramatized the thoughts of a lonely stoner. Instead of an anti-socialite who stares at his bedroom fan all night, Kid Cudi presents himself as a tormented journeying into the depths of his sub-consciousness, searching for the light, confronting his demons. But, on this track, he succumbs to the darkness. The guitars howl and the drums crack (and there’s that flying-boomerang sound) as Cudder becomes a kind of werewolf who is solely guided by instinct.

Traditionally, an album opener acts as an enticing introduction for new listeners. It wants to give them a taste of the musicians’ current character. It wants to give them a sample of the project’s general sound. It doesn’t want to do anything too experimental or confusing.

            “Feel the Love”, the first track on KIDS SEE GHOSTS, is a middle finger to that tradition. Kanye and Kid Cudi, the album’s protagonists, feel no need to identify themselves. Cudi wails the chorus so abstractly that I had to search the lyrics even though half of “I CAN STILL FEEL THE LOVE” is in the title of the song. Kanye doesn’t use lyrics at all and instead shrieks and fires out “gha”s and “g-ra”s “bra-ra-ra”s and “da”s with such unrecognizable insanity it’s as if he’s possessed by a spirit who knows no language. Pusha T, a feature, is the only one making himself clear, so the song ends up feeling like a Pusha T song that features Kanye and Cudi.

This must’ve pissed off a music label exec somewhere. But that might be the point.

Song structure is genius in its simplicity. The last verse makes me wonder. Is he lying to his new partner? Is he lying to us, the listener? Or, has he caught himself lying to himself? ( I prefer my last interpretation, as this gives the song replay value. Upon second listen, you assume that he HAS been crying, he HASN’T been laughing, he DOES still love.)

Classically, duets are male-female affection exchanges. This, here, is two women belting a love song to supportive friendship. For those that turn to music in tough times, this song has uplifting power.

Man has this song got layers. It can be that innocent acoustic tune in your mom’s minivan when grandpa’s in the passenger. It can be that song you have on repeat when you’re in the mood to brood over an ex or shitty men in general. It can be about woman empowerment. It can be meta. A credit to the writing, all these meanings are made possible due to the four-word chorus: “Where did Alexandra go?”

Despite being a question, the chorus doesn’t beg to be answered. It doesn’t spoil the comfort of the acoustic strums, the country twangs, and the warm harmonies. And when you hear generic verse lyrics “love” and “little note” and “diamonds”, your brain can’t help but categorize this as one of those “safe and fluffy” songs, something that belongs next to a campfire or in a teenage romance soundtrack. “Where did Alexandra go?” Why cares? The artist’s probably just appreciating her friend, Alexandra, and that’s a fine enough reason for a song, right?

But if you think about the chorus as a literal question, the song sheds its innocence and reveals something darker, something with more teeth. The chorus, instead, becomes confrontational. “Where did Alexandra go?” is an accusation aimed at a deceitful dude: Laura Marling is grilling a guilty guy about his ex-girlfriend. The repeated chorus seeks to make him atone for his lies. The verses hammer in the guilt-trip with “Did you feel like a man?” and “Why should I die so you can live?” before finally nailing him with a direct: “What did Alexandra know?”

Good lyrics don’t serve a sole message, though. Punishment isn’t the only purpose here. Not every “Where did Alexandra go?” is spent on this cheating dude. Laura sings some of the choruses to herself to empathize with women who’ve loved liars, all the “Alexandras”, and to try and understand the mental spaces they “go”: whether those spaces have been blackened by a realized betrayal or brightened by a released burden. And when you add that her voice is backed up by harmony, the chorus feels like a supportive shout-out to women who’ve had to deal with dishonesty.

The chorus has a meta-layer, too. While Alexandra is the song’s character as well as a symbolic name for all women who’ve loved liars, “Alexandra” is also the title of the song. So when you replay the track, (or the album, as it’s the first track), and the first line is: “What became of Alexandra/did she make it through?” it’s as if the song is asking itself whether its message got through. And when you hear, “Where did Alexandra go?” it’s as if “Alexandra” is asking about your personal interpretation.

Thundercat’s bass line moves your feet, but everything else is telling you to slow down. The synth chords loaf. The drums fizzle out. The vocal aids, which include Snoop, breeze behind Mac’s La-Z-Boy reclined flow.

Marvin shares the issue of police-brutality (and violence in general) by using familiar terms. – “Mother, mother, there’s too many of you crying” – “Mother, mother, everybody thinks we’re wrong” – “Brother, brother, brother, there’s far too many of you dying” – “Father, father, there’s no need to escalate” To white listeners, these problems might seem distant, yet Marvin, literally, brings the pain close to home by placing it through the perspective of protective fathers and worried mothers, something everyone can relate to. Additionally, Marvin’s voice, which beautifully bears both hurt and hope, is couched between group chatter. The beginning and end of the track feature sounds of people just talking, which is in line with his message that encourages people to really ask and listen to black people, their brothers and sisters, their fellow humans, “What’s going on?”

This dizzying concoction of multi-syllabic abstract nouns, historical figures, literary characters, obscure slang, and philosophical conclusions might mean Milo’s a genius. But it’s also possible he’s just tossing together big words off Wikipedia searches, like a stoned student who has 20 minutes to submit an online response to “A Postmodern Critique of Descartes”. I’m not sure. Regardless, I just find it fun to hear him rhyme:
1. pileup in Kabul/ Luke hand cool/ jukebox mule
2. Wilhelm Reich/ bygone organite
3. Hoisting Poetry/ Nostrum Groceries
4. Beard like Gimli/ light shine dimly
5. Smellin’ like Satsuma/ spit it like your math tutor

I like how, on this single, Nas’s style is the opposite of his subject matter: the coolest flow ever reacts to two awkward parenting moments. First, he catches his daughter writing love letters to a guy in jail. He checks his preaching impulse upon noticing he’s a suspect role model. Who’s he to judge her incarcerated crush since he himself has whole albums promoting criminal behaviour? How’s he going to give advice on love when he brings a different woman home every week? Second, his daughter posts a box of condoms on Instagram, which makes him doubt if he’s been a good father. And so, instead of “I figured out parenting” the song ends on a confessional “Man…being a single dad is tough.” (As an interesting aside, Eminem declined going a remix to this song because he felt he’d made too many songs about his daughter.)

Has a computerized feel. It’s as if the group individually recorded the guitar, drums, vocals, keyboard chords, and, most importantly, baseline and uploaded them on a computer so that they could easily summon them with fingertips. Then they started having fun, experimenting with instrumental combinations. What I appreciate is the commitment to balance. Neil Francis never deploy all their sounds at once, nor do they let one go for too long. Instead, they are selective, which creates the sense of a clean and organized track. When an instrument is added, another one is removed, but the groove always maintains.

I don’t believe Young when he sings, “It doesn’t mean that much to me to mean that much to you.” He wants to learn how to detach. He respects the old man’s wisdom, his embrace of impermanence. But he also doesn’t want his heart to get so cold that he stops loving.

Sky’s The Limit (ft. 112)- Notorious B.I.G

With Ease, Biggie:
1. Made vulnerability tough
2. Kept tales of shame light and charming
3. Taught street ethics
4. Convinced you he was a good man

If the world wasn’t sick of “Get Lucky”, this song would have been a hit. Are you kidding me with that string section?

Three parts to this song that obscurely comment on the Beatle’s breakup but more generally on freedom and escape. The first part is a slow and lamenting ballad. The band feels trapped, lonely, and unloved. In the second part, a vigorous electric guitar announces action. They want to leave, no matter what they have to give up. In the third part, their escape is prefaced by horns and then accompanied by country guitar-slides. They find themselves in the vast world, but they are not free. The band now spends their days running from the oppressive law.

Who knew Jazz could sound like a galactic moan?

This is part of the love-is-like-a-drug analogy wave that peaked in the middle of this decade, so, listening today, the message has become a little stale. However, the interesting genre blend is still fresh. The acoustic guitar is alternative rock. Raury’s voice starts postmodern singing-rapping then hardens into a supressed anger, angsty rocker kind of voice. The electric guitars addition in the second verse are stadium rock. The computerized background vocals are current RnB. The autotuned croon on the outro is hip-pop. A creative yet effortless mix of 6 styles.

Absurd in the mismatch of ethics to aesthetics. They sing so sweetly, so innocently, like they’re in the front row of the choir, but these two are the worst role models ever. They’ll hook up with your mom, smash your dad’s car then steal his money, and bring hard drugs to school all because, “I’M UNBELIEVABLY COOL!”

On a fundamental level, every rap nerd enjoys the challenge of keeping up with lyrics. With speed, slang, and symbolic language, the rapper builds a lyrical labyrinth that the nerd tries to follow and extract as much as meaning as he/she can without pausing or searching up the words. That’s the puzzle. But, just like other puzzles, there are hard ones and easy ones. Within this one song, two rappers offer two different verse difficulties.

Rick Ross represents easy mode because his rhymes never become more than the sum of their parts. Take this one for example: “Rolling like Mick Jagger, the women just getting badder”. One doesn’t need to listen to the rest of the verse to understand it, nor would that alter or deepen the line’s meaning. The line’s wittiness goes as far as Mick Jagger being the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, and “Jagger” rhyming with “badder”. So, in this sense, it’s easy to keep up with Ross’s verse because you only need to understand one line at a time.

Andre 3000’s verse is expert mode. In order to understand it, you need to process multiple things at a time. First, you need to follow his rhyme patterns, like “I’m tryna…” and “before…”. Second, you need to decipher slang-tinged metaphors, like “before my crumbs would cake up”. Third, and most challenging, you need to interpret the main idea of four or five of his lines. Fourth, you need to pay attention to how that main idea colours future lines.

Let’s look at an example:

“But I admit it, it feel good when the hood pseudo-celebrate

Hence why every time we dine we eat until our belly aches

Then go grab the finest wine and drink it like

We know which grape and which region it came from

As if we can name ’em, hint hint, it ain’t, um, Welch’s

These are five lines from the middle of his verse. Out of context, Andre’s saying that celebrations in his area are fun but fake, excessive, and uncultured. However, that’s not it. To really get these five lines, you’ve got connect them with what he said earlier in his verse. The first portion of Andre’s verse centred on the idea of “fulfilment”. He’s wondering about how to find happiness. In his first six lines, he takes us back to his youth when joy was as simple as hooking up with the girl next door, improving grades, getting waves, and buying new shoes. That was all he needed. But later, across the next 6 lines, Andre grows up and learns about fashion, make-up, puberty, maternal judgment, riches, and betrayal (his girlfriend bangs his friend). After all that, he is disillusioned to ever being fulfilled by romance or objects. Angry, he criticizes the education system. Not only did it misguide him, but he finds himself living around people who are even more misguided, so, even if he could discover satisfaction in owning a simple house and porch, he would need to buy guns to protect it from “intruders whose tutors did a lousy job”. Next, he points his finger at God (“How’s he god if he lets Lucifer let loose on us?”) for ever allowing this evil, slavery-like existence “That noose on us won’t loosen up but loose enough to juice us up”.

Scroll back up and look at those five lines I quoted earlier. After the main ideas from the verses beginning, they gain depth and nuance. First, over-eating and drinking wine become examples for how Andre’s devil juices people up. Second, the part about Welch’s connects to his criticism of consumer culture, as it encourages people to define their self-worth on what they can buy, so much so that they’ll lie about being wine experts to create a façade that they are rich and thus “better people”. Lastly, Andre admits to his own flawed humanity, his own failings on opposing this manipulative system: he still likes the wining and dining! (And this is only about 40% of Andre’s verse)

Of course, very few people listen to music as if they’re analyzing poetry. Most treat music like a house plant: something nice to have in the background, something that doesn’t require much thought. That’s fine, but I get annoyed about how rap seems to get pigeonholed as the background for partying or working out, activities where you’re turning your brain “off”. There are rappers, like Andre, creating verses that offer as much intellectual stimulation as the most “complex” and “deep” shows, movies, novels, and poems out there—all you got to do is stop, close your eyes, and really listen.

In 1898, steamers transported goods up and down the Detroit River all week. On Saturday and Sunday, these steamers transported weekenders with blankets and picnic baskets to a small island on the river. By 1920, the location had become so popular they built an amusement park. Originally, this island was called Bois Blanc (French for White Woods), but after years of American mispronunciation the name was changed to Bob-Lo in 1949. A pair of steamers kept shuttling families to and from Detroit to Bob-Lo island until 1990. Three years later the amusement park officially closed. It’s now a private residential community.

Born in 1977, Royce da 5’9” enjoyed those boat rides and the wooden coasters before it closed down. To set the scene, his song begins with an actual radio ad for Bo-Blo Island followed by a fake one. The nostalgia-inducing beat samples Michael’s Urbaniak’s “A Day in the Park” (on theme!), and the occasional rewind effects are further reminders that the rappers are reflecting on their past.

In his verse, Royce finds the roots to his identity in his trips to Ba-Blo Island. He gets his gangster from his grandma, who beat up his grandpa’s mistress for messing with her man. Then he touches on family dysfunction by mentioning that park weekends were the rare times when his parents got along. Next, he moves to sex: he lost his virginity on the boat and got paranoid because he didn’t use a dome. His final admission is that boozing during boat “pre-drinks” was the birth of his future alcoholism.

Cole goes back to his second semester of the tenth grade. Inattentive ears might hear him bragging about his car (a common rap topic), and yet, here, it’s done tongue-in-cheek. Instead of a Bugatti, he’s talking about rolling in his mom’s dented Honda Civic. Driving it slow, picking up his friends, bumping music: he feels like the man. But not completely. In order to fully “grow up”, he needs to lose his virginity. Cole’s verse has so many internal and multi-syllabic rhymes it steals the show, and, unfairly, overshadows Royce, who I felt did a better job staying on topic. But, all in all, the two combine to form a meticulously crafted walk down memory lane.

It’s so hard to pull off an ironic song. If you’re too obvious, it’s just lame or it’s just too much, as it’ll go against the ultimately enjoyable function of music. So, without being too obvious, you need a tune where the music and message don’t match. Or to be more specific, the music and message are simultaneously contradicting each other.

The first challenge is making the music speak. Separate from the lyrics, the voice and beat need to sound as if they’re saying something. “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome” does this by sounding like a 1999 female RnB/pop radio hit. Rina does a convincing Christina Aguilera, Britney, and J-Lo impression on a beat that sounds like “Genie in a Bottle” and “…Baby One More Time”, and “If You Had My Love”. So when you hear phrases like “ready to go out” and “isn’t she beautiful?” and “lips full of glitter”, you think the song’s going to repeat the message that dominated millennial pop tunes: I’m a strong woman that deserves the best kind of love.

However, Rina’s message isn’t saying that. It’s actually about a girl who’s so dependent on her phone that she’s lost desire and confidence to be social in real life. The little confidence she has is attached to her phone: “I am connected, I am the girl you want to watch”. But, for the most part, Rina’s lines speak to a bleak existence. There’s depression: “pretty but sad inside”. There’s anxiety: “ready to go out, but her body tells her no”. There’s paranoia: “in my 4×3, they can’t get to me”. There’s porn addiction: “the way you touch just don’t feel right/ Used to feeling things so cold/ minimizing windows”.

One on hand, the music is saying, “I’m so sexy and confident I can have high romantic standards”. On the other, the message is saying, “I’m so detached and uncertain I can’t leave my room.” That’s irony. Sometimes artists will luck into an ironic song, but I believe Rina knew exactly what she was doing. The last line of her chorus and song is “Happiest whenever I’m with you online” but the way she delivers “online” makes it sound like “all night”. So, in post-modern fashion, she gives you the option to digest the song however you want.

My all-time favourite break-up song. It’s got all the instrumental necessities: acoustic piano, strings, and gentle drums. But more importantly it’s got Sade’s delivery. When she sings about how dudes just drink to deal with splits, she uses a lower register, which comes off as a maternal “that’s just how the world is”. On the other hand, when she directly addresses the girl, she reaches a higher register, as if there is a sense of urgency to tell her not to blame herself for the break-up. This supportive message is crystalized on the chorus: “In another time, girl/ your tears won’t leave a trace”. When a painful situation goes down, one of our darkest thoughts is that we wonder if we’re now permanently and visibly scarred and everyone will see us as lesser, as broken. However, Sade assuages that negativity with her wise yet empathetic voice.

Sade’s consoling voice is always there for the meditative romantic.

Unlike most electro bangers, there is no build up. The hypest part is at 0:01, and since I usually go to club tracks for an instant energy bump, I wish more of them followed this format.

Definition of manic: showing wild, apparently deranged, excitement and energy. That’s the best word to describe this. The beat’s an insane mix of militant drums, a glitchy bass, a women’s voice making random noises, eerie screeches, and silenced gunshots. Equally captivating is Schoolboy’s mercurial flow, which boils then simmers between detached flatness to offensive (and offended) fury.

In the past, male RnB singers cared a lot about love. SiR, a Modern RnB artist, crooning over warm bass, approaches love with detached indifference, “If she need to go there, I’m gon’ let her go there/ She know it’s alright with me”

The harmonies in the verses and chorus are as sweet as a black cow (a 70s term for a scoop of ice cream in a cola).

Pass the case of dynamite and the keys to the Harley then point me to the unknown!

All the sounds are so obviously computerized; all the threads in the carpet are visible. The song’s frank. and it won’t judge if you dance.

When it comes to ex-lovers, RnB songs are resolute: I’ve moved on or I miss you. But in real life, our thoughts towards relationships exist in an “in-between” state, perpetually swinging between decisions, never sure of our feelings. SZA captures that. She goes from decisive departure (“I’m really leaving, and no I’m not keeping your shit”) to insecure dependency (“wish I was comfortable just by myself, but I need you”). While her intentions flip-flop, she’s unwavering in her honesty, and that transparency puts us on her side even after she admits, “Let me tell you a secret: I’ve been secretly banging your homeboy”.

A theme song for the ambitious artist who has social anxiety. The echoes, the unequalized instrumentation, the distorted microphone, and the fluctuating volume on the guitar make it sound as if Kevin Parker is on stage, or at least being heard by a lot of people. And yet, as listeners, we are not in the crowd. Instead, we are in Kevin’s head. Throughout the whole song, we hear his whispered mantra, “Gotta be above it, gotta be above it, gotta be above it…” which serves as both his coping mechanism for getting over stage fright but also hints at the harsh inner critic that makes him feel inadequate in the first place.

There’s a techno-ish build that’s traditionally followed by a lyric about living in the moment or love. Yet, Impala subversively call to the guilt in your subconscious, “It might be time to face it!”

2000s RnB songs are comfortingly formulaic. Tamia’s “I’m So Into You” is a great example. It goes: brief instrumental intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, then final chorus. But even though you know how the song’s going to go, there’s enough diversity within the formula to keep you interested.

This is mainly done through “vocal building”. The voices densify from verse to chorus. On the first verse, Tamia sings alone. Then, on the pre-chorus, her voice becomes layered, which means that she records herself singing the same part in different octaves then stacks them on top of each other. Finally, on the chorus, she sprinkles in her solo voice on top of the layers, crooning the main melody in different ways. Simply put: as the song unfolds, there are more Tamias singing at the same time.

The second vocal build is across choruses. In the first chorus, Tamia doesn’t do much. She’s pretty much a background vocal to herself, echoing the central melody. In the next one, those vocals start to stray from simple repetition into more unexpected twists. She’s hitting and holding high notes and switching up her pace. On the final chorus, her throat chords are unleashed, and her “background” vocals take centre stage. Because there’s less melodic predictability, less conforming to the song’s central structure, this creates the sense that the song has become more emotional– Tamia’s crying out rather than performing lyrics.

So, even though millennial RnB is a little predictable, it’s the creative build of voices, the decorations on the overall structure, that keep the choruses glued to our brains 20 years later.

It’s cool to share all your childish possessiveness when you’re in love or rich or have a hook this catchy.

The bassline gargles and bubbles with a funky awkwardness that suits Thundercat’s odd outpour. The man has lost his heart, literally. And while his over-the-top bridges are reminiscent of traditional ballads, there’s something about lyrics like, “Why in the world would I give my heart to you? Just to watch you throw it in the trash”, which make me feel as if he’s not taking himself that seriously.

“I want a brand new house/something I cannot buy, something I can’t afford” is chanted as if its speaker has been programmed to pursue its message without contemplation. Furthermore, in his typical lowest-of-the-lo-fi style, Toro Y Moi’s mentions of airport anxiety, baggage claim, unread texts, and long showers draw a portrait of millennial detachment.

On theme with the “astro” in Astroworld, this track feels like a druggie travelling through space. The drums rumble and snap and roll like a spaceship. Keyboard notes randomly streak across the track, like pretty shooting stars. Travis’s voice has an echoed muffle, as if he’s in a NASA helmet, acknowledging that he’s drifted from the real world.

Trey Songz made RnB ballads feel less dramatic, more tongue in cheek, as if he knew they’d be sarcastically crooned by teenagers.

Tribe always remind me of hip-hop’s essence: conscious, confident, and cool. First, there’s the beat. Like many of Quest’s others, it’s great, but it doesn’t distract from the words, which is really what the genre is about. Second, their choruses don’t try too hard. They sound like natural extensions of their verses rather than attention-grabbing attempts. Third, the eternally laid-back duo of Q-Tip and Phife always seem like their freestyling with friends. This is due to their simple flow (that does sound a little dated), but it’s also because they sound like they’re genuinely having fun. I can hear many of today’s rappers concerned with their brand, angling for an inflammatory line to get retweeted, trying to ignite a rap beef, or stretching a rhyme to shout out an endorsed product. Tribe rapped to rap. Last, they were so comfortable being contradictory. They comment on fellow musicians shamelessly chasing dollars while honestly admitting the struggle of checking their own paper-chasing instincts. Pure hip-hop.

Rap is self-esteem and self-importance in poetic form. It is the sound of raw american individualism. It is the puffed ego’s genre. bragging about money, girls, and skill usually happens over celebratory and/or agressive sounding beats, but, to me, rap is at apex confidence when done over smooth jazz. Everyone is cocky after a win. Everyone flexes before a fight. But it takes an absurdly sized ego to keep that same energy over lazy drums and elevator piano.

A master-class in lyrical storytelling. Tracy builds a whole narrative around the theme of “escape”, using the car as a symbol.

In the first verse, she establishes that her relationship with the car-owner (her ticket to escape) is born out of desperation.

In the second verse, she plans her departure. In the third verse, she explains why she’s in her position: she had to drop out of school to take care of her alcoholic father (foreshadowing) after her mom left.

Next, we get the chorus, where the narrator feels best when she is driving away, fast. The chorus doubles down on the car as a symbol for positive change.

The fourth verse finds them in a new town. The narrator is working as a checkout girl, but her partner is still unemployed and they live in a shelter—hardly her fantasy.

In the fifth verse, things are even bleaker. Her partner is now an alcoholic and sees more of his friends than he does their kids.

The song ends with: You got a fast car Is it fast enough so you can fly away? You gotta make a decision Leave tonight or live and die this way The car is no longer “their car”. The narrator is done with hoping for an improved life, which can be interpreted as either becoming realistic or defeated. She gives her partner an ultimatum. He can continue trying to find his fantasy life, or he can just accept what they have and stay with her. Through the story of a couple, Tracy details how the idea of “escape” can change across time.

Besides the undeniable swagger that still emanates from 70s funk, I’m drawn to this song because of the of the clear difference in what the word “cool” means today compared to 50 years ago. Today, a song with the title with “It’s Cool” would be something chill, something that sounded like a big shoulder shrug. However, Walter is in love and he is definitely not acting “modern-day cool”, as he belts from his soul on top of strings and trumpets. Walter deplys “cool” more literally, like a cold guest of wind sweeping through his rib cage, energizing his soul, lifting his heart skyward.

Andromeda is a galaxy, and, more relevantly, the name of a mythical princess. In her Greek tale, her mom claims her daughter is more beautiful than any god, so an offended Poseidon chained her to a rock next to a sea monster as punishment. Love, Perseus’s love, eventually rescues her. It is the theme of “being saved by love” that Weyes Blood plays with. It’s not a monster that the singer dares an addressed “crazy guy” to try and save her from– it’s her own lazy heart, her own doubts towards love.. Sonically, you can find “epicness” in the somber, opera voice and string sections. Yet, the acoustic guitar strums and twangs keep it applicable to our age.

My desire to poeticize music started with these guys. It was Sunday, and the family was cleaning up. Willie and Lobo, a New Flamenco duo, played on my living room speakers, and my dad bobbed his head. He loved this album and usually played it from top to bottom without interruption. However, for some reason, on that Sunday he paused the CD and asked me to sit on the couch and close my eyes. He told me to listen, really listen to the music.

My pops said “listen” but I felt like he really meant “understand”. So, with my lids down, I tried to break the song down. There seemed to be two sides. The guitar and drums were on one. The violin was on the other.

Then I recalled one thing my grandma said. One night, as we shared the bench in front of my piano, she told me, “The left hand and right hand are always having a conversation. Sometimes they talk is patiently, sometimes angrily, and sometimes they both feel differently.”

I used grandma’s analogy on this song. I thought there were two sides: the guitar and drums (GD) on one, and the violin on another. For the first two and a half minutes, I felt like the guitar and drums (GD) and violin were in agreement. Their civility created a lazy vibe, like the two were an old, resigned couple. However, at 2:37, the GD suddenly strummed and drummed quicker. It’s like she picked up the pace to challenge the violin’s vigour. At first, the violin was reluctant, but he eventually accepted the challenge: bowing quickly, hitting all kinds of notes, holding the high-pitched ones. And, in the end, the violin is so energized he can’t calm down. Even when the GD returns to the initial lazy beat, he’s can’t reel himself back from an emotion out pour.  

Sitting on that couch, listening to “Salsa Verde”, my thoughts were buzzing. I couldn’t have enough of them. I was excited about all these ideas. The song is like a conversation! It’s also like a story! It’s also like a dance! It’s also like a game! It’s like… LIFE!

When I opened my eyes, things felt different. My home had become unfamiliar in a good way. Even as I resumed the usually tedious Sunday clean up, I felt a wider sense of possibility inside moments that were formerly boring. Simply put, I was in a state of awe. And the fact that trying to “understand” a song could make me feel that way blew my mind in a way I still haven’t got over.

Wiz never gets mentioned as one of the best rappers of the past 15 years. That honour usually goes to the quotable and combative lyricists, but his appeal was never words—it was style. In this sense, he was internet Snoop Dogg, as it was never about what he was saying but, instead, how he was saying it. And the confident aura based in his annunciation was only compounded by his beat selection. In 2010, rapping on a post-disco sample was bold because it was so odd. 10 years later, Wiz has built a quality catalogue of beats. I couldn’t care less about the “sell-out” or “tasteless” label on him—I’ll still give his new projects a listen because I respect his ear.

A song for the daydreamers, for the over-thinkers: tired of mulling over the big questions, Quadry seeks relief, “I been thinkin’/All that thinkin’ got me smokin’, drinkin’”.