Album Reviews Posts

Is there a precedent for 55-year-old rappers making good albums?No?Well, of course, count on LL Cool J to break the mold. It’s something he’s been doing for four decades. He was the first solo rapper to have a Gold album. The first s…

We’re in 2026. Bruno Mars is, arguably, the biggest male singer on the planet*. His world tour sold out in minutes. He’s already amassed more Grammy Awards than his heroes Elvis, Michael and Prince. It’s hard to believe that once, …

When TLC stepped onto the scene in 1992, they broke the mold. While they were created in the image of Bell Biv DeVoe’s “hip-hop smoothed out on the R&B tip with a pop feel appeal to it” mission statement, TLC offered a differen…

When 19-year-old Janet Jackson flew to Minneapolis to record the album that ultimately became Control, she couldn’t have had any idea that the recording sessions she signed on for could reshape pop music. After all, the producers she was trave…

Michael Jackson is widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest pop stars of all-time. The Motown-era Jackson Five are acclaimed as the granddaddy of the modern boy band. However, the average music fan assumes that the Jackson brothers left Motown…

It’s hard to listen to, much less review, Tupac Shakur’s All Eyez On Me without taking in all that happened in the months leading up to the album’s release, and all that happened in the months after the album’s release. …

Where were you the first time you heard Amy Winehouse? I very distinctly remember my boss pulling me aside one afternoon and saying “listen to this.” “This” was “Rehab,” the cheeky opening track of Amy’s sec…

Group dynamics are always a tricky thing. Even if a collective is set up with the intention of being a democracy, there will always be some kind of imbalance. Someone’s gonna get more lead vocals, someone’s gonna get more production cred…

1982 was a transformative year for music in many ways. The second British Invasion exploded, thanks to new, fresh acts like The Human League, Yazoo and Duran Duran. Rap music planted its flag with two era-defining singles, “The Message” …

The members of New Edition found themselves at a series of crossroads when the Heart Break album was conceived and recorded in 1988. After making their debut in 1983 with “Candy Girl”, the group had established themselves as one of the m…