Big dissapointment from Stormzy’s third album. I was excited for the album considering his song Mel Made Me Do It which is defintely my favourite Stormzy song. It’s an 8 minute show of his rapping ability full of quotables and a music video with a plethora of entertaining appearances. The album takes a steep depature from this sound moving into very bland R&B. Much of his rapping is almost spoken word on this and his lyrics aren’t powerful enough to carry over 50 minutes of this slow style. While he does reach someone moments of heart touching introspection and religious belief like Holy Spirit most of the album falls short. Sampha has a great feature on this though, on Sampha’s Plea.

A pretty bland showing from Rodrigo Campos especially considering his exciting, avant-garde work with Jucara Marcal. This is a pretty basic MPB with from Sara Bentes on 3/4 of these tracks. Sara Bentes brings an even more commercial sound to this album. While it’s not bad nothing is particularly memorable and ranks pretty low on the plethora of interesting and ground-breaking Brazilian albums released this year.

This is the 7th album from NBA Youngboy released this year and you can feel he’s running out of steam. Luckily he teams up with Quando Rondo to bring more energy. This album is much more focused on Quando Rondo with 5 solo tracks out of 16. He brings an exciting energy of typical trap beats. None of Youngboy’s verses are bad but you can tell he’s running out of energy and lyrics by his 7th album. While nothing really stands out this is a solid album and defintely better than Youngboy’s other collab album this year with DaBaby.

I discovered this artist off the Black Panther 2 soundtrack released two weeks ago. Building off the attention that comes with a big soundtrack feature she’s released her 3rd album. This album is in the Amapiano genre which is South African house music featuring minimal and rhythmic production. This album features at least two people on every track and up to 7 people on the longer tracks. This showcases a wide variety of talent and voices from South Africa. While all the production is solid this album feels long with most tracks clocking in at over 6 minutes. Interesting to get into South African house music but overly long.

This album is originally released in 1997 but was just released on streaming services by reggae legend Barrington Levy. While this wasn’t released during his commercial peak during the early 70s and 80s this still is a great reggae and dancehall album. Catchy, groovy and rhythmic; this album ticks all the boxes of a great reggae album. Barrington Levy’s album sounds powerful and more mature here being almost 20 years into his career. This is a solid album to get more into reggae music beyond just Bob Marley.