PUSHA T - DAYTONA
HIP HOP/RAP
SIMILAR ARTISTS: KANYE WEST, JAY ROCK
This album is a minimalist paradise, with hard hitting and clever lyricism delivered over Kanye West production that throws off the maximalism of previous projects like MBDTF for a driven pared down approach that highlights the vocals and occasional sample work. Paring down the album to 7 tracks was a perfect move, going against the mold of modern rappers delivering 15-20 song albums for streaming numbers and in the process dragging out bad ideas over multiple songs. Here, everything is focused down to a perfect point—when the minimalism gives way to soul samples and the rare feature, it feels like a natural progression rather than a stark contrast. In short, everything works and nothing is wasted.
LEMAITRE - CHAPTER ONE
POP/ELECTRONICA
SIMILAR ARTISTS: SOHN, SLOW MAGIC
This album is an interesting beast—not quite album, not quite compilation, despite its official qualification as the latter, as it's composed both of tracks from their earlier Relativity series of EPs and more recent singles. Lemaitre creates bubbly electropop with a variety of lyrical themes and varying levels of poppiness vs electronic stylings, but has a very consistent style that is close to instantly recognizable—this is what makes Chapter One really feel like an album over a compilation. Songs move from happy to sad, from mostly or fully instrumental to full on pop songs, and each type has its merits: their instrumentals are fun and cute, while their pop songs can only be called bops. Some have harder electronic backgrounds (Higher, Closer), while others are much softer and sometimes so soft you can miss that there's any electronic aspects at all (Cut To Black, Strobes Pt. 2). I'm still mad they left out Coffee Table from Relativity 1, but hey, this is a great compilation from a very consistent and fun artist that I'll come back to over and over again.