Adrian Lee

In the ’50s, few were better than Buddy Holly at delivering light yet heart-heavy music with the kind of virginal authenticity that’d be considered audacious today. This compilation of covers largely captures that, with the best coming from stripped-down spaces (The Black Keys, My Morning Jacket), funky headcases (Cee-Lo Green) and surprising places (Kid Rock). […]

The sophomore effort by Washington rapper Wale, is cookie-cutter commercial hip-hop: not extraordinary, not terrible and probably forgotten by February. But that’s a relative success after Attention: Deficit—arguably the most uncomfortable and hype-evaporating hip-hop debut of the past decade—managed to alienate both hip-hop heads and hip-pop dalliers alike. Now a pet in Rick Ross’s Maybach […]

Being Jimmy Fallon’s house band certainly hasn’t left the Roots creatively fallow. Over two remarkable decades, Philly’s finest have crafted 10 good-to-great 
albums on the foundations of tight live instruments and sonically coherent sensibilities
—undun marks their ascension into the realm of the artful. Tracing the death of the fictional young gangster Redford Stephens, Black Thought […]

In hip-hop at large, few beatsmiths dare to release albums predicated largely on instrumental work. Once, LPs driven by rapper-free beats like Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals served as documents reminding hip-hop heads the culture was born on DJ tables; today, producers let their voices be heard through their rapper Rolodexes instead of beat machines. At its […]

Some movies are unapologetically desperate cries for Oscar consideration (hello, J. Edgar), and Take Care sounds like Drake’s attempt at the sonic equivalent. It’s more focused than 2010’s Thank Me Later, and goes harder without losing the smoky instrumentalism that defines his best work. Take Care’s title track, paired with the raw “Marvin’s Room,” captures […]

Listen long enough to Childish Gambino—AKA Community’s Donald Glover—and you’ll hear his primary gripe: no one takes his rap career seriously. But his resume informs his music, and his ability to make people care about him is Camp’s most impressive trick. Sure, there’s no evolution whatsoever from his past mixtapes, the narrative’s identical: alternately an […]

If churches played music like Toronto’s Bruce Peninsula—fulsome gospel-tipped thunder with four-part female harmonies cleaved by impeccable bluesman growling—I would go every week. Its sophomore effort is a distinct evolution from 2009’s A Mountain is a Mouth, which sticks to and nails an earthy aesthetic; here, the female voices are featured more prominently and the […]

As a lifelong hip-hop fanatic, I sometimes consider what I’ll play in my ’40s, while driving my kids to school. Will The Roots constitute “oldies”? When do The Clipse become The Beatles? Phonte Coleman’s first solo effort eases my forward-thinking mind. Phonte’s always made mature hip-hop about grown-man topics (infidelity, love, mortgages) with Little Brother […]