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The middle child of the middle child of hip-hop, KOD is the perfect encapsulation of J. Cole’s art. Situated between his signature 2014 Forest Hills Drive and the meteoric rise of The Off-Season , this record serves as a microcosm of the North Carolina rapper’s own position in the rap game. If one was to interpret 2014 Forest Hills Drive as your Jay-Zs and Eminems, and The Off-Season as the new breed; KOD is ultimately J. Cole. With all his highs and lows. King OverDose reigns supreme all over the first part of this record. From one of the best covers of the 2010s to the crushing, egomaniacal bravado of his own title track, this man is powerful, proud and addicted to everything on God’s green Earth. This is further developed excellently as Cole’s portrayal of these addictions, coupled with his untouchable storytelling ability, takes one on a journey through some incredibly relatable inner demons. The anxiety of love ( Photograph ), the betrayal of friends( The Cut Off ), money and

Sticking with how she presents herself, you might be a little frightened of the demonic glare poking from the album cover. A weirdo and thankfully so. But scratching beneath the macabre surface leads to a surfeit of fleeting tricks and quirks, brimming with wit and poise missing from the poppier struts of Don't Smile At Me.  As teenagers go, she's more than sweet - she's funny, refreshingly direct and brave enough to sacrifice conventional hooks for a more impressionistic getup. But the songs stick with you from the opening retainer skit through 'Bad Guy''s titillating clicks, to 'Xanny''s bloated reverberations and ‘Wish You Were Gay’s’ humming smirk and so on, without a hint of hubris or bare-faced duds. Her trials echo proudly because we all were teenagers once, but with a bad job and better salary we like to forget it.  Only when the last three cuts play out, solemnly etched as "Listen Before I Go, I Love You, Goodbye', do you realise th

  Evolution in the most regressive of times. When the pandemic hit, I immediately scoffed at the influx of art that would be inspired by the dark days. If that art even remotely reflects the power of this EP, then the light at the end of the tunnel is closer than we think. BMTH have certainly come a long way since Count Your Blessings , combining a plethora of other genres in each of their subsequent albums. This cycle of experimentation concluded in 2019’s ambitious but dull amo , an album lead singer Oli Sykes confessed to being a pain to make. Thus, a new approach spurred on by global tragedy emerged from the band. This shorter, focused, tighter record filled to the brim with lockdown hatred, killer riffs and surprising features is a relentless stimulant, polymerizing everything that the band has done so far while simultaneously channeling their biggest influences. From opener ‘Dear Diary’s schizophrenic experience(where a dog’s face is bitten off due to the isolation) to Amy Le

Certified as the second-most successful artist of the last decade (thank you, Mr. Graham) is some triumph with the pressure to match, but for the most part she lives up to it here. Coming into her seventh album with help from Jack Antonoff and Joel Little, this ‘love letter to love itself’ strikes me hard as it’s engaging for every unlucky sweetheart to find themselves snared by the dumb yet pleasurable treats love brings.  So what if it’s over an hour long, a little sappy, a ploy to ‘reassert her commercial dominance’? More than any contemporary imaginable she’s earned the right to write this letter. At a stretch of 75 minutes she covers all bases, and while there are lulls, there’s a lightness here she’s only ever come close to achieving on record before. I love a few quotes: “But then something happened one magical night/I forgot that you existed”, “what doesn’t kill me makes me want you more”, “combat/I’m ready for combat”. The first five cuts are the best, but Swift sustains inter

  Their safest album. For Deftones standards however, that is an unpleasant direction. Gone are the beautiful, yet violent flamingos from the cover of 2016’s Gore , being instead replaced by a pair of eyes emulating those presiding over the Valley of Ashes in The Great Gatsby .  Despite this, the green light is far away from the grasp of the alternative rock giants. Sections that should be louder and choruses that should be breathtaking instead fall flat, all the while drowning in a sea of synth. Chino Moreno dreamily coos how he has achieved balance on the opening track Genesis and perhaps this is the problem. Conflict and contrast between the band members have been at the core of the majority of ‘Tones albums, ranging from magnum opus White Pony to Gore .  Loud, abrasive, heavy instrumentation clashing with soothing and melodic poetry is the Deftones formula so when the band is suddenly on the same page and in tune, the magic paradoxically evaporates. Glimpses of it are available o