Terrace Martin - Velvet Portraits [2016]

Terrace Martin garnered the attention of many by being a key part of Kendrick Lamar's masterpiece, To Pimp A Butterfly. Although Martin's contributions to Lamar's record were phenomenal, Velvet Portraits leaves a lot to be desired. It is clear that Martin is an accomplished musician, but this is an album that bores more than it hits. 

Adrian Younge - Something About April II [2016]

When Something About April II was released in January 2016, Adrian Younge was on a roll. He had produced a great album for Souls of Mischief (There Is Only Now) and produced what might be Bilal's best album (In Another Life). Additionally, the multi-instrumentalist's work was the source of the samples of the solid PRhyme album and he also worked on two albums with Ghostface. 

Anderson .Paak - Malibu [2016]

The key to Malibu is that there is plenty of variety in how aspects of groove, soul, and occasionally even jazz course through Anderson .Paak's music. The album does genre-hop, though not to the extreme of something like Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid. .Paak walks the tightrope between neo-soul, hip-hop, and R&B. Something like that could be an absolute train wreck, but thankfully the musician has the skill to do it all well. He is a great singer and a solid rapper. "Put Me Through" is imbued with classic soul and the song right after it, "Am I Wrong", switches things up to a much more contemporary club atmosphere. Despite the radical difference between these two songs, the transition works perfectly - a testament to .Paak's talent.

Dr. Lonnie Smith - Evolution [2016]

Organist Dr. Lonnie Smith's Evolution is filled with loads of groove. It begins with "Play It Back", a stunning Smith original. Pianist Robert Glasper drops in to blaze through an incredible solo. Jonathan Kreisberg provides funky guitar licks and Smith takes center stage near the end of the tune with a ridiculously soulful solo. The strong rhythms make it hard to sit still while listening.

Elucid - Save Yourself [2016]

Regardless of how abstract and indirect it may seem at times - make no mistake, Save Yourself is a deeply personal record. Throughout the development of Save Yourself Elucid's life went through a sea of changes: a change of jobs, the end of a seven-year relationship and the isolation that came with moving to East New York. In the meantime, although some would say the world around him was changing, others might point out that it was just revealing itself, with the rise of the #BlackLivesMatter movement putting a much needed microscope on the all too common horrid instances of police brutality towards Black Americans. All of this - in addition to the rapper's past, present and views on the future - strongly informs Save Yourself. For Elucid, it's a work "expressing Blackness", delving into "lost love, inequality, and liberation" and speaking on "histories and structures...pointing out where they intersect."

Mary Halvorson - Away With You [2016]

Mary Halvorson is an idiosyncratic guitarist who first burst onto the scene as leader with Dragon's Head, a well put together trio record. Since the release of Dragon's Head, Halvorson has continued to collaborate with fellow musicians, in and outside of jazz, while also recording more albums as a leader and adding more members to her original core trio with John Hébert (bass) and Ches Smith (drums). Taught by fellow rule-breaker, the avant-garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton, Halvorson's unique way of attacking guitar playing often features very angular playing and arrangements, complete with unexpected shifts in rhythm and tone that are undoubtedly influenced by free improvisation. Due to her difficult to classify style and knack to push boundaries, throughout the years she has become well known in the more eccentric side of the jazz scene of New York City. On Away With You, Halvorson presents the listener with her biggest band yet, an Octet which, in addition to the core trio, includes Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet), Jon Irabagon (alto sax), Ingrid Laubrock (tenor sax), Jacob Garchik (trombone) and Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar).

Run The Jewels - Run The Jewels 3 [2016]

Hip-Hop is funny isn't it? Honestly, who would've thought that one of the best recent hip-hop groups would be formed from El-P, of abstract hip-hop Def Jux fame and Killer Mike, who earned his stripes working in an Atlanta hip-hop scene that couldn't sound any more different than that? Even more surprising is that the fruits of this combination have given both rappers, who could have definitely been described as veterans before Run The Jewels was even an idea, an unprecedented level of attention. In a way, RTJ operates as a modern day M.O.P. - although they sound radically different and (unlike M.O.P.) get blatantly political, there are two things that you are guaranteed on every RTJ album that you would be guaranteed in M.O.P's hey-day (Firing Squad, First Family For Life, Warriorz): aggressive lyrics filled with braggadocio accompanied by extremely banging beats.

Solange - A Seat At The Table [2016]

In recent years D'Angelo's Black Messiah and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, albums that undeniably pull from the rich past of black music, genres like funk, soul and jazz, but at the same time feel fresh and contain socio-political commentary ("The Charade", "Alright"), have been released to wide mainstream and critical success. Each album performed extremely well on the charts, with D'Angelo and Kendrick Lamar reaching number five and number one on the billboard charts respectively. If these albums are continuing any relatively recent musical lineage, it is that of the Soulquarians, an eclectic collective of instrumentalists, singers and rappers of which D'Angelo himself was apart of. The Soulquarians, which consisted of Erykah Badu, Bilal, Common, D'Angelo, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Pino Palladino, James Poyser, Roy Hargrove, Q-Tip, Questlove, J Dilla and Raphael Saadiq, created a number of beautiful albums during the late 90s and early 2000s, that were full of soul (be it the expression or the actual genre), jazzy, funky and at times contained socio-political - pro-black - commentary (e.g: Common - Like Water For Chocolate). 2014 gave us Black Messiah, 2015 To Pimp A Butterfly and 2016's gift is Solange's A Seat at the Table, the latest, Soulquarian-descendent to take the charts by storm.  

Noname - Telefone [2016]

In a by-gone era, when visiting the ridiculously big (and now non-existent) Virgin record store in Manhattan was one of the highlights of my life as a young music enthusiast, the first thing that would have drawn me to Telefone would have been the cover. Like many great album covers, the art that accompanies the mixtape makes a statement without words, a statement that, more or less, lets the observer know what the content of this project will be. It's a simple, but powerful image: a young black girl, with flowers in her hand and a skull on her head. She is young, innocent, but weighed down by death - mourning. Telefone is a mixtape that deals with innocence, youth and growth. However, the most interesting - and at times heartbreaking - aspect about Noname's debut is how she juxtaposes the innocence, sonically and lyrically, with the harsh reality, which comes in the form of racism, police brutality and loss.

Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool [2016]

Radiohead knocked it out of the park when choosing the two singles, "Burn The Witch" and "Daydreaming". Outside of the context of this album, they are both quite stellar, and in the case of "Daydreaming", hypnotically beautiful. Aside from that, a listen to this record reveals that these two songs were probably the two most effective, in terms of being a near-perfect teaser trailer for this album. The songs that introduced the public to A Moon Shaped Pool didn't give away too little or too much - they revealed just enough.

Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid [2016]

Aesop Rock has been at it for a very long time now. The New York native, who is known for his lyricism, which includes crazy rhyme schemes, abstract wordplay and an impressively large vocabulary, released his first record, Music For Earthworms, in 1997. Since 1997, as is natural with the passing of time, Aesop Rock's music has gone through many changes. Over the years he eventually traded the beautifully gloomy beats by Blockhead that were part of what made Labor Days such an intriguing, and generally extremely well received album (to this day the consensus seems to be that it is his "classic") for a relatively faster and harder hitting, albeit still at times quite dark, production style. The key in this change being, that with Skelethon (2012), Aesop, for the first time in his career, handled all of the production himself. Skelethon, one of the best records of its year, confirmed many fans suspicions (he had already produced a good number of beats on his earlier records) that Aes' skills behind the boards are not that far behind his on the microphone.

Kendrick Lamar - Untitled Unmastered [2016]

In the interviews surrounding To Pimp A Butterfly, Terrance Martin revealed that there was an extremely high number of unfinished tracks that were scrapped from the album. In addition to this, during various live performances Kendrick Lamar performed "untitled" songs that were not present on his recent masterpiece, and were, until the release of this "album" believed to be tracks that the general public would never hear outside of those live settings. Those that have followed his TV performances will immediately recognize "untitled 3" and "untitled 8". "untitled 3" remaining a captivating song that explores racial stereotypes, although the recorded session lacks the fire of his Colbert Report performance, and "untitled 8" being a great song with extremely funky and soulful instrumentation, with Kendrick's verses being accompanied by background vocals which sing throughout the entire track.

Oddisee - Alwasta [2016]

It's always nice to see people like Oddisee, a great rapper, producer and a fantastic live performer, drop a free EP out of nowhere. Oddisee has been releasing nothing but quality for a while, with his most recent projects, Tangible Dream and The Good Fight, being very enjoyable. Those records featured a noticeable improvement from him in the rapping department, with Odd growing even more in synch with his production while being more adventurous with his flow and rhyming with well written and thoughtful lyrics. On this EP, we find Oddisse continuing this trend, delivering intelligent, well crafted rhymes over lush production that features tastefully used live instrumentation provided by his backing band, which is comprised of Ralph Real (keyboards and vocals), Dennis Turner (bass), Jon Laine (drums) and Oliver Saint Louis (guitar).

Esperanza Spalding - Emily's D+Evolution [2016]

Published on Pretty Much Amazing

This is an album of firsts for Esperanza Spalding. Emily’s D+Evolution is her first album of almost all original compositions (the only cover here is “I Want It Now”, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and her first album on which she has embraced a heavier, often guitar based sound. As a result, despite her past forays into classically influenced territory (Chamber Music Society) and mixes of jazz and soul elements with a pop sensibility (Radio Music Society), this is arguably her first album that runs a serious risk of alienating some of her fan base. I could be wrong (what do I know really?), but with the singles of her last (and highest selling) album being the pop-soul of “Black Gold” and a cover of a Michael Jackson classic (“I Can't Help It”) it is pretty easy to see how someone who hasn't paid that much attention to her artistic evolution since 2012 (the singles from D+Evolution are not chart topping hits, after all) could find this album, opening with some dark keys that lead into some heavy guitar playing that has more in common with a Cream record than her past efforts, more than a bit surprising.

David Bowie - Blackstar [2016]

For those who processed the record directly before or after his death, it will be impossible to separate Bowie’s death from the analysis of Blackstar. One could argue that it’s nearly impossible to find a similar situation in music history. That situation would have to have the following five key factors:

(1) The artist is aware that he will probably die soon and decides to record an album 

(2) The album produced contains songs that musically have a dark and foreboding atmosphere 

(3) There are blatant references to death and mortality, lyrically and visually throughout the project (the "Lazarus" video speaks for itself)

(4) The public did not know that the artist had the illness which caused his death.

It is sadly appropriate that Bowie, a one of a kind artist, would exit this earth artistically in such unique circumstances. To dedicate your life to art is one thing, but to use the possibility of your death as something that fuels your art is something else entirely.