If anything, RTJ3 feels like the first record to be anti-Trump.

But what I haven’t read about as much is how musically sound RTJ3 is. It may be a protest record, if a vengeful one, but it’s an incredibly well-made one. It’s the culmination of everything the duo has been working on over the past several years.

As always, the beats are sharp and tonally dark. “Hey Kids” is a classic El-P production, with a swaggering beat that seemingly hums with its ire. “Stay Gold” reminds me of the beats from Cancer 4 Cure, El-P’s best production effort. “Don’t Get Captured” and “Thieves! (Screamed the Ghost)” are delightful counterparts that exemplify the record’s perfect pacing.

But the guest appearances here are notable for the texture they add to the record. Kamasi Washington’s turn in “Thursday in the Danger Room” adds so much to the song; without his saxophone work, the track would be notably starker and less emotive. Washington’s sax work makes El-P and Killer Mike sing over the beat, rather than rap over it.

There is truth, though, in the reviews that suggest this is RTJ at their angriest. The final track (“A Report to the Shareholders / Kill Your Masters”) is a reflection of Killer Mike’s year as a social and political activist. It’s an essay about the months he spent volunteering for Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail and the disappointment in the establishment’s inability to defeat Trump. That the track is partially titled “Kill Your Masters” is an indictment in and of itself.

My one wish is that RTJ would release instrumental versions of their records. I’d love an instrumental version of Run the Jewels 3 alongside my instrumental version of Cancer 4 Cure to work to.

RTJ3 is many things. It’s a record of revolt and protest, a promise of revolution, and an angry letter from a hip hop duo who’s been warning us all about bad politicians for years. But perhaps more importantly, it’s also a savage hip hop record. The beats are slick, the rhymes are sharp, and the production is absolutely impeccable. RTJ3, like Run the Jewels’ previous efforts, is an easy recommendation that’s easily among 2016’s best.

Image above by Tom Spray. You can download RTJ3 for free on Run the Jewels’ website.

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Corbin told me R & R was six years in the making, and put together entirely digitally over two countries in that time (Corbin is Canadian and Harmon is from Tennessee). As life changed for both rappers, so too did the record. Corbin and Harmon met each other at Flavor Fest in Tampa in 2010, and immediately knew they wanted to work together.

So this collaboration began in an effort to work long distance, put it together, and get it done. Six years later, after a number of highs and lows, the collaboration is over. There’s no chance you’ll see these guys tour together — the logistics won’t work — but making the project was a victory for the two family men.

And it’s a tremendous record. It might have taken six years to come together, but it doesn’t sound like it took that long. There are no signs of gestation anywhere.

More importantly, these two sound great together. They’re both great rappers with positive outlooks on life, and it’s refreshing to hear rappers who are focused on positivity.

In one telling moment on “Real Thugs” (my favourite track on the record), the duo samples Count Bass D. They turn the rapper’s one-off line “Real thugs don’t rap” into a fantastic, honest chorus. “Real Thugs” is one of those songs that works because of its reference to vintage hip hop. It strips the genre bare and naked, removes its showboating, and focuses on reality.

“Still Building” is my other favourite track on the record. The beat is great, the lyrics are clever, and the message is poignant.

I love it.

Lyrically, this is Christian hip hop. But I don’t think non-Christians would be bothered by it. If anything, this is a call for us to all get along together. It’s a reminder that we’re all humans, and that we all have to live and work together. The message is simple: we need to stand together when times get tough, and rejoice when things are good.

The whole album feels like a long period of rejoicing. There’s no negativity to be found here. These two guys are just glad to make music, and you can tell when you listen to it.

The album also packs together instrumental versions of each track, which is a great way to hear the record. The beats are definitely vintage, but they’re excellent. They sound ‘90s, but that style is still in, right? I’ve made a playlist with the instrumental tracks exclusively for work, and they make excellent music for focusing.

For a couple of independent rappers, R & R is a surprisingly strong record. It sounds indie — after all, this project spans six years and two countries — but it’s also at another level of creativity and talent. Travis Harmon and Jon Corbin have made a tremendous and positive record — and it’s nice to hear that music like this in a genre like hip hop.

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But to ignore Knxwledge, whose name is a big part of the NxWorries title, would be a major mistake. His production serves as the vehicle that .Paak hasn’t had yet in the hip hop world.

In short, Knxwledge is the reason that .Paak is about to explode from being an R&B saviour to a hip hop king.

It’s not that .Paak can rap (although he demonstrates some tenacity in that regard). It’s more that the beats on display here owe more to hip hop than most of the production on .Paak’s last record did.

This makes for a beautiful record. For .Paak, it’s jubilant. His voice is impressive throughout, but he’s clearly having a ton of fun. Tracks like “Livvin” and “Get Better/Do U Luv” have qualities to them that wouldn’t have existed on Malibu, the .Paak record that came out in February. .Paak knows he’s rising in the ranks.

Knxwledge has found a natural complement to his rhythms and beats. His beats haven’t flowed this well or felt this natural in a long time. The vocals lend them some charm, even when they feel too old-school or offbeat for their own good (pardon the pun).

There have been a few people who have compared the partnership to Dilla and Madlib. To me, it’s more directly related to the partnership between Madlib and MF Doom that resulted in Madvillainy. (Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Yes Lawd! was released on the same label as Madvillainy was.) These are two seemingly disparate voices who are able to come together and create something better as a whole than they are apart.

With all that being said, the question I’m left with isn’t whether or not Yes Lawd! is a great album. It’s an impeccably made, joyful record. It’s the record you make when you know you’ve finally “made it.”

No, the question I have is this: is Yes Lawd! the best Anderson .Paak record of the year? Malibu, I think, edges it out only a little bit. But the fact that it’s such a close contest is a remarkable testament to both Knxwledge and .Paak.

Clearly, .Paak has arrived. With Yes Lawd!, he continues to surprise. Knxwledge’s role in the record is the cherry on top of the cake.

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If you don’t know Watsky, you might remember seeing him perform in season six of HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry for his slam poetry. He also became popular for a YouTube video in 2010 called “Pale kid raps fast” (which is no longer available), which got him the attention of Verizon, who asked him to appear in a commercial to promote a new product with a speed rap. Not only did Watsky decline, he felt it was such an insult to his artistic integrity that he made another video making fun of Verizon.

That attitude — an attitude of passion and artistry — seeps into his hip hop. x Infinity finds Watsky calling us to be more real with each other.

That attitude is evident in hard-hitting tracks like the anti-Trump (and anti-Clinton) “Pink Lemonade”, or the emotionally involving “Stick to Your Guns” — a protest song about gun violence, news networks, and politics. “Hit me with your truth,” Watsky raps, almost pleadingly, on the song. It’s an observation of the lack of honesty from reporters and politicians, but it’s also a cry asking us to get better at this.

If you want to hear his speed rapping, Watsky unleashes it on the virtuosic “Don’t Be Nice”, which he uses to joke about hot moms and seriously tell people that he doesn’t have time for “fake friends”.

Throughout x Infinity, which features as many bangers as it does pop-infused moments of quiet beauty, Watsky continues to plead with us to be more honest and vulnerable with each other. He leads by example on songs liked “Talking to Myself”, when he opens up about his personal struggles.

It can be hard to hear his messages through his rapping, though: Watsky’s ability is second-to-none, and five albums in, he’s only getting better. Without a doubt, he’s one of the most skilled rappers in the world right now. His thoughtful lyrics are almost a bonus.

Whether he’s speed rapping or cleverly finding ways to adjust his intonation to match the instrumentation surrounding him, every track has moments that are worth discussing. On the previously mentioned “Don’t Be Nice”, he plays with his sample and raps against it, creating lines and verses off the sampled words “Don’t” and “Don’t Be” in an astonishing display of prowess and technical mastery.

x Infinity is the album that could elevate Watsky to household name. But he’s already got the attention of hip hop fans everywhere. With x Infinity, he continues perfecting his craft.

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I think Endless purposely existed as a filler record to get Frank Ocean out of his contract so he could independently release Blonde. I think Endless is the mostly-empty commercial counterpart to the emotionally involved and far better record, Blonde.

There is so much to say about Blonde. Even its name bears discussion: at the last minute, the name was changed from Boys Don’t Cry, prompting much confusion about whether the title is spelled “Blonde” or “Blond” and launching the Internet into rife speculation. The answer is simple: it doesn’t matter how you spell it, because Frank doesn’t seem to care, and the name was changed because a certain portion of the population wouldn’t understand that Boys Don’t Cry was a lie.

If anything, Blonde is a love letter to empathetic people. It suggests that boys do cry, that the appropriate response to tragedy is to weep and to mourn, and that we’ve lost something with all of our male posturing. Many musicians have said this in their music, but Frank lives this.

On “Nikes”, a track that couldn’t be considered a protest song even by the staunchest abusers of the term, Frank mourns Travyon’s murder as a black man. Mourns is the appropriate record. “Nikes” sets the bar for the rest of the record to come: almost completely beat-less, with a focus on Frank’s voice, encouraging us to get better at living with each other.

Unlike Kendrick, and perhaps unlike Beyoncé, Frank Ocean isn’t writing protest songs about blackness. He’s writing sad songs about losing our humanity. He’s writing music about empathy.

As good as the music is, that’s what I missed the most about Frank’s musical silence over the past four years. I missed his empathetic perspective.

On “Futura Free”, Frank Ocean spends the last half of the track talking to people on the street. The first half of the song is beautiful, Frank’s voice clearly having grown in the past four years. But in the last four minutes, Frank goes vocal and asks people on the streets about their lives.

For most musicians, moments like that would be throwaways. They’d be there to engineer an emotional response. But with Frank, it’s somehow clear how much he loves people. How much empathy he has for their stories.

That seems to be the driving momentum throughout Frank’s new record: there’s a sadness to it that strikes a chord in so many of us. Every track that feels like it’s about Frank — like “Solo” or the sensational “Self Control” (my favourite track on the record) — also feels like it’s about all of us.

I watched a brief, thoughtful exchange on Twitter yesterday between people talking about the melancholic moods that Frank’s music inspires in them. And it fascinated me that every metaphor described a similar feeling: loneliness in a crowd, that of invisibility. My favourite description was “a beach party in the winter.”

It’s all emblematic of the sensational control Frank has over the listener. Blonde is perfectly paced, with no track that could justifiably be removed — even the vocal interludes have a purpose, although they may be less infinitely re-playable than the more vocally-driven tracks.

Channel ORANGE was a spectacular album, but on Blonde, Frank Ocean has mastered his craft as a songwriter and performer. He’s writing music so far above his peers that it defies genre classification. It’s emotionally charged, powerful music that confronts its listeners with the empathy of its performer. It’s quietly transformative. The message is clear.

Perhaps boys should cry. And maybe we’d be better off if they did.

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The lyrics here are romantic and smooth, echoing the best of what soul and R&B has to offer. Almost every song feels like something that would work well on a classy date night. It feels all too rare that a good album with an air of romance comes out, and this is one of them.

The duo that makes this work is neo-soul singer Eric Roberson and rapper Phonte. It’s a surprisingly potent mix: while the backing tracks are decidedly R&B, Roberson is able to elevate his parts to feel like soul. Phonte’s raps make the album feel like classic hip hop, but he’s never abrasive. His vocals are as smooth as Roberson’s.

It’s astonishing how well these two voices work together. You needn’t look further than the first track, “It’s so Easy.” The second verse sees the duo swapping vocal parts, with Roberson rhythmically singing his part and Phonte joining in halfway through. When they swap, you might not even notice it because it’s so smooth.

It’s not a trick that gets old. “My Kinda Lady” has a similar feel, with the swap handled well. It’s a poor word because it’s so vague, but “classy” is the only word I have to describe music like this. It’s clear that Roberson and Phonte have a rapport here, and that the two have left their egos at the door.

Some tracks, like “My Kinda Lady” and “It’s so Easy” feel led by Roberson, but others swap the roles. I love “Lie to Me,” which feels like a Phonte-led track despite Roberson’s heavy presence. On others, they share the lead: “Grow This Love” features Phonte carrying the chorus’s backbone while Roberson sings the lead. It makes the duo sound bigger than they are.

Roberson’s vocals largely dominate the record, which is an important note because it speaks to what Tigallero is supposed to be: a modern neo-soul record with elements of hip hop. Fans of Phonte might find him under-utilized, but it feels like the record has exactly enough of him.

For me, Tigallero is a breath of fresh air: it’s got the soul of a vintage R&B record, but the modern approach of two masters at the top of their game. It’s fresh, despite some of the trappings of yesteryear, and the vocal performances are fantastic. More than once, Tigallero reminded me of a classier Justin Timberlake at his prime (and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible).

Compared to some of this year’s other standout releases, Tigallero’s release is rather quiet. But the songwriting is quality, and the performances are excellent. Phonte & Roberson call Tigallero a “project,” which implies — at least to me — that this could be a one-off record.

I hope that’s not the case, because this is the sort of collaboration that I’d like to see continue. Both artists leave their egos at the door and focus on putting out great, fresh music. It’s the rare musical partnership that works because the artists complement each other — it’s not a competition. And I’ve lot to hear more from them.

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“Living in that 80s song,” he half-raps, half-sings, in what sounds like a drug-induced state. His music captures nostalgia for a period his target demographic was never alive in, mixing R&B with hip hop in a way not dissimilar from Drake — but with a lot more soul.

That soul emphasis is what separates Berhana from all the Drake soundalikes who are veering away from auto-tune and towards R&B’s smooth rhythms and flows. It’s like Berhana spent a lot of time absorbing Drake and Chance the Rapper’s understanding of the world, and channeled that style intro a fresh take on his favourite genre: soul.

Berhana sounds like he’s been educated in soul music his whole life. “You used to love me; I used to love you,” he crones on “Janet.” It’s a stand-out track — because it’s both steeped in soul’s mythology and drenched in an 80s vibe that’s incredibly believable. The woman Berhana idolizes could very well be Janet Jackson or Janet Hubert — we don’t know, and we don’t need to know, because there’s an emotional connection to the referenced time period that’s authentic either way. (To be frank, he uses Fresh Prince clips throughout, so I’m pretty sure it’s an ode to Janet Hubert, but the point is that it doesn’t matter because he’s harnessing nostalgia to make us feel something.)

In short, Berhana’s stylings and ethos are familiar, but more effective, than many of his peers.

But then there’s that production: it’s incredible. Something about Berhana’s debut feels magical, from the opening moment to the album’s closing. “Brooklyn Drugs” opens with what I think might be a gunshot, which catches me off guard every time, but when the music finally comes, the synth sounds perfect and the kick is meticulous.

The slick production and fresh mix of emotionalism and nostalgia make Berhana’s EP far more effective than it has any right to be. The six tracks don’t overstay their welcome — and while I wonder how well-paced his eventual full-length record might be, Berhana’s debut EP stands out from the rest of the pack. It’s a fine first release from an artist I’m looking forward to hearing more from in the future.

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This new video aims to capture the attention of people who are obsessed with Pokémon Go — Orijin’s even called it “Pokémon Go Rap” on Youtube. It’s a smart move. The video’s as much fun as the song, and since it’s one of the best tracks on the new record, I have zero issues with this. The video’s great.

If you missed it, now’s as good a time as any to check out his sophomore record, Re:Percussions, out now on LSTNFND. Check it out on Apple Music, Spotify, or iTunes.

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Over the years, she’s recorded a number of solo records that each have their merits. But you can trace her career on a curve: the more records she releases, the more comfortable she becomes with singing. Her last record, Parts of Speech, was more or less a pop record.

A Badly Broken Code is her first record, released in 2010. And it’s filled with delicious and delirious hip hop. Dessa’s voice is seductively powerful and clearly very expressive, playing almost-sung hip hop lyrics, but she’s got a bit of venom in it at this point.

That’s not all to say that this is a pure hip hop record: Dessa is blatantly experimenting. Tracks like Dixon’s Girl expose not just her abilities behind a mic, but also her abilities as a songwriter and a singer.

Dessa is one of those artists who’s got bad timing: I think ten or fifteen years ago, she would have been way more popular. Tracks like Mineshaft II are potential radio hits, but Nicki Minaj beat her to it by 2010 and became the Queen of Rap.

But Dessa’s doing things that are more inventive and original without disrespecting hip hop’s past. She’s an artist that both hip hop fans and “regular folks” are going to love.

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His album has been described as a merger of folk and hip hop, and while I’m not sure that’s the best description, it might be as close as you can get. Beats and acoustic guitars intermingle, people sing in a chorus arrangement, and then Raury begins rapping. It’s like Fleet Foxes or Boy & Bear adding hip hop to their repertoire, and it works way better than you’d imagine.

The best of the bunch, from a songwriting perspective, is Love Is Not A Four Letter Word. He pairs slamming an ex-girlfriend with a vocal background soothingly singing “I miss you” on repeat in a choral arrangement. It’s truly stunning, and revealing of an emotional capacity well beyond his own years.

When Raury gets popular — if he’s not there already — I think there will be people who compare his production skills to Kanye West, thanks to his unique ability to surprise and entertain with what sounds like obvious connections between un-obvious sounds. But he’s really more like Common: he’s coming in with a unique perspective on the sound and the scene, and he’s rapping about things that are a little counter-cultural to the hip hop scene. If you ask me, rappers like him are the future of this genre. Check out Woodcrest Manor II for a taste of where this music is going.

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