And all of it is deserved.

Izzy’s stage name is interesting to me. It reminds me of the sensual French pop that was sweeping New York City in the 1960s: full-bodied French singers taking jazz by storm with their mix of classic ability and full-throated sexuality. I don’t know if that’s the image that Izzy Bizu wants to conjure up, and I don’t presume to think it is, but it fits.

First things first: Izzy has a phenomenal voice. Reminiscent of Amy Winehouse, with hints of Adelle, Izzy’s voice hits the rafters with ease. Fitting with my theory on her stage name is her jazz-inspired singing style: it’s playful and sometimes inspirational. It fills a room. But she brings this jazzy style to big pop tracks.

Most of the tracks on this record have a lot of radio potential. “White Tiger”, “Skinny”, and “Diamond” are all excellent — and those are only the first three tracks. None of these songs are particularly thoughtful — “Skinny” is about the body size that Izzy looks for in men — but they’re loads of fun.

Interestingly, A Moment of Madness was supposed to be released in June, but got delayed. This is a summer record if I’ve ever heard one. (Just in time for an “Indian Summer”, right?)

That being said, many of the tracks towards the end of the record feel more traditionally jazz-inspired. “Hello Crazy” feels like a live track. “What Makes You Happy” is an Adelle-like slow burner that thrives off its jazz connections. “Mad Behaviour” features a big, radio-ready chorus, but can’t escape its own lethargy.

My point is, there are two Izzy Bizu’s here: one is a pop-ready, crazed machine of a singer. The other is a quiet and introspective jazz singer. I don’t know which one I’m supposed to be rooting for. Both are excellent.

All of this is to say that A Moment of Madness is too long. It feels like two records. At seventeen tracks, this isn’t a “moment” of madness (if it’s madness at all). It’s fifty-nine minutes of occasional sobriety.

That’s not an insult. I quiet enjoyed both records here. But there are two albums. If you want my advice, take A Moment of Madness and split it in two. Alone, these conflicting sides of Izzy Bizu are both more powerful.

“Mad Behaviour” is a better song when it’s not listened to in the context of “Give Me Love”. Again, both are excellent, but they’re so different.

As odd as it sounds, because of its personality crisis, this is a record we should treasure. There’s no doubt we’ll be hearing more from Izzy Bizu. But in the future, her records will be shorter and more focused. This sort of sprawl is exactly the kind of music Izzy should be making while she fine-tunes her musical identity. If A Moment of Madness is mad at all, it’s only because Izzy doesn’t know who she’s going to be yet. That makes A Moment of Madness exactly the sort of debut it should be.

In an era of perfection, where artists are polished to a shine, the polished production on A Moment of Madness can’t hide the joy of Izzy’s slow self-discovery. For all of the record’s complications and multiple personalities, I love that.

It would be a shame if you missed the debut from one of music’s biggest future stars. A Moment of Madness is to Izzy Bizu as 19 is to Adelle. Don’t skip it.

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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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It’s not solely because of the album’s quality, either: Brown Girl is a captivating personal and political statement that strikes the same notes as Beyoncé’s records. “Welcome to the Jungle”, the album’s first track, feels as much like a personal track as it does a personal one about navigating racial platitudes.

The title track is a career-maker, a song that works as both a single and a protest song. “I’m not just a brown girl in the rain. I’m a girl that likes to sing,” Aaradhna croons over the chorus. It’s a powerful message: Aaradhna uses it to deny and redefine the colour of her skin, her genre, and her measures of success (on a song that will no doubt garner radio play and more serious “best R&B track” nominations later this year).

In many senses, that track is going to come to define Aaradhna’s success and her career this year — and perhaps next. It’s worthy of every bit of praise it’s going to receive.

When she’s not blending political and personal so deftly, Aaradhna’s writing big pop hits like “Empty Hall” or the tender “Talk Sweet to Me”. She’s capable of jumping genres from one songs to the next, and she does it convincingly — without ever feeling like the songs don’t belong together.

Most of these tracks — the non-protest tracks, if you will — deal with heartbreak and the death of a relationship. I particularly love “Under the Blue Moon”, which is a playful blend of many blues and jazz elements with R&B overtones. “Drunken Heart, Smokey Mind” is similarly about unrequited love, but after the fact.

I particularly like the opening lyrics to “I Don’t Know”, the album closer: “I thought that if I gave this world my heart it would show. Still I don’t know, still I don’t know.” The sadness here is palpable.

But what I love about these songs of heartbreak is that they could as much be about protest as they are about love. It could be the sound of a heartbroken woman of colour: a woman who loves the world and is shocked by the way it doesn’t love her back.

As separate themes, heartbreak and protest are not conducive to one another, but Brown Girl feels like the rare time that all the elements come together like magic. It’s a pop record that isn’t focused on dance tunes; instead, Brown Girl feels like the record we need to hear right now — and not the one we wanted.

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That’s a good thing. Chapters has a unique air to it, despite its existence in the over-saturated R&B marketplace right now. Despite that, many of her songs offer original takes on the genre. Crush (which features a soulful Usher performance), has a chorus that plays with staccato elements influenced by reggae. Yuna’s performance on Your Love would fit well in a Bond film (I’d happily lobby for her to sing a Bond track, actually).

Perhaps it’s her background, but Yuna’s music has an ever-so-subtle hint of world music inspiration that I really like. It’s R&B that isn’t afraid to treat its audience as intelligent beings who are willing to take their time to digest something. The music is a multi-layered affair, more complex than what most of Yuna’s peers are doing.

I lost count of how many musical layers I heard in Poor Heart, which has a chorus that’s as intricate and dense as anything in electropop’s busy genre. It’s also a masterclass in songwriting: the chorus takes elements of the verse, amplifies them, and adds new textures and sonic qualities to create a whole new hook – even though the basic gist remains the same.

I think the best track on the record is Time. Yuna uses the final track on the record to tell her story and explain how she got into music as a child. It’s a song that’s meant to be encouraging, particularly for aspiring musicians and creative people. And Yuna is so sincere about it that you can’t help but be swept up in it. (It doesn’t hurt that the hooks are so great.) When the song is over, you’re shocked the album is over, and ready to hit play again and start the whole thing over.

Chapters is the third album from Yuna, and her work gets consistently more mature and impressive on every record. And like she notes, “it takes time” to become a master and get taken seriously by your peers. It’s an immensely rewarding album, but it still feels like she’s just getting started. I can’t wait to hear what comes next from her.

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And he doesn’t need to: on Juice, he’s told that he needs the help of the label’s biggest hitmakers. But it seems pretty clear to me that all he really needs is a bit of radio play. Songs like the aforementioned Funk Outta Here, or Be a Man, just need a little bit of support from the local R&B radio stations to pick up the steam they need to succeed.

What makes JMSN work so well is a combination of a unique voice and a total disregard for genre conventions. While it’s clear that JMSN knows exactly what R&B should sound like, he seems more interested in writing his own style of record that bridges the gap between the neo-soul of people like Gallant with the pop sensibilities of Justin Timberlake.

While he’s not writing songs like Mirrors, JMSN is clearly self-aware. I can’t tell for sure, but it sounds like he’s doing all of his own backing choir parts. His music isn’t mixed well enough to be coming from one of the big labels. So when he sings “nobody’s going to understand,” I believe him, because he’s doing this all on his own — unlike most of the current prodigies in his genre. And on the last track, when he asks what you’ll gain “by pretending to be something you’re not,” it feels like he’s been real with you for the past 50 minutes. With JMSN, It’s not about a polished presentation, or stunning production.

What JMSN lacks in polish he makes up for in raw power and authenticity. The kick-off title track feels like one of the most vulnerable R&B tracks released this year. It’s a great way to start the record: like almost every other track, it’s a slow burner. Slow burners are great for JMSN, because they allow him to really show off his powerful presence.

What I like about JMSN isn’t that individual tracks are solid, though. It Is. is one of those rare albums that feels like the whole is greater than the sum of its part. On its own, the songs are successful, but taken as a whole, the album is more powerful than the songs alone. JMSN isn’t the world’s best singer (and I suspect he knows that), but he has a powerful sense of emotion and presence in his voice that sells him really well. Fans of carefully crafted R&B are going to love him.

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Gallant has the emotional range and vocal timbre of Chet Faker, but with the muscle of Justin Timberlake at his finest. His falsetto-laced R&B croon would be enough to make hearts swoon, but his music has a deep emotional core mired with the weight of his own struggles as a musician. As the period of time between Zebra and Ology might suggest, Gallant is a perfectionist who’s too hard on himself.

On Weight in Gold, one of the album’s particularly strong moments, Gallant sings, “I’m pulling my weight in gold. Call me anxious, call me broke, but I can’t lift this on my own.” The chorus’s backing track is a giant, loud synth that pulls back just in time for Gallant to come back with the John Mayer-influenced line over a subdued bridge: “Oh, Universe, hold me up. You tried your best; is it ever enough when it’s already dragging me down?”

Perhaps the album’s finest moment, and its most memorable for me, is Episode. An old-school R&B rhythm track holds down the verse, and Gallant sings the song almost entirely in falsetto. For just a moment, he feels like Jackson’s heir apparent.

Unlike Michael Jackson, Gallant’s scope is intentionally smaller. He’s not focused on solving the world’s problems with music; he’s just working through his own anxiety and loneliness. In that way, Gallant consistently reminds me of Chet Faker. Both of them are using synths and drum kits to give us modern takes on old genres that never feel like throwbacks or vintage apparels.

In an era of alt-R&B stars primed for radio time as if they were brand new, Gallant actually tries to be something new. And while he doesn’t always pull it off — sometimes he wears his Frank Ocean influence on his sleeve — Ology is admirable and refreshing.

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Malibu is smooth R&B all the way down, but it also defies categorization thanks to its hip hop guests and jazz affectations. The Waters is a fantastic example of this leaning: Paak doesn’t sing his way through, but instead raps through verses and has BJ the Chicago Kid guest. Unlike most rappers, Paak’s voice constantly feels like he’s singing, but this is most certainly rap — even if it’s accompanied by a backing choir singing the verse with him.

Songs like Put Me Thru feel like more traditional R&B, as does album opener The Bird, which is nearly Isaac Hayes-like. But immediately following it is a track featuring Schoolboy Q, which features Paak crooning and bringing the soul and Schoolboy Q bringing chorus-laden rap verses. (While we’re on the topic of Am I Wrong, I wouldn’t say every experiment on Malibu is wildly successful.)

In that sense, I can understand the comparison that Pitchfork makes with Malibu and Kendrick’s work, but in reality, Paak feels much more like BJ the Chicago Kid in his willingness to try new things and experiment. (Malibu and Butterfly do make very complementary records, though.)

Some tracks on Malibu are more successful than others, and reveal what Dre may have been mentoring Paak on with production and songwriting. Without You is wonderful, and Rhapsody’s vocal work pairs well with the laid-back R&B on hand here.

This constant blending and mixture that Paak is so expertly talented at makes Malibu feel like a multifaceted and multi-layered mystery. Anderson Paak is avoiding categorization, and aware enough of roots that he can embrace the familiar while combining a multitude of influences and experiences into something that feels like the future of multiple genres.

With the release of Malibu, it’s clear that Dre doesn’t necessarily feel he’s found a great emcee. It’s more like he’s found an equally talented songwriter and producer who can carry on his work when he retires. Paak is more than willing to carry that torch, and if Malibu is a chance for him to celebrate that accomplishment, it’s also a statement that he’s here to stay — and we ought to be grateful for that.

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It’s a really interesting, unique take on the genre that feels like it’s been becoming stifled recently by either bad throwbacks or overly-dark electronic ambience. Her tries to achieve a blend of the two, but they really succeed in adding an air of mystery to the music.

If you’ve been tapped into the underground scene, you no doubt have heard of Her already — and this EP only adds a couple new songs to the mix — but for those who haven’t heard of this French duo, I think we’re in for a run of amazing records. They reportedly have a lot of material lined up, so the real question isn’t if they’re going to keep it coming — it’s if the new material will be this strong.

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The first half is filled with dance songs and pop-filled tracks, with Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want) being one of those stone-cold dance floor openers. True Blood is much too long for my liking, and Drake’s rapping in Cabaret rubs me the wrong way. TKO and Take Back the Night are the singles here, but Take Back the Night is by far the better track. (And it still sounds like 80s-era Michael Jackson to a tee, which I’m not complaining about.)

The real stunners of this album are arguably in the middle and towards the end. Murder is by far the best dance track on the record. Jay-Z’s rap is notable, and the song easily bests Suit & Tie from Part 1. But the next track, Drink You Away, is my absolute favourite song from the disc and one of my favourite songs of the whole year. Timberlake really lets out. This is pure rock and roll, and it begins the second half of the album — edgier, pop-infused rock. It’s simply stellar.

Amnesia is incredible, an orchestral feat. Listen to its last couple minutes — this is a Timberlake track that once apes tons of familiar artists, but makes it his own. As always, Timberlake is at his best when you can easily sing along, and the second half of The 20/20 Experience: Part 2 is Timberlake at his sing-along prime.

Only When I Walk Away has a slightly awkward chorus, but is completely memorable. And Not A Bad Thing is a great closer to this epic two-part saga. These two records are Timberlake’s most important and fantastic records, and one of the best pop records in recent memory. Do yourself a favour and check it out.

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