Views // Drake

Drake: Views (2016)

Know yourself, the theory goes, and you will know all. The world will open up to you. Existence will be made plain. You will be one with the matrix. Yadda yadda yadda. From arenas to memes, Drake has always had a skill for turning his innermost thoughts, feelings, and anxieties into breakthrough group therapy sessions—he articulates what we know to be true and then lets us rap or sing those truths en masse, exalting in common bonds that are as vulnerable as they are revealing. When he confides his fears, we become a little more fearless. When he turns his woes into anthems, we all get lifted. But there is a razor-sharp line between self-awareness and self-absorption: Whereas self-awareness can expand wisdom by reflecting it outward, self-absorption often festers, drawing things in only to let them rot. For the past seven years, Drake has expertly glided along that line. But on his fourth proper album, he edges closer than ever to a mirrored abyss, a suffocating echo chamber of self.

The record is called VIEWS but its perspective is decidedly singular. “This album, I’m very proud to say, is just—I feel like I told everybody how I’m actually feeling,” Drake told Zane Lowe in a toothless recent interview, differentiating VIEWS from his previous work. This might seem like a ridiculous distinction—there’s never any question that Drake is the star of his own show—but it’s apt, and it hints at why this album feels like more of a claustrophobic mindfuck than a collective catharsis. VIEWS is what happens when venting turns into whining. Spanning an obnoxious 82 minutes, the record goes through several musical and thematic phases, but the overall atmosphere is bitter, petty, worn-down. It confuses loyalty and stagnation, wallowing in a sound that is starting to show its limits.

Revival // Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez: Revival (2015)

Selena Gomez wills a new era of her career into existence within the first two minutes of her second solo album. "It’s my time to butterfly," she sings on the self-care anthem "Revival." The Gomez of this relaxed, confident pop collection butterflies with such ease that it feels like she’s revealing her true personality for the first time. Where some former child stars tack toward aggressive maturity when they reach their twenties, Gomez finds ways to transcend that cliche. Her brand of sexiness has a coy, subtle quality that never tries too hard, from the fun, flirty "Hands to Myself" to the blissed-out "Survivors" to the intoxicating "Me & the Rhythm" — a riff on the classic theme of losing yourself on the dance floor ("Everybody wants to be touched/Everybody wants to get some") that nonetheless finds her sounding completely in control of her own euphoria.

Soaring past the harsh-though-catchy EDM beats of 2013’s Stars Dance and the shallow angst of her previous work with the pop-rock project the Scene, the former Disney star finds a new comfort zone in this album’s warm, tropical beach-pop sound. "Body Heat" brings Latin fusion into Gomez’s mix like never before and proves that she doesn’t need Zedd (the German producer behind her recent dance chart-topper "I Want You to Know") to make a genuine club banger.

Joanne // Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga: Joanne (2016)

At the start of the decade, Lady Gaga worked hard to reposition pop as a high art or vice-versa—both absorbing and extending a lineage that included oddball visionaries like Andy Warhol, Klaus Nomi, Prince, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Elton John, Madonna, and Missy Elliott. Most of her avant-garde gestures were extra-musical, a string of cheeky, absurdist visions realized entirely outside of the studio and only tangentially in conversation with her bloodless dance jams (Gaga herself has referred to that early work as “soulless electronic pop”). It’s not hard, now, to recall these stunts from memory: she was sewn into a dress fashioned from slabs of flank steak for the VMAs. She hatched herself from a semi-translucent egg at the Grammys. She hired a self-described “vomit artist” to puke a steady stream of syrupy green liquid onto her bosom during an SXSW performance. Her repeated and earnest disavowal of anything remotely normative was (and remains) plainly empowering for anyone sitting at home alone in her room, feeling like a true weirdo. The idea was always to fracture and re-establish a hierarchy. Only Gaga could turn “monster” into a term of endearment.

And regardless of whether you find those moves electrifying or tedious, it's hard to overstate the value of that work as a public service—every generation’s freaks elect a champion, and Gaga was tireless, proud, and wholly devoted to the job. Her commercial success also meant that her chart peers were, for better or worse, free to get stranger, artier, and less predictable; Gaga helped usher in an era of pop in which hardly anything is too far-out (or pretentious) to play. Visual provocations of one sort or another are expected now: Sia performed “Chandelier” at the Grammys with her back to the audience, wearing a bobbed, platinum wig, while Kristen Wiig and the then-twelve-year-old dancer Maddie Ziegler frolicked around her in nude bodysuits. Miley Cyrus gyrates among furries as a matter of routine.

Major Key // DJ Khaled

DJ Khaled: Major Key (2016)

No one could have predicted the trajectory of DJ Khaled except for pt Khaled himself. Well before he ascended to Snapchat stardom in his soy milk-and-cocoa-butter'd glory, he was a local Miami radio DJ pushing brand-worthy catchphrases (“Listennn…”; “We the best!”) and promoting unity and self-belief with a persistence that was as endearing as it was annoying. His bombastic statements seemed to be a nod to his reggae soundclash bonafides, but it was actually a ‘hood-oriented manifestation gospel. Khaled wasn’t just beating his chest, he was willing his success to existence—comparing himself to his apparent betters such as Quincy Jones and Russell Simmons; later he placed himself alongside icons like Jay Z and Kanye West in a way that suggested good-natured delusions of grandeur. It started as cute and laughable, but it quickly became clear that Khaled was justifying his place in the big leagues with a succession of  hits—to the point that, when he claimed that “All I Do Is Win,” it was hard to disagree with him.

Khaled’s ascent is one of the most remarkable in the past decade of hip-hop history: He started as a bit player in Fat Joe’s Terror Squad, but has outlived (and maintained) that association to become a living meme, motivational figure, and controller of culture nonpareil. He may not have the cachet of the people he regularly rubs shoulders with, but he often transcends them with the depth of his connections and the breadth of his reach. He helped reestablish Miami as a creative export factory and has been instrumental in the rise of just about every notable commercially successful hip-hop movement that has popped up since 2006. It’s hard to imagine the prominence of Rick Ross’ MMG, Drake’s OVO, and Baby and Lil Wayne’s Cash Money and YMCMB without Khaled serving as the glue between those factions, even as they splintered and openly warred with one another. It’s been a running joke that Khaled—who has sporadic production credits, some under the alias Beat Novacane—doesn’t do more on his records than shout, but that ignores that fact that many DJs have tried their hands at compilation albums, and none have been as consistently successful at it as DJ Khaled. (For a quick comparison, one can listen to DJ Drama’s recent Quality Street Music 2; while Drama has had the golden touch with his Gangsta Grillz mixtapes, his official albums haven’t left the same footprint as Khaled’s efforts.)

Anti // Rihanna

Rihanna: Anti (2016)

For much of 2015, repeated delays and a lack of solid information started to make Rihanna's Anti feel like pop's mythical creature. Now that we know it's real, we can hear the singer's eighth LP for what it is: a sprawling masterpiece of psychedelic soul that's far more straightforward than its tangled rollout. The three full years since 2012's Unapologetic – the longest break between releases in Rihanna's career – turned out to be exactly what she needed to make a rich full-length statement. After more than a decade as a superstar of the singles chart, Rihanna has become an album artist.
Anti is first and foremost an experience built on vibes. Where previous LPs were built around clear peaks, here the songs fit together into a fluid landscape of seamless transitions – check the flow on the excellent mid-album run of after-hours joints from "Desperado" to "Woo" to "Needed Me." Every song sounds like our collective fantasy of Rihanna: a carefree island girl lounging in a cloud of smoke, asserting a brand of independence that's wholly her own. On "James Joint," she assures us that she'd "rather be/Smoking weed/Whenever we breathe/Every time you kiss me" in her most dulcet tones. "You been rollin' around/Shit, I'm rollin' up," she asserts on the biting kiss-off track "Needed Me." Clearly, the stoned party goddess we've seen on Instagram and Snapchat is pretty close to the real Rihanna.

Anti's beats are more muted than the flashier productions of her past work, which leaves room for the album's biggest revelation: Rihanna's show-stopping vocal performances. One year ago, on one-off single "FourFiveSeconds," she belted in a raw, raspy tone that expressed levels of soul the previous decade of her career had only hinted at. Here, she follows through on that promise, singing powerfully and with a deeper emotional density than she's revealed before. On the bluesy late-album highlight "Higher," when she sings "This whiskey got me feelin' pretty" over a dusty strings sample from producer No ID, she could be crooning in a smoky post-war jazz club.

Illuminate // Shawn Mendes

Shawn Mendes: Illuminate (2016)

Shawn Mendes – 18 and releasing his second album – rose to fame three years ago singing six-second cover snippets on Vine, mastering the micro hooks that define current popcraft from the inside. His own songs often start with his guitar (his debut album was titled Handwritten), at once as disarmingly intimate as a singer-songwriter confession and as layered with melodic and rhythmic bait as a Major Lazer single. As a growing audience has demanded something more personal from their hits than self-empowerment slogans (thank Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, and include Tove Lo and Justin Bieber's guitar-centric "Love Yourself"), he's been poised to take center stage.

Illuminate mixes professions of romantic agony like "Mercy" (where a quietly hummed hook explodes into crashing drums), with nice-boy valentines like "Treat You Better" and bedroom come-ons like "Lights On." Two-thirds of the album is produced by Sheeran collaborator Jake Gosling and deploys Sheeran's mix of familiar pop vestments (electric guitar solos that float with John Mayer weightlessness, gently worried vocals that owe as much to Justin Timberlake as to gospel or R&B). If you think that seems third hand, you might be right. But you're definitely too cynical for music that mixes this much sincerity and cunning, a trick Mendes first learned six seconds at a time. "I'm not trying to come off too strong," he says after telling one young lady how good she looks with her clothes on. "But you know I can't help it." Exactly.

A Seat At The Table // Solange

Solange: A Seat At The Table (2016)

Solange Knowles turned 30 in June, and it seems clear that her Saturn Returns manifested in an artistic surge. A Seat at the Table, her third full-length album, is the work of a woman who’s truly grown into herself and discovered within a clear, exhilarating statement of self and community that’s as robust in its quieter moments as it is in its funkier ones. Even though it’s been out less than a week, it already seems like a document of historical significance, not just for its formidable musical achievements but for the way it encapsulates black cultural and social history with such richness, generosity, and truth.

To this point, Solange has been trying on styles and stretching out into her own skills as a songwriter. Having spent her early teen years singing backup and writing songs, she debuted as a solo artist at just 16, with Solo Star. Very 2003, it was a gleaming, hip-hop-informed album that slinked over beats from the likes of Timbaland and the Neptunes; even with plenty of great tracks, the production outweighed her presence. After a five-year break as a solo artist—during which she got married, had son Julez, moved to Idaho, got divorced, starred in Bring It On: All or Nothing, among other films, and wrote songs for her sister Beyoncé (whew!)—she returned in 2008 with Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams. That album was clearly immersed in a deep love of ’60s funk and soul and its attendant politics, and she rebelled against expectations (see: “Fuck the Industry”), eager to fully express her individuality. She fused her musical impulses in the easy, ebullient grooves of 2012’s True EP, which eased a glossier vision of pop into the soul-funk groove she had ingrained.