It has been a long nine years since The Offspring released their last album, Days Go By. Conflicts with a previous label, Columbia, contributed to the delay, as did the pandemic. Originally scheduled for release in 2020, Let The Bad Times Roll would’ve felt timely last year and is slightly dated…

BROCKHAMPTON, “Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine.” Hip-hop’s favorite boy band, BROCKHAMPTON, has announced it is on the way out. The band’s newest release, Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine, is the first of two albums set to drop this year as a swan song. The group’s catalog grows its legendary status, as…

NF, “CLOUDS.” As on his 2019 album, The Search, Michigan rapper NF maintains his somber and melancholic stylings on new mixtape CLOUDS, highlighted by simplistic string arrangements and classical music influences throughout. CLOUDS NF Caroline, Mar. 26 7/10 While NF continues to prove his technical abilities as a lyricist, many of the…

Benny the Butcher has delivered hard-hitting and detailed songs covering his involvement in drug dealing and life on the streets. Last year’s exceptional examination of such matters defined Burden of Proof as a modern classic, exploring themes of survivor’s guilt and the cost of participation. The followup to the 2019…

As the vaccine rollouts are picking up momentum, we’re hopeful that we will be seeing public spaces such as nightclubs finally able to open up and have folks on the dance floor before we know it. Thus Sean Paul‘s newest release ‘Live N Livin’ comes as an upbeat call to…

The rise of emo pop and pop-punk during the 2000s has served as both a source of nostalgia and revulsion from millennials and zoomers alike. Love it or hate it, it defined the decade and a generation of disaffected youths enduring uncertain times amid a culture of fear created…

It seems that things have taken a toll on frontman Fat Mike of NOFX, because Single Album oozes with the sense of decay and instability that comes with uncertainty, insecurity, controversy and tragedy. You can’t say Michael Burkett hasn’t taken these things head-on; however, addressing controversies, watching the passing of his…

There’s something to be said regarding the rise of awareness regarding mental health in hip-hop over the last few years, with an array of artists covering it with grace or with all the tact of a bull in a china shop. JPEGMAFIA followed up to his November EP! with the similarly…

Rapper Madlib didn’t wait long between albums. Following a jazz record in November as Jahari Massamba Unit, he’s already back with a new collaborative venture with electronic musician Four Tet in Sound Ancestors. Unlike the previous album, Sound Ancestors takes a more candidly hip-hop-centric focus that’s sample-heavy amid an array of boom…

A gallows erected by pro-Trump rioters outside the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. Courtesy: Tyler Merbler. All of this was entirely avoidable. Those words have rung in my ears well beyond the last four years, but they have become deafening as a result of…