Recent Records

The Weeknd’s House of Balloons is authentic R&B, the kind that doesn’t dress up what it’s about. Abel Tesfaye knows the music is there to make you feel what you’re already feeling, and he’s efficient about it—just voice and beat and whatever you’re thinking about someone specific.

Katy B’s debut is half great, half filler. The dubstep-influenced tracks have something real going on, all space and air, but then it settles into the same generic pop everyone’s making. You want more from her. She’s got something, just hasn’t figured out what to do with it yet.

tUnE-yArDs requires a certain amount of embracing weirdness. Merrill Garbus doesn’t make easy music—it’s experimental and off-kilter, chilly in a way pop usually isn’t. If you can sit with something that deliberately strange, she’ll take you somewhere actual.

Frank Ocean is floating around the Odd Future scene through Tyler, the Creator, but he’s got soul that most people don’t even aim for. His label signed him and then ghosted him, which is beyond stupid, but you can feel it in his music—not anger exactly, just complete defiance. He doesn’t need them and he knows it.

The Beastie Boys came back like they’d never stopped, which is both incredible and kind of crazy to think about. Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 opens into this early-80s New York thing and it actually works. They can still make everyone else in the genre look like they’re trying too hard.

Snoop’s been doing this forever—this is his eleventh album—and you can hear it. The Doggystyle thing is decades gone. Everything’s slicker now, more produced, more 2011. But Snoop hasn’t changed, which might actually be the whole point. The voice is still there. Everything else moves around it.