This Week’s Albums
It’s been ten years since Aaliyah died, and I spent the day listening through her catalog. Three albums is all she left, and they still feel untouchable—the production so clean it almost sounds conversational, her voice carrying this confidence that’s impossible to duplicate. You hear her everywhere in what came after, but there’s a distance between influence and the genuine article. Nothing that’s tried to follow has quite hit the same.
Thursday’s new record came at the right time. No Devolución pulls back from the usual post-hardcore fury—less wailing, more structure. It’s an album that demands to be heard as a whole, not parsed for singles. The thinking in the songwriting is obvious, and when they lean into instrumental passages they earn them rather than decorating around edges.
The Weeknd’s mixtape has been running alongside this, which makes an odd combination. House of Balloons felt like a genuine left turn in where R&B could go. Thursday treads the same territory but without quite the moments that hooked you the first time. It’s absorbing but less of a pull.
Netsky did something unexpected. I never paid attention to drum ’n’ bass before—always seemed too fractured, too much going on at once. But his self-titled has this sadness underneath it that just takes hold. At twenty-one he’s made something that feels completely finished, like he tapped into something he’s always known. The album’s taken up residence.
Toddla T’s Watch Me Dance does exactly what the title suggests. Hip-hop, reggae, electronics, soul—all of it moving together without seams. It’s built for the club but works anywhere because the composition underneath the party impulse is there.
This is why I keep coming back to music. Not everything connects, but when it does, it stays.