Interscope US 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Ghanaian singer-songwriter Amaarae presents a unique style with her second album Fountain Baby - mixing up R&B, Jersey bounce, amapiano, dancehall and more for a bedevilled, high-pitched modern weirdo opus. All tempered by its angelic pop production, which bolsters its stark vocal aura, Amaarae is rightfully deserving of the praise for this experiment. Its staunch queer identity goes hand-in-hand with its sonic playfulness, a synergy which we also hear in the lyrics throughout, be that via its girlbossy shattering of binaries ('Princess Going Digital'), or the obliteration of hegemony in basic party spaces ('Sociopathic Dance Queen').

Review: The fourth studio album by American rapper Bas (Abbas Hamad) is a solid collaborative onslaught, pitting together fiery all-rounder hip-hop with an utterly sidereal cast of massive celestial rap bodies, Adekunle Gold, AJ Tracey, ASAP Ferg, J. Cole, Boi-1da, CuBeats and even Galimatias to name but a small few of this one's production crew. The most recent protege of J. Cole's Dreamville Records, We Only Talk About Real Shit maintains a consistently sharp quality throughout, never letting up on its full-bodied OG soul sample palette, but nevertheless keeping things light-footed and wry on the flows, lyrics and deliveries ends of things. Highlights include '179 Deli' and 'Passport Bros', which evince Bas' ability to flit quickly between Jersey bounce, cloud rap and dancehall in quick succession.

Review: Where does Dr Dre's 1992 masterpiece, The Chronic, rank in the list of hip-hop's greatest albums? It's certainly up there with the most significant sets of the '90s, delivering as it does a brilliant blend of re-imagined, 'gangsta rap' era G-funk beats (Dre giddily drew not only on his own West Coast synth-funk heritage, but also samples from classic cuts by, amongst others, Malclom McLaren, Parliament, George Clinton, James Brown and Bill Withers) and on-point raps from a veritable who's who of Death Row Records-affiliated rappers - most notably Warren G, Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, The Lady of Rage, Kurupt and Daz Dillinger. Now fully remastered and bundled with - fittingly - with some branded rolling papers, The Chronic is a genuine classic that deserves a place in everyone's music collection.