Author: Isaac Bartels

Maidza gets fearless with her new EP, and with the chameleonic, genre-defiant artist at the fore, Australian hip-hop is poised for a renaissance.

Dacus’ new album is witty and frank, juvenile and mature, messy and refined all at once, staking a claim for one of 2021’s albums of the year.

With his latest EP, Taylor constructs a sonically cohesive narrative which allows him the opportunity to practically experiment in real-time.

‘Hot & Heavy’ skews nostalgic, but Dacus has no desire to reel you in with a copy-pasted track – she’s got too much to tell you, and you’d better listen.

Rather than striving for thematic ties, Sings (with “kindred spirits” including Mac DeMarco and Tom Misch) instead goes for sonic cohesion on his latest album. On that note, he succeeds marvellously.

It can be far too easy for any reviewer to trip over themselves in pretense and obsequiousness as they dissect FKA twigs’ artistry, but her new single is an uncharacteristically straightforward affair.

Embracing mental crises in his latest single, the controversy-seeking rapper is on the warpath.

A vocal opponent of Latin music’s gentrification, Uchis’ first outright Spanish album reaffirms her oft-praised refusal to be defined by things as pedestrian as genre, seamlessly swerving from slow Latin jazz to psychedelia to R&B with emotive, dignified poise.