Album Reviews

A few tracks into the soundtrack of Questlove’s music-fest documentary, an emcee introduces the next performer, David Ruffin. A year after being bounced out of the Temptations, the notoriously troubled Ruffin already sounds nostalgic: “I’d like to go back to the olden days,” he says, with a glimmer of humor, …

It took roughly four months for Nirvana to become NIRVANA. You already know the mythology: Two duders about 100 miles outside of Seattle (Kurt Cobain and bassist Krist Novoselic) recruited a Virginia-based drummer (Dave Grohl) and put out the band’s grungy second album, Nevermind, on Sept. 24, 1991. Then, in …

“Everything is special about Tems,” Wizkid, one of the brightest stars in Nigerian pop, told Rolling Stone last month. “Everything.” In just three years, Tems, 26, has established herself as one of the African diaspora’s most intriguing artists. She shines on Wizkid’s summer smash “Essence,” and dueted with Drake on …

For a little over a year, Drake has maintained a heart-shaped design at the front of his hairline. He’s sported the unrepentantly goofy hairstyle with the vigor of a method actor unwilling to abandon their character. On social media, the 34-year-old musician appears in a variety of photos with the …

Toward the end of his life, Prince was creating so much music that he appeared to lose sight of his vision. Although his records contained glimmers of brilliance, he had started entombing potentially glorious singalong choruses, jaw-dropping guitar solos, and clever lyrics in overwrought R&B and heavy-handed garage rock. (Check …

For over a decade, J. Cole has rapped as the enlightened everyman, navigating issues of race, class, and gender like a thoughtful jock. His latest release, The Off-Season, finds him pondering inventive gun violence prevention measures one moment, and lobbing sexist locker-room insults the next (“Check your genitalia, pussy-niggas bleedin’ …

Mdou Moctar has previously claimed, “I don’t know what rock is exactly,” and that’s a good thing listening to the Niger-based Tuareg singer-songwriter’s latest album, Afrique Victime. There’s a unique sense of freedom in the record’s eight songs that most household-name rockers will never understand, since North American and European …

In 2002, country music legend Loretta Lynn released her memoir Still Woman Enough, reflecting on her journey out of hardscrabble Kentucky and into stardom, with all the triumphs and tragedies between. That book and Lynn’s story gives her new album its title as well as its lone new original song, …

Megan Thee Stallion has been such a commanding presence in rap for the past two years it can be hard to remember that Good News is actually her debut full-length album. The 25-year-old Houston MC has always rhymed with such assurance that no matter when you first heard her “real …

“When will you know if the song’s been sung?” Gavin Rossdale sings obliviously on The Kingdom’s “Quicksand.” It’s a question he apparently didn’t take too seriously when writing that tune or the other 11 modern warhorses on the long-running band’s eighth album, which trudge through the same monochromatic grunge he …