Never before has Beyoncé made her fans wait so long between solo albums. Of course, these past six and a half years haven’t been easy for the singer—far from it. However, such levels of anticipation inevitably lead to impatience. After unveiling the house-pop influenced single Break My Soul, which definitely came as a surprise, you’d be forgiven for expecting her new album to be something more along the lines of Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind released a month prior, but it’s nothing of the sort. Renaissance has electronic rhythms at its core, but it’s extremely wide-ranging. Beyoncé flirts with disco-funk on Cuff It, summons huge choirs fit for a queen on Cozy, and includes a new ode to feminist empowerment with Church Girl (which gives an insight into her soul and gospel influences). Perhaps the best musical synthesis on the album is found in the track Virgo’s Groove, reviving the Latin sounds that feature on Move and Heated. With Renaissance, Beyoncé has really upped her pace, creating a highspeed musical freeway that’ll take you to a lot of different places. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

Like many pop culture sensations around the turn of the 2020s, PinkPantheress quickly became famous thanks to video-focused social media service TikTok. Initially posting brief loops of songs she worked on after coming home from her classes for the day, the clips went viral, and her audience expanded further after she signed to Parlophone and began releasing singles. Calling her style "new nostalgic," her music borrows heavily from dance and pop music of the '90s and early 2000s, with the ecstatic surge of liquid drum'n'bass and the clipped, staccato beats of U.K. garage and 2-step driving many of her songs. Her intimate vocals disguise lyrics about loneliness, heartache, and desire in sugary melodies, helping them resonate in the same bittersweet manner as past U.K. dance hits like T2 and Jodie Aysha's 2007 smash "Heartbroken." There's parallels between PinkPantheress's style and some of the more dance-adjacent indie R&B artists of the 2010s, like Kelela and Abra, but her sincere lyrics and intricate melodies, which make the best of her limited vocal range, put her closer to the league of bedroom pop and the less garish corners of the PC Music world. To Hell with It, PinkPantheress's debut mixtape, gathers most of her previously issued singles, several of which became charting pop hits in the U.K. and New Zealand. She's even found success stateside, where U.K. garage and drum'n'bass are beloved by certain anglophiles, ravers, and music journalists, but largely remain obscure to the general public. The entire release clocks in at under 20 minutes, with the ten tracks initially feeling more like preview clips rather than full songs. The brisk tempos and urgent lyrics beg for repeated listens, however, and the mixtape quickly becomes addictive. Her interpolation of familiar but not overused samples (including the keyboards from Crystal Waters' "Gypsy Woman" and the Satie-mirroring chord sequence of Sweet Female Attitude's "Flowers") transcends clever gimmickry, and she brilliantly snakes her delicate voice around the kinetic, tightly wound beats in such an unforced, carefree way, yet there's still plenty of emotional weight to what she's saying. There's such a grin-inducing rush to the way her shouted "Hey!" or "Yeah!" ad libs echo from the speakers. The acoustic guitar-based "Just for Me" is a teenage confession of an intense crush set to a 2-step shuffle ("I'm obsessed with you in a way I can't believe/When you wipe your tears, do you wipe them just for me?"), and the drum'n'bass tracks, particularly the slamming "Noticed I Cried" and the sly "Break It Off" (based on Adam F's classic "Circles," originally released six years before PinkPantheress was born), match the exhilarating beats with direct lyrics that aim straight for the heart. A pair of mellower tracks near the end, the dembow-inspired "All My Friends Know" and the lush, string-laden "Nineteen," are more restrained yet just as considered and affectionate, pointing to a potential direction for an artist whose emergence was one of the most welcome left-field surprises of 2021.© Paul Simpson /TiVo

Never before has Beyoncé made her fans wait so long between solo albums. Of course, these past six and a half years haven’t been easy for the singer—far from it. However, such levels of anticipation inevitably lead to impatience. After unveiling the house-pop influenced single Break My Soul, which definitely came as a surprise, you’d be forgiven for expecting her new album to be something more along the lines of Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind released a month prior, but it’s nothing of the sort. Renaissance has electronic rhythms at its core, but it’s extremely wide-ranging. Beyoncé flirts with disco-funk on Cuff It, summons huge choirs fit for a queen on Cozy, and includes a new ode to feminist empowerment with Church Girl (which gives an insight into her soul and gospel influences). Perhaps the best musical synthesis on the album is found in the track Virgo’s Groove, reviving the Latin sounds that feature on Move and Heated. With Renaissance, Beyoncé has really upped her pace, creating a highspeed musical freeway that’ll take you to a lot of different places. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

"The DELINQUENT HABITS of this hip-hop trio include their release dates...this disc--while featuring solid rhyming and spare, funky tracks--sounds a little dated....this likable group's Latin-influenced shills are...at least grumpy enough to create some promising tracks..."© TiVo

"The chilled beat and elastic bass of JERK draws on Galvin's love of 90's hip hop influences....Even in his darkest moments Only Real can't help but capture the glow of summer."© TiVo

Interplanetary-minded Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert and Atlanta trap legend Future collaborated on a bouncy track on Future's 2020 album High Off Life and a few singles before teaming up for the full-length Pluto X Baby Pluto later in the year. The nearly hour-long album finds the two rappers playing off each other's talents and personalities, sticking to lyrical themes of sex, money, power, and decadence and relying on bass-booming trap beats. Production is handled by Zaytoven, DJ Esco, Wheezy, and many others, providing the two rappers with spacy trap instrumentals to trade bars over. Tunes like opening track "Stripes Like Burberry" and the slinking "That's It" are especially fun, with Future and Lil Uzi Vert sounding like they can't wait to take their turn on the mic to top the other's lyrical punch lines or unexpectedly rerouted flows. The album stays in one lane for the majority of its tracks, with only a few divergences from competitive flexing about wealth or sexual antics for more emotionally reflective tracks. With songs as infectious and as goofy as the smooth, midtempo trap blast "Drankin N Smokin," however, there are no complaints about how Pluto X Baby Pluto keeps the party going.© Fred Thomas /TiVo