Once Adam Yauch discovered he had cancer in 2009, the Beastie Boys shelved their forthcoming The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once Yauch went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of THSC and simply went forth with The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, which retained the bulk of the track list from Pt 1. All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of The Hot Sauce Committee: that the Beasties could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record’s quality. This doesn’t suggest they’re out of step so much as they’re out of time, existing in a world of their own making, beholden to no other standard but their own. Certainly, the Beasties stitch together sounds and rhymes from their past throughout The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, laying down grooves à la Check Your Head but weaving samples through these rhythms, thickly layering the album with analog synths out of Hello Nasty, all the while pledging allegiance to old-school rap in their rhymes. Nothing here is exactly unexpected -- even the presence of Santogold on “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” isn’t new, it’s new wave -- yet The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 feels fresh because there is such kinetic joy propelling this music. Last time around, the Beasties weighed themselves down by creating retro-tribute to N.Y.C., taking everything just a little bit too seriously, but here they’re free of any expectations and are back to doing what they do best: cracking wise and acting so stupid they camouflage how kinetic, inventive, and rich their music is. And, make no mistake, The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 does find the Beastie Boys at their best. Perhaps they’re no longer setting the style, but it takes master musicians to continually find new wrinkles within a signature sound, which is precisely what the Beasties do here.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Carried by the juggernauts “God’s Plan” and “Nice For What”, Drake is releasing his fifth album, Scorpion. Coming off of his uneven Views and his eclectic playlist More Life, the Toronto artist offers a complete panel of 25 tracks spread over two sides like an old vinyl or a dusty tape. Drake is trying to explore all the angles of his musical personality, with a first ensemble focused on rap, and the other edging towards pop. In “Scorpion”, Drake is also trying to encompass his entire dynasty, and invited his two long-time role models to the party: Jay-Z for a red-hot verse and Michael Jackson on a ghostly melody. Darker and sharper in the first part, Drake reaches later on a few radiant moments like “Blue Tint” and “Ratchet Happy Birthday”. But for the first time in many years, the worldwide musical emperor appears to falter on his throne and offers a glimpse into a few fragile moments. Following Pusha T’s repeated attacks, Drake recognises his paternity maybe sooner than he initially intended. And while he often claims to be “Emotionless”, Aubrey Graham here proves he can’t always be in control. He appears urgent on the “Nonstop” borrowed from Blocboy JB, nostalgic on the soulful “8 out of 10” and annoyed on the catchy “Sandra’s Rose”, produced by DJ Premier. Bit by bit, he’s always trying to prove his legitimacy, justifying his success, his accomplishments. Scorpion marks a turning point in his discography, a transition with a few flashes and short-winded moments that scratch the surface of the artist’s personality. Throughout the album, Drake doesn’t directly address his critics, but provides a lot of information about his position and state of mind. Slick but tormented. The best Canadian mix. © Aurélien Chapuis/Qobuz

East of the Sun, West of the Moon was a small surprise, too quickly destined for the cut-out bins considering the way a-ha finally went after Hunting High and Low. This is a nicely crafted collection of songs, performed and sung beautifully, with lots of echoes and suggestions tucked into the music. While not an album one can discuss at length, it's an album that's a pleasure to listen to and one that deserves a better reception than the one, unfortunately, that it seems to have gotten.© Steven McDonald /TiVo

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Once Adam Yauch discovered he had cancer in 2009, the Beastie Boys shelved their forthcoming The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 1 and its companion volume, gradually reviving and revising the project once Yauch went into remission. At this point, they scrapped their convoluted plans to release concurrent complementary volumes of THSC and simply went forth with The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, which retained the bulk of the track list from Pt 1. All this hurly-burly camouflages the essential truth of The Hot Sauce Committee: that the Beasties could sit on an album for two years to no ill effect to their reputation or the record’s quality. This doesn’t suggest they’re out of step so much as they’re out of time, existing in a world of their own making, beholden to no other standard but their own. Certainly, the Beasties stitch together sounds and rhymes from their past throughout The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2, laying down grooves à la Check Your Head but weaving samples through these rhythms, thickly layering the album with analog synths out of Hello Nasty, all the while pledging allegiance to old-school rap in their rhymes. Nothing here is exactly unexpected -- even the presence of Santogold on “Don’t Play No Game That I Can’t Win” isn’t new, it’s new wave -- yet The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 feels fresh because there is such kinetic joy propelling this music. Last time around, the Beasties weighed themselves down by creating retro-tribute to N.Y.C., taking everything just a little bit too seriously, but here they’re free of any expectations and are back to doing what they do best: cracking wise and acting so stupid they camouflage how kinetic, inventive, and rich their music is. And, make no mistake, The Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2 does find the Beastie Boys at their best. Perhaps they’re no longer setting the style, but it takes master musicians to continually find new wrinkles within a signature sound, which is precisely what the Beasties do here.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Carried by the juggernauts “God’s Plan” and “Nice For What”, Drake is releasing his fifth album, Scorpion. Coming off of his uneven Views and his eclectic playlist More Life, the Toronto artist offers a complete panel of 25 tracks spread over two sides like an old vinyl or a dusty tape. Drake is trying to explore all the angles of his musical personality, with a first ensemble focused on rap, and the other edging towards pop. In “Scorpion”, Drake is also trying to encompass his entire dynasty, and invited his two long-time role models to the party: Jay-Z for a red-hot verse and Michael Jackson on a ghostly melody. Darker and sharper in the first part, Drake reaches later on a few radiant moments like “Blue Tint” and “Ratchet Happy Birthday”. But for the first time in many years, the worldwide musical emperor appears to falter on his throne and offers a glimpse into a few fragile moments. Following Pusha T’s repeated attacks, Drake recognises his paternity maybe sooner than he initially intended. And while he often claims to be “Emotionless”, Aubrey Graham here proves he can’t always be in control. He appears urgent on the “Nonstop” borrowed from Blocboy JB, nostalgic on the soulful “8 out of 10” and annoyed on the catchy “Sandra’s Rose”, produced by DJ Premier. Bit by bit, he’s always trying to prove his legitimacy, justifying his success, his accomplishments. Scorpion marks a turning point in his discography, a transition with a few flashes and short-winded moments that scratch the surface of the artist’s personality. Throughout the album, Drake doesn’t directly address his critics, but provides a lot of information about his position and state of mind. Slick but tormented. The best Canadian mix. © Aurélien Chapuis/Qobuz

Is there anything more tiresome than being at a party, or at work, or anywhere really, and finding yourself cornered by someone who tells the same story over and over and there's no chance to escape? On his last two albums, and the many singles and songs that surrounded them, Drake skated dangerously close to being exactly that kind of joy-killing, endlessly tiresome boor. On 2018's Scorpion, the ice finally cracks and Drake plunges headfirst into the icy depths of boredom and despair as the 25 songs go back and forth over the same lyrical territory and the monochromatic trap beats drag along slowly behind. Drake runs through his greatest hits yet again -- he's the best rapper yet no one will admit it, he's been treated wrong by every woman he's ever been with, he's rich as hell, and life is tough when you're on top -- to decidedly diminished returns. This time around, there is the matter of Pusha T's diss track to be dealt with and the existence of his freshly uncovered paternity to talk about, but even those tracks are filtered through Drake's tired lens that only seems to come into focus when it's directed inward. As the tracks slog past, one wishes for a feature to break the monotony or a song with a different tempo to break the trap spell, but it's not until the 11th track that Jay-Z shows up to give Drake a run for his money in the boredom stakes, and not until the 16th track that "Nice for What" -- the one song that gives any sense of the old Drake who wrote the occasional fun pop song -- comes along to inject some bounce into the mopey proceedings. Of course, that song is followed by the slowest, bleakest track on the record, and nothing else -- not even "Don't Matter to Me," which features a ghostly Michael Jackson sample -- manages to raise blood pressures or get feet moving or keep eyelids from drooping. At this point in his career, maybe it's not fair to expect Drake to be writing pop songs or having fun, but it was the balance between downcast, introspective soul raps and less cloudy, almost happy-sounding pop songs that made his best albums work so well. Scorpion doesn't even come close to being one of his best; instead, it's a one-trick record stretched out into 25 endless tracks by an artist who's so deep into the self-obsessed, self-pitying rut he created for himself that he can't see daylight anymore. Anyone who follows him there should be prepared to spend the next hour-plus buried deep in the inner self-loving/loathing depths of Drake's mind, where nothing else, not politics or humankind or the people around him who have yet to diss him, exists. It's a bleak and tiring place to spend time, and one can only hope that Drake himself gets weary of it soon, too.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

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