TranscendNoise

10. Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul – Topical Dancer Rarely do dance music centered albums come along with such political urgency. Topical Dancer follows in the line of Arular and Kala , the first two M.I.A outings that were aural and political lighter fuel. Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul magically switch from tongue in cheek moments in “Esperanto” to sarcasm in “Blenda”. Lyrics like “Siri, can you tell me where I belong” or “You’re the Columbus to my America” on “Thank You” not only make you chuckle, they encapsulate the strange awareness of a POC living in a dominantly white culture. Topical Dancer handles these moments of alienation with comedy, but never uses laughter as a cheap thrill. Tracks like “Reappropiate” and “Ich Mwen” grapple with the intersections of race and sexuality in an honest manner. “Ich Mwen” prominently features Charlotte’s mother, the singer Christiane Adigery in a heart to heart of mother and child, touching upon self-care, motherhood, and the stra...

51. Playboi Carti – Whole Lotta Red Released almost a year ago, Whole Lotta Red deserves the shout-out for being so far out of the box for a commercial rap album, that the first reactions toward it tethered on unlistenable to ingenuity. Sitting with the album over a year and getting lost in the blown-out, aggressive and almost nonsensical use of compression and overdrive bass, Whole Lotta Red and Playboi Carti made their unique vision and disregard for cohesion into a strange modus operandi. Far off from a “baby voice” and somewhat removed from actual lyricism, Playboi uses a hoarse and chewy vocal style, hopping from sing-song to straight-up shouting over the instrumentals at hand. There is hardly a pocket for the lyrics to be found in some instrumentals in their length and sketchy nature, with few exceptions such as “Beno”. Yet these more structured tracks are never the highlights between the short abrasive spewing of a few lines, a broken hook or weirded-out ad-libs. This kind of ...