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Friday

Thursday

Kendrick Lamar performs during

Kendrick Lamar performs during "The Pop Out — Ken & Friends," his June 19 concert event at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif. Timothy Norris/Getty Images for pgLang, Amazon/Getty Images North America hide caption

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Timothy Norris/Getty Images for pgLang, Amazon/Getty Images North America

Review

Music Features

Kendrick Lamar takes the West Coast off standby

Lamar's blowout Juneteenth concert, held at the Forum in Los Angeles and live-streamed on Amazon Music, planted flags for the future of LA rap, while uniting in hate for a certain Toronto titan.

Tuesday

The best songs of 2024 (so far)

Helado Negro Sadie Culberson Studio/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Sadie Culberson Studio/Courtesy of the artist

All Songs Considered

The best songs of 2024 (so far)

With the first half of the year almost behind us, we hit pause to reflect on some of the best tracks we've gotten so far, from Chappell Roan, Brittany Howard, Pedro The Lion and more.

The best songs of 2024 (so far)

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Thursday

Kendrick Lamar performs at a Spotify event in Cannes, France, during the Cannes Lions media festival in June 2022.

Kendrick Lamar performs at a Spotify event in Cannes, France, during the Cannes Lions media festival in June 2022. Getty Images for Spotify/Getty Images Europe hide caption

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Getty Images for Spotify/Getty Images Europe

Analysis

Music Features

GOAT debates are a hip-hop tradition. Spotify is here to spoil the fun

Canon-making is a core part of rap fandom, the subject of endless barbershop parleys and message-board battles. But something curdles when the companies that control the music business enter the chat.

Thursday

Ayra Starr's second album, The Year I Turned 21, is a global-minded symphony of influences, and part of a recent wave of young women charting their own course for African pop.

Ayra Starr's second album, The Year I Turned 21, is a global-minded symphony of influences, and part of a recent wave of young women charting their own course for African pop. Mikey Oshai/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Mikey Oshai/Courtesy of the artist

Review

Music Features

As African pop crests again, women are leading the second wave

Released in a span of three months, the new albums by Ayra Starr, Tems and Tyla are not merely career-making for the artists, but ground-shifting for the pop music of the continent.

Thursday

Friday

New Music Friday: The best albums out May 24

Carlos Nino Todd Weaver/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Todd Weaver/Courtesy of the artist

All Songs Considered

New Music Friday: The best albums out May 24

On our survey of the week's most exciting new albums, WRTI's Nate Chinen and NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce get all wrapped up in the amniotic embrace of a new album by a guru of the L.A. ambient-jazz scene.

New Music Friday: The best albums out May 24

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Thursday

Rapsody's album Please Don't Cry functions as a reintroduction to the rapper — long defined by her technique, now revealing some of the real person behind that prowess.

Rapsody's album Please Don't Cry functions as a reintroduction to the rapper — long defined by her technique, now revealing some of the real person behind that prowess. Jhalin Knowles/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Jhalin Knowles/Courtesy of the artist

Review

Music Features

Mask off: When rappers bust their own myths

Rapsody and Mach-Hommy, two rap technicians long defined by their skill above all, shake off that armor on a pair of striking new albums that demonstrate wildly different kinds of vulnerability.

Wednesday

Thursday

Gunna performs during the event

Gunna performs during the event "A Grammy Salute to 50 Years of Hip-Hop" on Nov. 8, 2023, at YouTube Theater in Inglewood, Calif. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for The Recording Academy hide caption

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Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Review

Music Features

Gunna can't flaunt his way out of the YSL trial's shadow

The rapper slipped free from the legal mess that swallowed his label and his mentor Young Thug — but on his new album, he's still in the grip of an unending image crisis.

Wednesday

8 Tracks: What was the Steve Albini sound? Almost everything

Artists like Superchunk, Neurosis, Pixies, Low, Mogwai and Joanna Newsom came to recording engineer Steve Albini when they had something righteous or defiant to proclaim. Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty hide caption

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Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty

Music

8 Tracks: What was the Steve Albini sound? Almost everything

If an artist was willing to confront their truths, Albini was ready to take them into the gaping maw. The recording engineer, who died last week, left an indelible mark on how we hear music.

Tuesday

The Contenders, Vol. 9: The songs we can't stop playing this week

WILLOW's latest album, empathogen, includes one of this week's must-hear tracks, "Run." Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Courtesy of the artist

All Songs Considered

The Contenders, Vol. 9: The songs we can't stop playing this week

We update our running list of the year's best songs with new ones from Dominic Fike, WILLOW, Kamasi Washington, Illuminati Hotties and more.

The Contenders, Vol. 9: The songs we can't stop playing this week

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Thursday

Wednesday

Taking the toll of Drake and Kendrick Lamar's vicious, gripping psychological warfare

Kendrick Lamar performs during the Rolling Loud hip-hop festival in Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 2023 and Drake performs during Day 2 of Lollapalooza Chile 2023. Last week, the two rappers' long-running feud exploded in a flurry of diss tracks. Jesse Wensing/ANP/AFP and Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images hide caption

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Jesse Wensing/ANP/AFP and Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images

Music

Taking the toll of Drake and Kendrick Lamar's vicious, gripping psychological warfare

As the jolt of adrenaline lit by the clash between the two biggest rappers of a generation fades, it's worth holding onto the possibility — however slim — that something new can grow from the chaos.

Thursday

Rappers took the White House. Now what?

A crowd of White House press looks on as Kanye West and then-President Donald Trump meet in the Oval Office on Oct. 11, 2018. Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images hide caption

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Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

Review

Music Features

Rappers took the White House. Now what?

A new documentary, Hip-Hop and the White House, considers rap's association with presidential politics — and in so doing, reveals a persistent misunderstanding of how both operate.