“I kind of prolonged my come-up,” Central Cee tells Apple Music. Off the success of record-breaking global hits “Doja” and “Sprinter,” not to mention the indisputable smash “Band4Band” with Lil Baby, nobody could have faulted the “Wild” West London native from hastily dropping an album to capitalize on any of those singles. But as he’d be happy to remind any of his fans, it was already an uphill battle just being a rapper out of Shepherd’s Bush, which makes his long-anticipated full-length debut, *CAN’T RUSH GREATNESS*, all the more momentous. “The first two projects were mixtapes,” he explains of his prior work. “The energy I put into them is what made it a mixtape, and the energy I premeditated to put into the album and the timing of everything is what the album is.” In line with that intent, Cee’s conflicted state of mind quickly comes to the fore on opener “No Introduction,” acknowledging and accepting the whirlwind of fame while concurrently craving a more tranquil life. Those changes manifest throughout the album, with him straddling diverging worlds on the drill dazzler “5 Star” and struggling with resonant pain on the plaintive “Limitless.” While the instantly gratifying “St. Patrick’s” indulges in familiar flagrant flexes, the album gets decidedly deeper than rap via tracks like “Don’t Know Anymore” and “Walk in Wardrobe,” with the latter’s late beat-switch raising the stakes. “It’s hard for me to rap in such a reflective wake,” he says. “I just want to look ahead at the light at the end of the tunnel and not really think about certain things.” While a substantial amount of the lyrical material skews intimately local, Cee’s worldwide reach reveals itself largely via collaborations with the likes of Lil Durk and Young Miko. Still, as good as it feels to hear him going bar for bar with 21 Savage on trap stunner “GBP,” his link with UK rap icon Skepta on “Ten” and reunion with *Split Decision* mate Dave on “CRG” just hit different, in the best way. “These songs aren’t really for the masses,” he says, “but just to touch the people, remind everyone that I’m human—that *they’re* human.”
With an album title like *The Last Wun*, speculation is bound to fly about Gunna’s future with—or without—his longtime label home YSL Records. Perpetuating his penchant for portraiture, the Cubist cover art conspicuously obscures his face even more so than on 2024’s *One of Wun* and further adds to the mysteriousness of these proceedings. Still, considering the repeated successes he’s enjoyed over the past decade, both solo and with hitmakers like Drake and Lil Baby, this sprawling set makes for an impressive send-off, one indicative of his commitment to quality. Victory laps don’t always yield the best results, but *The Last Wun* stands apart, staying consistently interesting throughout its more than two dozen songs. “pushin P” fans don’t have to wait long for new meme-ready moments like “let that sink in” and “just say dat,” though later cuts like the defiant “cfwm” and “him all along” are well worth sticking around for. His moneyed, jet-setting lifestyle matches a perpetual grindset mentality, evident on “showed em” and “on me.” Still, he remains a hedonist at heart, feeling faded yet tenacious on “again” and similarly invested in his pleasure on “gp.” Repeat Gunna collaborator Offset once again proves a worthy foil on “at my purest,” while Nechie adds some much-appreciated plug talk on “i can’t feel my face.” But as Gunna clearly looks towards the next stages of his career, his international tastes begin to intentionally solidify through some of his other feature choices. No fewer than three Nigerian stars make appearances here, with Burna Boy’s silky-smooth one on the explicitly salacious “wgft” contrasting with Wizkid’s romantic contribution to the subtler “forever be mine” and Asake’s more melodic placement on the luxe “satisfaction.”
It was a big deal when #KushandOrangeJuice became the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter upon the release of the eighth Wiz Khalifa mixtape in April 2010, back when “hashtags” and “trending topics” were cutting-edge promotional tools. Back then, it was practically unheard of for a rapper with no major-label deal to be making such big waves (he’d left his former label, Warner Bros., in 2009). But there was something comforting about the red-eyed Pittsburgh rapper’s laidback mode of rapping about the staples of college dorm-room chatter: weed, women, cars, parties… Did we mention weed? Today, *Kush & Orange Juice* is considered a “blog era” classic—a throwback to a chiller, simpler time. Almost exactly 15 years later, its sequel arrives like a visit from a friend from long ago who’s grown up and gotten richer, but otherwise mostly stayed the same. The 23 terminally chill tracks of *Kush + Orange Juice 2* feature more of the Taylor Gang touchstones you know and love: jet-ski races, beach picnics, fat joints, drop-tops, crab rolls, hot-boxing Ferrari F8s. He’s joined by a loaded roster of guests who haven’t changed much in the past decade and change, either: Curren$y, Smoke DZA, Chevy Woods, Terrace Martin. “I been doing the same thing since I was 19,” Khalifa crows on “I Might Be,” which might be tragic were those things not so timelessly appealing. Throughout the tape, a radio DJ (broadcasting on a station known as W-E-E-D) offers salient advice: “Don’t stay in the house, man. Jump in the car. Ride around with the homies and the homegirls, and put on some of that Wiz Khalifa, y’all.”
Louie Pastel and Felix actually hail from Los Angeles, borrowing their name from the title of Wim Wenders’ 1984 road movie. But beyond showing their movie-geek bona fides, the choice also speaks to their fondness for juxtaposing elements that might not typically go together—let’s say, West Coast G-funk and sneering punk rock, which they meld seamlessly on “Dogma 25,” where they deliver the odd cinephiliac bar (“Stanley Kubrick, how I’m making a scene”) in matching growls that do Tumblr-era Tyler, the Creator justice. Since their 2018 debut EP, *I’ll Get My Revenge in Hell*, the duo have earned comparisons to alternative rap groups like Death Grips and clipping. But *They Left Me With the Sword*, their third official EP, suggests that they’re equally inspired by blog-era cult faves The Cool Kids, whose retro-futuristic minimalism they channel on “Holy Spinal Fluid” and “El Camino.” (The latter, with its vocoder balladry and tight lyricism, showcases the pair at their best.)
On 2024’s *Samurai*, Lupe Fiasco gave his fans exactly what they wanted. Reuniting with longtime producer Soundtrakk (of “Kick, Push” and “Superstar” fame) for their second consecutive full-length collaboration, following *DRILL MUSIC IN ZION*, he kept his high-level rap songcraft at the fore on the acclaimed album. This EP-length companion expands upon that project somewhat, with some additional material including a few choice remixes featuring his Samurai Tour opening act, singer Troy Tyler. At first, the reworked version of the title track seems a rather nuanced revisiting, yet its final minute and a half gives the groove a more pronounced R&B feel with Tyler’s take on the hook. A similar thing happens with “Bigfoot,” where their vocal interplay elevates an already surging chorus. As for the newer songs, “SOS” delivers the masterly lyricism that people expect from Lupe, his running commentary and intricate metaphors buoying the divinely jazzy, ATCQ-esque beat.
Like its 2024 predecessor *Pinball*, part of the appeal of *Pinball II* is hearing MIKE step out of the fog of his own introspection and do something a little more sociable. Make no mistake: This is not straightforward rap music. But where *tears of joy*-era MIKE (age 20) sounded hell-bent on unburdening his soul, here he seems not only content with rapping for rap’s sake but resplendent in it. He pulls together West Coast breeziness (“Splat!”), Detroit bounce (“#74,” “WYC4”), weird Cubist R&B (“Dolemite”), and DMV dreamscapes (the Niontay feature “Shaq & Kobe”) with a free-associative joy that manages to be both fun and totally nonlinear. As for his collaborator, you guess he picked the name because of how hard he bubbles.
Is there anything Jane Remover *can’t* do? The 21-year-old rapper, singer, and producer’s surprise-released third album, *Revengeseekerz*, arrives just a few months after their striking and contemplative album *Ghostholding* under their Venturing alias. If that album dove deep into the tangled guitars and complex emotions of Midwestern emo, then *Revengeseekerz* finds Jane Remover fully leaving behind the gauzy anti-rock of 2023’s *Census Designated* and blasting off into the realm of rage music. It’s impossible to hear the bitcrushed synths of “Dreamflasher” and the lurching trap beats of “Experimental Skin” without conjuring images of current rage titans like Yeat and Playboi Carti. But nothing is ever that simple in Jane Remover’s world, as their dizzying and flashy approach to production means that even the catchiest *Revengeseekerz* material is densely packed with sonic bells and whistles. Amid a plethora of sonic gestures tilted towards the neon crags of modern rap, Jane Remover still finds the space to execute a few shocking left turns across these 12 tracks. Danny Brown lends his always elastic voice to the endless-ladder electroclash of “Psychoboost,” while “Professional Vengeance” bounces like a pop-punk Super Mario across a landscape of video-game lasers and pummeling bass. *Revengeseekerz* is the strongest statement yet from a true prodigy at the height of their powers.
The fact that Dijon Duenas had a hand in producing one of 2025’s most anticipated indie-rock releases (Justin Vernon’s two-part Bon Iver opus *SABLE, fABLE*) and most surprising pop-star comeback (Justin Bieber’s *SWAG*) speaks to his singular standing in the contemporary musical landscape. Arriving mere weeks after he became every Belieber’s most popular search term, Dijon’s second full-length, *Baby*, is an open invitation for his recent converts to follow him deeper into his lo-fi underworld—and a reassurance to his longtime fans that he isn’t farming out all his best production ideas to famous guys named Justin. On the conjoined opening tracks “Baby!” and “Another Baby!,” Dijon comes off as part Prince, part Salvador Dali, rendering his sensuous serenades in pitch-shifting surrealist style, like tapes from a late-night “Paisley Park” session left out to melt in the morning sun. And whether he’s indulging in the sound-collage gospel of “HIGHER!,” the distorted dub-soul of “FIRE!,” or the barking dog-assisted folk ballad “loyal & marie,” Dijon’s real superpower is crafting straight-from-the-heart songs and then throwing them delightfully off-balance, perpetually dropping elements in and out of the mix with a “what does this button do?” sense of mischief.
The past few years have been trying for the former member of Migos, which officially disbanded in 2023 after the tragic death of Takeoff in 2022. But hardship has shaped Offset’s path from the beginning, going back to his incarceration during Migos’ big break in 2013. “With me personally, adversity made me focus,” the 33-year-old rapper tells Apple Music’s Ebro Darden. “I’ve learned to just brush it off.” His debut solo album, *FATHER OF 4*, arrived in 2019, but 2023’s *SET IT OFF* marked Offset’s first venture with Migos in the rearview. On his third solo album, the rapper born Kiari Cephus sets aside his alias to dig a little deeper. “I named my album *KIARI* because it’s like me looking at myself in the mirror—my real life, how far I’ve come and what I’ve done, the good and the bad, the mistakes,” he tells Ebro. After seven years of marriage, Offset’s ex-wife, Cardi B, filed for divorce in August 2024. Through the drama, he sought solace in the booth. “I just wanted to focus on the music,” he tells Ebro. “And as soon as I did it, I seen the results.” The 18 tracks of *KIARI* show Offset at his most soul-searching, without sacrificing the technical precision he’s been known for since his scene-stealing turn on 2016’s “Bad and Boujee.” Moody samples add to the gravity, from the flip of Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” on “Pills” to “Bodies” with JID, which throws a curveball by interpolating Drowning Pool’s “Bodies.” (“I like the element of surprise on the records,” Offset told Ebro of the collaboration.) On “Move On,” Offset officially closes the book on his relationship with Cardi: “I’m trying to move on in peace,” he sings on the hook. As for a future reconciliation with Quavo for a Takeoff tribute album, Offset tells Ebro, “It’s possible. We just building us first.” Still, he scatters tributes to Takeoff throughout *KIARI*, recollecting the trio’s early days on “Prada Myself” and recruiting John Legend for the poignant hook of “Never Let Go”: “I lost my brother, but I gained an angel.”
After almost four years in prison, Flint, Michigan, rapper Rio Da Yung OG returned in early 2025 with his first project since incarceration: *RIO FREE*. Despite the prolonged absence, the MC, who has been a staple in the Wolverine State since 2019, picks up right where he left off before lockup. On the project, he’s not inclined to harp too intensely on the years lost to prison, instead reiterating that his status has remained unaffected despite his presence missing from the streets. On opener “Yung OGee,” he marvels at his status in the hood, his independent streak, and his ability to cook up a mixtape in less than an hour. He allows for some introspection, though, on “RIO FREE,” spitting over a mournful piano melody, reminiscing on the highs and lows of life in prison. He brags that the guards never found his phone (he hid it in some lotion) but also takes a moment to offer up a striking admission, a pain that clouds the celebration of his freedom: “I just did four years,” he raps. “I’m a lonely man.”
The New Orleans-born cousins (Ruby da Cherry and Scrim) have little in the way of crossover hits or mainstream press. But since emerging on SoundCloud in 2014 with their depressive, Memphis-inspired blend of horrorcore, witch house, and emo rap, the duo’s nihilism has proved surprisingly potent—their Grey Day Tour was the third-highest-grossing rap tour of 2024. On their fifth album, *THY KINGDOM COME* (a modest catalog, until you count the additional nine mixtapes and 30-plus EPs they’ve released in just over a decade), $uicideboy$ mostly stick to their bread and butter: themes of addiction and abjection, morose yet baroque titles, and the rap game’s bleakest flexes. (“Smokin’ on shit that smell like body rot,” they chant on BONES collab “Now and at the Hour of Our Death.”) But occasionally, a bit of levity creeps in, be it a jubilant sample of a NOLA bounce classic (Big Freedia’s “Gin in My System”) on “Napoleon” or the ’80s-R&B gloss on the otherwise grim “Full of Grace (I Refuse to Tend My Own Grave).”
Whether rocking with hip-hop heavyweights like The Alchemist over inventively sampled beats or spitting with lesser-known talents like RichGains and WhoTheHellIsCarlo, Boldy James can’t help but thrive over quality instrumentals. Coming off a string of near-monthly releases with producers ranging from Conductor Williams to Harry Fraud, the versatile Griselda affiliate delivers once more with his second project of 2025, *Permanent Ink*. Recorded with fellow Detroiter Roger Goodman of Royal House, the 13-track effort showcases a specific set of skills applied to yet another sonic side of the genre, one simultaneously more commercial and authentically regional. His street lingo backed up by street smarts, he brings intimate knowledge of the game on cuts like “All On My Side” and “It Hit Different,” mixing business with pleasure as is his wont. “Gargoyle Pelle” and “Stop Signs & Yields” blend him overtly into his city’s distinct palette of sounds, his hustler’s joy and survivor’s pain blurred throughout.
Since he signed to Def Jam at the end of 2021, Benny’s projects have been a mix of underground grit and mainstream appeal—a tough line to walk, but one he walks in style. At seven tracks in 20 minutes, *Excelsior* captures the gruff thrills of the equally brief *The Plugs I Met* series, pairing him with a marquee’s worth of midtempo, heritage-coded, narco-rap heroes including *Plugs* producer Harry Fraud (“Sign Language”), Styles P (“Toxic”), and Boldy James (the exceptionally titled “Duffel Bag Hottie’s Revenge”). You know what they say: You can take the boy out of the street, but…
“I believe the weirdest ones survive,” Doja Cat sings on “Stranger”—a line that just as easily applies to her unpredictable trajectory as it does a shimmering power ballad for misfits in love. With her world-conquering third album, 2021’s *Planet Her*, Doja Cat completed her evolution from viral internet oddball to full-on pop-rap star. Well, sorta: Ever the contrarian, the musician born Amala Dlamini announced in early 2023 that she was leaving pop music behind; months later, her fourth album, *Scarlet*, showcased her formidable rap skills with flinty songs that rejected the terms of her mainstream success. But when she began to conceptualize her fifth album last year, the pendulum swung the other way. “I think I love talking about love,” Doja tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “And I also think music is just such a door for expressing love in its different forms.” On *Vie* (the French word for life, or the phonetic interpretation of the Roman numeral five), Doja pulls up via DeLorean with a whole new sound and style. Artfully grounded in the decadence of the ’80s, she spiffs up songs about love-bombing and limerence with skittering drum machines, punchy basslines, and the occasional sax solo. She channels Queen on “AAAHH MEN!,” an ode to the maddening, demoralizing, irresistible pleasures of men, and brings new jack swing into the 2020s on lead single “Jealous Type.” Naturally, what she called “that ’80s tacky romance sort of spin” demanded Doja’s first meet-up with pop’s premiere nostalgist, Jack Antonoff. “And so it’s the grappling with talking about something personal and creating something fresh, and then getting to know someone new,” she tells Lowe of their collaboration. “All of these things fell together really naturally.” More playful than its predecessor, *Vie* relishes in its campy mood board and dishy subject matter: On “Silly! Fun!,” a punch-drunk R&B throwback about romantic delusion, the honeymoon’s over nearly as soon as it starts (“I know it could be a blast to just pop out a baby/We’re so very silly, getting married in Vegas”). But just because it’s flamboyant doesn’t mean it can’t be deep. “This album really grew from my sessions in therapy, and being so gung-ho on being there twice a week,” she says. “And learning about the human experience and how our brains function subconsciously and consciously.” Meanwhile, she mastered her singing skills—note the chops towards the end of “Jealous Type.” “I feel like I can do a lot more things that I could never do,” she says. “It’s just a more evolved, more mature version of whatever I’ve been doing since the beginning.” High-gloss romance aside, love manifests in other ways. “I think that creativity is love,” Doja tells Lowe. “You risk a lot for love. And so when a musician loves what they do, sometimes that entails things that are kind of uncomfortable and scary. But it doesn’t matter, because you love that thing so much.”
A broken clock is right twice a day, and a new Boldy James album comes twice a month. Well, not quite, but few rappers have ever been on a run as prolific as the Detroit MC has been in 2025. What makes the barrage of releases so special, however, is the high-quality raps he serves up again and again. On his May 2025 release with LA producer Real Bad Man, *Conversational Pieces*, he keeps the good times rolling like the luxury whips he loves to rap about. Much like the duo’s 2020 collaboration, *Real Bad Boldy*, James and Real Bad Man have an almost telepathic chemistry on *Conversational Pieces*. Whether spitting about cruising the streets late at night on “Tap the Brakes Twice” or luxury vacations on “Aspen,” Boldy floats atop stripped-down beats. It’s a fine line the artists effortlessly walk, balancing minimalism and charisma with an intoxicating nonchalance. It’s a personality Boldy has embodied on this generational run, and lord knows he’s had the practice.
Between Comedy Central’s *The New Negroes*, his Stony Island Audio podcast fiefdom, and countless hours of livestreaming, Open Mike Eagle has got plenty of media experience. For *Neighborhood Gods Unlimited*, he proffers a conceptually inventive take on imagined cable network Dark Comedy Television, with barely enough budget for an hour’s worth of programming. That translates to one of the indie-rap mainstay’s more diverse offerings thematically and, with help from underground producers like Child Actor and Ialive, sonically. On the sitcom-esque “me and aquil stealing stuff from work,” he and his buddy AQ both toil and loaf around like quintessential mall rats. His unabashedly nerdy tastes come through as he nods to *Adventure Time*’s wintry wizard on “contraband (the plug has bags of me)” and non-canonically mixes heterogenous comic book and cartoon lore on “michigan j. wonder.” Longtime cohorts R.A.P. Ferreira and Previous Industries’ Video Dave appear as fourth-wall-winking guest stars in sweeps-week fashion, but nobody upstages Mr. Number 1 on the Call Sheet.
For Benny the Butcher, feeding the streets is more than just a business strategy. As the Buffalo rapper builds his Black Soprano Family brand, he concurrently makes clear his determined aspirations towards earning a spot in the top-five-dead-or-alive vanguard of elite MCs. With the release of *Summertime Butch 2*, a sequel to his well-received 2024 project, he adds another audio document to the growing dossier comprising his craft. After letting Griselda comrade Westside Gunn get a few Flygod bars off on “Jasmine’s,” he proceeds to lay into the current state of rap music, lambasting the lyrical laziness and pop aspirations of a mercifully unnamed cluster of subpar artists. On “Told You So,” he deflects criticism from those who overvalue mainstream chart placements while cruising down his personalized path to hip-hop greatness. Later, he reaffirms both his dope-boy bona fides and his underground classics on “77 Club,” demonstrating a linkage with the past criminality that now thematically fuels his creativity. Guests like Bruiser Wolf and OT The Real operate at a high level alongside a never-complacent Benny on the Daringer-produced “Hood on Fire” and Nickel Plated’s “Gold Plated Leica,” respectively. Other collabs like the booming “In the Wall” with Bun B and “Why Would I” with G Herbo take him out of his well-established trap-house comfort zone, yet he adapts his knowledgeably streetwise flows with sweat-free dexterity over those beats. Naturally, he shows love for his BSF insiders, making space for Elcamino and Duckman on the cinematic “Pandoras.”
The Chicago drill superstar’s eighth studio album, 2023’s *Almost Healed*, was devoted to the concept of recovering from trauma—a theme that’s haunted Lil Durk’s music, either implicitly or explicitly, since his emergence in the early 2010s as the most melodically gifted of the genre’s rising stars. Its March 2025 follow-up, *Deep Thoughts*, was slated for release in October 2024. But that same month, Durk was arrested (along with several affiliates of his record label and collective, Only the Family) in connection to a murder-for-hire case against a rival rapper. The rapper born Durk Banks has maintained his innocence, but was denied bail on the grounds of being a flight risk. If convicted of the charges, the 32-year-old faces life in prison. This changes the gravity of his long-awaited ninth album, which was delayed four times since the 2024 arrest. But the tracklist of *Deep Thoughts* seems to reflect a different lifetime, with pre-arrest singles like “Turn Up a Notch” and a suite of lusty ballads like the benny blanco-produced Jhene Aiko duet, “Can’t Hide It.” The resounding pathos of Durk’s work remains—most potently on “Keep on Sippin’,” whose candid bars detail the vicious cycle of addiction. But the stakes have changed, and it’s hard not to wonder what the Lil Durk of the past year might have to get off his chest instead. Still, an offhand line from “They Want to Be You,” a melancholy Future collab about the expectations of fame, hits even harder now: “All the kids rap, they wanna be just like you.”
An undeniable East Atlanta fave, Young Nudy amassed a memorable assortment of charting hits in the first half of the 2020s, including a noteworthy few alongside his cousin 21 Savage. After reuniting with Pi’erre Bourne for 2024’s victory lap *Sli’merre 2*, he’s back with his longtime producer Coupe (known for “Peaches & Eggplants”) and beatmaking familiar Kid Hazel for the vibrant, ecstatic *PARADISE*. His mellifluous drawl and explicit lyrics coupled with surreally melodic instrumentals yield some of the most crowd-pleasing tracks of his career to date. From the irreverent strip club bounce of “BTA” to the smooth talk of “CHAINS ON” and “SUPER SLIME,” he’s in rare form as a trap libertine. Elsewhere, he shouts out Zone 6 on the more ominous “MOP STICK,” embraces baller status on “SNAKE,” and vibes with Latto on “WHAT’S HAPPENIN’.” Naturally, 21 Savage makes an appearance alongside Coupe on “ICED TEA,” but it’s the fresh Project Pat hook that takes the already elevated single to even higher heights.
In 2020, Mariah Carey gave her all to one of the most vulnerable works of her career—but for the first time, it wasn’t an album. Her memoir *The Meaning of Mariah Carey* laid bare her feelings about her complicated family life, the myriad successes of her record-breaking career, the joys of motherhood, and more. Though Carey’s an award-winning songwriter and has been known for her prowess with the pen since her 1990 debut, she tells Apple Music that the process of writing *The Meaning of Mariah Carey* unlocked something new for her when it came to plumbing particularly difficult emotional depths for her lyrics. “It definitely did something to me where I was just a little bit more vulnerable, a little bit more exposed, a little bit more able to be myself, regardless,” she says. *Here For It All*, her 16th studio album, is her first project to fully capitalize on this soul-searching, and look no further than the ballads for proof. “Nothing Is Impossible” is an ode to her own resilience (“I dream a greater dream/I fight a greater fight/I overcome it all”), and the grand and sentimental title track is the sort of unabashedly romantic that hits the ear like a love note read aloud (“When you leave/You take a little bit of every fiber that’s embedded in me”). These showstoppers are classically Carey, but so is the album’s robust mix of R&B, hip-hop, disco, gospel, and pop. “I was a little bit worried in the beginning that there were too many different types of records,” she says. “And I was just like, ‘I don’t care.’” Whether she’s vaulting her whistle tones to the heavens (alongside gospel legends The Clark Sisters on “Jesus I Do”), invoking ’90s street swagger with “Type Dangerous” (which samples Eric B. & Rakim’s “Eric B. Is President”), time-traveling with ’70s slow jams (courtesy of the Anderson .Paak collaboration “Play This Song”), or covering a childhood favorite (her take on Paul McCartney’s Wings classic “My Love”), Carey is unapologetically herself and relishing in every note. Read on for her thoughts on each track of *Here For It All*. **“Mi”** “It’s an ode to self-love and self-care. It was just one of those things where it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it’s still one of those ones that a lot of people were like, ‘Oh, I love this.’ I just visualize me in a hot tub every time.” **“Play This Song” (feat. Anderson .Paak)** “I definitely wanted to work with Anderson because he’s so brilliant and amazing at what he does, which is just being a kick-ass musician. But when we got into the studio, we decided we wanted to do something that was kind of ’70s, and we did give you that kind of vibe. So we started working on ‘Play This Song,’ and it was just one of those ones that I really loved. Working with him in the studio, he’s a great companion in terms of making music.” **“Type Dangerous”** “I was in a restaurant in Aspen, and I was with Andy \[Anderson .Paak\] and a couple of friends. All of a sudden they started playing music and playing different songs. Suddenly ‘Eric B. Is President’ comes on, and I was like, ‘What? I love this song. I haven’t heard this song in forever.’ We went to the studio the next day and started playing around with sampling it, and it’s just on and on from there... I made them play it over and over.” **“Sugar Sweet” (feat. Shenseea and Kehlani)** “I just think \[Shenseea and Kehlani\]’s freedom really shows, and they’re just present; they’re who they are. This makes the record so much younger and more fun, and I just thought it was everything. I’ve never had a trio before with three strong women, and having the ability to do this now, it’s amazing. I love what it speaks on. I love what it speaks to.” **“In Your Feelings”** “It’s one of those ones where you tell a story about something you’ve been through and put it together and you release it. And that’s what we did. People really like the ‘I think you might be getting a little bit too...’—that part. I like it a lot. I wasn’t really trying to say anything. I was just feeling the moment. I didn’t even appreciate it much until we did it and I lived with it for a while.” **“Nothing Is Impossible”** “I was just writing a couple of things, playing around with little ideas and working with my very close friend and musical director Daniel Moore. He was playing on the piano. I was singing along. We were following each other in terms of melody, and then I just took it home and wrote the lyrics. I think it’s one of those ones where I had to be by myself and really just off in my own world writing about these sort of feelings. I think it’s something, if anything, it would help somebody get through something.” **“Confetti & Champagne”** “I guess it’s about somebody that you’re not with anymore, but you’re speaking to them, and that’s it. You don’t really care. That’s the basic ‘Clink, clink, clink, pow/Look at me now.’ That’s basically it.” **“I Won’t Allow It”** “We took a long time writing it—not a long time with the actual words or the music, but it was just over time we produced more and did more. It’s another one with \[.Paak\], and he’s just so great at that type of vibe. There are some kiss-off moments in that. ‘I won’t entertain all your narcissistic ways’ is one of my favorite moments. ‘Should have been more proactive’—these parts just make me laugh.” **“My Love”** “It’s more an homage to my childhood, because I remember being a little girl and riding on the back of a motorcycle with my mother’s friend’s daughter and her boyfriend. This was their song, and they were in love. I’m still hoping that Paul McCartney might play something on it, which would be amazing. He is one of the greatest of all time, ever, and I just asked before I recorded the song, would he mind if I recorded it? I had a conversation with him, and he was like, ‘No, give it a shot, send it to me.’ And I’m like, ‘How do I do this? Because I really want him to be on this song doing background vocals, something.’ I don’t think that’s where he’s at right now, but he might lay something for the deluxe version. I would be thrilled out of my mind. But yeah, if you talk about the emotion when I’m singing it, it’s definitely about finding someone that you really revere and care for.” **“Jesus I Do” (feat. The Clark Sisters)** “I am a humongous Clark Sisters fan. I love their work. Karen Clark’s solo album is just scrumptious and unparalleled. I really was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m in here doing this.’ We wrote it together and sang it together. All the backgrounds that we did, I mean, I’m so inspired by their background vocals that when I get to mix that with mine, it’s something to be healed.” **“Here For It All”** “It’s just special to me; that’s why I put it at the end and named the album after it, because it’s personal to me. It’s not even something I want to even go into every beat of. I love the way it ends and then it doesn’t end. I thought this was going to be my gospel song on this album, because that’s the vibe it’s giving, but we have ‘Jesus I Do,’ so it’s different. I just feel like this is such a ‘Mariah Carey record’ in a way that other songs I’ve done however long ago weren’t, because it’s got a soulfulness to it, just the way that it’s arranged. I just feel like it’s something very personal, but also very like it’s giving this to other people that need to hear something like that.”
“I’ve been realizing that I really made the album that I needed to heal myself,” Kali Uchis tells Apple Music about *Sincerely,* perhaps her most liberating work yet. The Colombian American singer-songwriter’s catalog has never felt slight or frivolous, whether in English or in Spanish. Yet this full-length follow-up to her 2024 *ORQUÍDEAS* dyad presents as something truly unique, arriving roughly a decade after her promising EP debut *Por Vida*. The majority of the songs here began simply as voice notes, fortuitously captured in inspired moments outside of the confines or pressures of a studio setting. “Messages would just feel like they were directly coming through me, and I just had to get them out,” she says. Given such natural creative origins, it should come as little surprise that the actual process behind the album eschewed industry norms altogether, favoring home recording and unconventional settings. And despite the demonstrated level of guest vocal talent at her fingertips, she opted out of features, too. “When you’re making emotional music, you have to actually dig into difficult subjects,” she says, marking a clear distinction between this piece and its star-powered predecessor. As a result, *Sincerely,* feels disarmingly intimate for what is ostensibly a pop album, even one from as consistently adventurous an artist as Uchis. The evocative moments of opener “Heaven Is a Home…” and closer “ILYSMIH” speak on love in grand and sweeping gestures, the passing of her mother and the birth of her son making understandably profound impacts on the work. Influences like Cocteau Twins and Fiona Apple can be felt in all that comes between those bookends. “There’s a lot of grief, but there’s a lot of joy,” she says, describing what seeps through the veil of “Silk Lingerie,” or the vamps of “Territorial.” Excess punctuation on titles like “Lose My Cool,” and “For: You” hint at the flowing prose of her lyrics as it contributes to an even greater whole. “I think it is a celebration of life in its own way,” she says, “in the sense of finding beauty in the pain and taking the good.”