Artists

A$AP Mob has been having a productive summer. A$AP Twelvyy released his debut album 12, and A$AP Ferg dropped his Still Striving mixtape. The group’s sophomore studio album, Cozy Tapes Vol. 2: Too Cozy, is scheduled to be released on August 25.Although the collective is still going strong, they’ve been through a lot since they first rose to prominence earlier this decade. A$AP Yams, co-founder, music business guru, and de facto leader of the group, passed away in 2015. A$AP Rocky, the Mob’s biggest star, hasn’t released a new album since that year. As is the case with any popular group, their momentum has begun to slow.In 2012 and 2013, when the buzz behind A$AP Mob was just beginning to peak, Complex ran a series of features highlighting various members’ favorite albums. A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg both listed their top 25 albums, with A$AP Yams listing his top 42.This playlist consists of songs from the A$AP Mob members’ respective lists of albums, which vary widely in genre and sound. A$AP Rocky, whose choices account for the first 23 tracks on this playlist, lists rock groups like Nirvana, Colplay, Cold War Kids, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jimi Hendrix among his favorites alongside rap legends like Rakim and Big Pun. A$AP Ferg likes Selena. A$AP Yams liked Stillmatic more than Illmatic. A$AP Rocky specifically mentioned he didn’t like College Dropout, only Late Registration. A$AP Ferg liked both, plus 808s and Heartbreak and Kid Cudi.Despite the differences, there are commonalities. Everyone in the A$AP Mob loves Cam’ron and Dipset, which is unsurprising considering both hail from Harlem and brought global attention to their New York neighborhood by utilizing the group format. All three also list DMX among their favorites. A$AP Rocky said he listened to DMX to remind him of home when he had to move to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as a child.The A$AP Mob members reference the styles that influenced their sound, citing New York classics from the era in which they grew up as well as the Texan sounds of UGK and Scarface that A$AP Rocky notoriously incorporated into his music. Most of the songs on the playlist are recognizable singles or classic tracks, to underscore the fact that the group’s members have been inspired by music everyone likes. They’ve already produced work of their own that should stand the test of time, and hopefully their new music continues in that tradition.

Alive with pulsing disco and house beats, Shamirs debut album Ratchet caused a sensation when XL Recordings released it in 2015. Many casual fans know him by the sparky electro-rap of the albums single “On the Regular.” Scintillating as the lights of his native Las Vegas and, at times, as brooding as the gloom on the edges of town, Ratchet deserved all the accolades it garnered. Still, as the pop phenom prepares to release his very different third album, Revelations, its worth noting that theres always been more to Shamir Bailey.He started his career in music singing country, while his first band Anorexia was a DIY punk affair, and his debut EP Northtown took a raw, minimal approach to dance-pop. Given all that, Shamir would seem impossible to pigeonhole, even before factoring in his genderless countertenor. Nevertheless, after the success of Ratchet, XL set him on a track to make something similar. Uninterested in repeating himself musically, the young singer-songwriter parted with his label and self-released a second album, Hope, a bundle of defiant, aching indie-pop that set the stage for his latest release.The real revelations on Revelations are more of the musical than personal variety. Its avant lo-fi pop betrays the influence of his confessed favorite artists such as Vivian Girls and Tegan and Sara, and even of Nina Simone (whom he has called his “beacon”). Seeing this stripped-down side of Shamir will be an adjustment for some, but Revelations songcraft and intense honesty is bound to win the 22-year-old some converts. Whether you are a new fan or old, let this playlist be your guide to the many dimensions of the Shamiriverse: the underground electro heroes, rockers, gender outlaws, and heartbroken divas who run through all of his music. Get up to speed now, because even though he claims “I reached my final form” on the haunting anthem “Float,” he almost certainly hasnt.

Atlanta-born, Tropicalia-inspired singer-songwriter Adron has just released her new album Water Music -- a love letter to the ocean, described as "a defiantly joyful look at escaping the gravity of land." Featuring sweet, graceful vocals and a nylon-stringed guitar, her soft, breezy songs read like yacht rock for a new generation (which is probably why Steely Dan's Don Fagen personally invited her to open for him!)No stranger to themes as proven by her current concept record, when we asked Adron to make us a playlist, she chose to craft us a mix of "Music for Breakfast." Leading with a chill song from a band known for making "crazy samba," her playlist is pretty close to what you can expect from someone as eclectic and relaxed to make music about the sea. Listen above or go right here, and feel free to pair this with waffles.

Be sure to subscribe to our playlist, The 40 Best Nas Tracks Not on Illmatic, right here.Nas’ 1994 debut Illmatic is not only considered his best album, but is regarded as the best hip-hop album ever, full stop. And with good reason: that album revolutionized the genre. Nas captured the ruinous glory of post-crack N.Y.C.. By suggesting that drugs were both empowering and destructive, his lyrics alternately embraced and rejected the idea of ghetto glamour, etching out bits of hard-won wisdom amongst Nas’ piercing observational storytelling. His word-drunk, casual cadences redefined how emcees could rap. And this was all done over peak boom bap production from DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Q-Tip, among others.But, at this point, it’s boring to talk about Illmatic, or to say that Nas lives it its shadow. It’s a boilerplate narrative, and a lazy, rote mythologization. To be honest, many of the ideas and even a few of the observations I made in the first paragraph were recycled from the various times in my career when I’ve been tasked with paying homage to that particular lodestar. But what happened after Illmatic, and the various ways that his fans and critics have reacted to that output, is a lot more interesting.In the ensuing years (and decades), Nas continued to evolve and experiment, cycling through different personas and tackling difficult concepts, both personal and political. He wasn’t always successful; there are peaks and valleys, and he failed as often as he succeeded. At times, his work has been baffling and self-annihilating, full of contradictions and strange discursions. For every blazingly brilliant observational detail, there’s a weird sex rap or a confounding historical inaccuracy. And Nas, himself, is frequently unlovable. He’s aloof and enigmatic. He’s flirted with messianic imagery and has been accused of abusing his ex-wife. Sometimes it seemed that his fans -- and I count myself among them -- spent as much time apologizing for him as listening to his music. But, the truth is, we’ve hung on. We’ve bought into the idea of his brilliance; we’ve subscribed to his narrative. Sure, it’s a messy and uneven journey, and it’s frequently hard to stomach him, much less listen to his music, but, in a way, that makes him feel more human. He’s not a face on Mt. Rushmore, and he doesn’t carry the extra-human weight of aDylan or B.I.G., but his flaws ground him, and bring his flashes of otherworldly brilliance into stark relief.There has effectively been five distinct Nas periods. The first is Illmatic, which is a deeply autobiographical work that captures key parts of Nas’ childhood. By the time that he re-entered the studio to record 1996’s It Was Written, he had largely abandoned this direct approach. Taking a cue from Raekwon and Ghostface -- who had, the year before, released Only Built for Cuban Linx -- Nas took on the persona of drug lord Nas Escobar. His cadences seem were more calculated and precise, alternately more accomplished and less poetic, and though some of the imagery from that album was still culled from Nas’ childhood in the Queensbridge projects, tracks such as “Live Nigga Rap” and “Street Dreams” were conscious fictions -- Miami-sized coke rap fantasies that were cinematic in scope. He would continue mining this persona over his next two albums, Nastradamus and I Am. The artistic failure of those two albums has been widely overstated -- it’s hard to entirely dismiss albums that produced tracks like “Project Windows,” “Nas is Like,” and “NY State of Mind, Pt. II” -- but by the turn of the millennium, there was little doubt that the Nas’ Escobar persona had run out of steam, so Nas switched it up, beginning with 2001’s comeback album Stillmatic and continuing with 2002’s mid-period high-water-mark God’s Son. His narrative strategy here was more straightforward and reflective, which many took to be a return to the autobiographical raps of Illmatic, but tracks like “Get Down” and “2nd Childhood” were older, wiser, and less nihilistic. They were the stories of a survivor, and not a soldier. And though the role of the “street prophet” was always part of Nas’ persona -- see “Black Girl Lost” from It Was Written -- this period also saw him increasingly turning to socio-political themes. It felt that Nas had reclaimed his glory, and, for at least a minute, his fans reemerged from their closets and re-appointed Nas as the GOAT.This particular stylistic era reached a climax on 2004’s Street’s Disciple. There were moments of greatness on that album, but it was a messy, sprawling double album, and was a relative commercial disappointment. When, in a 2011 interview between Nas and Tyler, The Creator for XXL magazine, the Odd Future frontman admitted that Street’s Disciple was his favorite album, Nas seemed shocked. But Tyler’s reaction is understandable. The album contains some genuinely brilliant material, and the fact that it’s been overlooked makes it seem more personal to his fans. It’s something that we, and we alone, own. Still, the lukewarm reception caused Nas to recalibrate. To put it bluntly, Nas was aging. He was a wealthy, veteran rapper who, at that point, was over 10 years removed from the street life and struggling to adopt a credible public persona. In lieu of this, he withdrew himself from his music, and released a string of high-concept albums that were oriented around a series of thematic conceits. Hip-Hop Is Dead, from 2006, looked at the supposed-demise of hip-hop. It was a moody album that mourned the genre’s childhood innocence and the inondation of commercialism. It was by no means brilliant, and I can’t imagine anyone putting it in their top 3 Nas albums, but its melancholy made it compelling. The follow-up, 2008’s Untitled, looked at race relations in America. The album was originally called Nigger, which, as you can imagine, garnered a sharply mixed response. Nas was still considered a commercial and cultural force, and the title drew criticism from camps as disparate as Al Sharpton and Bill O’Reilly. Eventually, Nas conceded to the pressure, and named it simply Untitled. Putting the controversy aside, it wasn’t a particularly great album, but there are some crucial tracks, including the spare lyrical workout “Queens Get the Money,” and the crunchy, aggressive “Money Over Bullshit.” But it’s legacy was tainted by allegations that Jay Electronica had ghostwritten some of the tracks. Though never proven, it put Nas fans in a familiar space, making excuses and equivocating.Regardless of the album’s authorship, at this point, in his career and in his life, it’s fair to say that Nas had lost his narrative. He was no longer at forefront of hip-hop, either culturally or commercially, and his marriage to R&B singer Kelis had produced a child but ended in a divorce (years later, Kelis would claim that Nas had abused her; and regardless of whether or not that is true, at the very least, it pointed towards a tumultuous relationship). He did what many of us would in his situation: he took some time off. 2012’s comeback album Life is Good was Nas’ most personal work to date, and one of his most compelling. It’s a deeply ambiguous work -- the cover finds him clutching Kelis’ wedding dress, and the entire album is coated in ennuie and disappointment. The opening track, “No Introduction,” is a biography-in-miniature and directly tackles the dissolution of his marriage. Over a lush production from Miami production unit (and frequent Rick Ross collaborators) J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, the song begins with Nas embarrassed, standing in line for a free lunch at elementary school, and ends with the admission that he’s aging and seeking an ever-elusive closure. This sense of melancholy is present throughout that album. The track “Bye Baby” tackles his divorce head-on, while “A Queens Story” traces the arcs of his friendships, and ends with the starkly ambivalent image of Nas the “only black in a club of rich yuppie kids,” getting hammered as he recalls the images of his dead friends.Life is Good would’ve made an appropriate swan song, and he could’ve rode out in the sunset at this point with his legacy intact, but, of course, this didn’t happen, and the follow up, 2018’s Nasir, felt like a retreat of sorts. It was billed as a collaborative album with Kanye West, which seems like every hip-hop fans wet dream (at least in 2005). And while there are certainly flashes of greatness (most notably on “Adam and Eve,” where Nas wrestles with his legacy, both to his public and his children), the emcee sounds strangely detached. He’s abandoned his narrative raps, and his ability to twist the details of his life into poetic imagery fail him. “Not for Radio” more-or-less recycles the vibe and themes of “N.I.*.*.E.R” from Untitled wholesale, except with much-diminished returns, while the seven-minute-long “everything” feels maudlin, and strangely anchors itself around an anti-vaccination rant. But most of all, it's what's missing that's important. Considering that Nas has always been such an honest and forthcoming emcee, it's odd that he didn’t address Kelis’ allegations of domestic abuse. Nas is far from the only pop culture figure to suffer from such allegations, and there has been no supporting evidence, but his silence reads as guilt. Nas fans have defended him many times over the years for a variety of transgressions, but this is probably the most troubling.But, like I said in the beginning, it’s not easy being a Nas fan. At times, he seems god-like and invisible, while at others, he's impossibly bitter and even loathsome. But you take the good with the bad, and hope the former outweighs the latter, as it frequently does. If he would’ve ended his career after It Was Written, he would’ve left the hip-hop with two concise, blazingly brilliant albums, and would’ve been talked about in the same breath as Biggie or Pac, but his subsequent material has revealed him as being merely human, but, in the end, we’re still here, for better and worse.

After her 2015 single “Waiting Around” racked up 10,000,000-plus Spotify plays on the strength of a Volkswagen-ad placement, New York folk-soul phenom Aisha Badru recently released the first teaser from her upcoming full-length solo debut. The aching ballad “Bridges” is currently available in two forms—a deeply atmospheric, beat-driven take, and a “stripped” version where her voice is accompanied only by somber strings. Collectively, they set the goal posts for the intimate and experimental sounds she’s collected on her Dowsers playlist.“This playlist features a mix of some of my all-time favorite songs, along with some newer songs that I’m loving right now. Over the years, Ive grown to love artists across many genres. I think I subconsciously picked up elements from all ofl the style of music that Ive enjoyed and crafted a unique sound that I can call my own.”—Aisha Badru

Before forming, half of ALASKALASKA met in a Popular Music university course, while the other half mingled among the jazz crowd in South London. Together, its six members found even ground or, rather, a way to seamlessly blend their vast array of influences into a melodic mix that knows no borders. On their 2019 debut album, <I>The Dots</I>, they weave together sex, sax, synths, and sadness into a colorful tapestry of jazz, funk, disco, psychedelia, and pop. To make better sense of the sextet’s rich sonic meld, bassist and producer Fraser Rieley shares with us the music that helped inspire the band to find and refine their sound.Says Rieley: These are “tracks that inspired the making of <I>The Dots</I>. I’m drawn to music that has a certain duplicity, an interesting balance of moods and sentiments. Things that contrast dark and light, happy and sad, depth in texture and tonality, or raw/human components against unusual or jarring elements. Nostalgia and genre also played a big part in how the album was arranged and produced, blending or clashing sounds/instruments/parts that have different musical connotations as a way of making something new and relatable at the same time. Enjoy!”

Throughout the fall of 2017, San Diego ambient post-rock architect Jimmy LaValle has overseen deluxe vinyl reissues of his back catalog on his own imprint, Eastern Glow Recordings. In the same industrious, self-sufficient spirit, he’s created a Dowsers playlist to celebrate fellow musical loners (and the partners with whom they commiserate). “Here’s a playlist of some of my favorite solo artists and duos. As a solo artist myself, I truly love discovering new (to me) music not made by a band. Multi-instrumentalists are kind of a musician’s musician at times, making music because it’s something we have to do. There’s a ton of material I’ve recorded over the years that’s never been released and it’s because I’m constantly creating. I admire these artists and songs, and it also reflects what I’m really currently into instrumentation-wise.”—Jimmy LaValle a.k.a. The Album Leaf

Sia’s songs have a certain archetypal character: spurned lovers feeling out the space between their needs and desire; distressed romantics seeking the salvation of sunrises and barstools; frail, self-possessed heroines steeped in their own idiosyncrasies. The former Zero 7 frontwoman is primarily known for her own hits at this point, but she’s written for some of the biggest pop stars of the past two decades, and this collection highlights, what Time feels, are the greatest performances of her songbook. It’s ranked (from top to bottom), which means that this is intended as more of a subjective conversation piece, but it still feels cohesive.

Over the past two years, there’s been such a remarkable abundance of great music by female artists in the overlapping territories of alt-country, roots, and Americana that it could fill this playlist many times over. From the folky, sepulchral sounds of Pieta Brown, to the Kitty Wells-style honky-tonk throwbacks of Rachel Brooke, to the raw and tender country blues of Adia Victoria (pictured), it’s a boom time all round.That said, trying to fit a disparate group of artists into a tidy category that’s based in part on their gender can’t help but feel unfairly reductive. Hell, it may even perpetuate the kind of backward sexual politics that persist in the worst of American country music and that many artists understandably buck against. Back in 2014, the duo Maddie & Tae scored a surprise smash with “Girl In A Country Song,” a bouncy piece of C&W pop that doubled as an unusually acerbic satire of the ways women are typically represented by Nashville. “We used to get a little respect,” goes the chorus. “Now we’re lucky if we even get to climb up in your truck/ Keep our mouths shut and ride along/ And be the girl in a country song.” Three years later, with “bro-country” acts like Florida Georgia Line, Luke Bryan, and Chase Rice doubling down on innuendo-laden tailgate-party anthems and yet more videos with models in bikinis, mainstream country needs that kind of skewering even more.Lest all this just serve as another reason for alt-country hipsters to feel smug about their superior tastes, even they ought to admit that there ain’t much gender parity when it comes to the artists who generally cross over from the No Depression crowd and gain wider renown and success. After all, there are many more female acts who’ve been just as willing as Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson to pursue a richer, more adventurous kind of artistry than Nashville generally tolerates. They too deserve to garner audiences beyond the flannel-clad roots-music devotees who already recognize the virtues of Rhiannon Giddens’ revamps of old-time spirituals, savor the gilded harmonies of The Trishas, or tremble at the sound of Tift Merritt’s warble.This bounty of talent ranges from newbies like Kacy & Clayton (a Canadian duo who’ve become protégés of Jeff Tweedy) and Molly Burch (an Austinite blessed with a voice whose chilly beauty evokes Patsy Cline and Karen Dalton at their most desolate) to Shelby Lynne and Alison Moorer, sisters and alt-country vets who demonstrate their own dexterity by combining covers of Townes Van Zandt and Nirvana on their new album Not Dark Yet. These are the alt-country women you need to hear if you haven’t been so lucky already. Big-hatted bros best take heed.

Few artists have embodied the sound and ethos of their entire genre the way Miles Davis did with jazz. When Davis’ career began, even the shift from the uppity early 20th-century sounds of bebop to the laid-back tones of cool jazz was considered a highly controversial move, yet by the end of his life, he was leading his band into 30-plus-minute psychedelic freefalls, pushing the genre ever onwards into the future while taking inspiration from whatever styles suited his fancy. Even his most relaxed-sounding work bears all the creative energy of a true maverick, and his powerful visions of what jazz could be endure in their vividness even today.As an emerging voice on Manhattan’s mid-’40s bebop scene, Davis originally distinguished himself with his smooth, minimal style of trumpet playing—ironic, given how bold his ventures into jazz would become. His first major stylistic shift came with his development of cool jazz, embodied most famously on the 1957 album Birth Of The Cool, a compilation of sessions dating back to 1949-50. But even this sound wouldn’t contain Davis for long—by the end of the ‘50s, he had become a firm collaborator with big-band arranger Gil Evans, recording a number of orchestral jazz masterpieces such as Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain, as well as the defining document of modal jazz (and possibly jazz in general), Kind of Blue.From here, Davis would only push the limits of his craft even further, and the loose, hard-to-define post-bop sounds of albums like Miles Smiles and Nefertiti would eventually bloom into the electric, rock-fueled incantations of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, two albums that ushered Davis into the ‘70s completely unbeholden to any notions of traditionalism or boundaries. As Davis’ arrangements and performances became increasingly frenzied (see the amorphous funk of On The Corner or the free-flowing fusion of Agharta), his health started to decline as well, which resulted in a hiatus that lasted until the ‘80s, upon which Davis returned for a final string of records powered by synths and drum machines (including the rap-crossover Doo-Bop) before passing in 1991.The mark that Davis has left on music is staggering. His reflections of jazz are both tender and enigmatic in equal measure, and tackling his entire career is no small feat. But to explore the music of Miles Davis is to understand the shifting state of culture in America, to see the ways in which our borders have materialized and dissolved as time has marched on, and to understand how the unleashed insanity of a later album like 1977’s Dark Magus can secretly be brewing under the stately calm of early work like Milestones all along. Davis’ career may be daunting, but the beauty of it is that there is no wrong place to start—no matter where one decides to pick up the thread, there are countless revelations to be found.