Hip-hop

Mary J. Blige’s new album, Strength of a Woman, is unapologetically devoted to heartbreak. Chronicling the strains and inevitable tears in a relationship, the album is inspired by the recent end of her 13-year marriage. For fans who’ve followed her career for the past quarter-century—yes, it’s been that long—Strength of a Woman feels like a return to vintage Mary, or as she once called her former self, “sad Mary.”During those early years, she struggled with fame, substance abuse, and bad affairs, but made some of the best soul music in recent times, including the classic album, 1994’s My Life. But in the past decade or so, especially after 2005’s The Breakthrough, she’s recorded a sometimes-gratifying, often uneasy mix of self-help anthems and earnest attempts at recapturing the pop zeitgeist, regardless of her collaborators. Her last album, 2014’s The London Sessions, found her working with au courant chart-toppers like Sam Smith, Disclosure, and Emeli Sandé. For 2011’s My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1), she assembled a grab bag, including a cameo by Drake, a nostalgic look back at her Bronx B-girl days with Nas, and motivational tunes like “The Living Proof.”Strength of a Woman is remarkably consistent. It indulges our desire to relive the vintage, somewhat mythical, Queen-of-Hip-Hop-Soul sound that she did so well early on in her career. Many of its tracks find her riffing over classic soul arrangements, just like when she used to cover quiet-storm chestnuts like “I’m Goin’ Down.” As this playlist demonstrates, she included a few breakup testimonials in every album, though they didn’t have as much purpose and artistic flair as now. Sad Mary never really went away.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

Young Thug says “Metro Boomin want some more,” Kodak Black says “Lil Metro on that beat,” and most famously, Future says, “If Young Metro don’t trust you, I’m gon’ shoot you.” Regardless of which rapper is identifying Leland “Metro Boomin” Wayne at the moment, odds are you’ve heard his name and his beats on the radio a lot in the last few years. The St. Louis native began driving to Atlanta to collaborate with musicians as a high school student. Since his flashy piano work on 2013’s “Karate Chop,” he’s been one of Future’s closest collaborators, and he’s slowly expanded his clientele across the music industry, from Kanye West to Nicki Minaj.Although Metro Boomin is a master of the heavy bass and busy hi-hat programming of Atlanta’s ubiquitous trap sound, his work isn’t as singular or distinctive as previous kings of the scene like Lex Luger and Mike WiLL Made-It. Instead, Metro has distinguished himself with the sheer variety of sounds that he’s integrated into the trap blueprint, from the haunting chords of “Bad and Boujee” by Migos to the ethereal flute sample of “Mask Off” by Future.Metro Boomin is also a big collaborator, crafting the woozy groove of ILoveMakonnen’s quirky hit “Tuesday” with Sonny Digital and working alongside three other producers on Big Sean’s “Bounce Back.” His ear for bringing together the contributions of others served him well as he executive produced Drake and Future’s hit collaborative album What A Time To Be Alive and 21 Savage’s breakthrough mixtape Savage Mode. Sample 2017’s hottest producer with this playlist of his greatest hits.Click here to follow this playlist on Spotify.

September 2017 will see the release of Michael McDonald’s Wide Open, his first solo album of original material since 2000’s Blue Obsession. Following that record, McDonald reoriented his solo career around a series of albums in which he recorded tasteful tributes to Motown Records, cementing his position as one of the most respected “blue-eyed soul” singers of all time. But that career path, however lucrative it may have been, only served to make a fairly uncool pop star of the ’70s and ‘80s seem even less cool.McDonald’s status as a pop-culture punchline is perhaps best epitomized by the 2005 comedy The 40-Year-Old Virgin, wherein an electronics-store employee played by Paul Rudd squirms with annoyance as a Michael McDonald live DVD plays on a loop at work. In 2007, I saw McDonald in concert and filed a review for my local paper, and the next day my editor sidled up to me with a smirk and said, “So...Michael McDonald, huh?”But in 2017, Michael McDonald is about as cool as he’s ever been. The “yacht rock” sound with which he’s associated (thanks to his work with the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, and Christopher Cross) has become a renewable source of inspiration for dance and hip-hop producers. And over the past decade, McDonald has collaborated with a number of hip younger artists that appreciate the distinctively smoky grain of his voice, including Brooklyn indie bands Holy Ghost! and Grizzly Bear. L.A. future-funk bassist Thundercat even reunited McDonald with longtime collaborator Kenny Loggins on his acclaimed 2017 single “Show You The Way.”This newfound appreciation of McDonald didn’t happen overnight, and in fact there’s no one particular tipping point that turned him from camp to cool in the way that The Sopranos helped rehabilitate Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” But the seeds were laid by hip-hop, particularly when McDonald’s 1982 solo hit “I Keep Forgettin’” became the bedrock of Warren G. and Nate Dogg’s G-funk smash “Regulate.” De La Soul sampled Steely Dan’s “Peg” and Meek Mill sampled the Doobies’ “Minute By Minute” on hit singles, and dance producers like Grant Nelson have remixed tracks like “Yah Mo B There,” McDonald’s 1983 duet with James Ingram. But McDonald himself has also demonstrated himself capable of surprising displays of good taste, like his killer cover of Neil Young’s “Down By The River.” And the sheer range of artists he collaborated with in his heyday, from Van Halen to Patti LaBelle, has placed him at the intersection of rock and soul, and continues to inspire a wide swathe of music both popular and underground.

Five years ago, Mike WiLL Made-It took over the airwaves, his murky, undulating trap beats powering Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance,” Rihanna’s “Pour It Up,” Ace Hood’s “Bugatti,” Lil Wayne’s “Love Me,” and many more hits. Meanwhile, he orchestrated Miley Cyrus’ emergence as a Top 40 libertine, delighting poptimists and infuriating others in the process. His sound was difficult to escape.Today, while fellow Atlantan Metro Boomin has taken over as mainstream rap’s omnipresent producer, Mike WiLL Made-It has scaled back. He’s focused on his Ear Drummers’ camp, particularly Rae Sremmurd, the brothers from Tupelo, Mississippi who made surprisingly durable pop-raps like “No Flex Zone,” “No Type,” and last year’s Billboard chart-topper “Black Beatles.” When it seemed impossible to play a mainstream rap hit without hearing his Brandy-supplied audio signature, Mike WiLL Made-It’s beats swung like pendulums—sort of like a trap version of those damned drops that bedevil electronic dance music. Listen to “Bandz A Make Her Dance” and “Love Me” back-to-back for those similar percussive builds.Mike WiLL Made-It’s latest full-length production showcase, Ransom 2, reveals that his techniques have grown far more complex. For “Razzle Dazzle,” he arranges a frizzy feedback storm over a booming kick drum; on Rae Sremmurd MC Swae Lee’s “Bars Of Soap,” he pairs 808 drums with icy synths reminiscent of Giorgio Moroder aficionado Alchemist; another Ear Drummers protégé, Andrea gets “Burnin” with a flurry of menacing cowbell percussion and dancehall chants.With cameos by Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, and other boldfaced names, Ransom 2 proves that Mike still has plenty of juice. And while no one may have paid attention to his 2015 Miley disasterpiece, Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz, he can still orchestrate a beautiful pop catastrophe: On the one-off single “It Takes Two,” Carly Rae Jespen and Lil Yachty remake Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock’s funky hip-hop classic into a thinly veiled advertisement for Target. Hear the latest evolutions of Mike WiLL Made-Its sound on this playlist.Click here to add to Spotify playlist!

Missy is easily one of hip-hop’s most innovative talents. Her and Timbaland’s production effectively globalized the genre, and she’s always been underrated as a rapper -- she mined the space between singer and rapper a good decade before Drake got there. Some albums are better than others, but she never fell off, and it’s a travesty that she hasn’t released one in over a decade. Although her singles are epochal, she’s much more than a singles artist, and she’s the latest in Al Shipley’s amazing “deep cuts” series.

Astrology has become a cultural phenomenon—horoscopes and astrology memes are prevalent on social media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial who doesn’t know their astrological sign. Apps like Co-Star and The Pattern are thriving on the promise of A.I.-gathered birth-chart insights, and astrology columns are published in almost every major online brand targeting young people. Whether or not our zodiac signs have any actual impact on our day-to-day lives, the study of the movements of the planets and their pseudo scientific meanings brings people together on a mass scale.From June 21 to July 22, the world is in the season of Cancer, symbolically depicted as a crab. Cancers are generally understood to be sensitive, nurturing, and a little bit mysterious. In celebration of the cardinal water sign, this playlist is a collection of some of the most iconic pop, hip-hop, and R&B songs made by Cancer musicians.From Vince Staples to Ariana Grande, Solange, Lana Del Rey, and Post Malone, some of the 2010s’ most beloved artists were born under the Cancer sun. While we lean contemporary here (after all, astrology is ultra-trendy), the playlist wouldn’t be a proper dedication to the zodiac sign without including quintessential tracks from older-school Cancers Missy Elliott, M.I.A., and 50 Cent. These Cancer classics are a fun, mystical way to get into the season.Photo by Max Hirschberger

Astrology’s pretty ancient, but we’re here for it as a modern-day cultural phenomenon—horoscopes and astrology memes are delightfully prevalent on social media, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a millennial who doesn’t know the ins and outs of their sign. Whether or not the zodiac has any actual impact on our day-to-day lives, it’s definitely affecting our listening habits every month with this ongoing playlist series in which we corral our favorite hit makers born under the current sign.That’s it, Cancers; Leo season has arrived. As of July 23, the astrological sign said to be ruled by the energy of the sun casts a bright, vivacious, peak-summer spell over the earth for a month. A fire sign, Leo is symbolized by the lion and is a playful, daring, and commanding sign. According to astrological wisdom, people with this zodiac sign have no shortage of confidence, are beloved for their loyalty and reliability, and are brave beyond comparison.For the latest installment in our series of music horoscopes, we’re celebrating some of our favorite hits made by Leo artists in recent years. Whether it’s country queen Kacey Musgraves cleverly calling out bullies on “High Horse,” bubblegum rapper DRAM flexing with stacks of money on “Cash Machine,” or pop chanteuse Dua Lipa nonchalantly cutting off an ex-lover on “IDGAF,” this playlist is full of fun, bold Leo energy. Some classics like Jennifer Lopez’s “Jenny from the Block—Track Masters Remix,” Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me),” and Kelis’ “Bossy” also make appearances, for it wouldn’t be a Leo season playlist without honoring the original divas. This radiant, spirited playlist is the perfect complement to sunny days.

Click here to subscribe to this playlistsWhen Rolling Stone asked Nas to list his 10 favorite hip-hop tracks for a feature in their May 2014 issue, he limited his selections to songs released in the late ‘80s. His choices—which comprise the first 10 tracks on this playlist*—represent a transitional era in hip-hop: the mythical Golden Age when artists like Run-D.M.C., Big Daddy Kane, and Public Enemy were shaking off the genre’s cheesier disco roots in favor of a sharpened lyrical style.But beyond the Rolling Stone list, Nas has routinely paid homage to his predecessors elsewhere, mentioning the early innovators that influenced him on songs like Hip Hop Is Deads "Where Are They Now" and Life Is Goods "Back When." With this playlist, weve supplemented Nas original Top 10 with other personal favorites, based on references the rapper has made on record and in other interviews. On "Back When," which samples MC Shan and Marley Marls 1986 track "The Bridge," Nas talks about putting up a poster of the duo in his teenage bedroom. But even though, like them, Nas hails from Queensbridge, hes praised Shans Bronx-bred rival KRS-One as "someone that artists need to study"—"The Bridge Is Over," Boogie Down Productions response to "The Bridge," may have even paved the way for Nas eventual diss records against Jay-Z.Nas hasnt just studied Golden Age rap; he was raised by it. He grew up hearing fresh voices distilling real New York life onto record through blunt lyricism, a style he would adapt and evolve on his own a few years later. Hes mentioned that Kool G Raps "Streets of New York"** was a direct influence on "N.Y. State of Mind."Most of Nas favorite rappers hailed from one of the five boroughs. But hes also acknowledged the impact of artists from outside the East Coast, citing Ice Cubes Death Certificate and Scarfaces Mr. Scarface Is Back as formative releases. Those albums preceded Illmatic by only a few years, but given that Nas was only 21 when his classic debut came out, they were still crucial to his artistic development.Unlike Redhead Kingpin and the many other forgotten legends Nas cites on “Where Are They Now,” Nas has maintained both career longevity and musical relevancy. He’s been teasing his 11th studio LP since he claimed it was finished on DJ Khaled’s “Nas Album Done” last year, and he still claims that album is coming at some point in 2017. Until then, acquaint yourself with the songs that got Nas started in the first place.* “Plug Tunin,” Nas’ choice from De La Souls 3 Feet High and Rising, isn’t on Spotify. “Me Myself & I” has been substituted in its place.**"Streets of New York" isnt on Spotify; its been replaced by "#1 With A Bullet."

Released in conjunction with a trio of new digital singles—including “No Frauds,” her half-hearted response to Remy Ma’s ferocious “shETHER” diss—Nicki Minaj’s “Queens Got Da Crown” playlist is an admirable survey of her borough’s vaunted rap lineage. Nicki’s selections lean towards rap’s clubby mainstream, so instead of Nas’ “The World Is Yours,” we get “Hate Me Now.” Some historical figures like MC Shan aren’t included at all, but pioneering group Salt-N-Pepa gets three tracks. (Perhaps the least known artist here is Stack Bundles, who was murdered in 2007.) Overall, the playlist is inelegantly sequenced, with each artist’s picks bunched together. But give Nicki credit for revealing Queens’ deep hip-hop roots to her younger teen followers, especially the ones who may be more familiar with her “Super Bass” megahits instead of her “I Get Crazy” mixtape origins. The only act who doesn’t hail from Queens here is JAY Z; his “Can I Get A…” presumably merits inclusion because, uh, he owns TIDAL.(Note: Nicki’s playlist includes a remix of Mya and JAY Z’s “Best of Me” that’s featured on the Backstage soundtrack, which is a TIDAL exclusive. We substituted it with the original “Best of Me” from Mya’s 2000 album Fear of Flying.)

Before Biggie, nearly every rapper was a specialist. But Biggie was the complete package. Even Pharcydes Fatlip confessed that he felt inadequate next to Biggie’s overall excellence on record and in video. The fault of rappers in the post-Biggie era was thinking they could compete with him.Puff Daddy maximized Biggie’s eclectic tastes on 1994s Ready to Die: massive radio hits ("Juicy," "Big Poppa," "One More Chance") coupled with murderously head-nodding odes to spitting on graves ("The What"), feeding artillery to canines ("Warning"), and the defining advantage of boxers over briefs ("Unbelievable").Whereas Hammer and Vanilla Ice mined the grooves of 70s and 80s rollerskating jams for massive sales at the beginning of the decade, Biggie sampled Mtumes syrupy "Juicy Fruit" while sticking up Isuzu jeeps on "Gimmie the Loot." Blunts were rolled next to bottles of Cristal, Army jackets were hung next to Coogi sweaters, and platinum plaques were offered up to Bed-Stuy.But Life After Death upped the ante—Biggie had mastered every rap style under the sun by the tender age of 24. Never before had an MC owned the radio ("Hypnotize," "Mo Money Mo Problems"), the mixtapes ("Kick in the Door"), the 96 Knicks ("I Got a Story to Tell"), and every part of the map ("Going Back to Cali," "Notorious Thugs"). Life After Death checked off every box over its two discs: storytelling, beefs, murder, mortality, paranoia, drugs, sex, and extravagance. To paraphrase Doug E. Fresh, any Biggie song you played, youd immediately think to yourself, "Yo... Did that really happen?"Biggie was one of the best rappers, but more crucially, he had one of the best ears. For Life After Death, he picked arguably the greatest collection of beats that had no place being together on any one album. RZAs Stax Records obsession on "Long Kiss Goodnight" was pitted against Puffys Diana Ross jack move for "Mo Money Mo Problems"; DJ Premiers whittling of Screamin Jay Hawkins ("Kick in the Door") and Les McCann ("Ten Crack Commandments") coexisted with Stevie Js glossier crates—Barbara Mason ("Another") and Liquid Liquid ("Nasty Boy").Biggie was right at home paying homage to Schoolly D, the dusted West Philly inventor of gangsta rap, and DMC, a graduate of St. John’s University. There was no sample source too funky (Zapp on "Going Back to Cali") nor too melancholy (Al Green on "My Downfall"), and no beat presented any challenge.Life After Death was released just two weeks after the unfortunate, premature death of this fearless rapper. For the 20th anniversary, its important to celebrate its greatest quality: Biggies otherworldly ability to make you like everything he liked.