By: Sophie Johnson & Mae Skold

One of the most successful country music artists of our generation, Morgan Wallen, released his double album ‘One Thing at a Time’ on March 3, 2023. This is his third album he has released since his career launch and it features 36 songs. This album has several featured artists, on multiple tracks, such as Eric Church, HARDY, and Ernest who are some of Wallen’s long time friends. The album was a hit with the fans and here’s what we thought about it.

Because the album is 36 songs long, there was a lot of room for variety in style and song quality within the album. Given that there were so many songs there were certainly ups and downs but here are some of the “ups”.

The biggest favorite among the fans would have to be his upbeat, early release single, “Everything I Love”. This song is an upbeat, fun, song with country twang. It follows the plot of a breakup perfect for fans to relate to.

Another hit was “Man Made a Bar” featuring Eric Church. This song is in storytelling style and its chorus is its hook. Wallen and Church’s voices blend perfectly in the chorus making the song unskippable.

Ultimately, the song that we think takes the title of best on the album is track #5, “Devil Don’t Know”. It’s a slow guitar ballad about a girl he loves who is with someone else. The emotion and passion of this song is so powerful making it shine among the other songs on the album. 

Wallen spoke about the process of writing this album and how he was searching for a theme as he wrote it. He stated that he started writing with a song called “Born with a Beer in My Hand”. To him, this song symbolizes the birth of the album in a way, making this song a big monument for him. To go along with that, track #22 is titled “Dying Man” which for Wallen really pulled together the theme of birth to death in the album.

One other song that we loved off this album is the song called “Thought You Should Know”. This song is a thank you letter to his mom letting her know that he appreciates her and everything she has done for him. It is slightly slower paced than some of the other songs on his new album, yet it still holds such a deep meaning. We loved this song so much partly because it has such a catchy and singable chorus as well as the fact that it holds such a sweet message. 

The last song that we are reacting to on the new album ‘One Thing at a Time’ is a song called “Last Drive Down Main”. This is another one of our personal favorites on the album because it fits the vibe of the album so much and it has a really fun and catchy melody to it. This song is about someone who he is no longer in contact with, but wherever he goes, he sees their face. He talks a lot about old memories in this song and how he keeps going back to the same places because they make him remember those special memories of being with that person.

By: Bijou Kruszka

On February 24, 2023, Gorillaz released their newest album, ‘Cracker Island’. For those unfamiliar, Gorillaz is a virtual band created by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. The fictional cartoon members are lead singer 2-D, bassist Murdoc Niccals,
drummer Russell Hobbs, and guitarist Noodle. They are known
for their genre-breaking music and iconic animated videos. Now,
with the release of ‘Cracker Island’, they’re back in the spotlight.

As a whole, the album is decent. On a first listen, all the songs seem to blend together, with a very similar lo-fi hip-hop sound with a slightly dance-y twist to every song. However, they make it work. As the saying goes “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and the chill, pleasant sound of the album is far from ‘broke.’ The songs are far from bad and some are even highlights of the Gorillaz discography. But when considering their past albums like ‘Plastic Beach’ and ‘Demon Days’, ‘Cracker Island’ fades in comparison.

Released a few months previously as a single, “Cracker Island” is the title track and first song of the album. Listening to the album as a whole, this one certainly stands out. While most of the songs in the album could be described as lo-fi hip hop with lyrics, “Cracker Island” is heavily contrasting with its electronic dance sound. The song is impossible not to dance to, and the bizarre lyrics and Thundercat’s vocal contributions to the song elevate what would have been a relatively basic dance track.

The other singles released pre-album range in quality. “New Gold” featuring artists Tame Impala and Bootie Brown, is a fantastic track. Combining dreamy, almost ethereal vocals with cleverly rapped rhymes and a fabulous rhythm, this track stands out from the rest of the album. “Silent Running” features excellent vocals from both Albarn and Adeleye Omotayo, and the beat is uniquely fun. However, both “Baby Queen” and “Skinny Ape” are relatively forgettable. Sure, they’re pleasant, but they feel much too slow, and don’t do anything super original. They seem to serve as filler tracks, which makes it bizarre that they were released as singles.

This album also heavily relies on featured guests. As mentioned before, Tame Impala, Bootie Brown, Adeleye Omotayo and Thundercat all added interesting elements to their tracks. However, this is not always the case. The song “Oil” features Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, and that’s the only interesting thing that could be said about it. Nicks’s vocals are good, as usual, but don’t do anything special to the track. Neither the instrumentation or the lyrics are particularly interesting either. Singer Beck can be found on the final track of the album “Possession Island,” but his musical stylings are too similar to Albarn’s to make him a noticeable appearance. Alternatively, Bad Bunny’s appearance is incredibly significant on “Tormenta,” with his Spanish lyrics elevating the bossa nova-style track, and adding a level of uniqueness to the song not found in the other tracks.

There are only two songs not released as singles, or featuring another artist, “Tarantula” and “The Tired Influencer.” Both are unremarkable, and when first listening to them, I wanted them to be over much sooner than they were. “The Tired Influencer” was particularly mediocre. While the music was standardly pleasant, the lyrical commentary on social media was, as the title would suggest, tired.

‘Cracker Island’ continues the Gorillaz trademark of animated music videos. However, they’ve transferred their style from 2 dimensional cartoons to 3 dimensional models. While it is an interesting artistic choice, it feels less authentic than the 2-D. After all, the lead singer is named 2-D, so to move to 3-D feels odd. The music videos are also significantly harder to follow. While the story was somewhat ambiguous in albums past, it was relatively followable. Meanwhile, ‘Cracker Island’ is heavily centered on lore and plot, which is hard to convey in a music video.

Overall, ‘Cracker Island’ is good but not great. The songs are okay without being spectacular, and the stand-out tracks are only unique due to their featured guest artists. The music videos leave a lot to be desired. In comparison to Gorillaz’s past albums, ‘Cracker Island’ is simply average: pleasant but unmemorable.

By: Charlie Boone

In 1965, 17-year-old Tony Iommi was working at a sheet metal factory when a large press dismembered the tips of two of his fingers, leaving him unable to play guitar without homemade plastic prosthetics and lower gauge, detuned strings to suppress the pain. These accommodations gave his playing a deep, metallic strength that ended up inadvertently changing music and culture forever when he formed what is widely considered the first metal band, Black Sabbath, in 1968.

This innovation that focused on darker themes, lower tunings, and fuzzy distortion presented a new challenge for young musicians, pushing the boundaries of music and honing in on extremes to create visceral new sounds. Heaviness, extremity, brutality, are all subjective terms, representing different things to each listener, but I’ve narrowed it down to three factors: Speed, subject matter, and dynamics.

In terms of speed, the obvious logical conclusion is grindcore. Popularized in the 90s and derived from both the death metal and hardcore scenes respectively, grindcore’s sole focus is speed and aggression in short bursts. In fact, the shortest song ever recorded is actually a grindcore song called “You Suffer” by one of the staple bands in the original British scene, Napalm Death. Grindcore is inherently rough around the edges and typically features more raw, unpolished production. For some people, this adds to the aggression and brutality of the sound while others prefer a more tight and refined style of extreme noise terror in that of technical death metal. As implied in the name, the focus here is pure technicality and skill, so, still blisteringly fast but not typically as raw or pissed-off.

What is often sacrificed for speed in technical death metal is dynamics. If an entire four-minute track is all at the same face-melting tempo, it gets tiring to listen to and the visceral feeling of the speed wears off. To put it simply, if everything is fast, nothing is; and the same thing goes for volume. Juxtaposition of soft and hard sounds increases the sense of dynamics and makes the heavy parts of the song hit that much harder.

A subgenre that better understands this juxtaposition while staying mind-bendingly heavy is brutal death metal. First achieved by Suffocation with their 1991 album, ‘Effigy of the Forgotten’, brutal death metal combines raw production reminiscent of grindcore, with the technicality and speed of death metal, and an added element of groove and bounce.

There are also bands that take speed to the exact opposite extreme and play as slow as humanly possible. Early sludge metal bands like Grief and Melvins played with this idea, but no sound truly embodies the feeling of being crushed by a gigantic boulder like funeral doom metal. The slow, hypnotic melodies of this style were directly inspired by funeral dirges, adding another layer of heaviness through the exploration of themes like grief, depression, and solitude. In a style saturated with gore and demons, extra weight is carried when the horrors being described are true. Good examples of this style are Bell Witch, Ahab, and Mournful Congregation.

Further listening: If you are interested in looking further into the world of extreme music, here are four modern records that I think embody each of the factors of heaviness mentioned earlier.

Nails – ‘You Will Never Be One of Us’ (2016)

Ridiculously brutal grindcore that makes use of the iconic HM2 chainsaw guitar sound present in classic Swedish death metal.

Whitechapel – ‘The Valley’ (2019)

Emotionally dense and progressive deathcore, overall fantastic and dynamic record. The only record on the list to feature clean vocals as well as growls/screams.

Cerebral Incubation – ‘Gonorrhea Nodule Mastication’; (2012)

Quintessential slam/brutal death. A solid midpoint between raw and polished production with the classic high-tuned pingy snare and guttural vocals.

Archspire – ‘Bleed the Future’ (2021)

Some of the most extreme and balanced technical death metal out there. Every member of this band is inhumanly talented; insanely polished and tight performances.

By: Hannah Gliedman and Nagad Omar

Growing Up

Jackman Thomas Harlow, was born on March 13th, 1998 in Louisville, Kentucky. Born to Maggie and Brian Harlow, Harlow was raised on a horse farm with his younger brother.

It wasn’t until Harlow was 12 that he discovered the art of rapping. Harlow was surrounded by music while growing up but wrote his first unofficial rap in elementary school. His rap was geared towards the kids in his grade that bullied him for his eye patch.

By the time he was 12-years-old Harlow had made up his mind that rapping was what he was destined to do, even asking his mom “How do I become the best rapper in the world?”

Harlow was around music quite a bit growing up, his mother introduced him to bands like Tribe Called Quest, while his father was more into country.

Jack released his first rap at 12-years-old which was recorded off of a microphone from the Guitar Hero game, and titled it “Ripping and Rappin” . Harlow gave out 40 copies of the CD to kids at his middle school selling them for $2 each.

Fame

After Harlow acquired a real microphone, he began creating songs and putting them online, and he started gaining recognition around his community. After playing a few very small shows with almost no one in the audience, Harlow started gaining fans and created more music.

His first mixtapes were called ‘Moose Gang’ and ‘Moose for the Death’. In 2015, while still in high school, Harlow released his first EP, ‘The Handsome Harlow’, which was followed with a more expanded 2016 mixtape.

Harlow was then signed to the record label “Generation Now” in 2017. From there he started to gain more recognition and started collaborating with bigger artists.

His 2020 EP, ‘Sweet Action’, featured artists like CuBeatz, PoohBeatz, and 2forwOyNE. Harlow’s major breakthrough came from the song “What’s Poppin”, which gained almost 700 million views on TikTok, peaked at #2 on the Billboard top 100, and gave Harlow his first Grammy nomination for best rap performance.

In 2021, Harlow and rapper Lil Nas X collaborated on the song “Industry Baby” that became his biggest hit yet. It peaked at #1 on the Billboard top 100 and became extremely viral on TikTok.

With songs under his belt, Harlow released his first full length official album titled ‘Come Home the Kids Miss You’ in 2022, including songs like “First Class”, “State Fair”, “Dua Lipa”, and “Churchill Downs”. In that album, Harlow collaborated with many known artists like Pharrell Williams, Justin Timberlake, lil Wayne and Drake.

Since then, and because of that album, Harlow has received many awards and recognitions. Harlow is continuing to make music and has also made brand deals with popular shoe brand New Balance and chip brand Doritos.

Harlow did announce he will be making his acting debut in the remake of the movie ‘White Men Can’t Jump’.

Awards

Harlow has been nominated for many awards like a Brit award for international song of the year, and a BET awards for best male hip hop artist. Harlow has also been nominated for 6 Grammys in the past 3 years for categories; best rap performance, album of the year, best rap song, best rap album, and best melodic rap performance twice. He has also won 4 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) for song of the summer with “First Class” and best visual effects, best art direction, and best collaboration all won from “Industry Baby” with Lil Nas X.

Harlow was also featured in Forbes “30 under 30” in 2022. Along with being named Variety’s “Hitmaker of the Year”. Jack was also the cover of Teen Vogue in June of 2022, and has gained fans for his charming looks and demeanor.

For more information, please visit:

• https://wiki.sportskeeda.com/tiktok/jack-harlow
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dyaApKvUdE&scrlybrkr=de892b63

By: Abby Altman

Zach Bryan is a rising country singer who made himself known after posting videos on YouTube and TikTok, and rising in fame after releasing his single “Something in the Orange” in April of 2022. The song made its debut on the Billboard Hot 100 in May of 2022, and hit the top 10 in January.

In December of 2022, Bryan released ‘All My Homies Hate Ticketmaster (Live from Red Rocks)’, a live album recorded at a 2022 concert. With the album, Bryan released a statement against the large increase in ticket prices via Ticketmaster.

In late January, Zach Bryan announced the official Burn Burn Burn Tour across the United States. Bryan, previously expressing his disdain for Ticketmaster, scalpers, and tickets being resold at a higher resale value, utilized a ticket sales site called AXS.

AXS is a sports and entertainment ticket sales outlet, first deployed in 2011.

After announcing the tour, Bryan opened presale registration, with a $1 sign-up fee. Randomly selected fans were then notified several weeks later with the opportunity to purchase tickets, ranging from $40 to $156 at the absolute maximum.

Fans selected to purchase tickets received an email from AXS, which led to fans checking their inbox every 30 seconds for 3 days straight. Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and TikTok are filled with fans expressing anger and sadness over “not getting the email”.

Along with using AXS, Bryan is not allowing the transfer of tickets to avoid reselling. The original purchaser of the ticket must be in attendance at the concert, with an ID matching the name of the ticket holder.

While the thought process behind the idea is sound, the resale policy has not stopped scalpers from trying. Tickets for the Burn Burn Burn tour have been appearing on sites such as VividSeats and TickPick for hundreds more than the original sale value. Zach Bryan and his organization have done everything in their power to try and make it clear; These tickets will not be accepted, and no refunds will be given.

Buyers selected to purchase tickets were first notified on February 14th through the 17th. For most concerts, fans were allowed to purchase up to 4 tickets, and for the concerts held at Red Rocks Amphitheater, fans were limited to 2 tickets per purchase.

While the random selection process worked just as Bryan had explained, many fans who were not selected were angry and spoke out publicly on social media.

During the selection process, Zach Bryan deactivated his Twitter account to avoid the harassment and hate. Shortly after tickets had been sold out, Bryan returned to Twitter saying “sorry guys had to avoid Twitter while the tour went on sale. I love you guys all so much and I’m so insanely happy and blessed.”

Bryan disappeared from social media once again a few weeks later after tweeting “Jesus, you guys have taken it out of me, see ya man, tried my best”. He reappeared 2 weeks later, but the complaints regarding ticket sales have not ceased.

Demand for tickets to see Zach Bryan in concert is much higher than the supply of seats to sell tickets to. Aside from adding more tour dates, there’s not much Bryan can do about the overwhelming number of fans who didn’t secure tickets.

Zach Bryan did exactly what he said he was going to do, in reducing ticket prices, eliminating scalpers reselling his tickets, and creating the fairest way possible for people to get access to his show. It’s understandable that those without tickets would be upset, but the amount of heat Bryan has received from upset fans is completely unwarranted.

The Burn Burn Burn tour will begin May 10th in Charlottesville, Virginia, and last until the end of August.

By: Rose Ramadan and Thea Berg

This article, which examines one of the greatest musicians to exist, will discuss Taylor Swift, her least-listened to album, as well as the details and opinions around it.

Taylor Swift’s debut album, which has 780 million Spotify streams, has received the least attention. That is around 4.3 billion fewer streams than the Taylor Swift album with the highest listening volume which is her album ‘Lover’. Even though other albums have a lot more streams, this is not surprising.

Taylor’s debut album, which is also her first, doesn’t contain many hits or the most well-known songs. This album was also one of her only country ones. The most played song, “Our Song,” was a huge hit in the late 2000s but is now virtually unknown to listeners of contemporary music. This album consists of 11 songs and is a total of 40 minutes long. Each song is around 3 minutes long.

In 2004, at age 14, Taylor Swift signed a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV, which made her the youngest signer in the company’s history.

In 2006, she then signed with Big Machine Records and she scored her first top 40 with the song “Tim McGraw”.

Taylor Swift moved to Nashville Tennessee when she was 14 years old which led her to release her debut album 2 years later. She released ‘Debut’ on October 24, 2006, when she was 16 years old.

Liz Rose, an experienced song writer co-wrote 7 out of the 11 songs on the debut album. Her first hit-single that was released on ‘Debut’ – “Tim McGraw” – was one of the songs co-written with Liz Rose.

Taylor Swift did not go on an individual tour with her debut album, but she went on a 6-month country music radio tour in 2006, and she was an opener during 2006-2007. She opened for other country music artists and she became more well known. She was an opening act for Rascal Flatts in 2006, George Strait in 2007, Kenny Chesney in 2007, Brad Paisley in 2007–08, and she opened for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s joint tour in 2007.

The song “Tim McGraw “ is about a personal experience from when she dated a senior in high school during her freshman year. Once he moved away, she was inspired to write it. The song was funny and cute to him, but not to his new girlfriend who wasn’t necessarily a fan of Taylor. This song means a lot to Taylor which is why she made it the first track on her album.

On this album, a lot of the other tracks spoke to different listeners. Many feature lyrics that are profoundly moving, such as “Tied Together with A Smile.” Many listeners may give into their pain thanks to this song, which eliminates the need for them to pretend their troubles don’t exist. This song may touch the emotions of many listeners and maybe alter the way they perceive their own reality.

“Mary’s Song (Oh My My My)” is a wonderful song and love story about two lovers growing up together, getting married, and taking place in a country setting. Many listeners believe that it is the most underrated song on this album. It is well regarded and a really pleasant listen. The song is worth listening to and might even engage you in her music, especially her country music.

‘Taylor Swift’ was a sleeper success in the United States. It debuted at number 19 on the Billboard 200 chart, dated November 11, 2006, and within the first-week had sales of 40,000 copies.

Though we covered this album on a small-scale, there are still many more songs that are highly praised by fans and listened to everyday. This album, though her least listened to album, is one of the cutest and most underrated albums in the history of Taylor Swift lyrics.

By: Domingo Basso

Okay, well, since the electric bass is like the coolest instrument ever (very factual statement) I’m sure you’re wondering just who exactly are some of the best bass players in the world? Well allow me to show you what my research has led me to conclude. And before I continue, I’ll make the disclaimer that there is no truly factual best bass player(s) in the world, so this is, of course, based on my opinion.

My list of the top bass players will also align with that of one done by ‘Rolling Stone’ in a poll, so I highly recommend that article if you want to learn more. Anyways, enough with the introductions, here are some of the top bass players: 

8: Victor Wooten- 

Victor Wooten is a famous bass player who’s most known for his amazing jazz bass playing, great knowledge in music theory as a whole, and most of all his fantastic improvising skills.

7: Cliff Burton- 

Cliff Burton, who’s known for his role as the bassist of the band Metallica, was a great influence for bassists in the future with his frequent use of pedals creating a more distorted and aggressive sound. He also would play his bass in a way that allowed it to be a more prominent sound in the band, even being mistaken for a lead guitar at times. 

6: Jaco Pastorius –

Now, while the name Jaco Pastorious isn’t all that well known, the bass playing community highly respects this man for his sheer mastery over the instrument, having him be a very sought after musician to work with. This allowed him to work with the likes of: Weather Report, Joni Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Herbie Hancock and many others.

5: John Paul Jones- 

John Paul Jones, known for his involvement as the bassist of the band Led Zeppelin, was a master at using the bass with his interesting percussive and rhythmic style inspiring many bassists around the world.

4: Les Claypool-

Les Claypool is known for being a bit of a weirdo and you can kind of tell that after listening to some of his music. His most famous music act was being the lead singer and bassist of Primus. Doing bass lines that are already very difficult to master, he pairs that up with also being the lead vocalist for the band, earning him a spot on this list. Funny enough, after Cliff Burton’s death, Metallica was in search of a new bassist and Les tried out for it but was eventually denied the role.

3: Geddy Lee- 

Geddy Lee, known most for his role in the band Rush, is very talented at playing the bass. But, he also plays the keyboard for the band, as well as being the lead vocalist, so he earns a spot on this list for his sheer variety and key role in his band.

2: Paul Mcartney-

While Paul Mcartney (known for his role as the bassist of the band The Beatles) isn’t the most skilled bass player out there, he still manages to earn a spot on this list because of the amount of influence that he has over bassists around the world to this day. This arguably makes him one of the most famous bassists of all time.

1:  Flea-

Finally, on the number one spot of my list is Flea, known for his role as the bassist in the band Red Hot Chili Peppers. I put him on the #1 spot because he’s a very well renowned slap bassist and really helped boost the popularity of the bass guitar (also I’m super biased, but that’s like, whatever).

For more information, please visit:

• https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/rolling-stone-readers-pick-the-top-ten-bassists-of-all-time-10325/
• https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjAjPXCqvf7AhVzlYkEHUhQCj8QFnoECBMQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwpflemingcollege.com%2Fthesystemhasfailed%2F2019%2F07%2F25%2Fcliff-burton-and-why-he-was-the-best-bass-player-ever%2F&usg=AOvVaw0n_pID4tAvcXeXSG8T2ePF

By: Alexa Ramirez

SZA’s 5 year hiatus has finally come to an end, and her new album ‘SOS’ has broken the internet, reaching the No. 1 spot on Billboard 200. This album contains 23 tracks, is filled with several collaborations, and is a definite sign of expansion in this upcoming musician’s artistic style.

Solana Rowe (SZA) is a 33-year-old R&B singer from Missouri. She began making music in the early 2010’s, and released her debut album, ‘CTRL’, in June of 2017. This album gave her a great deal of her fame, but is filled with nearly all contemporary R&B, which is what got her the reputation she has in the music world as an R&B singer.

She has also gained huge followings through social media, and experienced success with TikTok, where many of her songs, such “Good Days”, “Broken Clocks”, “Drew Barrymore” and many more are used by fans making videos.

She also made an appearance in the movie ‘Black Panther’, in the song “All the Stars” which she collaborated on with Kendrick Lamar.

She has also been featured on Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show, and performed in the Good Vibes Festival, Panorama NYC, AFROPUNK FEST Paris and many others.

Though she is relatively new to the music scene, she is definitely making a large name for herself and her music is only on its come up now.

While she has stayed relevant through social media, she hasn’t been releasing much music since her debut album in 2017. Since then, she has added a deluxe version of her first album ‘CTRL’ and has released three songs. “I Hate U”, “Good Days” and “Shirt” were all songs she released between albums which kept her relevant online. But really, this new album has been a big deal in her career since she has been off the grid musically for a long time, and many people didn’t know when, or if, she would be releasing music again. There were even rumors that she retired, or is retiring from music altogether.

When speaking on how releasing music has negatively affected her she said, “I’m making the best album of my life for this next album and I know that, because it’s going to be my last album.” ‘SOS’ was the last album she had been referring to, setting the standards high and the audience eagerly waiting on its release.

This album is a very unique one musically, and artistically, considering her previous label as an R&B only artist; she has definitely expanded on that and added a variety of rap and pop songs to this album.

The songs “Kill Bill”, “Conceited”, and “Seek & Destroy” all explored an upbeat pop side to her, which is a fun one to see because her music is usually very beautiful in more sad or quiet ways, while these were more bold and bouncy.

I also was so excited about her expansion on her rap side with the songs “Low”, “Smoking on my Ex Pack”, and “SOS” which were fun and very singable. She doesn’t get enough credit for her plays on words which were shown off in those songs, and many others on this album.

I thought expanding on her skills, and also keeping some R&B songs that she’s known and loved for, like “I Hate U” and “Blind” was genius because it caters to many different needs fans might have had for this album.

Another interesting detail about the album is its cover; in the cover photo, SZA is sitting on the edge of a diving board over an ocean as seen in a similar photo of the late Princess Diana, who was photographed sitting on the edge of the diving board on Mohamed Al Fayed’s Jonikal yacht. The photo was taken in 1997, before her death. When asked about the resemblance between the two photos, SZA said, “I just loved how isolated she felt, and that was what I wanted to convey the most”. This unique attention to detail in every aspect of her album is something key to understanding the type of artist that SZA really is.

I rate it a full 5/5 because the songs were all so good and special, and music aside, it spoke volumes about her as an artist and as a person and I’m excited to see where her musical journey will take her in the future.

By: Dylan Moore      

2022 was a phenomenal year for the genre of rap. Long awaited albums dropped, new artists exploded on the scene, while long standing titans of the industry proved once again why they have staying power with amazing features and singles. For clarifications sake, this album will be based off of music these artists released in 2022, along with the impact of artists they have co-signed (if they own a record label).

5. 21 Savage

An artist who has very rapidly climbed the food chain since his 2015 debut, he grew exponentially in 2022. Known for being the best feature artist in the genre, 21 started the year by hopping on a remix of King Von’s popular song “Don’t Play That”.

Following a few less successful verses on remixes, he had a verse on Pharell Williams “Cash In Cash Out” along with Tyler, The Creator.

Later into the year, he managed to secure a spot on DJ Khaled’s star studded album ‘God Did’ with a feature on “Way Past Luck”.

Towards the very end of the year, he dropped a collaboration album with Drake, the undisputed biggest artist in the industry. While he only rapped about 30% of the total lyrics on ‘Her Loss’, the album absolutely blew up. Following the smash hit that was “Knife Talk”, the biggest and best couldn’t deny 21 his chance for the collab album with Drake, and we can no longer deny his place among some of the best in the game. 

4. Gunna 

In and out of the industry, it has been a whirlwind of a year for Gunna. The year started with ‘DS4EVER’ on January 7, which easily became the 6th most streamed album of the year (and 4th most streamed new release) when it was all said and done. With a loaded deluxe album and massive successful single in “Pushin P”, you would think he would take that momentum and roll with it, but sadly not.

After another quite successful single in “Banking On Me”, Gunna had quite a rough rest of 2022. He was arrested along with Young Thug for racketeering charges, a very serious case ensued for the rest of the year. This case kept Gunna in the spotlight, and his plea deal and subsequent release in December 2022 has kept him a big deal throughout the year. It’s safe to say that Gunna’s brand has grown in 2022, although certainly not in the way he wanted it to. 

3. Future 

Future had a phenomenal 2022 to say the least. Following a slow start (for his standards) with a few unsuccessful features, he dropped the phenomenal ‘I NEVER LIKED YOU’ in late April. The album was a massive success, ending the year as the 3rd most streamed 2022 rap album.

After that success, he also had a great feature on DJ Khaled’s ‘God Did’, and ended the year with a smash hit in “Superhero” off of Metro Boomin’s ‘HEROES & VILLAINS’, one of his 5 features on the late year success that was that album. 

2. Kendrick Lamar

When it comes to most influential artists, Kendrick Lamar and the #1 artist on this list has been battling it out for our entire generation. This year Kendrick re-kindled the debate with his long-awaited album ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers”’ His first album in 5 years was an obvious success, and while not as critically-acclaimed as some other albums on his phenomenal discography, you can’t argue with the success it had. 

Along with going triple platinum, the second-most streamed album of the year had a top 5 single, won an AMA, BET, and People’s Choice award, along with being up for 2 Grammys. This along with another smash hit single “The Heart Part 5”, released just before the album, made 2022 a big comeback for Kendrick. 

1. Drake

Unfortunately, for everyone else on this list, Drake exists.

Not only did the Canadian have the most streams of any rapper, he had 3 top 10 most streamed albums, and continued to shatter streaming and billboard records previously held by some of the greatest artists of all time. It’s not much of a debate for who the most successful artist of our generation is, and it also isn’t a debate for who the most influential artist of the year was. Drake takes the top spot with ease,