F=1/T

  TAKE CARE Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 BigXthaPlug Texas standout BigXthaPlug’s career skyrocketed shortly after he emerged in 2022, becoming Dallas’ next great hope by 2024. His first album, 2023’s   Amar , established him as a bona fide star, but rapping is no longer his main focus. BigX is a proud father of two, and everything he does (rap included) is to give his children things he was never afforded. On 2024’s   TAKE CARE , he makes clear where his priorities lie. “My kids is what drives me,” he tells Apple Music’s Ebro Darden. “That’s the reason when I’m tired and I get up every day when I don’t want to get up, they’re the reason.” This album, as such, is for the next generation. Yes, he raps his ass off and showcases why he’s one of Texas’ most celebrated stars, but more important than acclaim and fame is making sure the mouths that rely on him are adequately fed. “My little boy, he made me realize, ‘Okay, life is for real. This is a real thing.’” That seriousness makes its way

Beautifully Broken (Pickin’ Up The Pieces) Album ∙ Country ∙ 2024 Jelly Roll Jelly Roll’s quick rise from obscure Nashville hip-hop artist to beloved country singer-songwriter is one of the genre’s more exciting success stories in recent memory. In just a couple years’ time, the Antioch, Tennessee-born and -raised artist, whose offstage name is Jason DeFord, has won major awards, including New Artist of the Year at the 2023 CMAs, a category that often serves as an industry coronation. During that period, he collaborated with a laundry list of stars from country music and beyond, including Lainey Wilson, Eminem, Post Malone, and Cody Johnson. It’s appropriate, then, that this follow-up to DeFord’s first proper country album, 2023’s wildly successful   Whitsitt Chapel , would take an inspirational tone: A man with a checkered past that includes time in prison, Jelly Roll has never shied away from using his own story to motivate others. Beautifully Broken   opens with “Winning Streak,” a

TMZ Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Money Man ,  Zaytoven  &  Trauma Tone

Inhale / Exhale Album ∙ Electronic ∙ 2024 RÜFÜS DU SOL After releasing their fourth album   Surrender   in 2021, RÜFÜS DU SOL declared it “the end of a chapter for us as a unit.” After years of living in their adopted hometown of LA, its members (Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George, and James Hunt) relocated to Encinitas and Miami. As the group crafted   Inhale / Exhale   over the next two years, the physical separation required them to carve out time for joint writing sessions, where they reconvened in places such as LA, Austin, and Ibiza. “We really made the most of those two-week stints,” George tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “We were in a really good creative flow. We were reconnecting and particularly reconnecting in the studio more than ever.“ When “Music Is Better,” the album’s lead single, arrived in June 2024, it marked RÜFÜS DU SOL’s triumphant return. Its joyful chorus—“Music is better when we’re together”—seems as much a love song as it is a celebration of the creative magic they

TYLA + Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 Tyla “I've always wanted to be a pop star, but beyond that, I wanted to be an African pop star,” Tyla tells Apple Music. “The roots of my sound are in amapiano music, in South African and African music.” Though the megaviral 2023 single “Water” may have put the South African singer-songwriter on the proverbial map—first as a social media sensation, then as the highest-charting African female soloist ever on Billboard’s Hot 100, earning her the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance—she’s been carefully plotting her path to the top for years. “Since I started experimenting with amapiano, I just feel like it's really helped me get to this point where I created something that is fresh and new, but still familiar and comes from home,” she says. “It's a sound of Africa, and it's something that I couldn't be more proud about.” She weaves through a blend of pop, R&B, amapiano, and Afrobeats (“pop-piano sounds cute,” she admi

Niveleando Cuh II Album ∙ Música Mexicana ∙ 2024 Nivel

The Encore Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Curren$y  &  DJ.Fresh

Class of 95 Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 DOM KENNEDY

  NEXT Album ∙ Música Mexicana ∙ 2024 Xavi Fueled by a steady stream of viral or otherwise popular singles, Xavi rose to música mexicana prominence in what feels like a relatively short time frame. Major chart moments like “La Diabla” and “La Victima” at the end of 2023 set in motion a momentous rise for the Mexican American singer, his tumbados románticos style resonating for obvious reasons. Several—though conspicuously not all—of his accumulating 2024 hits and fan favorites appear alongside brand-new tracks on   NEXT , an album that serves as a snapshot of his success so far. With seemingly autobiographical corridos like “La Diosa” and “Peak” in the mix, he mirrors the attitude found on the previously released “Corazón de Piedra” or “Poco A Poco.” Proving ever adaptable to whatever the situation may require, he approaches matters of the heart with doe-eyed tenderness on “La Luna X Mi” and brusque desire on “Que Hay Que Hacer.”

The Freak Show Album ∙ Pop Punk ∙ 2024 NASKA

SYNK : PARALLEL LINE - Special Digital Single - EP Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2024 aespa

Last Lap Album ∙ Rap ∙ 2024 Rod Wave No matter how hard he appears to try, Rod Wave seems unable to escape the sadness. As the veritable king of pain rap, the St. Petersburg, Florida, artist has frequently sworn off the emotional depths that came to define his catalog, only to return to this thematic well again and again to produce masterful works born of hard times and mired in misery. As such, the trap-soul hybrids his fans continue to expect and, perhaps, demand from him persist on his sixth studio album   Last Lap . Case in point: The finality implied by its title runs counter to the title track’s closing refrain, his inability to let go less a choice than a calling. From the very beginning, Rod shows that he’s still wrestling with demons. Opener “Turtle Race” mourns the lost while fretting over fresh woes, not the least of which being an ominous interaction with law enforcement. “Federal Nightmares” furthers the narrative as he watches loved ones ensnared by a carceral system whil

  Still King (Deluxe) Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 BIG30

ENCUENTROS Album ∙ Música Mexicana ∙ 2024 Becky G Becky G’s love for música mexicana used to be one she kept to herself. Prior to 2023’s ambitious   ESQUINAS , the Mexican American superstar had largely limited her Spanish-language work to the pop and reggaetón spaces. Yet as corridos and other related styles surged into the mainstream as part of a genuine, youth-driven movement, her ultimately perfectly timed album transcended the trends to reveal not merely a devotion to this music but a proficiency within it. Triumphant after the warm reception the project received, she returns roughly one year later with the like-minded   ENCUENTROS . Less a follow-up than a companion to its predecessor, the 16-song effort finds her eagerly exploring cultural heritage while making history of her own. Throughout   ENCUENTROS , Becky G expresses herself over themes familiar to música mexicana listeners across generations. The unresolved heartache of “COMO DIABLOS” and the jilted lover’s one-upmanship

Long Player Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Die Fantastischen Vier

Von der Schönheit und Zerbrechlichkeit der Dinge Album ∙ Pop ∙ 2024 LEA

Liebe & Hass Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 Symba

13 Organisé 2 Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 13 Organisé

BLACKBIRD Album ∙ Hip-Hop/Rap ∙ 2024 B.B. Jacques

Vivre... Album ∙ French Pop ∙ 2024 Kendji Girac

King Gnu Dome Tour THE GREATEST UNKNOWN at TOKYO DOME Album ∙ Alternative ∙ 2024 King Gnu

  Youth - EP Album ∙ K-Pop ∙ 2024 Lee Mujin

Chopin: Études, Op. 10 & 25 Album ∙ Classical ∙ 2024 Yunchan Lim Chopin composed the first of his Etudes when he was 19. By neat coincidence, Yunchan Lim was the same age when he recorded the composer’s fiendishly difficult, musically profound keyboard studies. The Korean pianist’s vision of Chopin’s two dozen pieces blends the fearless virtuosity of youth with a maturity associated with artists three times his age. Lim, who shot to fame in 2022 as the youngest winner of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, produces a potent blend of showmanship and artistry, subtle voicing and pinpoint articulation, exquisite legato and arresting dynamic shifts, all harnessed to strikingly individual expression. “Chopin’s Etudes were a mountain I had to overcome someday,” he tells Apple Music Classical. “For the recording, I had the compulsion to be technically perfect. But I think every note is like a leaf swaying in the wind and should be as beautiful as nature itself. I feel Chopin