This New Orleans MC (and former Lil Wayne protégé) has celebrated his move to a new label by darkening up his trademark weed-rap, backing his hazy musings with gritty, paranoid production that's more New York than NoLa. Curren$y's topics — cars, kush, and cash — are familiar and repetitive, but his intricate, stream-of-consciousness narratives come with varied flows. Sample-dicer Alchemist is the maestro here, lacing Covert Coup with tumbling chops of obscure soul and dusty space-funk. It's the perfect backdrop for the rapper's stoner humor ("Patty cake, patty cake/I'm baked my man") and for quality cameos from the freshly paroled Prodigy and blog darling Freddie Gibbs. Straight edge listeners won't be disappointed, either

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“The A Team”

This debut track from the then-20-year-old British singer-songwriter has a dark story behind it. Sheeran says he culls songwriting inspiration from "viewing other people's situations," which, for the heroine in "The A Team," involves drug addiction and prostitution that began as a teen. Sheeran paints the woman's trials with haunting imagery such as "But lately her face seems/Slowly sinking, wasting/Crumbling like pastries." "I did a gig at a homeless shelter, [and the song] is about one of the women there. It's her story," he said.