"My weed so strong, I swear to God you would think it’s cologne," brags the Pittsburgh MC on this mixtape, essentially an apology for the mass appeal of his 2011 debut. Wiz Khalifa tampers down the singsong hooks in favor of insular stoner-rap mood pieces ("California"), defensive interludes ("Yeah, I'm a pop rapper/ I'll pop up and make 5 million dollars"), needling beats from Spaceghostpurrp and a cameo from Rick Ross, who revels in rosé on "Never Been Part II." But hearing Khalifa get adversarial – "Now you motherfuckers owe me" – can be a buzz-kill: It's too soon for him to sound bitter.

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“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”