10 New Albums to Stream Now: The Carters, Nine Inch Nails, Kamasi Washington and More Editors’ Picks

EDITORS’ PICK: The Carters, Everything Is Love
“Everything is Love is the refreshing final chapter in a trilogy of albums that includes Beyoncé’s unburdening 2016 odyssey Lemonade and Jay-Z’s 2017 conscience-stricken apologia 4:44, glimpses inside a strained marriage from both sides,” writes Sheldon Pearce. “Everything Is Love is couples counseling as an art exhibition, as much a splendid relationship retrospective as it is a celebration of their growing black family dynasty. When Beyoncé raps, ‘My great-great-grandchildren already rich/That’s a lot of brown children on your Forbes list,’ she’s connecting the dots between their love and their legacy.”
Read Our Feature: Beyoncé, Jay-Z Collaborators Detail How Everything Is Love Came Together
Read Our Review: The Carters’ Everything Is Love Splendidly Celebrates Their Family Dynasty
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal | Deezer

Nine Inch Nails, Bad Witch
Trent Reznor’s still (justifiably) afraid of Americans, as evidenced by the grimy sonics and spittle-flecked lyrics of this six-track album’s harder-edged offerings like “Shit Mirror” and “Ahead of Ourselves” (“When we could have done anything/ We wound up building this,” he sneers on the latter). The quieter moments further bear out that long-simmering dread: drones and silences add unease to instrumentals like the uneasy “Play the Goddamned Part” and the spectral “I’m Not From This World,” while closer “Over and Out” combines a Quiet Storm groove, sax ripples, and a Bowie-echoing vocal from Reznor into a eulogy for the world before dissolving into nothingness. Maura Johnston
Read Our Live Review: Nine Inch Nails Bring Smoke, Refigured Classics to Vegas Residency
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Kamasi Washington, Heaven and Earth
“The so-called spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders and other late-Sixties and early-Seventies seekers remains a major element of Washington’s sound on Heaven and Earth,” writes Hank Shteamer. “But the former Chaka Khan and Raphael Saadiq sideman is also deeply invested in buttery smoothness, an aesthetic that’s as much post–Soul Train as post-Coltrane.”
Read Our Review: Kamasi Washington’s New Heaven and Earth is Another Sprawling, Style-Hopping Epic
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, International Artist
Perhaps it’s a sign of how much hip-hop has evolved that artists from the Bronx, home to decades of rhyme pioneers ranging from Grandmaster Caz to KRS-One and Fat Joe, are no longer expected to mean-mug and spit traditional bars. Take A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, who easily fits into the current zeitgeist of rappers who sing more often than they speak. He’s a product of the times, but he has a talent for appealing melodies and memorable flows that’s more creatively compelling than his peers. That skill carries him through International Artist, a shameless if charming bid for crossover success. Afrobeats singer Davido’s robust boasts accompany Boogie’s airy vocals on the club-ready bounce “Way Too Fly,” and he trades bars with the wildly underrated Latino rapper Kap G on highlight “MIA.” Even Tory Lanez, whose low-common-denominator hits often evoke the worst of the current singing-rapper wave, comes off nicely over the tropical synths of “Best Friend.” Mosi Reeves
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Dan + Shay, Dan + Shay
This country duo has quietly racked up hits like “How Not To” and “From the Ground Up” since 2014, and they’ve taken their fair share of shit along the way for daring to have a softer, less rowdy presentation than their peers. On their self-titled third album, Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney maintain their low-key approach, delighting in simple, domestic pleasures and providing a reminder to pause and take a breath. Lead single “Tequila” is a massive, sweeping country-radio smash that’s less about getting drunk than the overwhelming power of memory. Mooney also goes toe to toe with vocal powerhouse Kelly Clarkson on the live-in-the-moment anthem “Keeping Score” and emerges no worse for the wear, transcending obvious comparisons to Rascal Flatts’ Gary LeVox with a voice that is both lithe and brawny, yet steeped in contemporary vernacular. Co-producer Smyers bridges adult-contemporary pop, power balladry and modern country, dabbling in vaguely Caribbean sounds on “All to Myself” and adding record-scratching loops to “No Such Thing.” Dan + Shay are at their most collectively potent on the soulful cuts “What Keeps You Up at Night” and “Speechless,” their groove-oriented production giving Mooney plenty of space to proclaim his love in soaring fashion. Jon Freeman
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Panic! At the Disco, Pray For the Wicked
Brendon Urie’s nervy bravado and Silly Putty voice have helped him become an elder statesman of pop at 31 – and the sixth Panic! At the Disco album lets him flaunt that status, its audacious, booze-soaked jams spinning off into the night. At its best moments, like the roller-disco-ready opener “Silver Lining” and the brass-and-falsetto-accented “Dancing’s Not A Crime,” Pray brings Urie back to his guyliner-era role as jubilant-yet-weary ringmaster of a sprawling, oddly cohesive pop menagerie. Maura Johnston
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Death Grips, Year of the Snitch
The sixth album from these “noise-punk-rap cyber-transgressives,” writes Christopher R. Weingarten, is their “least aggressive offering to date, but still quite disruptive. … The most visceral tune may be the agoraphobia slam of ‘Black Paint,’ but the most interesting development is closing track ‘Disappointed,’ which sounds like the hocketing of Dirty Projectors as interpreted by a hardcore band.” 
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Priscilla Renea, Coloured
“I’m happy to trail blaze and I think I always have been that person that wasn’t afraid to explore new things, to mix sugar with salt, so to speak,” the genre-agnostic songwriter and singer tells Rolling Stone. Following contributions to songs like Fifth Harmony’s “Work It” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Love So Soft”, Renea’s second album came after collaborative sessions with Nashville peers like Ashley Gorey (Thomas Rhett, Dierks Bentley) and Emily Shackleton (Carly Pearce, Lauren Alaina). “I made this record for myself on purpose because I didn’t want people to think there was no depth to my artistry,” she says. “I wanted to make a very meaningful, introspective diary-style record. Yes, I would love to have a hit off this record, absolutely. But if it doesn’t happen, whatever. I’m making more music.” Jon Freeman
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Mock Identity, Paradise
This D.C. quartet’s terse debut grinds and giggles as it flips off the status quo, taking the old saw about dancing’s place in a revolution and repurposing it as a credo for a perpetual-motion, no-jerks-allowed mosh pit. Vocalist Adriana-Lucia Cotes has an urgent yelp that gives her bandmates’ spiky, nimble post-post-punk a giddy jolt, turning the beauty-myth broadside “Glamour” into a cat-and-mouse game and making the terse shove-off “No Means No” a rallying cry for personal space. On the breakneck Spanish-language track “Nación de Opresión,” Cotes rails against the un-pretty hate machines at work in her band’s hometown while Jeff Barsky’s guitar squalls, her agitation mutating into a full-throated rebuke of any vampiro who wants to tighten their screws. Maura Johnston
Listen: Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal

Westside Gunn, Supreme Blientele
This Buffalo rapper, his brother Conway and their Griselda Records camp have an innovative aesthetic combining ’90s thug rap and Alchemist-style dusty loops. That, coupled with a canny marketing strategy aimed at vinyl swagbeasts – Westside Gunn’s 2016 breakthrough Flygod now trades for a ridiculous $600 online – has made the Griselda team an unlikely sensation among true-school enthusiasts. (Griselda inked a deal with Eminem’s Shady Records last year.) Gunn’s latest full-length is threaded together with wrestling-related sound snippets – its original title was Chris Benoit, named after the wrestler who killed his family and himself in 2007 – and pocked by grizzled macho-man cameos from Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss, and Roc Marciano. Gunn himself has a sharp, high-pitched voice and breaks verses down into micro-fragments; he’s not as lyrically deft as some of his thug rap peers, but he’s punchy and effective. “This is for the culture, you wouldn’t understand my sculpture,” he brags over the Blaxploitation soul dream “The Steiners.” Mosi Reeves
Listen: Amazon Music Unlimited | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal