![]() J.D.Ģ4KGoldn, the 20-year-old San Francisco rapper-singer born Golden Von Jones, has big Gen Z tween-idol energy. Even when the mood gets maudlin or the hour-long album feels stretched or samey, his soulful delivery keeps you in his corner. But the honesty, hunger, empathy, and nuance in his voice puts the music past mediocrity - whether he’s taking stock of his own harried jetset life (“Street Runner), celebrating his bottomless work ethic (“All I Got”) or reminiscing over those who can’t be with him on the ride (“Pills & Billz,” which movingly honors a cousin who died of a Fentanyl overdose). That unassuming quality extends to the music too Rod Wave isn’t an especially gifted rapper and his tales of struggle and success tend to be relatively pro forma. Petersburg, Florida’s latest LP debuted at Number One without much fanfare, promotion or assists from big-name collaborations. Deacon works in a lighter register, with four-on-the-floor beats and pop hooks, although it’d be disingenuous to call this a party record - Deacon is less “clubby,” and more like dancing in your living room with a glass of wine after dinner. Since his debut Blisters EP, the choir-trained experimental artist from Baltimore has woven an extensive catalogue depicting the tenderness and lushness of queer romance, with a baroque sonic palette that would be as fitting for a bedroom as a tabernacle. Josiah Wise trades in passion for commitment on Deacon, his latest full-length album as Serpentwithfeet. Kids dance the Louisiana two-step in a forgotten bar a prolonged breakup meets its bitter end people get high and make out in a parking lot while “the whole world is crazy.” It’s an incredibly bleak yet weirdly comforting sentiment all at once – the notion that one’s personal dramas, the ups and downs of “normal” life, will continue to go on even as the rest of the world goes to shit. Her observations are somber now, her melancholy placed against a more substantial backdrop. Though Del Rey’s overall project has remained remarkably consistent throughout her career, her growing disillusionment with fame, and with this country’s prevailing iconography of wealth and success, has loomed large as the national mood has grown more dire.
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