Rap Royalty

Redemption

Jay Rock

After a life-threatening motorcycle accident, Jay Rock returns with his strongest album yet, a collection of rap songs that highlight his struggle and journey.

Redemption is the most cohesive of Jay Rock's albums. He he puts up a career high and at 44 minutes, the album breezes by without many frills.

Rock raps, makes his point, and gets out quickly after, allowing the TDE vet to chalk up his biggest win yet.

Tracklist

A1 - The Bloodiest

A2 - For What It's Worth

A3 - Knock It Off

A4 - ES Tales

A5 - Rotation 112th

A6 - Tap Out (ft Jeremih)

B7 - OSOM (ft J. Cole

B8 - King's Dead (ft Future)

B9 - Troopers

B10 - Broke +-

B11 - Wow Freestyle (ft Kendrick Lamar)

B12 - Redemption (ft SZA)

B13 - Win

Big Bad

Giggs

The London rapper’s fifth album reinforces his dominance of the UK scene and marks his increasing cachet in international waters, but the decision to sing might be the wrong kind of risk-taking.

Giggs is at his best while rhyming simple, fearlessly well-timed, cryptic truisms about the rougher edges of urban life, as calibrated by his razor-sharp mind and communicated via a slang dictionary that he's kept tight to his chest for over a decade. Big Bad... overflows with different iterations of this strength.

Tracklist

A1 - Great Collectives (featuring Gashi)

A2 - Set It Off

A3 - 187

A4 - Baby

A5 - Spun It

B6 - Mic Check (featuring Jadakiss)

B7 - Show Me Respect

B8 - Talk About It (featuring Kristian Hamilton and Theophilus London)

B9 - Don't Go Hungry (featuring Labrinth)

C11 - Nostalgia (featuring Lil Yachty)

C12 - Hold Up (featuring French Montana)

C13 - You Ain't...

C14 - Who

D15 - Turnt

D16 - Terminator (featuring Swizz Beatz)

D17 - Gwop Expenses (featuring Wretch 32)

D18 - Shade

The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living

The Streets

Welcome to Mike Skinner: the being dead famous and realising it’s “a load of boring shite” years

Mike Skinner follows two brave, brilliant records with an album chiefly about fame and its attendent trappings.

The first two LPs found him clambering for closer contact with the people around him; this record takes place almost entirely in his own head, where he's either engaged in a struggle to stay on the right side of sanity (and possibly sobriety) or to keep his misanthropy contained.

Tracklist

A1 - Prangin' Out

A2 - War of the Sexes

A3 - The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living

B1 - All Goes Out the Window

B2 - Memento Mori

B3 - Can't Con an Honest John

C1 - When You Wasn't Famous

C2 - Never Went to Church

C3 - Hotel Expressionism

D1 - Two Nations

D2 - Fake Streets Hats

Mastermind

Rick Ross

Rap's own Jordan Belfort doesn't have to be likeable to impress

There’s no doubting that the beats on Mastermind, as you would expect from a production roster including Kanye West, Jake One, JUSTICE League and The Weeknd, are exceptional, lush and bombastic and full of zaftig soul samples.

So, really, it’s all down to Rick and whether he shows up. And he does. On The Devil Is A Lie, on which Jay Z also kills it, he is almost possessed, roaring and gasping his lyrics. West’s contribution, Sanctified, is a glorious snail’s-pace gush of braggadocio (not convinced that being “the fresh David Koresh” is much of a boast though), likewise the ragga-heavy Mafia Music III.