Album Review: Vanisher, Horizon Scraper

Quadeca’s fifth studio album, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper, might be his most expansive project to date. Fourteen tracks, nearly 69 minutes, and a full-length film that’s just as bold as the music itself. From the opening notes of “No Questions Asked,” you’re pulled into a windswept, apocalyptic folk saga — part philosophical journey, part descent into madness.

In many ways, this album feels like a fully evolved version of his most recent project I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You. That album lived in grief and isolation, wrapped in spectral, experimental arrangements. Vanisher blows that world wide open. Where Haunt You felt static and internal, Vanisher is outward-facing and mythic, leaning into the shape of an epic quest. You can hear The Odyssey all over this record: a lone sailor chasing purpose, navigating a dangerous sea of illusions, regret, and moments of fleeting beauty. But unlike Homer’s hero, Quadeca’s protagonist never comes home. The journey is the destination — and the curse.

The album is built like a modern myth, with each song playing out as a trial or temptation pulling him deeper into the unknown. Quadeca blends ambient textures and orchestral swells with folk instrumentation and experimental minimalism, giving the music a constant sense of drift. Tracks like “THUNDRRR” are dazzling not just musically but visually in the accompanying film, where lightning cuts across black oceans in perfect sync with the song’s chaotic crescendos. And quieter pieces like “I DREAM ABOUT SINKING” are just as vital, giving the narrative space to breathe and make the storms hit harder.

One of the album’s biggest peaks is “FORGONE,” a nearly eight-minute centerpiece that grows from hushed piano to gospel-sized catharsis before falling apart into silence. That collapse leads straight into the closing track.“CASPER (with Maruja),” whose post-rock textures and whispered vocals mirror the fragility of the album’s opening. In the film, the sequence is unforgettable: Quadeca’s character bobs in and out of water as space and time dissolve around him, finally consumed by the cycle he’s been trying to break. It’s one of those endings that stays with you long after — and makes you want to start the album again.

That cyclical structure is what makes Vanisher so addictive. It ends where it began, but everything feels different the second time through. It’s a story that resonates deeply with young people still finding their way, because it captures how early adulthood can feel like a loop of searching, rebuilding, and second-guessing. There’s comfort and fear in that repetition, and Quadeca leans into both. The lyrics are dense with metaphor: water as erasure, radio static as memory loss, longing as self-destruction. He’s both narrator and doomed protagonist, and by the time the mythic Bakunawa (brought chillingly to life by Danny Brown) devours the moon, you feel the inevitability of it all.

If I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You was emotional excavation, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper is the summit. A full concept pushed into operatic folk-epic territory. Ambitious in every sense but never indulgent. Like The Odyssey, it balances introspection with forward motion, knowing that the beauty of the journey lies in its cycles.

Ultimately, Vanisher, Horizon Scraper isn’t just a record — it’s a voyage. Expansive, hypnotic, and heavy with meaning. It’s myth-making for a generation still trying to figure out who they are and where they’re headed. It pulls you in with its scale, keeps you hooked with its storytelling, and leaves you changed when it swallows you whole. Like the ocean it depicts, it’s impossible to fully grasp — and that’s exactly what keeps you diving back in again and again.

Favorite tracks: All

SCORE: 10/10

Album Review: DON'T TAP THE GLASS - Tyler, The Creator

Tyler, The Creator has returned suddenly with his newest album DON’T TAP THE GLASS, and this time he’s not building a world; instead, he’s capitalizing on his well-deserved positive momentum. It’s his shortest release yet at just ten tracks and twenty-eight minutes, but it moves with intention. No concept, no alter ego, no cinematics. Just pace and presence. The title itself reads like a command: don’t interrupt, don’t dissect, don’t poke around looking for depth he isn’t offering. This album is built for motion, not meditation.

The rollout reflects that same energy. No ornate visuals, no extended teasing. Just a quiet drop in the middle of his Chromakopia tour and a note that this project wasn’t made for sitting still. Compared to his previous records — where the packaging was often as layered as the music — this one feels deliberately light. Not hollow, just unburdened. There’s nothing to decode here, no long arc to trace. It’s not a concept album, it’s a movement record.

There’s also the sense that Tyler’s experimenting again. Not reinventing himself, but pushing forward — testing out grime textures, rubbery funk, high-BPM loops that border on dance music. “Big Poe” feels like a beam of sun refracted through broken glass, with Tyler gliding over it like it’s effortless. “Sucka Free” comes through with clipped percussion and a fantastic bass — the kind of track that sounds like it was made in 15 minutes and didn’t need a second more. There’s looseness here, but not laziness. The music is sharp even when it’s fast.

And that speed matters. These songs are short — most clock in under three minutes — but they don’t feel unfinished. They arrive, make their point, and move on. Even the softer moments (“Don’t You Worry Baby,” “Tell Me What It Is”) don’t linger. They suggest emotion without spelling it out. There’s something restrained about them — like Tyler knows you’ll feel what you need to feel without him having to lay it bare. He’s said this album wasn’t built for stillness, and you can hear that in how little space it gives you to pause.

What’s compelling is how Tyler avoids spectacle without losing presence. There’s no heavy narrative or big finale. Just texture, rhythm, and restraint. Vulnerability shows up not in lyrics, but in choices — in the brevity, in the refusal to explain, in the confidence to release something this minimal with no framing around it. He’s not interested in giving you a full picture. He’s letting the edges stay loose.

There are also moments — specific cadences, basslines, or sudden drops into tenderness — that subtly gesture back toward his earlier works. Bastard’s rawness, Wolf’s oddball melody lines, the confidence of Flower Boy — they all flicker at the edges of this record without ever hijacking it. DON’T TAP THE GLASS doesn’t reach for legacy. It doesn’t try to top anything. It just constantly moves — fast, smart, and fully in its own lane. If this is Tyler in transition, it’s a fluid one — not toward a new persona, but toward lightness. That’s what makes it so refreshing. This record doesn’t pretend to be a defining moment. It just knows exactly what it is. And sometimes, that’s all you need, even if it leaves you wishing for more.

Favorite tracks: “Big Poe (feat. Sk8brd)” — “Sugar On My Tongue” — “Sucka Free” — “Ring Ring Ring” — “Don’t Tap The Glass / Tweakin’” — “I’ll Take Care of You (feat. Yebba)” — “Tell Me What It Is”

SCORE: 7.9/10

Album Review: Let God Sort Em Out - Clipse

After sixteen years away, Clipse didn’t come back to relive their former glory. They came back to finish the project they started. Let God Sort Em Out isn’t a nostalgia trip — it’s a reckoning that has finally arrived after a masterful rollout. Pharrell handles the production top to bottom, but this isn’t a return to the style of Neptunes from the 2000s. It’s sharper, colder, and sometimes stranger. The sound moves between cold-blooded minimalism and grandeur, and it frames the two brothers’ voices — Pusha T and Malice — who now rap like men who’ve realized the full cost of their ambitions.

The opening tracks, “The Birds Don’t Sing,” sets the tone with almost no fanfare. Pusha and Malice are grieving the loss of their parents. The song sits in silence before it even begins, and once it does, it lands like a prayer. There are moments on this album that feel heavier than any beat can carry, and that’s the point. Even when the flows are airtight and the bars and wordplay are vicious, there’s a weight underneath: memory, mortality, and loss. Clipse have always made music about consequences, but never this directly.

Then the album flexes. “Chains & Whips,” “P.O.V.,” and “Ace Trumpets” bring back the cold-chested luxury raps, but they’re reframed. There’s tension in the subtext and more scar tissue in the delivery. The verses land clean, but the energy isn’t youthful — it’s watchful. There’s power here, but it’s been earned the hard way. That energy carries through the middle of the album, even in moments that lean theatrical. The confidence is still there, but it’s less about proving something and more about refusing to do anything but tell the truth.

The production walks that same line. Pharrell keeps things stark — tight drums, unexpected breaks, beats that feel like they’re holding something back. It’s not trying to be pretty. There’s a rawness, even when the polish is there. But when guests show up — Kendrick, Tyler, Nas, John Legend — they feel like pieces of a grander architecture, not spotlights. They enter the world Clipse built instead of pulling us out of it.

What makes Let God Sort Em Out resonate isn’t the reunion. It’s the clarity. These aren’t two rappers picking up where they left off. These are two people who have changed since we last heard from them, and you can hear that in every line. The album is bitter, weary, sometimes defiant, but never hollow. It’s about legacy, yes, but also about grief. About what gets lost when you give your life to a thing, and what it costs to look back at all of it and try to keep going. Clipse didn’t come back to make a statement. The presence and gift of new Clipse music is the statement.

Favorite tracks: “The Birds Don’t Sing” — “Chains & Whips” — “So Be It” — “Ace Trumpets” — “E.B.I.T.D.A.” — “F.I.C.O.” — “Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers” — “By The Grace Of God”

SCORE: 9.5/10

Album Review: Lotus - Little Simz

Little Simz has returned with her sixth full-length studio album Lotus, and its title tells you everything you need to know before hitting play. It’s an album about emergence — how something beautiful can grow out of something else that has been tarnished. For Simz, that “something else” is the fallout from a collapsed creative partnership with her former producer Inflo, subsequent legal battles, and years of unreleased material scrapped entirely. Lotus doesn’t sound like a comeback, but instead sounds like survival. It’s measured, unsentimental, and at times, angry enough to burn through the speakers.

The album’s opening track is called “Thief,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a direct reckoning. The beat’s restrained, almost dry, leaving plenty of space for Simz to put Inflo on notice. She’s not hiding the pain, but she’s not drowning in it either. It’s a form of confrontation as closure. From there, the album starts to twist and pull: “Flood” (with Obongjayar and Moonchild Sanelly) hits like the emotional purge it’s named after. It’s anxious and cathartic in equal measure, featuring a Simz that seems as determined as ever in her blooming career. The closing four tracks on the album are as impressive of a run as Simz has ever had in her career — “Blood” is genius narrative, “Lotus” is desperate and direct in its instrumentation, and “Lonely” is as vulnerable as Simz has ever been.

There’s no moment on Lotus where things “resolve.” Even when the production softens, the weight doesn’t lift. “Blue” is one of the quietest moments toward the end of the record, and yet it’s still one of the heaviest. Sampha shows up with the exact voice you’d want for a song like this, just above a whisper, but it’s Simz who brings the emotion. She’s not just rapping about being tired, she sounds tired: of the industry, of betrayal, and of people expecting strength from her without ever asking the cost.

Production-wise, she keeps things stripped back — sometimes jazzy, sometimes grimy, but never too flashy. There’s still orchestration like we’ve grown to love on her previous records, but it’s lighter, less cinematic than her past work with Inflo. That decision feels deliberate. Nothing on this album is trying to impress you. Even the features — Wretch 32, Michael Kiwanuka, Yussef Dayes — show up more like collaborators than guests. They feel part of the architecture, not ornaments. This isn’t the album where Simz tells you how brilliant she is. It’s the one where she tells you what it cost to get to this point, further cementing the authenticity that makes her discography so authentic and magnetic.

Lotus doesn’t aim for closure, and it doesn’t pretend healing is linear. There’s no grand finale. Instead, it circles its own themes — grief, resilience, fatigue, clarity — and sits with them. That restraint is what makes it feel so human. Simz isn’t performing strength; she’s documenting the process of rebuilding it. It’s an album that offers no solutions, only honesty. And in a moment when the music industry is loud and everything is instant, Lotus feels like Simz choosing to speak slowly, carefully, and only when it really matters.

Favorite tracks: “Thief” — “Flood” — “Free” — “Lion” — “Blood” — “Lotus” — “Lonely” — “Blue”

SCORE: 9.4/10

Album Review: Cancionera - Natalia Lafourcade

There is always a timeless quality to Natalia Lafourcade’s music. On her newest album Cancionera, that timelessness becomes deliberate. It’s etched into every lyric, chord, and moment of stillness like new embroidery on old fabric. This isn’t just an album you listen to; it’s an immersive experience you are meant to enter like a small, candlelit room during a thunderstorm. Cancionera is a deeply theatrical and symbolic departure from the grounded earnestness that defined her last project De Todas las Flores. Where that album felt like a diary — vulnerable, rooted in grief, and rebirth — Cancionera feels more like a play. There's a new character that defines it: “La Cancionera,” Lafourcade’s alter ego, who acts as both a muse and mirror, guiding the listener through themes of love, heritage, and healing.

What’s most impressive is how this character doesn’t obscure Lafourcade’s voice, but instead it sharpens it. By crafting a fictional persona and alternative voice for this album, she somehow becomes even more honest. She lets Lafourcade explore aspects of herself that don’t always get center stage, such as rage, sensuality, absurdity, and defiance. The album’s storytelling is rich with metaphor and symbols like mirrors, rivers, ghosts, and lullabies, but it never feels out of reach. Instead, it invites living interpretation and re-interpretation, like a poem that changes meaning depending on when and where you read it. Natalia has always flirted with duality, but here, she dives in headfirst.

Sonically, the album is a layered tapestry of regional Mexican music, chamber folk, and impressionist pop. Tracks like “Cocos en la Playa” shimmer with vibrant warmth through its plucked strings, suggesting palm trees swaying just out of view. It’s lighthearted and earthy, but even in its breeziness, there's a wistfulness to this track. On the other side of the spectrum is “La Bruja - Versión Cancionera,” a spectral reinvention of a traditional folk song that pulses with quiet menace. Here, Lafourcade doesn’t just cover a classic, but instead inhabits it. This range can at times suggest thematic inconsistency compared to previous projects, but that may be by design here. Her voice slips between registers, echoing like wind, evoking centuries of women who’ve sung same melody, for protection, protest, or something in between.

The album’s production is meticulous but feels incredibly organic. It doesn’t feel overworked or over-arranged — just lovingly handled from its instrumental opening and closing tracks to songs that sound like they were sung in front of crowds. The use of live recordings, analog textures, and layered acoustic instruments gives the album an almost tactile quality. It sounds like a room to stand in, not a file to streaming. Collaborations with Hermanos Gutiérrez and El David Aguilar aren’t marquee moments on the project, they are woven into the fabric of the album like threads of a larger pattern. These guest appearances don’t detract from Lafourcade’s vision. Their voices arrive not as intrusions but as echoes, as if summoned by La Cancionera herself to help add color to the narrative.

Cancionera is more than just a record. It’s a ritual. It’s an invitation to step into a dreamscape where every song is a memory you forgot you had. It’s also a reminder that honoring tradition doesn’t have to mean staying still — sometimes it means dancing with the past, reimagining it, and encouraging it to say something fit for a new context. Lafourcade isn’t just preserving heritage here; she’s conversing with it, complicating it, and making it beautiful all over again. In a time when so much music feels like background noise, Cancionera not only demands to be heard intently and fully, but experienced with every part of you — especially the parts that leans into the romanticization and beauties of everyday life.

Favorite tracks: “Aperatura Cancionera,” “Cancionera,” Cocos en la Playa,” “Amor Clandestino,” “El Coconito,” “El Palomo y La Negra,” “Cariñito de Acapulco,”" “La Bruja - Versión Cancionera,” “Luna Creciente,” “Lágrimas Cancioneras”

SCORE: 9.2/10