Summer is a time of intense polarities, of feverish abandon and earned languor. There’s heat and purpose waiting to be seized in those unexpected, life-altering summer nights: on the dancefloor, at the bar, among friends. There’s equal chill, though, in the loss and grief that surface: historically, fatalities spike during hotter months.
Yet summer, at its glowing core, is a time of auspicious breakthroughs, and the best albums released across June, July, and August rattled with justifiable discovery. Excavating personal triumphs and public traumas, kindling love and sexuality, contending with struggle both emotional and economic. Discovering, ultimately, what it means, to shape yourself.
This year has been an especially promising moment in music, a reminder that the gold rush of creativity from artists as varied as Sunflower Bean, Nipsey Hussle, Young Fathers and others won’t soon let up. It’s also a year marked by pure volatility. Artists no longer hew to industry conventions; fall no longer heralds the most attention-commanding records. Pop giants like Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Kanye West all issued albums this summer. Drake and Cardi B were the two most-streamed artists on Spotify, with nearly 1 billion spins between them. And the ascendant California artist Doja Cat released the summer’s surprise viral hit, with “Mooo!”; amassing more than 10 million views on YouTube since dropping just three weeks ago (she later came under fire after defending past homophobic language in a tweet).
And in such transformative times, these six albums are perhaps the truest anomalies marking an era of Peak Music.
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