We are dedicated to celebrating milestones, unearthing lesser-known gems, and promoting discussions around LPs and new music that might not receive attention.
United States
Joined January 2009
- Tweets2.1K
- Following45
- Followers246
- Likes95
On his first concept album, a set of postcards about romance and family, Daddy Yankee writes the women who left him and the mother who raised him in more detail than the women he thanks God for.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Former public defenders, sober party girls, and rappers fighting their labels made October’s best records, and almost all of them confess before they boast.
The list: shatterthestandards.com/p/oc…
A Zambian band once added its own sound to the Western songs it covered. Sampa the Great makes hip-hop the next layer on that copy and signs her name to it.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
On a studio volume and a live volume, Kirk Franklin owns up to being unfinished before a microphone and then before a room of singers, and the room gives the admission its answer.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Michael Jackson’s last album cost more than any before it, and his own label allegedly buried it. Eight million copies sold is only a failure if you’re him.
Our Milestones review: shatterthestandards.com/p/mi…
As new albums and singles get constantly flooded into our radar, look no further than skimming through the release week of October 30th. We know it can be a task, so let’s help you cut through.
#NewMusicDrops: shatterthestandards.com/p/ne…
nomi. can dismiss a lover in a single sentence and takes whole songs failing to ask another person to stay, and the failing is where her writing comes alive.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Answering every call that reaches an independent Dallas rapper, BigXthaPlug turns Texas trap into a close study of what it costs to be the person a whole circle depends on.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Off cigarettes at thirty with a son at home, Dominic Fike leans on lovers, guest singers, and a friend calling from prison, and that leaning is what his best songs are made of.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Writing for bigger voices all through the mid-‘90s, Babyface kept his own soft tenor close to home, and his kitchen-table love songs make the quiet storm sound like grown people talking.
Our Milestones review: shatterthestandards.com/p/mi…
As a debut he didn’t want to make, Dennis Coles was depressed, newly diabetic, and grieving a wrongfully imprisoned friend, and the pain bled into every bar he couldn’t bring himself to write.
Our Milestones review: shatterthestandards.com/p/mi…
Thirty-five years after 1991 shrugged past it, the self-produced debut from Queens’ Organized Konfusion is the source code of technician rap.
Our Milestones review: shatterthestandards.com/p/mi…
Recorded between the N.W.A. split and the Los Angeles uprising, Ice Cube’s autopsy of Black Los Angeles holds up as prophecy wherever it names systems and rots wherever it names neighbors.
Our Milestones review: shatterthestandards.com/p/mi…
Over Real Bad Man’s unbudging loops, Boldy James raps the Detroit dope trade as a family business, with an aunt for a customer and an uncle for a teacher, and the relatives carry his best writing.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
For Just Doin Me, Young Nudy hasn’t changed his voice or his beats. But on his Zone 6 street songs, sameness carries the authority of a witness; everywhere else it idles.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Christian McBride gives the front of his new quintet and keeps the bass chair for himself, and Ursa Major plays post-bop, funk, and synth-soul as one band that already knows how to listen to itself.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
Coming off house arrest and a year of public losses, Meek Mill built his fourth Dreamchasers tape out of the proof North Philadelphia street rap asks for. The question is, did it live up to the hype?
Our Anniversaries review: shatterthestandards.com/p/an…
Listen to new releases from @iamelena, @adrianyounge & @AliShaheed, @eiht0eiht, @YoungChris, @dpat, @terrellgrice, @LunaEllemusic, #H31R, #SurpriseChef, @miriahworld, #Khalil, #Telemakus, @Goyagumbani, @KoloGG & @6ixwastaken, @nadineelroubii, #JONES, @MAKOGirls, #GDP, @chukathedstryr, @kaylaraemusic, #JonGreen, #TommiePhoenix, @natetaylorr_nj, #AMI, and #KZIA.
Wednesday Roundups: shatterthestandards.com/p/we…
Shatter the Standards retweeted
Seated together with a joint album between them, Cordae turns the racist judge and the Klan's torch into wordplay while Anderson .Paak raps about the porch where police took his father.
Our deciphering: shatterthestandards.com/p/de…
Backed by a live orchestra and Noah Conrad playing nearly everything else, Ashe plays every woman a man has dreamed up and makes a scene big enough to get the real one seen.
Our review: shatterthestandards.com/p/al…
