Booker's second studio album is inspired by a society that disproportionately harms black bodies, and what he saw as his own lack of effort to do anything about it.
A studio session with Kanye led to a new album that finds the soul eccentric extending his fatherly compassion, and a helping of funk, to the world at large.
Rock critic Ken Tucker reviews Styles' self-titled solo album, as well as Waiting on a Song, by Auerbach of The Black Keys. Tucker says the new albums "meet in a middle-ground of forced humility."
Chumped's Anika Pyle and Dan Frelly are back with a new band that's more pop than punk and a song named for a 19th-century abolitionist and suffragist.
The fifth album by the one-time pop-punk champions ditches the four-letter qualifier to embrace a classic '80s pop sound. But there's still anxiety beneath the gloss.