The best albums of 2022 so far

Six months into 2022, this year has already given us several memorable albums in every genre, from reggaeton to dream pop to hip hop to post-punk. In fact, there were enough great albums that we couldn’t quite leave this list…

‘Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers’ review: Kendrick Lamar returns with messy introspection

The cat is out of the bag: Kendrick’s favorite subject is himself. Anyone who’d been paying attention to his music already knew this, of course. Even in To Pimp a Butterfly, his ostensibly “political” album, he was equally drawn to…

The TYF Monthly Mixtape: May 2020

In our TYF Monthly Mixtape feature, our music writers share Spotify playlists of the songs – new and old – they’ve had on repeat for the last month. This column is back for 2020, and this time we’re sharing some…

The Young Folks’ Top 50 Albums of the 2010s

In a decade that saw the rise of streaming, the album came out of the 2010s alive and well. The LP rose again, dwarfing the dying compact disc by the end of the decade, and some of the biggest artists…

The Young Folks’ Top 50 Albums of 2018

For the third year in running, The Young Folks music staff has compiled a list of our Top 50 favorite albums of the year. As with last year, the list was compiled through the votes of our music staff, plus…

Album Review: Anderson .Paak – “Oxnard”

This is the third Anderson .Paak album to be named after a California coastal town. So it’s the completion of a loose trilogy, and because it’s the one named after his home town, you might expect Oxnard to be .Paak’s most “personal”,…

Album Review: Lil Wayne – “Tha Carter V”

There are very few rappers in today’s industry that can say they’ve left an impact on multiple eras of the hip hop genre. When thinking about it, Kanye West, Kid Cudi, Jay-Z, and of course, Lil Wayne come to mind.…