Ky$hia is one of the most promising female rappers to come out of Baltimore in the last few years. She's got songs with some of the biggest guys in the scene (YG Teck, OTR Chaz), but she really holds her own on the solo tracks, my favorites on here are "Whatcha Gon Do?" and "Best Behavior." 

A whole lot of artists in different genres have released their first country album in the first year or so, and some people tend to look at this through a weary, cynical lens, I personally think it's a lot of fun and has resulted in more good music than bad. And I think a particularly welcome guest at this party is Ringo Starr, whose first solo songwriting credit with the Beatles all those decades ago was a pretty good country tune, "Don't Pass Me By." In recent y ears Ringo has made a lot of EPs of varying quality and not a very strong musical identity, but getting into the studio with T-Bone Burnett (who did most of the songwriting) and some capable guests (Billy Strings, Alison Krauss, Larkin Poe) has resulted in some of the best stuff he's done in a long time. 

Not knowing any languages besides English, especially Spanish, really makes me feel like I'm missing out on a lot of music. Sometimes I'll look at translations of lyrics when listening to artists like Bad Bunny, though, and I really appreciate how much he's celebrating Puerto Rico on this album and how varied the music is. 

There's always been a lot of resistance to British rap in America and I understand it, it's a very different sound and a different culture. It's felt a little like Central Cee was being really aggressively marketed to America lately, especially when his song with Lil Baby just kinda floated into heavy rotation on rap radio with anybody seeming to care about it. But I was surprised by how much people talked about and seemed to genuinely like Can't Rush Greatness the weekend it dropped, and I'll give him credit, he's really spitting on this record and he does have the right accent and enunciation that most American listeners can follow what he's saying pretty well, could be a really genuine crossover moment. I think "5 Star" is my favorite so far. 

Lil Baby is one of those artists where I think public opinion on him has fluctuated hugely with fairly little difference in the quality of his music. When he dropped My Turn, people were making comparisons to Lil Wayne that he couldn't possibly live up to, and then turned on him hard when the last couple albums really weren't very different at all. WHAM has plenty of good songs, my favorites so far are "Due 4A Win" and "Free Promo," but there are some duds. I think it's hilarious that everyone hates "Say Twin" so much that it's the least streamed song on the album (not counting songs recently added for the deluxe version.