Monthly Report: June 2026 Albums
1. Tierra Whack - Whack's Museum
I'm not someone who begrudges rappers experimenting with singing and melodic flows. But there was plenty of that the last couple times Tierra Whack released a batch of new songs (2021's trio of EPs called Rap? and Pop? and R&B?, and the 2024 album Whack World). So her new mixtape Whack's Museum feels like an overdue confirmation that she's absolutely one of the best MCs going right now. The tape opens with her chuckling "They say I should rap more," and then she proceeds to rhyme her ass off for 12 tracks, a third of them produced by Conductor Williams.
2. Olivia Rodrigo - You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love
I don't know if I like this as much as Olivia Rodrigo's first two albums, but she's still on an incredible run and has really not missed once yet. And I like that she's pivoted a bit, from grungy/punky rock influences to lots of homages to The Cure (and a Robert Smith cameo), and from angry or sad or horny breakup songs to the whirlwind of emotions of a blossoming new relationship. The whole title and vibe of You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love kind of takes me back to the early days of dating my wife, and her enormous sad eyes that made me want to just stay with her forever and try to make her smile more. I particularly like "Maggots For Brains" and "U + Me = <3," which has my favorite line on the album: "They say modern love's a cruel endeavor, and to that I say 'Fuck it, whatever.'"
3. Key Glock - Project X
On a Thursday afternoon in June, the world heard the news that Memphis's Tay Keith, one of the biggest rap producers of the past ten years, had died at 29. That night, people pressed play on Memphis rapper Key Glock's new album and the first thing they heard was Tay Keith's signature drop, and it was bittersweet to learn that Tay Keith produced 5 tracks on Project X. Key Glock's got a formula that he never really deviates from -- he's got more ways to say he bought some expensive jeans than perhaps any rapper in history -- but he's got a great ear and as usual picks some excellent beats, from Tay Keith and Grayson Beats's "Mannish" to Oh Ross and Blazerfxme's "Big 5."
4. Niall Horan - Dinner Party
All four surviving members of One Direction released albums in the first half of 2026, and I'm not surprised that Niall Horan continues to quietly have the best solo catalog out of the group. Julian Bunetta and John Ryan have made some huge hits with Sabrina Carpenter in the last few years but they really do some of their best work with Horan, "Tastes So Good" is a fantastic opener, and "End of an Era" is a moving tribute to Liam Payne.
5. Imani Imani - Papercut
It's been 6 years since Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free launched pgLang, a multimedia company that seems to have mostly worked on advertising campaigns and occasionally releasing the music of Kendrick and his cousin Baby Keem. Apparently they released an album by another artist, Tanna Leone, in 2022, but I have no recollection of hearing anything about that. Singer Imani Imani's debut Papercut was surprise released on a Tuesday in June, I guess on the premise that the pgLang brand could lure enough listeners to check out a new artist. I don't know how well it worked, but I hope Imani Imani has a future, this album is really good, I particularly like the early stretch of "Come Together," "Snatch," and "On Demand." There are a couple familiar names in the liner notes, James Fauntleroy and Sam Dew, but it seems like she's not working too much with established people, and has a lovely voice that works in several different styles of music.
6. Vince Staples - Cry Baby
I respect that Vince Staples has always moved like an album artist who makes each release musically and/or lyrically distinct from his other work. Summertime '06 didn't sound like his early tapes, Big Fish Theory was a departure from all of the above and kind of divisive at the time, but now it's one of his most popular records. So I take the mixed reviews of Cry Baby with a grain of salt, because even if it's not his best work, I really like dig him adding something like this to his catalog. It's a political rap/rock record that sounds nothing like Rage Against the Machine, full of rhymes about American racism and the Trump administration over chugging indie rock guitars. Vince gets a lot of credit for his deadpan wit, but there's a lot of sincerity in his music too, and I like how fully he engages with the subject matter and says exactly what he thinks. It really feels like 2010s mainstream rap songs like YG's "FDT" and Childish Gambino's "This Is America" totally went out of fashion in the 2020s and guys like Kendrick and J. Cole wouldn't be caught dead making a record this earnestly topical today. So Vince making Cry Baby actually feels refreshing, he's swerving confidently into an unoccupied lane.
7. T.I. - Kill The King
T.I. has said that Kill The King is his final album, and so I'll just quickly link my old piece about how almost no rapper ever truly retires and I think he'll be back. But having a comeback hit like "Let 'Em Know" 25 years into his career is pretty cool, I'm glad he was able to catch a real wave with this album. He got some good beats from DJ Toomp, Organized Noize, Mr. Hanky, and DJ Montay, and Young Dro is on like three tracks. T.I. is still really an elite rapper, I'm pretty happy with it as a fan, whether or not it's his last album.
8. Berndt / Schmidt - Cloud Machines
The High Zero Festival is one of my favorite things on earth -- longtime Baltimore saxophonist John Berndt co-founded the festival in the '90s, and M.C. Schmidt of Matmos, who moved to Baltimore in 2007, is the current president of the High Zero Foundation. Their first album as a duo, apparently 12 years in the making, is the kind of experimental record that makes judicious use of silence as much as any sound. You get a lot of room to listen or not listen closely to these strange and often beautiful little spurts of sound that come from Bernt and Schmidt's instruments, synths, samplers, and collaborators like guitarists Owen Gardner of Horse Lords and Joel Knispel.
9. Horse Lords - Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!
I already included one of the advance singles from the sixth Horse Lords album, "Brain of the Firm," in my annual DJ set of music in 5/4 back in May. There's some more 5/4 on Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive! as well as some other unusual time signatures (I love the 9/8 on "A City Yet To Come). But what really impresses me about Horse Lords is how they blur and overlap and transition between different meters and polyrhythms. In a way they're probably one of the tightest bands in the world, because they play such unnatural grooves together so well.
10. Death Cab For Cutie - I Built You A Tower
I think of Ben Gibbard as a singer/songwriter guy at heart. Like, Death Cab For Cutie always seemed like a somewhat unlikely platinum rock band, he could very easily have had more of a Elliott Smith or Iron & Wine-type career, whether as a solo artist or under the Death Cab name. That being said, The Photo Album is my favorite Death Cab album partly because there's a little more muscle in the rhythm section, and I Built You A Tower goes even further in having a real bass-heavy post-punk crunch on "Punching the Flowers," "How Heavenly A State," and "Envy the Birds." They even pull off a nice 5/4 groove on the latter, which is not something I really ever expected to hear on a Death Cab record.
The Worst Album of the Month: Malcolm Todd - Do That Again
If I wanted to take easy shots at Malcolm Todd, there are plenty of readymade narratives to draw from: that he's a showbiz nepo baby (his father is a successful TV producer/creator), or an industry plant (Spotify recently removed some suspicious streams from his listener statistics), or a white teenybopper knockoff of a Black artist (Steve Lacy). I really just don't like his music, particularly his dopey breathy singing style. I also don't like his lyrics -- Do That Again opens with lots of horny songs about hotel room trysts, and then goes into a stretch of sour breakup songs where he slut shames a girl or mutters "bitch." I do like the album his sister Audrey Hobert released last year, though.
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