Key track: Come Back BabyIf not for Twitter, Harlem’s Azealia Banks would be mentioned in the same breath as Beyonce, Rihanna and Ariana, thanks to her sky-scraping vocals and genre-blurring virtuosity. Still, her runway-ready debut EP electrifyingly stood at the confluence of rap and house music as Banks vacillated wildly between baby-doll breathiness and serpentine rhymes across its four prodigious tracks. Key track: RiRiOnce the darling of the digital underground, Art Angels was Grimes’ pop star coming out party. Key track: ButterflyAn R&B smoothie aligned with oddball LA hip-hop collective Odd Future, Frank Ocean’s debut swept off into unexpected directions. This bleak outlook was offset by a thrilling excursion through black music history, pinballing between rap, jazz, funk, soul, and freeform scat freakouts, and buoyed by a breathlessly dexterous ferocity.

Source: Otago Daily Times December 22, 2019 14:26 UTC