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Big release: Janelle Monáe’s fourth LP, The Age of Pleasure
New album: The American artist returns after 2018’s dystopian Dirty Computer a series of acting roles with a celebratory LP of her full sexual liberation and confirmed non-binary status in a release that feels like a hedonistic non-stop party of the LGBTQ Black culture scene
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Arlo Parks’ second album My Soft Machine
New album: After the acclaimed Mercury Prize-winning 2021 debut Collapsed in Sunbeams, the much anticipated follow-up by the now LA-based British artist is filled with poetic self-reflection, intimate, intelligent, gentle pop-soul, but at times falls short of that debut’s initial impact, edge and melodic power
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Hannah Jadagu: Aperture
Debut album: A hugely promising and mature debut LP by the 20-year-old Texas-born, New York-based singer-songwriter, mixing intimate soul and R&B with dream-pop, low-key indie and gentle touches of psychedelia
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Madison McFerrin: I Hope You Can Forgive Me
New album: Smooth, dreamy, ethereally beautiful soul, trip-hop, R&B low-key gospel and electro-pop in this entrancing debut LP by Brooklyn singer and the daughter of Bobby (Don’t Worry, Be Happy) McFerrin, whose style is very different to her jazz vocalist father
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Baby Rose, aka Jasmine Rose Wilson
New album: With a voice as rich, smooth, deep and pure as anyone around, sublime, tender, passionate, perfectly paced soul, funk R&B in this second LP by Washington D.C.-born Atlanta-based Jasmine Rose Wilson
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Jessie Ware:’s aptly titled new album: That! Feels Good!
New album: Classy and indeed classic disco, pop, soul and funk by the London-born soaring-voiced singer, who with this fifth album of 10 glitterball bangers is really at the very top of her game
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Technology + Teamwork: We Used To Be Friends
New album: Sarah Jones and Anthony Silvester’s debut brings experimental electro-pop, new wave, R&B, disco and more, from brilliant bangers to the oddball and bizarre, and influences from West Coast 60s synthesis movement to late 70s and early 80s Cabaret Voltaire with little dash of Yello
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Yazmin Lacey: Voice Notes
Debut album: A magically smooth, beautiful fusion of jazz, soul, funk and reggae in this debut by the superb London-born, Nottingham-based singer, whose fluid, dreamy voice captures the emotions in the intonations and nuances in her eloquent delivery
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Liv.e: Girl In The Half Pearl
New album: A dizzyingly indefinable and innovative debut by the Dallas-born singer-songwriter Olivia Williams, mixing experimental R&B, gospel, neo-soul, spoken word, electronica, cosmic jazz, and pop
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Stomzy returns with his most mellow and candid album yet
New album: Smooth, mellow, self-healing, candid, with many nods to his faith, the third album by the south London rapper is far from his edgier grime origins, and particularly mixes soul, R&B and spoken word alongside gospel choir and keyboards
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Sudan Archives returns with her expansive, innovative second album
New album: The scintillating second album by Ohio’s LA-based multi-instrumentalist and singer Brittney Parks showcases her innovation across hip hop, R&B, electronica, jazz and beyond with looping ingenuity, improvisation, and sharp feminist, dark lyrics about life as a black woman
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Sampa The Great’s second album reaches different heights
New album: A swaggeringly stylish, sharp, soulful, funny, proclamatory new release by rapper and singer Sampa Tembo celebrating her return to her native Zambia, with rebuffs to her previous home Australia and its music industry, and nods to Zamrock, lyrics in the Bantu language, and multiple African and other collaborators
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Fable’s debut album, Shame
Debut album: An outstanding debut of powerful, intimate songs by the English singer-songwriter Holly Cosgrove from Paignton, Devon, who, with co-writer Jonas Persson, brings an aura of innovative, tender menace with echoes of Portishead, Billie Eilish and Fiona Apple
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Horse power: Beyoncé bestrides her latest release
New album: The American superstar’s first full solo album since 2016’s Lemonade a ful- throttle 16-tracker filled with taut, sexy, hedonistic disco, soul, hip hop, Afrobeats, gqom, house and other club styles and even a surprisingly effective sampling of Right Said Fred
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Lizzo’s back with her album, Special
New album: Back with a bang (there’s no other way), the wonderfully charismatic American star Melissa Jefferson returns with a mixture of disco, funk, pop, soul and R&B, with bags of attitude, fun, female empowerment, and music to make you dance
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Moor Mother’s Jazz Codes
New album: A mesmeric new album that began as poetry book by the American artist Camae Ayewa mixing jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop and spoken word in her own form of Black Quantum Futurism group, her multi-artform fusion of black history ontology
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Nova Twins second album, Supernova
New album: After their pre-lockdown debut, Who Are the Girls?, the London duo of lead vocalist and guitarist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South return with a blisteringly exciting hybrid of punk, heavy rock/metal, hip hop, pop and R&B
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Moonchild Sanelly
New album: Stylish, charismatic, sexy, with a unique mix of South African dance music – gqom, amapiano, hip-hop, jazz and electronica, with a persona somewhere between Eartha Kitt, Nicki Minaj or Doja Cat, the starry, blue-haired Port Elizabeth-born rapper, model and designer’s fabulous second and double LP is all about ‘baddies’ and personal empowerment
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Ibeyi’s third album Spell 31
New album: The third album from Afro-Cuban French twins Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Díaz is a sensual, eclectic mix of R&B, hip hop and more, drawing on their rich heritage, and inspired by a passage the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
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New album: Entrancing third LP by the 29-year-old Catalonian star singer with a voice of huge range, mixing flamenco with reggaeton, hip hop, R&B and lush pop, feminism and food, heartbreak, the staccato with the smooth, and influences from MIA to Niña Pastori and José Mercé
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