I'm not sure that I've ever understood what Laurel Halo is going for. That's quite alright; her three major releases occupy a totally distinct sonic world, and it'd be boring to have fully explored it the first time. Halo's work, for me, has a very specific role: when I'd like to listen to Laurel Halo, she's the obvious choice.

No malice, only curiosity: why is 2 Chainz still making music? There's no doubt that his moment is in the rearview - with it, those heady days of college when Birthday Song, I'm Different, and No Lie were inescapable day or night - and yet he continues to release better and better albums at a furious pace. Pretty Girls Like Trap Music is no exception, collecting the highlights from his excellent 2016 along with all-new solo and collaborative material. 2 Chainz (re-)made his name with a furious run of instant-classic features, but this is his first release in which other artists' appearances feel as symbiotic - there are three or four guest spots on here that supersede the rest of the artist's entire catalog, in my eyes.

I listened to Mach Hommy out of obligation more than anything else. I’ll forever ride for anyone subverting the tyranny of third-party distribution, and Haitian Body Odor is exactly that – released in October 2016 and sold via Instagram for $300 a copy, the album was a total ghost for months until a broader release via Soundcloud earlier this year. Impossible to find but with just enough evidence to prove its existence (including radio plugs from Earl Sweatshirt and Flying Lotus), HBO is one of the most remarkable marketing achievements of music’s internet era (a few other entries off top: Beyonce’s silent release, the entire Yeezus rollout, and the absolute god Soulja Boy).

The most surprising thing about Back To The Basics is that it's not a comeback, per se - Rich Homie Quan feels no need to re-shape his style to fit a new rap landscape. In fact, on first listen the tape sounds a tiny bit dated - there's no one that sounds quite like Quan, and his shine a couple years back was so all-encompassing that all subsequent work can't help but be of a part with it. Ubiquity can camouflage uniqueness.

I haven’t listened to an indie pop album in years. There are a couple of reasons for this, mostly obvious - I haven’t been in an Urban Outfitters in a minute, the genre kinda sucks, I lack the requisite sunny disposition to really own the fandom. And yet, the temperature moves inexorably towards hot as hell and my tastes shift, feverishly and unpredictably, to match.