B- DJ Khaled
Grateful
Epic
Nobody has a talent for persuasion like DJ Khaled. With each summer album and anthemic single, the Miami-based, Palestinian-American producer/DJ/ host throws a party, invites a slew of featured big-name guests and manages to get them to sing and rap over his light-as-Fluffernutter melodies while he yells, “We the best music” or, “Another one,” a lot. It seems to work. This album has spent two weeks at No. 1.
Sometimes, it’s a groovy, intimate affair, like Drake on the murky “To the Max.” Sometimes, Khaled packs a clown car (the flighty “Down for Life”) with as many as five pals (Future, Travis Scott, Kodak Black, PartyNext-Door, Rick Ross) and it’s a slapstick mess.
The sultry, boastful “Shining” features Beyonce and Jay Z. “I’m the One” has Justin Bieber at his muskiest, with Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Lil Wayne along for the rough ride. The extra-long Grateful’s most winning moments come with its most understated elements, like when Rihanna does her usual Eartha Kitt purr against a Carlos Santana guitar sample on “Wild Thoughts,” or the down-tempo Calvin Harris/ Travis Scott/Jeremih collaboration “Don’t Stop.” After that, talents like Nicki Minaj, Migos, and more get caught in a maelstrom of dance-hop that’s funked up but sameish. Aural wallpaper punctuated by the host’s loutish shouts is good, but not great. Another one?
Hot tracks: “Wild Thoughts,” “Shining”
BTLC
TLC
852 Musiq
TLC, the ’90s-era girl group, is back after 15 years away and these women are clearly not wasting any more time. “We don’t need no introduction,” they boast on the first song of their new self-titled CD. “No, we don’t need no instructions/We already paved the way.”
TLC’s hits “No Scrubs,” “Waterfalls” and “Creep” were important for a generation raised on the band’s mix of female empowerment and socially conscious lyrics. (Ed Sheeran had to credit the band’s “No Scrubs” for his hit “Shape of You.”)
The self-titled album is from the surviving members, Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas. Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes died in a 2002 car crash. The new album includes a recording of Lopes’ voice as an interlude.
The album is executive-produced by Ron Fair, who has worked with Vanessa Carlton and the Pussycat Dolls, while Watkins had a hand in almost every song.
It veers from the stripped-down acoustic of “Perfect Girls” — a sort of updated “Unpretty” — to the R&B-flavored “Joy Ride.” There’s a techno-touched “Scandalous” and a ’70s-disco boogie, “It’s Sunny,” which samples Earth Wind & Fire.
Watkins and Thomas take a nostalgia tour with Snoop Dogg on “Way Back” that name-checks Prince and Marvin Gaye — and forward with the electro-poppy “Haters.”
Hot tracks: “Perfect Girls,” “It’s Sunny,” “Way Back”
B Fleet Foxes
Crack-Up
Nonesuch
After two acclaimed albums of lush, heavenly harmonies and gentle, Laurel Canyon orchestration, Fleet Foxes went into hibernation. Crack-Up is their first since 2011; in the interim, leader Robin Pecknold took classes at Columbia, and their former drummer Josh Tillman grabbed the spotlight as Father John Misty.
Crack-Up is a more complex, darker album than their first two. Songs are full of questions: “If I don’t resist/ will I understand?”; “Who stole the life from you?”; “Can you be slow for a little while?” Several songs are suites that stretch past 7 minutes and move from lonely, solo ruminations into densely orchestrated grandeur, but whereas in the past the tone was triumphant and affirming, here it is often dissonant and conflicted. The signature harmonies are still there, as are moments of beauty in songs such as “If You Need to, Keep Time on Me” and the title track. The sun-dappled melodies have given way to something deeper and more demanding but still rewarding.
Hot track: “If You Need to, Keep Time on Me”
B Mary Lattimore
Collected Pieces
Ghostly
Harpist Mary Lattimore’s six-track, often disquietingly beautiful set of songs was recorded in her apartment. Mixed by longtime collaborator Jeff Ziegler, the instrumentals recorded over five years are plucked on her 47-string harp. The song treatments reflect her classical training and — not surprising coming from a musician who has backed up Kurt Vile and Sharon Van Etten, among others — an indie-rock sensibility and taste for echo and noise.
As well as being a uniquely skilled musician who ranks behind only Joanna Newsom in the harp-star pop pantheon, Lattimore — whose previous album, At the Dam, was recorded during a cross-country trip in a Volvo station wagon and named after a Joan Didion essay — is also something of a marketing genius. If you want people to listen to 10-minute-plus harp instrumentals, it can be a good idea to give them evocative, curiosity-piquing titles like the haunting “It Was Late and We Watched the Motel Burn,” and the becalming “Wawa By the Ocean,” inspired by her favorite beachside convenience store in Ship Bottom, N.J.
Hot tracks: “It Was Late and We Watched the Motel Burn,” “Wawa by the Ocean”