@Francine Mangwa

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

The tracks you can’t get enough of lately, all in one place. Updated as you listen.

NAO's breakthrough has been stealthy, savvy and completely irresistible. Ably assisted by some spectacular collaborations (check out her guest spots on “Firefly” by Mura Masa and Disclosure's “Superego”) and a tantalising dripfeed of solo material, the otherworldly R&B singer/songwriter is armed for greatness.

Born in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1975, Lauryn Hill formed the Fugees in 1990 with fellow musicians Prakazrel “Pras” Michel and Wyclef Jean. Though she was the act’s de facto singer, Hill found inspiration in the cultural activism of Ice Cube and Eazy-E, and her gifts were on abundant display on 1996’s <i>The Score</i>, as both a rapper (“Ready or Not”) and a world-class singer (the band’s Grammy-winning version of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song”). On her 1998 solo debut, <i>The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill</i>, her flow was relentless yet inviting, a mix of swagger (“Doo Wop (That Thang)”) and sway (“Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You (I Love You Baby)”). Hill changed the game not just for women in rap but for rap in general: <i>Miseducation</i> was the first rap album to ever win Album of the Year at the Grammys. (Twenty-six years after its release, it also topped the list of Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums.) But after that monumental achievement, Hill retreated into a life of seclusion from which she has rarely returned. Her divisive 2001 <i>MTV Unplugged</i> session saw Hill eschew hip-hop almost entirely, abandoning her deeply powerful boom-bap beats in favour of acoustic folk renditions of her songs. But while “I Gotta Find Peace of Mind” and “Mystery of Iniquity” may be stripped back, they’re no less intense.