@Hugo Costan

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

Brooklyn’s Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter had already been a well-charting rapper for a few years when he levelled up with his 1998 breakthrough, the <i>Annie</i>-sampling “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)”. But that sizeable hit allowed the former drug dealer to fully graduate “from grams to Grammys”—as he later rapped—and make a convincing case for being the world’s greatest MC. While early hits like 2000’s “Big Pimpin’” leaned hard into that street cred, by the following year he had perfected his self-mythologised image as an unbeatable rapper turned cigar-puffing mogul with “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and its culture-shifting source album <i>The Blueprint</i>. Carter’s dream combination of lyrical dexterity, commercial polish, unshakeable swagger and artistic risk-taking came through in repeat collabs with rising producers like Kanye West and Just Blaze, not to mention such industry mainstays as Timbaland on “Dirt off Your Shoulder” and Rick Rubin on “99 Problems”, both from 2004. With 2009’s Alicia Keys teamup “Empire State of Mind”, Carter proved that he could command a pop smash while retaining his hip-hop bona fides and shrugging off multiple would-be retirements. He continued to work with West even after the latter had become a rapper and household name in his own right, leading to multiple hits like 2011’s “Ni**as in Paris” and “Otis”. Even once Carter slowed down in the years since 2013’s Justin Timberlake collab “Holy Grail”, he has remained a very visible public supporter of his wife Beyoncé and a permanent fixture on rap’s Mount Rushmore.

It’s not just that he’s an enigma or that he follows his own clock. It’s not even his style (which seems invincible), or the fact that he’s one of the few pop artists publicly navigating the frontiers of queer identity. It’s that Frank Ocean is one of those songwriters who manages to touch new and distant places in his audience’s imagination, a cartographer of intimacy and confession so intrepid and sensitive that listening to him can feel like eavesdropping on something private, maybe even inexpressible. Yet here he is, expressing it. Even in his early days as the quiet one in the LA hip-hop collective Odd Future, Ocean seemed possessed by a stoicism and emotional intelligence that was uncommon, luminous—the kind of guy who sees more than he says and doesn’t waste a word when he opens his mouth. <br> Ocean was raised mostly in New Orleans, and moved to Los Angeles in the mid-2000s; by 2009, he’d landed a contract with Def Jam, but couldn’t square the relationship with his ambitions and ended up releasing his first mixtape, 2011’s <i>Nostalgia, Ultra</i>, on his own. He was soulful, funny, understated and poetic, the kind of writer who made fragments of the real world—a girl doing porn to cover tuition (“Novacane”), a dip in the ocean (“Swim Good”)—crackle with mystical significance. <br> From Kanye, Jay-Z and Beyoncé on down, he gained a cult of followers. In 2012, he released <i>Channel ORANGE</i>, which veered from Stevie Wonder-style soul to string-led gospel and psychedelia, framing R&B as a kind of rarified art music. The writing got sharper, too—at once more pitiless (“Crack Rock”), more expressive (“Bad Religion”) and more surreal (“Pyramids”), weaving storytelling and social commentary with an offhand brilliance that has become Ocean’s trademark sleight of hand. After a four-year period during which news of his next move flitted around in the internet ether like myth, Ocean released two projects in a week, in August 2016: the visual album <i>Endless</i> and the more conventionally framed <i>Blonde</i>. If <i>Channel ORANGE</i> had sounded like Ocean opening up, <i>Blonde</i> marked a contraction, exploring meditations and internal monologue with a sound that often felt more like ambient music than R&B. In the few years following <i>Blonde</i>, Ocean shared a string of singles through his Apple Music show, <i>blonded RADIO</i>, each one its own miniature event. Whether turning inward or outward, Ocean continues to explore.

Detroit rapper Big Sean began writing poetry as a kid and was selling his own CDs by high school. His break came in 2005 when he freestyled for Kanye West in a radio station parking lot—an encounter that led to a deal with West’s GOOD Music label. After a trio of mixtapes, Sean debuted in 2011 with <i>Finally Famous</i>, an album that balanced wit (“My Last”), introspection and swagger (“Dance [A$$]”). He quickly became one of the most versatile rappers of the 2010s, and has continued to deliver bangers (“Blessings”) and heartbreak ballads (“Beware”) ever since. He’s also the consummate collaborator, not just on his own albums (“Deep Reverence [feat. Nipsey Hussle]” and “Body Language [feat. Ty Dolla $ign and Jhené Aiko]” from the guest-packed <i>Detroit 2</i>) but also on joint full-length projects with Jhené Aiko (2016’s <i>TWENTY88</i>) and Metro Boomin (2017’s <i>Double Or Nothing</i>).