Initially planning to ‘Rih-release’ loud with a handful of new tracks, Rihanna soon scraped the idea in favor of a whole new album.

“Take Care” is this thing we use in passing conversation to dismiss bullshit like, “Oh, you couldn’t make it on time? Oh, take care, take care.” Drake explained upon being asked his reasoning for the name of his album. “We’ve always used that, and then I really took so much care making this album. I knew I was going to go home and take longer than six months, I knew that I was literally going to take care of making this project and be attentive, be clear, be immersed in it. ‘Take Care’ worked.” Drake concluded.

A cry for Aston Martin Kings, Luther with dreams, and a young Denzel moving through scenes. In the wake of writing a best-selling book and acting in a lead role in a television series depicting the formation of the transcontinental railroad during the post-Civil War reconstruction era, Common’s lyricism and gift to “make songs as sweet as the psalms” still hasn’t dropped a beat.

After all of the controversy that surrounded Lasers‘ problematic distribution, Lupe Fiasco’s third studio album finally managed to find it’s way – mostly thanks to the hardcore fans who petitioned Atlantic Records on a daily basis. But does the album live up to it’s astronomical hype? Sadly, yes and no.

Kanye’s fascination with lights continues to be a reoccurring motif for each of his albums, and it serves metaphorical to the celebrity itself: we imagine Kanye’s conflicts with the paparazzi over the years and question how they disrupt the livelihood of his private life (as previously mentioned in Graduation’s fourth single, “Flashing Lights”). Yet “All of the Lights” marks a unique departure in parabolic lyricism. The claustrophobic feeling of lights flashing in your face from every different angle in the chorus is juxtaposed with a father’s remorse against a restraining order in the verses.

It’s quite interesting to examine Rihanna’s musical history and development. Few people remember that she got her first radio hit in 2005 with the Latin-style dance track, “Pon de Replay.” After that, Rihanna continued scoring number ones with more conventional songs, like the memorable singles off 2007′s Good Girl Gone Bad. Rihanna has evolved with nearly every one of her releases and has still managed to keep herself relevant in the music scene. Her fifth studio album, Loud, released last week, is yet another step in her evolution as an artist.

In 1958, renowned musician John Cage gave a series of compelling lectures calling for a fundamental shift in musical time. He argued that the essential formality of art music is the production of “time objects”, which Cage outlined as such: “the presentation of a whole as an object in time having a beginning, a middle, and an ending, progressive rather than static in character, which is to say possessed of a climax, and in contrast a point or points of rest.” Cage’s mission was to create a “process essentially purposeless”, one that would defy traditional narrative and delve into the complex irrationality of the modern world.

N.E.R.D. once represented greatness. Example? On their ever fitting sophomore effort Fly or Die, Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo decided to pick up the instruments themselves, creating a record that sounded enjoyably amateurish in production and slightly tongue-in-cheek in approach. It was an ideal follow-up to a perfectly polished debut : weird, messy, catchy as fuck, and unconventional to the standards of a play-it-safe sequel (garage-rock mixed with electronic hip-hop elements, and all the more better for it).

It takes approximately one nanosecond to realise that Kanye is back, as a sold out stadium-sized vocal chant rips into action.