New albums by Megan Thee Stallion and Andrew Combs cope with personal tumult

Plus, a joyful Tiny Desk from ADG7

View this email online Aug. 20, 2022 by Marissa Lorusso This week, we’re sharing reviews of exceptional new records from Andrew Combs, Megan Thee Stallion and Black Thought and Danger Mouse; plus, a joyful and unique Tiny Desk. Courtesy of the artists This week we shared reviews of two very different albums that both were written as a response to serious personal tumult: Sundays, a beautiful and pensive album from singer-songwriter Andrew Combs and Traumazine, a confessional (but still characteristically rowdy) new release from rapper Megan Thee Stallion. Since 2012 Combs has released several records of his trademark “quiet, introspective brand of left-of-center country music,” as writer Brittney McKenna puts it, but started work on Sundays after what he described as a “mental breakdown” after the 2020 holidays. In his recovery — aided by medical treatment and transcendental meditation — Combs turned to a songwriting routine, heading into the studio each Sunday to record a song he had written during the week. “Soon, something unlike anything Combs had made to date began to take shape,” McKenna writes. The resulting album has a slightly discordant atmosphere, based around rhythmic thumb-picked guitar, and grapples with “the struggle to live with integrity in a world that demands otherwise,” as McKenna describes it; it’s a moving record that invites us to join Combs in “plumbing the darkness for foundations of a better world.” Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine also reckons with what it means to have agency over your own story, even when society tries to wrestle that away from you. The album makes “space for ruminations and grief, managing the swirling emotions produced by years of acrimony and cathartically letting them rise to the surface,” as writer Shamira Ibrahim explains. Megan Thee Stallion has had a destabilizing past few years, reeling from the death of her mother in 2019, ongoing disputes with her label and being shot in an incident involving rapper and singer Tory Lanez in 2020. The “near-constant refutation of her version of events” of the shooting, “in both the courtroom and the court of public opinion, has been an obvious drain of her energy,” Ibrahim writes. On Traumazine, the rapper digs into her feelings about the trauma of the past few years — and, in the process, reaffirms her skills as one of rap's bar-for-bar heavyweights. Also this week: My colleague Sheldon Pearce wrote a thoughtful review of Cheat Codes, the new album from Black Thought and Danger Mouse. For years a solo album from the frontman of The Roots “felt like an imaginary object, long rumored yet never revealed,” Sheldon writes. A debut album is a big matter for any artist, but for a rapper in a group, he says, "it is also a chance to establish a fully independent identity." On Cheat Codes, after a long wait, Black Thought delivers on that promise. And it’s not just that the album is excellent — though it is; Sheldon calls it a “classicist album fit for the form's elder statesmen.” It’s filled with beats that Danger Mouse made with the rapper and his skill set specifically in mind, and Black Thought matches his “novelistic charm with attentive storytelling” better than ever before. But as Sheldon explains, this record feels like a culmination of Black Thought’s career up until this point: “Listening now,” he writes, “it can feel like all those years the album went unmade are what made it possible.” Newsletter continues after sponsor message More to read, watch and hear: NPR How do you fit a gayageum and an ajaeng behind the Tiny Desk? That’s the question Bob Boilen whispered into the ear of our Tiny Desk audio engineer when they first saw the Korean band ADG7 playing those five-foot long string instruments at globalFEST in New York City. The Tiny Desk team solved the puzzle and the resulting performance is filled with joy and a unique sound that mixes shamanistic ritual sounds with Korean folk songs. In the 2020-2021 season, only 5% of compositions scheduled to be performed by 100 orchestras worldwide were written by women. A new record label, La Boîte à Pépites, is fighting to raise the profile of female composers — to “exhume pieces that seem worthy of a good position in the standard musical repertoire," says founder Héloïse Luzzati. In the early days of the pandemic, jazz pianist Emmet Cohen decided to revive a Jazz Age tradition: the rent party. In March 2020, he launched a series of live-streamed concerts, Live from Emmet's Place, in his Harlem apartment. This week, Jazz Night in America shared a conversation with the pianist, plus a live set recorded at Dizzy's Club. Since 2019, more than 20 women have come forward publicly with misconduct claims against opera star Plácido Domingo. As a result of those accusations, Domingo parted ways with New York's Metropolitan Opera and resigned from his role as general director of LA Opera in California. Now, prosecutors in Argentina have linked Domingo to a criminal group in Buenos Aires that was a front for sexual trafficking, including of minors, as well as other crimes. This week, our friends at Mountain Stage shared a live performance of “Let's Get It Together” by Southern Avenue. One More Thing Mariachi mail. Listen to your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to hear live radio from WMFE (edit station). Need a new playlist? Follow NPR Music on Spotify and Apple Music What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: nprmusic@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Books, Pop Culture, Health and more! 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