Here Are the Best Albums of 2016 So Far

A stunning, expansive statement on gender and race in America, Beyoncé’s second “visual album” brings together disparate genres and musical sensibilities in a way that conforms to her singular artistic vision. While the acid-tongued “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and the vicious “Sorry” allow Beyoncé to put her scorned-woman side on full display, the sumptuous love song “All Night” provides a happy ending—and another blissed-out devotional to add to her already impressive roster.

Rock’s No. 1 chameleon worked with the saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his namesake quartet on an album that both called back to his past musical adventures and looked ahead at a future that he painted as both foreboding and enticing. That Blackstar would wind up being Bowie’s final work before he died in January only adds to its artistic gravity; Bowie was an innovator until the very end, pushing against boundaries and smashing calcified ideas about what “rock” could be.

The third full-length mixtape from Chicago’s next hip-hop hope is a spiritually charged album that doesn’t retreat from the harsh realities of life in 2016; it balances gospel’s transcendence with pointed lyrics about his home city’s corruption and dashed romantic hopes. While Coloring Book‘s all-star tableau of guests includes Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and Justin Bieber, Chance is the album’s white-hot center, showing off intricate lyrics and inimitable flow.

This 21-year-old singer-songwriter from Richmond, Virginia, crafts plainspoken poetry that depicts loneliness and longing. Her rich, low voice is nestled among gorgeously fuzzed-out guitars that recall college rock’s best moments while also sounding perfectly tailored to 21st-century tastes.

This Prince-endorsed trio’s debut is a Quiet Storm dreamscape, with meticulous production (courtesy of self-professed vintage synth nerd Paris Strother) that harkens back to the era of stretched-out soul jams while filtering them through a dreamy haze. Vocalists Amber Strother and Anita Bias play off each other beautifully, dipping in and out of rich harmonies while also shining on their own.

After setting the Grammys aflame with a ferocious medley, the Compton-born MC Kendrick Lamar pulled off another remarkable move—he released an odds-and-sods collection that further showed off his talents as a lyricist and thinker. Even when he’s musing about being possibly in need of editing, as he does on the epic-in-miniature “untitled 07 2014-2016,” he’s flaunting how cogent he is not just compared to his contemporaries, but to all of pop. This trip through Lamar’s archives serves as an amuse-bouche for the next step in Lamar’s storied career.

This Russian band specializes in drowning itself in sound—feedback and drones, booming drums and humming electronics. Pinkshinyultrablast manages to craft hooky bliss from so much chaos, with lead singer Lyubov’s soprano hovering over her bandmates like a pop spectre.

The Barbadian pop princess’s eighth album was more than a surprise release-date-wise: Rihanna’s moody, emotional Anti- balanced forward-thinking megahits (the sinewy “Work,” the spiteful “Needed Me”) with tracks like the old-school tour de force “Love On The Brain,” which allowed her to show off her voice’s surprisingly wide range.

Having already established herself as a bass prodigy and thoughtful interpreter of jazz, Esperanza Spalding dives deep into her own head on this album, which is named after her “un-cultivated curiosity” and which surfs through heady funk, sparse soul, and the soundtrack to Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. (Perhaps appropriately, given the album’s arms-around-the-world ambition, Spalding takes on the role of the wanting-it-all “bad egg” Veruca Salt.)

While guitars have been largely absent from top-40 radio this year, this fearlessly ambitious collection from British cult heroes The 1975 shows how guitars can still have a place in 2016’s pop pantheon. Frontman Matty Healy has an eroticism that recalls the nervous energy of INXS’s Michael Hutchence, but his sardonic lyrics about love, lust, and notoriety on songs like the biting “Love Me” and the jittery “UGH!” are very much of the hyper-self-examined social media era.