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2022 release from Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Yaya Bey, her most expansive work to date, Remember Your North Star is a body of work that showcases Yaya's experimental approach to R&B, Hip Hop, Jazz, Reggae and Afrobeat music. The album explores the landscape of Black music via Yaya's storyteller approach and examines themes of romantic turbulence, female empowerment, fraught parental relationships and self-actualization, with production primarily from Yaya, Aja Grant (of Phony Ppl) and DJ Nativesun.

All the barking and growling in the world could not detract from the fact that DMX is a troubled, tormented soul. On And Then There Was X, the multiplatinum-selling Dark Man X uses his signature fragmented flow with its singsongy vocal inflections to preach, teach, and reveal. Melodramatic storytelling has always been his shtick, whether it's tales of robbing liquor stores, plotting violent murders, or teaching shorties the code of the streets. X's inner conflicts are laid out on "Angel," a dialogue between himself and his Lord, and his ability to acknowledge different perspectives of a situation (i.e., repercussions) on several songs add depth to his character. The anthemlike "What's My Name," with its affirmations "I have no friends" and "I'm not a nice person," proves that money, fame, and popularity do not translate into happiness for DMX.