We have reached the halfway point of 2020. In the past, we would use this time to pause, light up the grill and enjoy the summer, bathing ourselves in the glorious new music that this year has yielded. Not in 2020. As we struggle with COVID-19, music is now a balm, a way to get past the days of being …

Rarely is art as incidentally tied to its moment in history as RTJ4 will inevitably be to the early summer of 2020.

Run the Jewels is different than most rap music because it keeps it political.

RTJ has continued to rise to the occasion and deliver galvanizing political rap that is equal parts menace and message.

Be a Part of the Dream.

20. Lykke Li I Never Learn [LL Recordings/Atlantic] I Never Learn is Lykke Li’s Blood on the Tracks. That is to say, this is the album on which the Swedish songwriter has abandoned any pretenses and surrendered to pure, unvarnished pain through her music. While her previous two albums were riddled through with earworms like “Dance Dance Dance,” I Never …

25. Lykke Li – “Never Gonna Love Again” [Atlantic] The product of a catastrophic breakup, I Never Learn contains the saddest music Lykke Li has recorded to date, making it one of the most heartbreaking records of the year. Yet despite the specter of loss that casts black and lovely shadows over all of these songs, I Never Learn is …

(Photos: Michael Patrick Perry) Some cities put athlete spectators up on the jumbotron but in Portland, Oregon, we get Carrie Brownstein, of Sleater-Kinney fame, up there at the Blazers games. Brownstein sightings around town occur at the hippest events: a Savages concert, on a “Portlandia” shoot. Run the Jewels, the excellent collaboration between rappers El-P and Killer Mike, not only …

[xrr rating=4.5/5]People love to categorize El-P’s production style as “cinematic,” but apparently no one told him that, in movies, sequels tend to be rehashes, mild variations of form that simply bilk another few bucks out of fans who would have been happier just revisiting the original. Run the Jewels 2 isn’t a break from last year’s surprise hit, but it …

20. Julianna Barwick Nepenthe [Dead Oceans] Julianna Barwick’s Nepenthe leaves me feeling like I’ve opened a secret door, the light behind it thick and golden and twining around me. With ethereal loops and choir-strong harmonies and swells and flows that float you through her honeyed haze, Barwick does more than conjure an ambient space from oceans of sound. Her songs …