Heems enlisted the Indian American producer Lapgan for his latest album, along with guests including Open Mike Eagle, Quelle Chris, Kool Keith, Saul Williams, Blu, and Your Old Droog. It is the Das Racist and Swet Shop Boys veteran’s first full-length in about a decade; it is out on his new magazine, brand, and label Veena; and it includes a full-song tribute to the England and Arsenal striker Bukayo Saka. Of the new projects, Heems said in press materials, “My world was one of graffiti and golgappas, skateboards and saris, music and Mughals, and so on. This is what my music sounds like.”
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Laryssa Kim: Contezza [City Tracks]
On Contezza, the Brussels-based Italian Congolese singer and composer Laryssa Kim sleepwalks into an electronic netherworld. Her skin-prickling compositions are an unsettling frame for vocals that, when they come, startle with their operatic grace. Chthonic instrumentals give way to eerie ballads incorporating chamber-pop and R&B, her voice rising from the ether like a spirit from a cursed cave.
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Mari Montana: Sincerely, Montana [Real Lifer]
West Palm Beach rapper Mari Montana led into Sincerely, Montana with the horny devotional “My Lil Shit (Pt.2)” on February 14. As Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre summarized, “Suddenly, on Valentine’s Day, rappers who’ve never said a romantic word in their lives are longing like Carl Thomas on the cover of Emotional. They’re taking a day off from hyper-masculine theatrics and dropping R&B-sampling mixtapes full of freaky sex fantasies. Mari Montana got the memo.”
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