Megan Thee Stallion, Fever
[300 Entertainment, May 17]
There’s a very specific energy that moves through artists who are aware that their time has arrived. Megan Thee Stallion knows she has a verifiable hit with Fever, a debut album fueled by unabashed sexuality and laced with an indelible Houston spirit. What projects the most with each precisely delivered lyric—aside from a truly chameleonic flow—is the power Megan asserts with her first major-label effort. A lyricist who learned her craft under the tutelage of her late mother, Megan constructs each verse with biting clarity as she explores her unwavering confidence and agency. “Cash Shit,” for instance, is a track that could only believably come from a person who is in total charge of themselves: “He told ’em send me a pic ’cause he miss me / I told him send me a stack if he really / I don’t be trusting these tricks ’cause they tricky / Send him a pic of somebody else titties.” Fever delivers a couple fiery collaborations via Juicy J and DaBaby, but make no mistake: Megan Thee Stallion is a star. [Shannon Miller]
Pronoun, I’ll Show You Stronger
[Rhyme & Reason, May 24]
It’s shocking to discover that Alyse Vellturo is the sole force behind Pronoun, a loud, riff-heavy powerhouse with songs big enough to swallow an arena. Vellturo’s layered vocals are emotive and muscular, and her debut LP’s criss-crossing, reverb-heavy guitar lines dovetail with thick, enveloping synths and spine-rattling percussion. There’s a satisfying hint of ’90s FM rock on booming tracks like “Run” and “Temporary Tantrum,” but Vellturo’s songs amount to more than their riffs, pleasurable as they may be. Take “Wrong,” a Swiss watch of a song that clicks each of its moving parts into place so skillfully that it ripples with an infectious momentum. That sensation rings throughout I’ll Show You Stronger, an album that, despite its searching, anxious lyrics, nevertheless resonates as a propulsive sprint into the future. Closer “Everybody Knows,” for example, finds Vellturo “trying to make some sense of things I know deep down don’t make any” against harmonies that ascend like rockets, symbolizing the indelible blend of joy and terror with which we approach the not-knowing. [Randall Colburn]