Music reviews: Vince Staples, Kurt Vile, and Jalen Ngonda

‘Cry Baby’ by Vince Staples

★★★★

“Cry Baby is a cry for revolution, a challenge to do better,” said Kiana Fitzgerald in Consequence of Sound. A “brash, guitar-led” album from “one of the most adept rappers we have,” the record finds Vince Staples “aiming his ire at the long-established American way.” On the “tense” lead single, “Blackberry Marmalade,” he delivers a “brutal but necessary” repetition of the N-word while juxtaposing the wisdom of his nana with the violence he sees haters inflicting on Black America. Across the ensuing nine tracks, the Southern California native urges people of color to stand up, and while he’s always called out abuses of power, “it’s his genuine care for the future of this nation that makes him such a welcome voice.” The use of guitar, bass, and live drums proves “a compelling artistic shift,” said Grant Sharples in Paste. “Staples and his band pull from various offshoots of guitar-forward music,” suggesting the Black roots of rock in all forms, many of them discernible in the record’s “thwacking drums” and “viscous bass lines.” There may be hope for the nation he describes here. For now, though, “the American dream is just that: a dream.”

‘Philadelphia’s Been Good to Me’ by Kurt Vile

★★★

“As the title of the album makes clear, Kurt Vile is proud of his roots in the City of Brotherly Love,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. So much so that on “You Don’t Know Cuz It’s My Life,” he takes affectionate potshots at two of his heroes, Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen and Ontario’s Neil Young, for contributing to the soundtrack of the 1993 film Philadelphia. Eighteen years into a career of making rootsy indie rock, the War on Drugs co-founder has kept his songwriting fresh “by thinking small, and engaging with what is happening around him.” On this, his 10th solo studio album, “Vile seems less like a confessional songwriter than a cartographer of the mind, mapping the ways that our thoughts can wander from prosaic to profound and back again,” said Stuart Berman in Pitchfork. Think of him as “the world’s drowsiest rapper,” writing songs “steeped in his peculiar POV.” Meanwhile, his countrified guitar licks, often “dripping with melancholy,” convey the subtle heartbreak of his nomadic musician’s life. As “99th Song” and “Rock o’ Stone” reveal, all he wants is to get home and enjoy doughnuts with his wife and daughters.

‘Doctrine of Love’ by Jalen Ngonda

★★★

“Smooth, easy to digest, and impeccably crafted,” Jalen Ngonda’s second album of throwback R&B “looks set to be the perfect accompaniment for summer barbecues,” said Chris Connor in The Line of Best Fit. The lead single, “Anyone in Love,” was a top-20 U.K. hit for the Maryland-born, U.K.-based singer, and this “often exhilarating” collection of new songs “proves he is far from a one-hit wonder.” Compared with his 2023 debut album, it’s “perhaps not as fresh.” But his voice is “once again a delight throughout,” and every song comes across as a “joyous embrace” of his Motown and 1960s rock ’n’ roll influences. With “a knowing ache” in his “slightly scratchy” tenor voice, Ngonda “gives off a moonlighting factory-worker vibe,” said Andy Kellman in AllMusic. But the “sophisticated backing” includes horns, four background singers, and “ample strings.” On “I Can’t Ever Leave You,” Ngonda “switches from belting to crooning in one short line—‘You treat me like a dog does a shoe’—with rare poise and nuance.” And when he sings “You never wanted me” on the album’s closing track, “the emotion is powerful enough to make an empath tremble.”