Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter is much more than a country album — it’s actually a tour through the Black roots of American music that manages to be both thematically rich and stuffed with indelible pop songs, in multiple genres. Kendrick Lamar‘s virtuosic “Not Like Us,” meanwhile, completely transcends its status as a killing blow in the Lamar-Drake battle, packing in an astonishing amount of lyrical and musical density — and it’s somehow also the year’s most entertaining, endlessly replayable track.
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