Welcome back to Sound Bite! It’s been a minute, like, a long minute. Because of that, this is going to be a very untraditional Sound Bite, as I’m going to be recapping all the major releases I’ve missed since Sound Bite Volume: 26. 

Let’s start off with Playboi Carti, specifically “I AM MUSIC,” his latest album which was released following years of delays and anticipation. This album was long, in my opinion too long. The ratio of hits to misses on this album was about even to me, and I think with a bit of trimming it could have been a much more solid album. That said, I loved all the features and the production, in classic Carti style, was super unique and fun to listen to.

Following up Carti Iets jump into a personal favorite of mine, Ariana Grande. Building upon the success of her album “Eternal Sunshine” Ariana Grande released a follow up deluxe version adding a total of six new bonus tracks. To me, these were all hits, to an extent that I rarely see from deluxe drops. I feel like nowadays we get new album variations the day after an album drops, Taylor Swift‘s latest album having 36 versions being a prime example. But this deluxe really fit the theme of the original album while still adding substance and style to this already masterful genre album.

Now it would be hard to talk about music without talking about two industry staples who recently teamed up, both on and off the track, to make their latest collab album “I Said I Love You First.” The two staples being, of course, Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco. Now what I’m about to say is going to sound pretty controversial, but this album really wasn’t that bad. In fact, I think there were a couple songs on here that were pretty solid. Is this album original, not really. But is it a bad listen, not really. If you like her music, I would definitely recommend it.

And before I wrap up this latest Sound Bite there’s something, or someone, I’d like to weigh in on. That someone is Ye, also known as Kanye West. Ye recently dropped a version of his latest album “Bully,” as well as some song titles off of his upcoming album “WW3.” I didn’t listen to “Bully”, and I certainly won’t be listening to “WW3.” And my take as a reviewer, you shouldn’t listen to them either. Any streaming of his songs is putting money in his pocket, and at this point it is wholly unethical to support him. And yes, that includes his classics as well. If it wasn’t time before (it was), it’s certainly time now. Do some deep cleaning, take Ye out of your playlists, and don’t engage with his music anymore.