Kiana Fitzgerald

We could all use a little extra light, with just a hint of cheesiness. That's exactly what the Brooklyn duo offers in its new video.

Seemingly banal at surface level, the visuals for the Atlanta singer-songwriter's only song to date represent the impossibility of meeting in the middle once a relationship is beyond repair.

The powerhouse singer and her army of beautifully diverse women turn out a post-apocalyptic land.

The Philadelphia rapper continues to set himself apart visually with a surrealist twist in this video for the standout track from his Missed Calls EP.

The Brooklyn DJ's final installment of her curated mixtape series is a patient journey toward personal excellence, crafted with a steady hand and a discerning ear fixed to the streets.

The Chicago rapper's new mixtape, Coloring Book, walks a line between the secular and the religious, bringing gospel sounds to listeners who may not have darkened the doors of a church in a while.

The Brooklyn rapper-producer's latest instrumental album is evenly weighted from front to back. There's never an off moment — or even a precarious one.

A quiet fixture of the R&B and hip-hop ecosystem comes into her own with a hat-tip to Alanis Morissette.

The story she's telling this time, that of a woman wronged, is universal, but the way she's delivered it is a crystal-clear representation of the black female experience.

With her new, scaled-back style, the New Jersey singer-songwriter proves that she can strip away the frills and still make us feel all of the emotions.

In a video packed with myriad cinematic influences, the neo-soul and hip-hop duo wages a war against superficiality that spares no one.

The Atlanta singer and DJ follow closely, but not wholly, in Missy Elliott's empowering footprints in this flip of her subversive hit single from 1999.

The new "it" guy of that place where R&B and hip-hop overlap showed why he's attracted so much attention at NPR Music's SXSW showcase at Stubb's.

The R&B stalwart has long vibrated on a different wavelength than do his contemporaries; in a turbulent, bruising world, he's stayed rock-steady.

The rapper, whose songs are shaped by his experiences as a youth in Long Beach, Calif., brought charisma, comedy and a touch of cynicism to the stage at NPR Music's SXSW 2016 showcase.

A young singer-rapper from Atlanta displays her signature hard-edged playfulness and sonic extremes.

Out of nowhere, Kendrick Lamar dropped a new record this week, called untitled unmastered. Reviewer Kiana Fitzgerald says that listening to these demos "feels like we're playing catch-up."

Making year-end lists is hard. The process of tracking down all the music you heard over the prior 12 months, then whittling those songs down to the "best" material, is often a battle, both internally and externally. Once the selections are made, the blurbs written and the beloved jams placed ...

R&B resurfaced in a big way in 2015. Not only was there a smorgasbord of LPs and EPs available for online consumption, R&B also returned to Top 40. New school representer The Weeknd blew up and dominated for much of the year while contemporary veteran Tyrese's album, Black Rose,

It's not easy to flip a Sade track, especially, "No Ordinary Love." On that 1992 smash single, Sade Adu and her band told an emotionally haunting story about a love that was beautiful but unhealthy and, by the end, all-consuming. Yet despite the dark overtones, the song felt like ...