The pileup of massive releases from big-name artists over the past few months has an unfortunate side effect: the number of new high-profile albums becomes the story in and of itself, often overriding the narratives in the music. At times the proximity of Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Drake’s Views, to pick the two most recent, has caused their rollouts to come across like a volley of cannon shots between competing streaming services. Beyoncé held it down for Team Tidal, which had an exclusive stream upon the album’s release on Saturday, April 23 (HBO premiered the “visual album” companion). Drake went with Apple, who’d given his OVO label an Internet radio show and gifted him with a fancy watch; Apple Music debuted Views exclusively on Friday, April 29.
Regardless, there’s plenty of other new Chicago rap worth hearing. Ty Money drops the sequel to last year’s excellent Cinco de Money tomorrow, and yesterday Save Money rapper Sterling Hayes dropped Antidepressant, a 20-track debut that’s been three years in the making. Hayes has told Noisey that the album’s title was inspired by his history with depression—he went on antidepressants when he was in seventh grade, and used part of his prescription in the album art.
