Noname is back with her first album in five years, Sundial. Following on from her debut Room 25 in 2018, the Chicago rapper first came onto the scene at the same time as contemporaries such as Chance the Rapper and Saba, making smooth yet hard-hitting hip-hop influenced by her background in slam poetry. Having nearly quit music in 2019, citing her frustration at performing to mostly white fans, Sundial signals her triumphant return, and artfully combines cosmic jazz and neo-soul with mindful lyrics that tackle themes both personal and political.

Featuring collaborations with the likes of Common, Jay Electronica and Billy Woods, the 11-track album proves the rapper isn’t afraid to face heavy subjects head-on, with tracks referencing everything from white society to colonialism and the US military-industrial complex. This takes effect almost immediately with Noname asserting in second-person on opening track “Black Mirror”: “She’s a shadow walker, moon stalker, Black author, librarian, contrarian.”

Set against sunny production and gospel choruses, “hold me down” doubles down on the clever wordplay, proclaiming “Won’t be a self-critic, burn up our whole village/ That wasn’t us, that was colonialism!”, while on “balloons”, she takes aim at the “casual white fans/who invented the voyeur/fascinated with mourning”, as collaborator Jay Electronica draws parallels to AK-47s and enemy lines.

Effortlessly going between love and politics, pop culture and industry pressures – sometimes in a single bar – Noname isn’t afraid to call out the hypocrisies of the liberal mainstream. Not even Barack Obama is immune to her razor-sharp flow, delivering anti-imperial sentiments with distinct bluntness: “First black president/ he was the one who bombed us”. But these musings aren’t meant to be controversial for the sake of it; pull each song apart and they hit with mindful purpose, made all the more gripping by her wry and breezy delivery.

Elsewhere, Karol G drops her high-anticipated new album, Turnstile and BadBadNotGood team up for their New Heart Designs EP, and Tomu DJ shares a tender third record.