From the German city of Delmenhorst, DJ Snudi has dispatched "Sugar Daddy," a single that lands with the curious thud of a velvet-wrapped brick. The track presents itself as a straightforward club banger, but listening to it is like trying to have a serious conversation in a room where someone keeps changing the lighting from sterile white to a pulsing, humid red. It’s disorienting,...

Amara-Fe has definitively shifted from the messy business of becoming into the absolute certainty of claiming with her new album, "A Queen’s Ambition". The rising solo artist, tethered to deep musical roots extending through Mission and Dallas, Texas, arrives fully formed here. There is a palpable weight to her cinematic R&B and electropop arrangements. You can almost feel her surveying her territory, setting borders,...