AC23 is a dynamo on the British music scene, and they came straight out of Newcastle upon Tyne, a lively and throbbing city famed for its rich history and buzzing nightlife. This multi-talented musician blends styles together in a novel way, yet his heart and soul are in hip-hop. AC23 is a musical chameleon, capable of switching between the lyrical finesse of a seasoned poet and...

Sophia Mengrosso’s new album, “Unforgiven”, doesn’t so much start as it does detonate, a thirteen-song treatise on survival. Her voice, a thing clearly trained for gilded halls and velvet curtains, instead wails from within a foundry’s clang and fire. The result is a bizarre and beautiful collision, the sonic equivalent of discovering a lost Caravaggio painting lit by a flickering fluorescent tube in a...