You know that exact moment when you realize the people clapping the loudest are the ones hoping you trip? That is the exact energy Mista Crook captures in his latest single, "Dream Big". 'Dream Big' does not waste time pretending the road to success is all champagne and confetti. It gets straight to the gritty reality of what happens when your ambition outgrows your current...

Adam Brice's "Never Is Too Late" landed on my desk – or, rather, materialized in my digital ether – and I've been wrestling with its echoes ever since. It's a curious beast, this album. Part rock anthem, part campfire confessional, with a splash of country twang that somehow doesn't feel out of place, which has themes running circles like wild horses, settling down around...