When Nelly Furtado released Loose in June 2006, it was a curve ball. Just three years before, she had been collaborating with people like Caetano Veloso and the Kronos Quartet on polite, artsy folk-pop songs. Then suddenly she was singing about sex over blaring beats from Timbaland. It could only have been a way to sell records, critics concluded, and if so, it certainly did the trick; the album has sold no fewer than 11 million copies to date.

Whether Furtado’s transformation was her own decision or her superiors’ is still a mystery; the further up the charts one goes, the harder it is to tell whose ideas are whose. But 10 years later, loose remains one of the most convincingly and creatively sexual pop albums of the 2000s and one of the finest artifacts of that strange and fertile era for pop. The sex songs here aren’t just clichés about hands and bodies. They’re passionate, creatively written and exceedingly weird.

Take “Do It,” which inflates the physical feeling of sex to the operatic scale generally reserved for matters of the heart like crushes and breakups (“just a little touch has got me seeing things” – wow, I’d like to meet this guy). Or “Promiscuous,” where Furtado and Timbaland affectionately (and respectfully) play ping-pong with a loaded term too often used to slut-shame. Or “Glow,” which uses its title as code for the feeling during or after great sex, in addition to cleverly flipping the “my friends say you’re no good for me” trope. Anyone who’s ever had their world completely rocked by another person – or fantasized about it – can find something to enjoy here.

Another interesting thing about Loose is how little Furtado, as a vocalist, sounds like your typical “sexy” female pop singer circa 2006. On “Maneater,” with its layers of slightly off-key chanting, she sounds a bit like a cackling goblin. There are no deep Britney gasps. Vocal fry is employed sparsely but dutifully. For a lot of it, she raps. She’s always calm and collected. Her vocals are understated, often deadpan, and in this she seems to predict vocalists like Rihanna and Lady Gaga who make the most out of a limited palate. Her high notes seem to have influenced Grimes; they share an ability to propel their voice into areas that are almost uncanny.

And then – holy shit – there’s Timbaland’s production. Loose was mere months removed from Justin Timberlake’s FutureSex/LoveSounds, in which Timbaland embraced his status as auteur by drowning his protege in pompous symphonies. Here, his approach to the nine (out of thirteen) songs he produces is utilitarian but no less weird. Saw-toothed synths augment the trashy swagger of “Maneater” and “No Hay Igual.” Chiptune bleeps and bloops give “Do It” a tactile, ticklish feeling that only makes it sound even filthier. Bits of cut-up vocal are scattered liberally throughout. And he can dial back the weirdness too, as on the gorgeous “Wait For You.”

The idiosyncrasy of his approach is only more obvious given the presence of four non-Timbaland songs. One of these, the dreamy “Showtime,” is quite strong. The others are the weakest things here and muddy the flow of an otherwise consistent album. “Te Busque” is a post-grunge nightmare with a hammy chorus from Juanes and some truly dreadful rapping from Furtado. “In God’s Hands” and “All Good Things” are hookless acoustic cheese that mostly seem to offset the risk of making a commercial gambit with such a strange record.

It’s worth noting that these are the least sexual songs here too, so it’s possible Timbaland played a part in Furtado’s decision to get nasty. But she doesn’t feel like she’s in over her head here, and her effortlessness and comfort suggests that this was something she wanted from the get-go and just got the OK from Timbaland. It’s hard to say. Either way, this stands as one of the most artful recent mainstream symbioses between vocalist and producer and one of the great gems of 2000s pop. In today’s pop landscape, when the genre is weirder and more respected than it’s perhaps ever been, it may only sound better with age.

Listen to Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” feat. Timbaland below.

It makes sense that Ariana Grande would go full raunch queen on her third album Dangerous Woman. Though she debuted as a Nickelodeon star, Grande’s never been interested in kid-friendly shit, and she was quick to disown her bubblegum-as-fuck debut single “Put Your Hearts Up.” Alas, the Nick baggage has stuck with her longer than it should have, and she’s often portrayed in the media as an innocent baby-like creature rather than a 22-year-old with a healthy artistic vision. She needs this album, if only to get the assholes off her back.

What she doesn’t need to do is switch up her sound again. While her prior albums largely honed in on one sound — Yours Truly retro bubblegum, My Everything EDM-pop — Dangerous Woman lacks such an identity. The biggest change is the introduction of a few 6/8 soul ballads, but house, trap, reggae and R&B are never far away. Dangerous Woman thus feels more like a statement of intent for her image than for her sound, and it’s accordingly more coherent lyrically than sonically: the main theme is sex, with a bit of inspirational pep-talk thrown in for good measure.

And, as luck would have it, Grande’s great at sex songs. “A movie’s playing, but no one’s watching tonight,” she sings on “Moonlight,” succinctly summing up the physics of “Netflix and chill.” “Into You” is a relentless come-on, but it feels more desperate than sultry, as if the whisky’s got her feeling pretty and she only has one chance. The album’s best song, the hilarious “Side to Side,” is an ode to the rough sex that’s got her walking as the title suggests. She doesn’t sing with pride here, nor with “sexy” affectation: she sings with a hint of a laugh, fondly recalling the events of the night before as she comes to terms with the awkward after-effects. 

It’s easy to dismiss the more inspirational songs here as by-the-numbers seeing as pop’s been telling us to keep our heads held high for over half a decade now. And they’re not the best: “I Don’t Care” is a pretty basic fuck-the-haters coda, while “Dangerous Woman” roars with a powerful chorus but skimps on the verses. These tunes gain a bit more context when you consider all the absurd and pointless scrutiny to which Grande’s been subjected throughout her career. But context doesn’t define a song, and these are the album’s weaker moments.

The drastic changes in production mean Dangerous Woman isn’t as good a back-to-front listen as it could have been. It seems to settle into a slow soul groove with the first two tracks, “Moonlight” and the bombastic “Dangerous Woman,” before jumping that train in favor of house grooves for the next two. But there are really no clunkers — except “Everyday,” another sex song but one so bland Grande actually gets upstaged by Future, a rapper capable of making just about anything sound boring. This is a great pop album in the rough — a rewarding listen, but hopefully a practice run for a record that’s as fleshed-out sonically as Dangerous Woman is thematically.

Watch the video for Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” below:

As Bob’s Burgers hits its 100th episode, it’s worth looking at how far the show has come since its humble debut in 2011. Or, more precisely, how far it hasn’t come. It still hasn’t enjoyed the culture-eating ubiquity of The Simpsons or Family Guy, nor has it provided endless fodder for memes as King of the Hill has. Rather, it’s sat consistently at fourth or fifth place in ratings besides the Seth MacFarlane and Matt Groening juggernauts with which it rubs elbows on Fox.

Bob’s biggest cultural export remains Tina, the oldest child of the show’s central Belcher family. She’s something of a feminist icon, an alternately awkward and confident 13-year-old unafraid of slathering her schoolmates with the female gaze. But Tina’s stagnated as a character since the writers gradually brought her out of her shell in the show’s first few seasons. Several episodes from this last season hint that her longtime crush Jimmy Jr. isn’t the right man for her after all and that perhaps she should focus more on his fart-loving friend Zeke. But for the most part, she’s just doing what she’s always been doing these days, and Tina-mania has died down.

This last season, the show’s big project has been Louise, the youngest, most mischievous and arguably smartest Belcher. She tore through early seasons like a fireball, causing wanton destruction and chaos in her wake. But she’s developed something of a conscience recently, though perhaps she’s not entirely sure what a conscience is yet — she described it as “this weird feeling” in “Lice Things Are Lice.” This development came to a head in the sixth-season finale, “Glued, Where’s My Bob,” where Louise’s regret at accidentally gluing her father to the toilet (god, I love this show) forms an entire story arc by itself. The littlest Belcher is growing up. 

Middle child Gene’s still mostly a repository of fart jokes and esoteric pop culture references. Unfortunately, one of his most compelling early traits — his gender-fluid expression — has been toned down. “The Gene And Courtney Show” also hinted at a romance with his classmate Courtney, whom he finds annoying and was pressured into courting back in season three. A lot of fans took Gene as queer, and I for one was a bit disappointed that he’s so far straight. More egregious is the fact that Gene’s fallen for his former enemy, which reeks too much of the untrue and potentially harmful “if a boy and a girl don’t like each other they must be in love” trope.

Now that the kids have grown up a little, I suspect the show’s next big project will be the parents. The parents’ private lives are still largely unexplored; most of the time, they’re just dicking around the restaurant. There are plenty of relationships still unexplored, including Bob’s friendship with the mysterious Marshmallow and Linda’s with her outrageous hairdresser Gretchen. Fifth-season standout “Eat, Spray, Linda” also hinted at the rich private life Linda leads outside the restaurant. It’d be a shame if that all turned out to be a one-episode punchline.

The mysteries the show has yet to explore suggest there’s no shortage of future plots for this show and that Bob won’t be going to space or working as a soccer referee anytime soon. Bob’s has been renewed for seventh and eighth seasons, so there’s years of plots to come. And it’s a sign of a great show when it’s less worrying that the show will run out of plots than that it won’t have enough time to explore all the directions it could potentially take.

Since the starters for the unfortunately titled Pokémon Sun & Moon games (abbreviate ‘em) were first revealed last Tuesday, the internet’s been quick to praise the Grass-type owl Pokémon, Rowlet, and quick to heap vitriol on the Water-type seal Popplio. Most of the hatred seems to pivot around its clown-like design, which has been described as “silly” by game sites and Twitterland alike. And yes, clowns are silly – and a bit scary. But Popplio is one of the most creative starter designs in a long time, and it’s pretty damn cute, so I’m personally pulling for it.

These are the best-looking starters since Generation II. The only dud of the three is Litten, yet another mammalian Fire starter; he’s a cat, and of course he’s going to evolve into a lion, probably with a mane of flames. Rowlet is inventive, a nice change of pace from the almost uniformly reptilian Grass starters of yore (the exception being the chipmunk-like Chespin), but he doesn’t really fit my definition of cute; he reminds me too much of a baby or a pug. I like things with long snouts.

Popplio appeals to my tastes just a little more, and he’s the best seal Pokémon has yet created. Generation one’s Seel and generation three’s Spheal were cool, but they didn’t radiate Popplio’s charisma. The former two are aloof wild animals, while Popplio – appropriately for a beast you’ll likely spend the whole game with – looks like he wants to jump up and lick your face. His design’s more creative than your average water starter, which are mostly existing animals colored blue. Popplio’s a seal and a clown, which is impressive given that the GameFreak design team was probably home for lunch with the others.

The clown thing doesn’t really bother me, either. He’s too cute to bring to mind Pennywise or Poltergeist. But when he grows up, he’ll probably be terrifying. Clowns and full-grown seals are two of the most godawful things to walk the earth; have you ever seen a bull elephant seal? I hope he matures into some disgusting, corpulent John Wayne Gacy monstrosity.

And it wouldn’t be the first silly/scary pinniped the games have cooked up. If you played the third-generation games, you might still have nightmares of Walrein, the toughest beast in that game’s Elite Four arsenal. With his devastating Sheer Cold attack and endless, hollow roar, that thing was as frightening to fight as to stare down. And even though the big walrus was a little funny with his Danny DeVito tufts of hair, most people weren’t laughing.

Popplio doesn’t deserve the hate. It’s a remarkably inventive design, and given the iconic image of the trained seal, it’s surprising the Pokémon design team didn’t think him up before. And look at those front flippers. If those things pack anywhere near the punch they look like they do, he’ll be no clown on the battlefield.

Follow Daniel Bromfield on Twitter @bromf3

No musician in the pop pantheon has made it harder to find their work than Prince, which is frustrating if his death last Thursday at age 57 piqued your interest in his discography.

The Purple One’s music isn’t available on Spotify or YouTube — he’s on Tidal, of course — and the Knight Library here at University of Oregon only carries two Prince albums: 2004’s Musicology, one of his many disappointing post-prime efforts, and 1984’s Purple Rain.

For those too scrupulous to pirate, the cheapest option is to dig around in bargain bins or buy his work on iTunes. But if you have no conception of Prince’s music, you might not find it worthwhile to just buy a full album. Luckily, we at the Emerald put together this guide to the best Prince albums to start with depending on your musical taste.

Dirty Mind (1980)

This is His Purpleness’s poppiest album, and at just under half an hour, it’s a quick and easy listen. Like Purple Rain, it’s not particularly experimental. But it’s hooky as hell, and it’s also one of his dirtiest albums, featuring the ludicrous homewrecker fantasy “Head” and a little ditty about incest called “Sister.” Not for kids.

1999 (1982)

1999 is perhaps the best demonstration of what Prince was capable of. It’s got radio hits like “1999” and “Delirious,” but most of it is given up to paranoid, seven-plus-minute drum machine jams that prefigure house and techno. Though it won’t appeal to anyone looking for short, snappy pop songs, it’s the best Prince album for those of us with more out-there tastes.

Purple Rain (1984)

Purple Rain is Prince’s most rock-oriented album, heavy on guitar solos and light on experimentation. If you want something gnarly and out-there, this one isn’t for you. But it’s a great album, and it’s got some of his most ubiquitous jams, including “When Doves Cry,” “Let’s Go Crazy” and the epic title track.

Sign ‘O’ The Times (1987)

This sprawling double album is a combination of three or four half-finished projects the singer was working on in the mid-‘80s. There’s something here for everyone, from the pure pop of “Starfish and Coffee” to the Blade Runner balladry of “If I Was Your Girlfriend” to the avant-garde minimalism of “Forever In My Life.”

The Hits/The B-Sides (1993)

Though it’ll be a bit pricier than any of his albums, this triple-disc set is as good an overview of Prince’s prolific and daunting career as you’re likely to get. There’s a lot of great songs on the two “Hits” sides, but the real gems here are the non-album B-sides on disc three, including the immortal piano ballad “How Come U Don’t Call Me Anymore?”

Other options

Prince’s 1979 self-titled is a solid pop-rock album. 1985’s Around The World In A Day is a bizarre tribute to the psych-pop of the late-‘60s. 1986’s Parade plays like the film soundtrack it is, but it has a few of the singer’s best songs, including “Kiss.” And if you can find it, 1994’s legendary Black Album is the Purple One’s weirdest, funniest and funkiest outing.

The late 60s were a time of wondrous and rapid evolution in pop music with major and underground acts alike risking their commercial viability in the name of art-minded experimentation. But perhaps no one went further out than the Swedes.

The “progg” scene that flourished in Sweden’s hippie-era communes and universities was devoted to anti-commercialism, guerrilla performance, leftist politics and live improvisation that made the Grateful Dead look tame.

It was DIY before DIY, punk before punk and though it has since become a bit of a joke in Sweden, the rest of the world can only goggle in wonder.

Progg is still little-known in the States. Expect Anthology Recordings’ Träd, Gräs och Stenar box set – available for your streaming pleasure on Spotify – to change this.

Collecting two live albums and a glut of unreleased jams from the Swedish band Träd, Gräs och Stenar (which translates to “trees, grass and stones”), this five-hour compilation is a wonderful entry point to a forgotten rock scene that never quite got its due.

Some context: Träd, Gräs och Stenar was the final incarnation of a collective of musicians that had previously gone by the names Harvester, International Harvester and Pärson Sound. The music the band made as Stenar was a lot more rock-oriented and less out-there than the amorphous, minimal noise they had made under their prior names. The live albums here – Djungelns Lag and Mors Mors – were released in 1971 and 1972, respectively. By this time, the music they were making was unruly and proudly experimental but also unexpectedly listenable.

Most of the songs here are, for lack of a better word, jams. Träd, Gräs och Stenar were art-school friends, and their music isn’t far removed from what I’ve heard lots of bands here at the University of Oregon do in the heat of particularly wild house shows. They sound like a bunch of buddies screwing around. But they’re always in tune with each other, and it’s a blast hearing the different band members’ ideas bounce off of each other as they move through their songs.

They also create better music than most basement bands, in part because of their restraint. These jams prioritize texture over soloing or dramatic crescendos, and they’re usually gorgeous.

This is not music for people with short attention spans, and indeed, not everyone will want to wade through five hours of improvisational rock. But it’s not essential to listen to this thing front-to-back.

It feels like it’s on shuffle anyway; many of these performances were recorded in drastically different places, from festivals and houses to meadows and airfields, and the recording quality track to track tends to vary.

But if you just want to get lost in a head-expanding musical space for a while, you could do a lot worse than throwing on Träd, Gräs och Stenar.

Listen to “Vår vila” by Träd, Gräs och Stenar below.

How exactly does one make electronic music live? It’s a question pondered by many of us who have seen laptop DJs up on stages but never gotten a glimpse of what’s going on behind the screen. With such a studio-oriented genre, it’s a lot trickier to make live sound than if you have a physical instrument that just feeds sounds into an amp. How can one conjure that same spontaneity with beats made weeks, months, even years prior to a show?

For many producers, including University of Oregon doctoral student Nathan Asman, the answer is the digital audio workstation Ableton Live. Ableton, which has gone through 18 versions since Live 1 was debuted in 2001, allows its users to crossfade and sequence tracks live in addition to creating their own compositions at home.

“It allows really seamless work flow between composition and performances, which is exactly what I do,” said Asman, who leads the Eugene-based electronica trio Hamilton Beach. “I’ve been using it for eight or nine years, and I still find new things about it.”

Asman will impart the gospel of Ableton Live this Friday the UO stop of the 2016 Ableton University Tour.

He’ll co-host two workshops at the UO School of Music & Dance in Room 173: one for beginners from 3 to 4:45 p.m. and another more advanced workshop from 5:15 to 7 p.m. He’ll also be presenting a composition, “Trio 1-465,” in which he uses a programmed roller mouse to control Ableton-generated sounds. At 9 p.m. that night, he’ll play with Hamilton Beach at the HiFi Music Hall as part of their “A Night With Ableton” event.

The annual Ableton University Tour, now in its third year, features speakers and musicians extolling the program’s virtues and hosting workshops and performances at universities across the globe. This time around, they’ll be demonstrating Link, a new Ableton update which allows two separate Ableton users to wirelessly sync their devices and play music together.

“Making music with computers tends to be a solitary pursuit,” said Thomas Faulds, brand manager for Ableton. “This is sort of a way for people to get out of the studio, basement, what have you and share tricks and inspirations with other people.”

Asman will co-host the UO event with Oregon Interactive Lunch (OIL), a University of Oregon campus group that hosts presentations by tech-savvy students across varying fields.

OIL director Steve Joslin has been using Ableton for about five years and, along with Asman, is enrolled in the Performance with Data-Driven Instruments doctoral program. Lately, he’s been using a Gametrak game controller to make sounds with Ableton, just as Asman’s been doing with his roller mouse.

“It’s an expandable, great live program,” said Joslin of Ableton. “But it can also work great as a studio program. That’s why I go back to it.”

If projects on the scale of Joslin’s Gametrak or Asman’s mouse sound daunting, Joslin says there’s no need to worry.

“I would encourage anyone who’s interested in making music at all to come and check it out,” he says. “I think this event is really here for everyone, not just for advanced users.”

Toronto duo dvsn’s debut Sept. 5 is R&B blown up to Wagnerian proportions, an unapologetically massive spectacle that reminds us not only of what R&B can do as a form, but what maximalism can accomplish as an approach.

The ten songs here are all pretty simple. There’s nothing here that wouldn’t be considered purist in the nineties; in fact, most of the music here feels closer to, say, Boyz II Men than anything else from the Toronto R&B scene from whence the duo came. And all of the ten tracks here follow tried-and-true R&B formulas – love songs (“The Line,” “Too Deep”), breakup songs (“Hallucinations”), stripper ballads (“Do It Well”) and sex jams (“With Me”).

The difference is in scale. Nineteen85, the producer half of the duo (you may know him from Drake’s “Hotline Bling”), slathers every inch of the sonic playing field with gospel choirs, horns, orchestras and titanic trap drums. Above it all, singer Daniel Daley belts for dear life; whether he’s grieving for a lost lover or simply throwing money in the air at the club, he sounds like he’s on bended knee in the face of God. It’s an approach that makes the simple truths about which Daley sings – love, lust, faith, sadness, longing – feel divine, mythical, apocalyptic.

This all comes to a head on “The Line,” a seven-minute slow-burn that starts with just Daley and a piano before swelling to a “Hey Jude”-worthy gospel coda. (Nineteen85 likes to start songs this way; he uses the same trick on “Angela” and Drake’s “Too Much.”) In a nice trick of sequencing, “The Line” also features Daley’s most ragged vocal performance. Though the vocal takes here were likely recorded months apart, the climactic placement of “The Line” creates the illusion that he’s expended so much energy over the last nine songs that he can barely get through this one.

By the end of this thing, the listener’s likely to be just as exhausted. Sept. 5 is maybe three songs too long, and I’d argue that cutting a few tracks out would better emphasize the scale of the songs that remain. Some of pop music’s great maximalist statements – Pink Floyd’s Meddle, Joanna Newsom’s Ys, James Brown’s Live At The Apollo, Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul – have been short, or divided their epicness over fewer tracks. But by the time “The Line” swallows you up and spits you out, it’s hard to complain. After an experience this emotionally arduous, you might even come out feeling refreshed.

Listen to “With Me” from dvsn below.

When Bibio first emerged on Mush Records in the late-‘00s, he seemed easy to pin down: a Boards of Canada acolyte with a love of detuned guitars and British folk. Then, just as the English producer born Stephen Wilkinson signed to the vaunted Warp label, his musical horizons exploded. Ambivalence Avenue (2009), Mind Bokeh (2011), and Silver Wilkinson (2013) all mashed genres wantonly, his folkier tracks brushing against funk, rock and instrumental hip-hop. The latter two albums were a bit undercooked, suggesting a lack of focus. Luckily, A Mineral Love – his seventh album, and easily best since Ambivalence Avenue – finds him committing solidly to the role of indie-pop auteur, in the vein of Toro Y Moi or Blood Orange.

The sonic milieu is well-established from the first few songs: pitter-pat drum machines, soulful keyboards, guitars that alternate between funk wah and spidery folk finger-picking. Bibio sings a lot more here than usual, either in a silky croon or a squeaky falsetto. While his voice is low in the mix, he doesn’t deliberately cloak it with reverb and echo like a lot of bedroom producers do. Instead, his vocals just seem to come from slightly farther away from the guitar. The effect is one of intimacy and tranquility, as if he’s singing these songs for himself on his front porch.

Bibio’s always had R&B and funk leanings, most famously expressed on Ambivalence Avenue’s “Jealous Of Roses.” But they’re to the fore here more than ever. “Feeling” could be a Shuggie Otis or Sly Stone track with its patient funk lope and playful sax. And “Light Up The Sky,” which could have been a hit from a late-‘90s family film soundtrack, features a near-dead-on vocal impression of Prince. Even the folkier tracks brim with funk attitude: listen to the flecks of wah-wah buried deep in the title track, or the bright Hammond organ that ambles through “Town & Country.”

There’s nothing here we didn’t know Bibio could do. But it’s nice to hear him commit to one aspect of his discography and spin that sound into a solid album. The only incongruous tracks are two in the middle: the straight house of “With The Thought Of Us” and the post-disco of “Why So Serious,” featuring a lusty vocal turn from Olivier St. Louis. They’re such a sharp stylistic left turn as to be jarring. But when those familiar guitars come back in on “C’est La Vie,” it’s like we’ve come back from an intermission, and it’s a relief to just hear Bibio again.

Listen to “Town & Country” from Bibio’s A Mineral Love below.

The music on Young Thug’s Slime Season 3 is less exciting than the music it promises. This release, which marks the end of the Slime Season series, is more of the same; there’s nothing here Thug hasn’t done as well or better on a prior release.

Except for one song: “Worth It,” which is a great, gooey R&B slow jam that features some hilariously filthy sex talk (“I’ma shoot inside that pussy like a hooli on you / Goddamn, I’m sorry, B”), as well as some of Thug’s tenderest and most virtuosic singing to date. It’s the kind of thing Thug’s hero Lil Wayne might have put on Tha Carter III or IV, and if Thug intends to keep following Weezy’s career path, he’ll cap his current mixtape run with an album full of songs like these. It’s the most promising thing Thug’s done in about three mixtapes. (And don’t miss the adorable video, starring him and his fiancee Jerrika.)

But for the most part, the differences between Slime Season 3 and Slime Seasons 1 and 2 – or, for that matter, last month’s mixtape I’m Up – are negligible. It’s darker and less hooky than I’m Up, it’s not quite as weird as Slime Season 2, and it’s more consistent than Slime Season. (It’s also only eight tracks, a break from the meandering sprawl of the last two Slime Seasons.) But these differences feel too small to get excited about, and pretty much everything we’ve come to expect from Thug is here – triple-time rapping, trap beats, shrieked hooks, a lot of non-sequiturs.

All that said, Slime Season 3 isn’t a bad release. There’s no real filler, and there are plenty of thrilling moments (Thug’s deranged rant on “Drippin’ “; the Auto-Tune histrionics on “Memo”). Newcomers will likely be dazzled by how well he juggles eccentricity with no-bullshit Southern banger-craft. And thanks to its brief length, Slime Season 3 is a great tape to play for newcomers. But it’s easy to be cynical if you’ve followed Thug and heard it all before.

Down the road, Slime Season 3 will probably be regarded as either Thug’s most listenable or most forgettable mixtape. It’s so him it’s gotta count for something. But it also doesn’t do anything to expand our ideas of who he is.

Watch the video for “Worth It” below.