Humanz by Gorillaz

Humanz, the fifth Gorillaz album, arrived in 2017 on Parlophone in the UK and Warner Bros. in America, the cartoon band's first record in seven years. The silence had followed reports of a falling-out between creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett; they patched things up in late 2014, and sessions ran from around September 2015 to December 2016 in London, Paris, New York and Jamaica, with The Twilite Tone and Remi Kabaka Jr. producing.

Albarn pictured it as the soundtrack to a doomsday party thrown in a nightmare where Donald Trump wins the 2016 election, and it throbs like one: electronic, hip-hop and R&B, packed with guests from Grace Jones and Mavis Staples to Vince Staples, Pusha T and De La Soul. Some critics felt Albarn got crowded out of his own party, but it opened at number two in both Britain and the US and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.