BLack on BLonde by K-OS

k-os decided to stop choosing. BLack on BLonde, the Canadian rapper's fifth studio album, came out in 2013 on Crown Loyalist and EMI as a double album with a hard line down the middle: one disc of hip-hop, labelled BLack, and one disc of rock, labelled BLonde. For an artist who has always toured with a live band and picks up the guitar and keyboards himself, it plays less like a gimmick than an overdue admission of dual citizenship.

The guest list sprawls like the record does. Emily Haines, Black Thought, Sam Roberts, Shad, Saukrates, Sebastien Grainger, Travie McCoy, Jay Malinowski and, gloriously improbably, Corey Hart all turn up, and George Stroumboulopoulos opens "The Dog Is Mine" with a spoken intro. It's a restless, genre-hopping ride from a songwriter who has never bought into mainstream hip-hop's fixation on money and fame, and Can't Fly Without Gravity followed it.

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