Boucher has recently seemed at a loss to regain control over her career, and naive about her role in its dissolution. But Miss Anthropocene reveals an astute understanding – evidently well honed – of humanity’s worst impulses and how to appeal to them. […] Against all odds, Miss Anthropocene is a beautiful and emotionally complex album: Boucher’s continuing personal testament to creativity as resistance against destruction, and an unlikely optimistic gesture that still believes art can be a powerful force for social good. It also finally finds Boucher reconciled to her relationship with the public. On Miss Anthropocene, she is a mirror, inviting us to examine the source of our bad faith.

Rappers are presented as violent, vulgar sexists and homophobes, and then they're not only expected to have fully-formed opinions on social issues, but progressive ones. This is an ugly update on the always implicit, often explicit demand that hip-hop, if it is to be lauded and celebrated, must espouse a strong, left-leaning political message.

I wish for my own voice what Aretha’s has had from the beginning: a sense of self so strong that she had to open her mouth and sing to keep from exploding, to keep herself whole.