“Against these, her vocal delivery is plaintive. The production does not struggle to make her sound big, like someone onstage, bathing in high-powered lights and a sea of fog. Rather the closeness and minimal vocal effects bring us to her in a small, candlelit room. Her flow is deceptively natural, with her background in poetry giving her the ability to confidently explore all of the minute gradations between speaking and rapping. Sometimes she tumbles words out haphazardly, and other times she rides the beat hard, almost driving it. She is in possession of a broad array of rhythmic variations that she stealthily deploys and switches up throughout the album. Some of this is on display in “Lost,” from Chance's 2013 mixtape Acid Rap, where her stellar guest verse catapulted her into the national conversation. But there she stayed fairly on beat, like a guest respectfully observing house rules. Telefone, by contrast, finds her at her own home late into the night, beginning to let everything loose. Telefone shows her rhyming on her own terms.” (more…)