Keith Urban RIPCORD (LP)

As something of an outsider to Nashville, Keith Urban has the latitude to experiment, an opportunity he seizes with 2016's Ripcord. The album's very title suggests he's diving into the great wide open and he makes no attempt to disguise the record's heavy hip-hop and electronic influence. "Sun Don't Let Me Down," a collaboration with Nile Rodgers featuring a verse by Latin superstar rapper Pitbull, is merely the culmination of all these inclinations, a move Urban hinted at with the rolling loop propelling the album's lead single, "John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16." Given how contemporary country has shifted in the years following 2013's Fuse -- the party-hearty swagger of bro country is in decline, replaced by the flexible R&B rhythms of the likes of Sam Hunt and Brett Eldredge -- Urban's shift is not only adventurous, but commercially savvy. It also suits his style, which always threads subtly modern, mass appeal moves into a country pop that's never beholden to Music City conve