Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
This week, Cardi B has a message for the competition, Chance The Rapper comes full circle and Dijon blows up. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Cardi B, “Imaginary Playerz”
“Fixin’ y’all mouth to talk fashion with me / I’m the one who showed these girls what fashion could be,” Cardi B spits near the end of “Imaginary Playerz,” a viper strike against those who doubted her longevity and other women in hip-hop trying to come for her crown. With Cardi’s long-awaited sophomore album just weeks away, this single is a timely reminder of her dominant wordplay and cutthroat approach; the expectations are officially sky-high.
Chance The Rapper, Star Line
Chance The Rapper hit the mainstream with the force of a freight train in the mid-2010s, and then his 2019 album, The Big Day, zapped his momentum; Star Line, the long-awaited follow-up, boasts plenty of A-list guest stars — Lil Wayne, Young Thug and Jazmine Sullivan among them — but also serves as a back-to-basics project from an artist who blew up thanks to fiercely beloved mixtapes, combining personal reinvention with scrappy artistry.
Dijon, Baby
In the four years since Dijon released debut album Absolutely in 2021, his influence in modern R&B (and popular music in general) has grown by leaps and bounds — and with follow-up full-length Baby, he returns with a lush, lo-fi set of rhythmic gems, to a much bigger audience waiting for them, and now has the opportunity to position himself as a full-blown commercial force.
Kaytranada, Ain’t No Damn Way!
A press release for Ain’t No Damn Way! describes the project as “an intentional return to Kaytranada’s dance music roots” — which, if you like to move whatsoever, is pretty damn exciting, considering that the producer is absolutely elite when it comes to cooking up dance floor-fillers. Opener “Space Invader” sets the euphoric tone immediately, and by “Target Joint” in the fourth slot, your shoulders will be exhausted from wiggling too hard.
Jordan Davis, Learn the Hard Way
Country star Jordan Davis’ catalog contains a reliability that has made him into a singer-songwriter with a dedicated Nashville fan base, and on Learn the Hard Way, he continues his streak of celebrating the simple pleasures of life with mid-tempo tracks built around his steady tone and shrugging off too much production flash (although the occasional guest star, Carly Pearce and Marcus King, does drop by).
Olivia Dean, “Man I Need”
Anyone paying attention to Olivia Dean’s recent string of singles understands why anticipation keeps ratcheting up for the London singer-songwriter’s sophomore album, The Art of Loving: “Man I Need” once again demonstrates her natural gift for immediate melodies, but her modern riff on classic rhythmic pop is snappier than ever, to the point where you’ll be humming along midway through your first listen.
Editor’s Pick: Conan Gray, Wishbone
Wishbone is Conan Gray’s fourth studio album, and sounds like the one he’s been working toward his entire career: once again working with Dan Nigro but handling much of the songwriting on his own, the pop artist fully arrives with a mix of hushed confessionals and brash arena-fillers, with both styles boasting the evocative lyricism that’s made him a star.
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