Billboard's Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday's most important releases: the essential music everyone's talking about today and dominating your playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Post Malone and Morgan Wallen are helping each other, Gunna is as prolific as ever, and Megan Thee Stallion is even more ferocious. Check out all of this week's picks below.
Post Malone feat. Morgan Wallen “I Helped You”
No artist spent more weeks atop the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 in 2023 than Morgan Wallen. Post Malone, meanwhile, has been doing well as a collaborator with Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, recently featuring on their hit albums, but he's also given a nod to country crossovers. These fruitful paths intersect on his rocker “I Had Some Help,” a country rocker faster paced than Warren's biggest hits and more evocative than Posty's typical work. Popular countries are increasingly making an impact on the mainstream, and this team-up looks poised to dominate the summer.
Gunna, one of One
Last year, Gunna's album “a Gift & a Curse,'' which reflected the rapper's mixed feelings over the YSL RICO incident, contained no features. The Wun one is a different story, with a more celebratory vibe (especially after the success of last year's smash hit “Fukumean”), with Offset, Normani, Leon Bridges, and Roddy Ricch all stopping by. In either mode, Gunna belts out some nice sinuous syllables over a zonked-out beat, and while One of Wun may approach her 60-minute mark, it flies by, and the solo Tracks “Back in the A”, “Still Prevail”, “Blackjack”.
Megan Thee Stallion “Boa”
“All of a sudden, they're vegan and they don't want to eat beef,” says Megan, who has already topped the Hot 100 once with “Hiss,” a diss track that kicks off this year's huge list of diss tracks. Thee Stallion scoffs: Top of new single “Boa”. Her recent single gesture aims to cut down more enemies, but “Boa” actually shows off Meg's pop know-how. A smart sample of Gwen Stefani's “What You Waiting For?” Animate the hook and set a sophisticatedly designed chorus between ferocious wordplay.
Camila Cabello feat. Lil Nas X “He Knows”
Camila Cabello's reinvention takes advantage of the edgier look of “I Luv It,” while still featuring hand claps, cooing hooks, and Cabello rhyming “provocateur” with “connoisseur.” , follows “He Knows,” which delivers a more straight-forward pop fun. Lil Nas X knows a thing or two about provocative pop, spending the verses doubling down on dual purpose before joining Cabello for well-executed harmonies on the chorus.
Ice Spice “Gimme a Light”
Throughout her rise over the past year and a half, Ice Spice has sounded calm, cool and collected, even as beats permeate around her voice and A-list collaborators flock to her tracks. , never interrupting her flow. Her new single, “Gimme a Right,” uses the Sean Paul classic as the basis for a breathy shout-along, and represents a new hue for the rapper. The track is designed to rattle club walls, but it also opens up more possibilities for Ice Spice's aesthetic, which continues to take the New York hip-hop formula and push it in different directions.
Editor's Pick: Chief Keef, Thor 2
Fans of Chief Keef have been waiting for a sequel to 2013's Thor for a long time, and after years of set release dates and countless delays, Thor 2's appearance feels like a small miracle. Even better news is that the sequel is Keef's best project in years. Building on the momentum of his recent collaborative project with Mike Will Made It, Dirty Nachos, here the drill legend smashes through an hour's worth of beats to find a set of beats. He brings the energy of his early career and a combination of hunger and confidence on every track.