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, Dua Lipa sees through your deception, Sabrina Carpenter keeps you up all night, and of course, Future and Metro Boomin remain doubtful about your reliability. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Future & Metro Boomin, We Still Don’t Trust You
If you thought Future & Metro might be mostly phoning in their sequel effort to their chart-topping We Don’t Trust You from three weeks ago, that 25-song tracklist — 18 for the proper album and a seven-track extra disc — should make it pretty clear that this isn’t just spare bonus material. Besides, the leadoff title cut finds rapper and producer right away in new pulsing dancefloor territory, led by an uncredited appearance by The Weeknd, which sets the tone for the strobelit sonics for much of the project. But of course, folks will mostly be talking about the appearances on this set from J. Cole (“Red Leather”), who does not really seem to be addressing any of the recent “Big 3” feuding, and A$AP Rocky (“Show of Hands”), who appears to be taking shots — possibly at Drake? — via his current romantic partner: “N—as swear they bitch the baddest, I just bagged the worst one… I smash before you birthed son, Flacko hit it first son.”
Dua Lipa, “Illusion”
Following the top 40 Billboard Hot 100 hits “Houdini” and “Training Season,” pop superstar Dua Lipa is back with the third taste of her upcoming Radical Optimism set, “Illusion.” Co-written with regular collaborator Caroline Ailin, singer-songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., PC Music soundsmith Danny L Harle and psych-pop fixture Kevin Parker — the latter two of whom also co-produced — Lipa sings of learning to “take my rose-colored glasses of” when dealing with a potential new love with no shortage of red flags. The track finds her back in her disco-pop sweet spot, and with its repeated “dance all night” refrain should find its way to plenty of radio and club airplay in no time.
Sabrina Carpenter, “Espresso”
Speaking of disco-pop, if you prefer your dancefloor jams a little on the laid-back side — more “Levitating” than “Physical,” perhaps — Sabrina Carpenter has you covered with her new piping hot “Espresso.” The alluring new single, co-written with Grammy nominee Amy Allen and Carpenter’s “Nonsense” collaborators Steph Jones and writer/producer Julian Bunetta, features Carpenter positing herself as the caffeinated beverage keeping boys’ thoughts’ racing and sleepless: “That’s that me espresso.” Who’s to say what coffee puns she’ll end up ad libbing in the outro to this one during future live performances?
Lil Nas X, “Right There”
“Been hoarding music for years smh i hate my relationship with fear of my songs not doing well and perception,” Lil Nas X wrote on Instagram in March. “i wish i could just release music and not give af.” The rapper seems to be walking the walk now by dropping his new “Right There” on SoundCloud earlier this week, thought to be a track from his upcoming Nasarati 2 mixtape. With a bombastic beat built around an angelic backing vocal loop, the song sounds absolutely enormous as LNX mixes themes of sex, drugs and religion in his verses: “Montero just popped that Perc/ This feel like God in church/ This scripture a Bible verse/ Buss it open and make it twerk.”
Maggie Rogers, Don’t Forget Me
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers might not be likely to end up with the most buzzed-about release of the week since Future & Metro entered the picture, but Don’t Forget Me should nonetheless delight fans of her sparkling, impassioned folky alt-pop. Highlights of the songs not already released from her 10-track third official LP include the Pat Benatar-worthy ’80s pop-rock blast “Drunk” and the gently-but-firmly shuffling acoustic kiss-off “On & On & On.”
PartyNextDoor, “Lose My Mind”
PartyNextDoor fans who want to hear the late-night singer-songwriter at his most carnal and unfiltered were no doubt encouraged by the recently released cover image for his upcoming PartyNextDoor 4 album — a naked model, shot from behind — and will probably only be further intrigued by “Lose My Mind” his hedonistic latest release from the project. “F–kin’ two b—hes at the same time/ Couldn’t make me choose if it depended on my life” he sings in the first verse, and it only gets more libidinous from there — culminating in a sample from DMX’s “Party Up (Up in Here),” which recontextualizes that song’s classic raging hook as a statement of unbridled lust and sexual abandon.
