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.
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This week, Olivia Rodrigo wrestles with a (great) bad idea, Karol G keeps collecting W’s and Trippie Redd shows a new side of himself. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Olivia Rodrigo, “bad idea right?”
Two years ago, Olivia Rodrigo preceded her debut album with a spectacularly emotional ballad and a head-banging pop-punk anthem; both of those songs, “drivers license” and “good 4 u,” reached the top of the Hot 100, and Sour became a year-defining full-length. Rodrigo is utilizing a similar playbook with her sophomore effort, GUTS, as the theatrical epic “Vampire” has been followed by the driving shout-along “bad idea right?” — although the new single is far from a rehash, instead mixing pop, riot grrrl rock and new wave into a compact call-and-response ode to ex-boyfriend temptation. More than anything, Rodrigo understands how to give wide swaths of listeners exactly what they need, regardless of tempo or sound — it’s the reason why she’s a superstar at the age of 20.
Karol G, Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season)
Few popular artists are having a better commercial year than Karol G: after Mañana Será Bonito album became the first all-Spanish language album by a woman to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, the Colombian superstar plotted headlining dates in football stadiums, performed on Saturday Night Live and popped up on the best-selling Barbie soundtrack. Now, the winning streak continues with Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season), a companion piece to her recent album, but also a 30-minute project that stands on its own; new collaborations with Kali Uchis and Peso Pluma are especially dynamic, while previously released single “S91” sounds even more impactful in the context of a full-length.
Trippie Redd, A Love Letter to You 5
A Love Letter to You 5 may be the fifth and final edition of Trippie Redd’s popular mixtape series that began in 2017, but the 19-track project feels particularly thoughtful and expansive, as if the hip-hop streaming juggernaut wanted to end the project with the biggest, best installment possible. Lil Wayne, Roddy Ricch and The Kid LAROI all swing by, although the pair of collaborations with Skye Morales, the gifted singer and Trippie Redd’s former partner, are especially poignant, and shed new light on a prolific star’s emotional range.
DJ Khaled feat. Lil Baby, Future & Lil Uzi Vert, “Supposed To Be Loved”
Summertime is a season for beach days, backyard barbecues and star-studded DJ Khaled singles — and although it’s already mid-August, Khaled has come through with a song that will no doubt linger in the mainstream until the leaves begin to fall. “Supposed To Be Loved” not only corrals Lil Baby, Future and Lil Uzi Vert and lets them unfurls some surprisingly tender bars, but Khaled positions the hip-hop summit over a sample of Michael Jackson’s “P.Y.T.,” as extra insurance that the new single will be smooth and summer-friendly.
V, “Love Me Again”
A few weeks after his BTS band mate Jung Kook topped the Hot 100 chart with his Latto collaboration “Seven,” V steps forward with his own solo bid, albeit with a very different sonic approach. “I wish you would love me again / No, I don’t want nobody else,” V sings, his vulnerability matched by sensitive R&B production that motions toward jazz and classic soul; the subtleties of “Love Me Again” begin to reveal themselves on the first listen, then deepen with each new play.
Editor’s Pick: The Hives, The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons
Swedish punk veterans The Hives invaded America during the garage-rock movement of the early ‘00s, as singles like “Hate to Say I Told You So” and “Walk Idiot Walk” made their intense presences felt on MTV and alternative radio. The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons is the quintet’s first album in over a decade, but from the opening riffs of lead track “Bogus Operandi,” the group swaggers back into view like they never left, filling 31 hard-charging minutes with punk performances that will make any thirtysomething want to get back in the pit.
