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Between Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé’s first live performance of “Savage,” a new LP from Doja Cat, and friction between Drake and Charlamagne tha God, it’s been a characteristically hectic week for hip-hop — but there’s also been some excellent music released over the past seven days. With Fresh Picks, Billboard aims to highlight some of the boldest and most exciting new sounds across R&B and hip-hop — from Sexyy Red’s ode to dreads to moody R&B midtempos from TA Thomas and Jean Dawson & SZA.
Be sure to check out this week’s Fresh Picks in our Spotify playlist below.
Sexyy Red, “Shake Yo Dreads”
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The Hood Hottest Princess continues her year-long streak of grimy bangers with this delightfully rowdy ode to dreads. Stuffed with hooks at every turn, Sexyy effortlessly embodies the spirit of Waka Flocka Flame with her seemingly endless arsenal of party rap bangers. “F—k the opps, f—k the opps, f—k the opps/ You the cops, you the cops, you the cops/ Gimme top, gimme top, gimme top/ “B—h, I’m hot, b—h, I’m hot, b—h, I’m hot,” she chants over the Kat Lightning & AyoCBass-produced beat. Words to live by.
Jean Dawson & SZA, “NO SZNS”
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Fresh off a pair of collaborations with Drake (“Slime You Out”) and Justin Bieber (an acoustic “Snooze” remix) last week, SZA returns with a featured turn on Jean Dawson’s “NO SZNS.” Built around a dry acoustic guitar and shimmering reverb-drowned background synths, Jean and SZA deliver a wistful, plaintive ballad about the ever-present warmth of California. Somewhere between Frank Ocean’s “Biking” and the guitar-centric soundscape of Steve Lacy’s Gemini Rights, “NO SZNS” is perfectly engineered for a late-night drive.
Byron Messia, “Mad Dawgs“
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Still riding high off the global success of his breakout summer hit “Talibans,” Byron Messia keeps the momentum going with the new single “Mad Dawgs.” Released alongside the announcement for his forthcoming Sad & Famous album, “Mad Dawgs” finds Byron relaying snapshots of life in his native St. Kitts over his now-signature blend of soulful ad-libs, a nimble dancehall flow, and a percussive beat that combines elements of Afrobeats and traditional dancehall drum patterns with a touch of piano.
Chris Patrick, “Slide On Me”
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Over an unassuming arrangement, anchored by acoustic guitar and accented by lush strings and 808s, Chris Patrick coasts across “Slide On Me” with an air of effortlessness that’s truly captivating. The laidback production and his prickly high-speed flow shouldn’t work together as well as they do. “And she wanna slide on me/ Take the night off and ride with me/ Is you down? Take a dive with me/ 21 questions, I’d ask you right now/ Is you down to die for me?” he sing-raps — a pitch-perfect lead into cuffing season.
JELEEL!, “GFU!”
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JELEEL! has basically become synonymous with zany, rambunctious bite-sized bangers, and that formula remains intact on “GFU!” Across what is essentially an interlude, JELEEL! squeals, whines, shouts and raps over this rage rap-meets-Jersey club banger about, well, getting f–ked up. He’s somehow able to teeter on the very edge of absolute mania for the entirety of the track, never slipping too far in either direction. From the way he plays with different pockets of his voice to the way he warps his intonation to match whatever studio filters are put over his vocals, JELEEL! harnesses a special balls-to-the-wall energy that holds the song together.
Karri, “Lemonade”
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So far in 2023, Karri has kept fans enthralled with his slow-burning heaters, including “Only U” and “3 AM in Oakland.” Fresh off a newly-inked deal with Interscope, he drops off his sweet-sounding record “Lemonade.” Scripting sugary lines like, “She’s a tall glass of lemonade/ She’s exactly what I need,” Karri looks to mesmerize his female listeners with his dulcet delivery on this latest release.
TA Thomas, “Bad for Me”
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After releasing a fistful of songs, including “June 15,” “W.I.A.(Where I’m At),” and “Pros and Cons,” singer TA Thomas goes on a full-fledged exploration of love, self-discovery, and healing on his debut EP Caught Between 2 Worlds. From dealing with an internal tug-of-war on “Bad for Me” to combating trust issues on “Truth Is,” TA Thomas carves out a soul-stirring effort for his rookie project.
When Ashanti and French Montana presented best R&B at Tuesday night’s MTV Video Music Awards, the category’s winner, SZA, was not present to pick up her Moon Person for “Shirt” — but she didn’t just skip the show for no reason, her manager revealed.
SZA entered the Sept. 12 ceremony as one of the night’s most-nominated artists, with eight nods total, including video of the year (“Kill Bill”), best art direction (“Shirt”) and album of the year (SOS). Despite being one of the most omnipresent artists of the past year, however, SZA’s name was left off the list of nominees for artist of the year.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published Friday (Sept. 15), Terrence “Punch” Henderson, SZA’s longtime manager, said, “Obviously, she had one of the best years, if not the best year, of any artist at this point. I don’t see why she wouldn’t be nominated for artist of the year. It just really didn’t make any sense to me. It’s disrespectful.”
SZA released SOS in December, and her critically lauded sophomore studio album has dominated 2023. The record has been present in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 nearly every week this year, spending 10 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 and ranking at No. 2 on Luminate’s 2023 Midyear Music Report. “Kill Bill,” the record’s breakout hit, topped the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 and spent months in the chart’s top 10. On Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, “Kill Bill” broke the record for most weeks spent at No. 1 (21 weeks).
SOS also yielded the Hot 100 top 10 singles “Nobody Gets Me” (No. 10) and “Snooze” (No. 7), which reached the top 10 in its 35th week on the chart. Prior to the album’s release, two other singles hit the top 10: “Good Days” (No. 9) and “I Hate U” (No. 7). The VMA-winning “Shirt” peaked at No. 11 and topped both the Rhythmic and R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay charts.
During a call about a potential SZA performance at the show, Punch says MTV “couldn’t give a clear answer as to why she wasn’t [nominated for artist of the year]. It was just, ‘Well, she’s nominated for all these other [awards].’” The nominees for artist of the year at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards were Beyoncé, Karol G, Shakira, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj and eventual winner Taylor Swift.
The nearly four-hour-long 2023 VMAs ceremony featured an overwhelming amount of performances, none of which included SZA — despite the initial efforts to have her grace the show’s stage. During one of those negotiations, “because there were people on [the call] about logistics for the show who didn’t have anything to do with [the nominations],” Punch said, “they ended up saying, ‘OK, well we could do another call.’” Nonetheless, MTV “didn’t want to discuss artist of the year, which to me was really a slap in the face,” he remarked.
“Why wouldn’t she be nominated for artist of the year? Even with the other artists that were nominated for artist of the year, some of them were even off-cycle. They didn’t have an album out. I mean, no disrespect to them or anybody else; everybody’s great and all of that, but still, you can’t discredit what SOS has done and is currently doing,” Punch added.
Three of the nominees — Doja Cat, Minaj and Shakira — had not released albums since the 2022 VMAs ceremony.
Ultimately, MTV’s failure to provide an explanation for the snub and reach a resolution spurred Punch to pull SZA’s performance. “I figured, why go perform and do this if she’s not going to be respected to the highest level? So it was my call to actually pull out of the performance,” he explained. However, the Top Dawg Entertainment president noted that SZA is “a very sweet person and she’s not for all of the nonsense and the politics and the back-and-forth and all of that. So, our feelings might be a little different.
“Ultimately, I felt it was disrespectful and I was very stern on that and influencing that,” Punch concluded. “If there’s any issues or backlash and all of that, I’m taking all of that.”
Despite the VMAs kerfuffle, SZA is currently powering through the final leg of her SOS headlining arena tour. According to Billboard Boxscore, the tour has grossed $34.5 million and sold 238,000 tickets. On Friday (Sept. 15), the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter released two singles: a Justin Bieber-assisted acoustic reboot of “Snooze” and a highly anticipated Drake collaboration titled “Slime You Out.”
Last week (Sept. 8), SZA announced a deluxe edition of SOS titled LANA at a surprise event at New York’s Brooklyn Navy Yard. The expanded version of her triple-platinum album will arrive “this fall.”
SZA, an Academy Award-nominated songwriter, has earned eight top 10 hits on the Hot 100 from 40 career entries. On the Billboard 200, she has earned two top five albums: 2017’s Ctrl (No. 3) — which has spent a whopping 326 weeks on the ranking — and 2022’s SOS (No. 1).
The revelation of SZA’s situation comes after another R&B artist — Grammy-nominated “On My Mama” singer Victoria Monét — revealed to fans that MTV told her team that it was “too early in [her] story” to perform at the VMAs. Monét is a three-time Grammy nominee with writing credits for a range of artists including Ariana Grande and BLACKPINK. She has also charted a pair of albums on the Billboard 200 and two songs on the Hot 100; Monét made her recording debut in 2014.
Last week (Aug. 4), Ciara debuted the Chris Brown-assisted “How We Roll,” the lead single from CiCi, her forthcoming EP. Today, the R&B powerhouse sat down with Billboard to reflect on the 20-year anniversary of her debut album, her recent K-Pop collabs, and the sound of CiCi.
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“I feel blessed. I feel like I’m just getting started at the same time,” Ciara gushed. “To know that it was 20 years ago that I was just really, really ambitious… dreaming big, I envisioned that I’d be sitting somewhere like this 20 years later.” In 2004, Goodies, Ciara’s debut studio album, debuted and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The record spawned three consecutive smash hits on the Billboard Hot 100, including the Missy Elliott-assisted “1, 2 Step” (No. 2), the Ludacris-featuring “Oh” (No. 2), and the No. 1-peaking “Goodies” (with Petey Pablo).
Reflecting on the dominance of Goodies, Ciara said that she was very aware of her success during that moment because she always “believed in [herself].” “I was on camera, documented right at the graduation, and the guy said, ‘So, Ciara, where do you see yourself a year from now?’” the “I Bet” singer recounted. “And in my super-Atlanta thick accent, I said, ‘I see myself having the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts!’ And then literally, “Goodies” was No. 1 on the Billboard charts. I dreamed big!”
Speaking on her more recent music, the Grammy-winner described her new Chris Brown duet as “a great example of that feel-good R&B, dance, rhythmic, melodic energy that you can play at a house party. It’s gon’ set the house party off right.” She noted that this collaboration with Chris Brown is something that the pair have wanted to do for “a long time.” “It was an artist’s dream come true for the both of us,” she remarked.
The pair’s new single, “How We Roll,” is the first official single from Ciara’s forthcoming CiCi EP, which she describes as “classic [Ciara], but elevated.” “It’s got a super strong R&B core,” she revealed. “CiCi is that ‘turn that lip up, get a lil stank… Ciara, she keeps it cute, she’s a mom of three, she’s unbothered,” she said, outlining the two sides of her that are present on the upcoming project. “I really wanted to bring that classic R&B energy to this project.”
CiCi follows a string of 2023 releases from Ciara including “Da Girls” and the Summer Walker-assisted “Better Thangs.” The “Level Up” singer also released a slew of collaborations with Asian artists this year including XG (“Left Right Remixx”, Jackson Wang (“Slow”), and Agnez Mo (“Get Loose”). “I feel like I’m touching and tapping into a lot of the boxes I always wanted to, and that was one of them,” she said. “That audience is so special. It’s fascinating to see how they react to their own artists, I’m like ‘That’s the energy that you want. That’s the energy that you want to be apart of.’”
Ciara has earned four top ten albums on the Billboard 200, including 2006’s chart-topping Ciara: The Evolution. On the Hot 100, the “Body Party” singer has notched 21 entries, including notable hits such as “Promise” (No. 11), “Level Up” (No. 59) and “Lose Control” (No. 3).
The slow dance between Usher and Keke Palmer set the world on fire last month, and now the Grammy-winning R&B icon is finally revealing his thoughts on the whole ordeal. “Every night I’m thinking about how the world now is going to react to this moment that I’ll have with whoever I’m choosing to sing […]
Coco Jones’ “ICU” is the gift that keeps on giving. Nearly nine months after the Bel-Air actress first debuted her ballad, Justin Timberlake has now blessed the track with a brand new remix. Rumors of a revamp started swirling on Monday (July 10) when Jones took to Twitter to post a photoset that included a […]
