Tracks Ranked
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With the raw energy of corridos and the dance-floor fervor of Jersey club, Fuerza Regida’s latest creation, Pero No Te Enamores, forges a bold, unprecedented fusion. At the helm, frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz, a.k.a. JOP, embraced the risk of blending these distinct styles.
“When I first heard [Jersey club] about one to two years ago, I loved it. I was like, ‘Man, I wanna do something with it.’ I just didn’t know how. But I knew that when I did, they were gonna talk sh–t,” he tells Billboard Español. “So when it got to the point to make a new album, I was like, ‘I wanna do Jerseys and dance music, I want to move something different but still keep the original Fuerza Regida [essence], with the guitars.”
The gamble paid off. This week, the album, which was released on July 25, made an immediate impact on the Billboard charts, debuting at No. 2 on the Top Latin Albums and No. 23 on the Billboard 200. The focus track, “Nel,” marked by its emotional-yet-disillusioned tone, entered the coveted Billboard Hot 100 at 91. Additionally, eight cuts from the album appear on Hot Latin Songs.
For this new sound, Fuerza Regida enlisted music producers Gordo — known for his work on Drake’s Baltimore club hit “Sticky” — and Synthetic, the architect behind Lil Uzi Vert’s Jersey club smash “Just Wanna Rock.” “Gordo has the dance s–t on lock, he’s the man; and Synthetic, he’s killing it with the Jersey club,” adds JOP.
The San Bernardino band’s innovative leap into Jersey corridos does more than fuse two disparate genres: It carves out a fresh niche in the musical lexicon, affirming that the barrios and dancehalls can, in fact, share a singular, resonant heartbeat.
Below, Billboard ranks all 15 songs from Pero No Te Enamores, from worst to best.
“Britney”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Fuerza Regida
Munchkins, your time is now! After dominating 2023 with four Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hits, and kicking off the year with four Grammy nominations — including best new artist — and a Super Bowl commercial, Ice Spice has finally unveiled her debut studio album.
Titled Y2K! — a nod to her Jan. 1, 2000, birthday — the new record finds the Bronx rapper assuming her throne as the queen of New York drill. The album builds on the dynamic she and go-to producer RiotUSA established with 2023’s Like..? EP, looping in new names like Lily Kaplan, Nico Baran, Synthetic and Venny to add different textures to Ice’s take on drill. The album finds its anchors in those skittering snares, but nods to Jersey Club, nifty dancehall samples and star-studded collaborations (Travis Scott, Gunna and Central Cee) make Y2K! feel much more expansive than its predecessor.
And yet, at just under half an hour, Y2K! never tries to be something that it’s not, or overstay its welcome. This is an unfussy collection of 10 tracks that double down on Ice’s (sometimes) poop-minded metaphors, her trademark laid-back flow (although she does beef up her voice for the album’s most drill-forward tracks), and her effortless charisma that captivated the world by way of “Munch” two summers ago.
The “Princess Diana” rapper brought in 2024 with “Think U the Shit (Fart),” a hilariously infectious joint that found her throwing shots at fellow Grammy-nominated rapper Latto over a beat that played on the wonky video game-esque synths of new jazz. Although that track peaked at No. 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 — her highest peak for a solo single — the Y2K! era would not begin in earnest until the springtime, with the Sean Paul-sampling “Gimmie A Light” arriving on May 10.
She then revealed the New York-themed album cover — which drew some ire due to the LP’s title being digitally spray-painted over a trash can — on June 5, with a pre-release single “Phat Butt” arriving later that month (June 21) ahead of her 2024 BET Awards performance. By July, Ice had unleashed the record’s latest radio single, the Central Cee-assisted “Did It First,” which became her first Hot 100 entry since “Fart,” debuting at No. 62 on the chart dated July 27. She also spent the first half of the year guesting on Cash Cobain and Bay Swag’s “Fisherrr” remix and preparing for her upcoming Y2K! World Tour, which kicked off on July 4 at the Rockslide Festival, marking her first headlining trek.
Read Billboard’s ranking of every song on Ice Spice’s Y2K! LP.
Plenty Sun
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Midway through Everything I Thought It Was, Justin Timberlake makes a callback that he knows his fans are going to love. “Hey fellas! Hey fellas!,” he crows during the dance barnburner “My Favorite Drug,” to which he’s greeted with a chorus of manly “Yeahhhh”s. Timberlake then goes, “I know I did it before, but I’ma do it again!” And after that, of course, he pivots to the ladies: “I know you came here alone, but you gon’ leave with a friend!”
The nod towards the classic call-and-response hook of Justified classic “Señorita” is intentional, and emblematic of what Timberlake has set out to accomplish on his first album since 2018’s Man of the Woods. That album dabbled in country, Americana, traditional R&B and funk through a dance-pop lens; parts of Man of the Woods were captivating, other parts didn’t quite land, and the experiment earned Timberlake some of the harshest critiques of his career.
Six whole years have passed since then, multiple full eras of popular music along with them, and Timberlake has re-emerged with an album that plucks him out of the woods and better understands his core appeal. Everything I Thought It Was finds Timberlake playing the hits to a degree — shimmering rhythmic pop; crackling, Timbaland-helmed beats; disco grooves that aren’t contained to radio-single lengths; even the return of *NSYNC — but also does not represent a retreat into safe territory. Timberlake may be squarely in his forties at this point, but he still aims to have every moment of a sprawling, 76-minute album be considered thrilling. He’s a consummate entertainer who knows what he’s best at, and still finds occasions to operate in the margins of his aesthetic.
Since his last album release, Timberlake has faced newfound public scrutiny, both in regard to his past relationship with Britney Spears as well as for his role in the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy; Timberlake has revisited these issues himself, while also declaring in concert that he’d like to “apologize to absolutely f–king nobody.” Everything I Thought It Was is bookended by a pair of songs, “Memphis” and “Conditions,” that dissect his relationship to celebrity and the pristine image that he maintained for many years in the spotlight before blemishes began to be highlighted (“I’m less Superman, more Clark Kent/ You want a hero, I don’t know where he went,” he admits on the latter track).
In between those two songs is more than an hour’s worth of finely crafted, wholly satisfying pop, but the beginning and ending stand out, and fascinate, amid renewed scrutiny. Timberlake is known to take roughly a half-decade to craft full-length statements, but let’s hope he comes back sooner next time, and continues to balance sumptuous radio fodder with self-reflection.
While all of Everything I Thought It Was is worth checking out, which tracks are the early standouts? Here is a preliminary ranking of every song on Justin Timberlake’s latest album.
“Flame”
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