Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw a star-studded new Young Thug project and new rock revivalism from Greta Van Fleet. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Young Thug — Slime Language 2
The new Young Thug/YSL Records collection features an all-star roster that includes Drake, Travis Scott, Big Sean, and Meek Mill. Thug said of the creative environment of making this album, “It seemed like a show. It seemed like a Lollapalooza, Coachella. It just seemed like a show. Every moment was performing. Those was more a performance. You got to show up. You know what I’m saying? Everybody’s watching there. Everybody here. Everybody in your sh*t. Everybody in your face, you got to show up. It just felt like that. Every moment.”
Greta Van Fleet — The Battle At Garden’s Gate
In his review of the new nostalgic rock effort from Greta Van Fleet, Uproxx’s Steven Hyden decides that while the band often comes across like cheesy ’70s cosplay, they are nevertheless “capable of kicking up a pretty enjoyable racket that hits the pleasure centers of prog-blooze aficionados with ruthless Pavlovian consistency.”
Saweetie — Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1
Every summer needs an anthem, so Saweetie has preemptively dropped a handful of them on her new project, Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1. The brief project is full of highlights, including a track with Drakeo The Ruler and another on which she seemingly goes after her ex, Quavo.
Paul McCartney — McCartney III Imagined
The former Beatle came up with a fun idea to follow 2020’s McCartney III: release the album again, but this time, get other folks to cover or otherwise reinterpret the songs. Given that he’s Paul McCartney, he was able to secure quite the lineup of collaborators for the project, which includes Phoebe Bridgers, Anderson .Paak, Idris Elba, EOB (Ed O’Brien), Dominic Fike, St. Vincent, Damon Albarn, Beck, Khruangbin, Josh Homme, 3D RDN (of Massive Attack), and Blood Orange.
Sharon Van Etten — Epic Ten
Van Etten’s latest project is quite similar to McCartney’s: On her anniversary reissue of Epic (titled Epic Ten), Van Etten recruited a handful of artists to cover her songs. Contributing to the project are Big Red Machine (Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner), Idles, Lucinda Williams, Shamir, Courtney Barnett and Vagabon, St. Panther, and Fiona Apple.
Conway The Machine — La Maquina
Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes that on the new Conway The Machine project, the Griselda rapper “changes lanes from the usual gritty output he’s best known for, connecting with ATLien stars like JID, Ludacris, and 2 Chainz to show that his comfort zone covers much more ground than you might think.”
Regard, Troye Sivan, and Tate McRae — “You”
After working with Kacey Musgraves and Mark Ronson on “Easy” a few months ago, Troye Sivan has further expanded his list of collaborators. This time, he links up with Tate McRae and Regard on “You,” an electro-pop tune that’s a fine preface to the upcoming summer.
Rina Sawayama and Elton John — “Chosen Family”
Sawayama managed to lock down John for a collaboration because he was so enamored by her abilities. He says he “stopped in [his] tracks” when he heard “Comme Des Garçons” and also noted, “She is just an extraordinary talent. Rina doesn’t just represent the cross-cultural mix of inspiration from which the best music always thrives, but a generation who have grown up with the internet and the entire history of music at their fingertips and mix together whatever they please with real love and understanding, unconstrained by old ideas of genre or boundary. To my mind, she’s the brightest embodiment of this: a brilliant, confidence-oozing, endlessly fascinating songwriter and performer.”
Lucy Dacus — “Hot & Heavy”
After dropping an album in 2018 and spending much of 2019 trickling out a series of holiday-themed singles, Lucy Dacus is gearing up for a new album. She previewed it last week with “Hot & Heavy,” an introspective and retrospective tune she says was initially about an old friend but ended up becoming about her growing beyond previous versions of herself.
IDK and Offset — “Shoot My Shot”
IDK has dropped a project every year since 2014, so don’t think he’s taking 2021 off. He’s been busting out singles this year and the latest is “Shoot My Shot,” an Offset collaboration on which the pair boast about their abilities when it comes to drawing the attention of the fairer sex.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.