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 Murda Beatz recruit nearly half the music industry for a new song and Burna Boy come through with a big-time collaboration of his own. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.
Murda Beatz — “No Más” Feat. Quavo, J Balvin, Anitta, and Pharrell
Everybody’s trying to drop a “song of the summer” contender right now and Murda Beatz got all the help he possibly could on one last week. “No Más” is definitely a warm and breezy tune fit for the hotter months and the list of features is a party on its own, as the tune includes contributions from Quavo, J Balvin, Anitta, and Pharrell.
Burna Boy — “For My Hand” Feat. Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran’s a pretty good dude to have in your corner and indeed, that’s what Burna Boy has on “For My Hand.” On the tender tune, the two make an exceptionally good vocal pairing, with Burna’s deeper voice playing extremely well with Sheeran’s higher register.
King Princess — “Change The Locks”
King Princess gave herself a tough act to follow with her 2019 debut album Cheap Queen, but she’s going to try with Hold On Baby, which is out at the end of July. She offered a taste of it last week with “Change The Locks,” a mostly low-key with a boisterous and explosive chorus that conveys the emotional intensity of the tune.
The 1975 — “Part Of The Band”
The 1975 are coming back, beginning their trek last week with “Part Of The Band,” a tune more organic-sounding than their recent output. The headline, though, is the very Matty Healy lyrics, with lines like, “I like my men like I like my coffee / Full of soy milk and so sweet, it won’t offend anybody,” and, “Am I ironically woke? The butt of my joke? / Or am I just some post-coke, average, skinny bloke / Calling his ego imagination?”
Brent Faiyaz — “All Mine”
On his new album Wasteland, Faiyaz goes through a deep journey of self-discovery, or at least one of self-expression. Uproxx’s Wongo Okon notes in his review of the album, “What he soon learns through this album’s well-crafted, dark, and vivid records is that the fast life is oftentimes a death race rather than a carefree cruise through the city.”
Aespa — “Girls”
K-pop has proven to be an especially impactful part of the American music landscape in recent years and now Aespa is the latest group to help push the genre forward, like they do on the new single “Girls.” Uproxx’s Armon Sadler notes of the song and its accompanying video, “‘Girls’ is fierce both vocally and visually, as the K-pop group displays sharp choreography, firm lyricism, and collectively jarring melodies as they traverse an elevator and dance in a dojo.”
Kid Cudi — “Love”
Cudi has had himself a better music career than most so far, which he observed last week with The Boy Who Flew To The Moon, Vol. 1, a new compilation album. The best-of also serves as a resurfacing of “Love,” which Cudi previously shared on SoundCloud back in 2015, so learned Cudi fans are surely pleased to have this one on streaming services.
Fivio Foreign and The Kid Laroi — “Paris To Tokyo”
This week was especially rich with top-tier collaborations, thanks to the aforementioned as well as Fivio Foreign and The Kid Laroi’s new link-up, “Paris To Tokyo.” It’s a brief tune, clocking in at just a couple minutes, but the two get after it over an excitable, in-your-face instrumental and similarly spirited lyrical performances.
Doechii — “B*tch I’m Nice”
In a time when a lot of songs mainly get heard in 10-second, TikTok-friendly chunks, 90 seconds can seem like an eternity. That’s also how long Doechii needed to make an impact on last week’s “B*tch I’m Nice,” a quick, rapid-fire tune that packs some witty and memorable bars, like, “Know this p*ssy good, and it purr, but it still got bite.”
Alvvays — “Pharmacist”
The Canadian group found themselves on the rise with their 2017 sophomore album Antisocialites, but it’s been nearly five years since that album and they’ve yet to release a new one. They’re working on that, though: They announced Blue Rev last week and shared “Pharmacist,” yet another example this week of a notably short song (just over a couple minutes here), but their signature dreamy/hazy indie rock aesthetic it out in full force here, complete with a frenetic and exciting guitar solo to cap off what can only be described as a fantastic set-up for this long-awaited album cycle.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.