Best New Tracks: Lil Wayne, Turnstile, Little Simz, and More
Albums come fromLil Wayne,Little Simz,Turnstile,Addison Rae,and MARINA, withJPEGMAFIAexpanding hisVeteranLP.
Singles, on the other hand, stem fromLil Yachty,Ty Dolla $ign,Pi'erre Bourne,Kevin AbstractxDominic FikeandGlorilla.
Lil Wayne has shared the sixth installment of hisTha Carteralbum series:Tha Carter VI.The album arrives almost seven years after its predecessor and featuresBig Sean,2 Chainzand many others.
Spotify|Apple Music
The sixth studio album by English rapper Little Simz has surfaced. EntitledLotus, the initially delayed LP featuresObongjayar,Moses Sumney,Sampha, Yusef Dayes and more.
Spotify|Apple Music
Turnstile has shared the audiovisual albumNever Enough. Also set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, the album is produced by the band's Brendan Yates and tracks 'SEEIN STARS,' 'BIRDS,' 'NEVER ENOUGH' and 'LOOK OUT FOR ME' all land on the tracklist.
Spotify|Apple Music
Addison Rae has made her formal debut as a solo musical artist with her first studio album:Addison. Spanning 12 tracks, the album features 'Headphones On,' 'Aquamarine,' 'High Fashion' and 'Diet Pepsi.'
Spotify|Apple Music
Marina Diamondis – now just MARINA – has presented her sixth studio album:PRINCESS OF POWER.
Spotify|Apple Music
Leave it to Lil Yachty to sample everyone's favoriteMaggie Rogerssong. On Boat's first solo release of 2025, he samples Rogers' 'Alaska.'
Spotify|Apple Music
After announcing the news earlier in the week, JPEGMAFIA has lifted the curtain on theDirector's Cut(deluxe edition) of his iconic second studio albumVeteran
Spotify| Apple Music
In February, Ty Dolla $ign tapped ye for 'Wheels Fall Off.' Today, the multi-hyphenate is back with his second solo single of the year 'ALL IN.'
Spotify|Apple Music
Pi'erre Bourne has shared new single 'Blocs' – his first solo studio release in a few years lifted from his imminent LP, dropping at the end of the month.
Spotify|Apple Music
The first single from Kevin Abstract's newBLUSHventure has transpired at last. The high-octane 'Geezer' offering features 'Peach' collaborator Dominic Fike. The track isn't on streaming services yet.
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Earlier this month, a band called the Velvet Sundown surpassed 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Its profile features two albums, some gauzy cover art and a genre-appropriate backstory. The music was credible, the branding effective and the effect convincing. Only afterward did we learn the truth: There was no band. Every note, lyric, image and faux-autobiographical gesture was the work of generative artificial intelligence. The project was presented as human, then rebranded as 'synthetic music guided by human creative direction,' a soft euphemism for automation. Whatever creative intentions, aesthetic sensibilities or prompting skills that may have guided the project, the resulting songs still arose from full substitution because no embodied musical practice took place. No performance, no skill-based interaction with the medium, no causal chain running through human hands in the act of making. We are in the process of crossing a threshold. 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Platforms like Suno do not understand or feel music. They approximate its grammar. They rely on vast archives of recorded music, often pulled without permission or compensation. AI's 'cheap' outputs aren't cheap because the cost of making art has vanished. They're cheap because the cost for training is being invisibly offloaded onto past labor that was never compensated. They don't feel or resolve tension. They don't second-guess themselves. They produce form without the living content that once made form matter. Other audio tools based on machine learning — e.g., Izotope's noise reduction plug-in and Logic Pro's stem separation — have already become normalized in music production. But generative AI crosses a different line. It doesn't just assist the process. It threatens to supersede it entirely. The result could be substitution rather than enhancement. While some might argue that generative AI democratizes creativity, this framing obscures a deeper reality. These systems make possible the instantaneous imitation of creativity. Authorship too easily collapses into prompt-entry. It is more akin to configuration from a catalog. Yes, AI can and will enhance creative projects, making new outcomes possible. No, it will not mean the same thing if no human struggle threads it together. When I initially shared my AI-assisted track with a few friends, I withheld the fact that the vocals had been created by a machine. The reception was warm. Some listeners were moved to tears. Then I shared the track with some other friends, disclosing the AI vocals upfront. The reception was quite different. 'There's no tell in the vocal that it's a heartless construct sent by fascitarian tech overlords to extract phosphorus from the working class,' one wrote. 'So: 1) good job, and 2) ohmygodwhatishappening?' Another said simply, 'Nice track — but I draw a hard line on AI for music creation, and I'm sure you know why.' I do know why. Because music isn't just sound. It's a relationship based on tension, memory and embodiment. It's the moment in the take that no one planned, but everyone went with, or the phrasing that makes the line land. I don't think AI will erase human music. Music is social; it comes from bodies in time. But the economic logic is changing. A tireless synthetic co-worker, charging a modest monthly subscription fee and trained on the unpaid labor of artists whose livelihoods it now threatens — this is all new. The point is not to romanticize a pre-generative-AI past. It is to understand that the problem is not the tool but the system that deploys it to cheapen labor and consolidate cultural production on private platforms. The question is not only, 'Can AI make art?' but also, 'Who controls what counts as art and under what terms?' Platforms like Suno are not only generating songs. They are scripting the future conditions under which music will be made, circulated and valued. To what extent these systems serve as creative tools or substitutes for creativity will decide whether culture remains an open field of human meaning or a closed loop of recombinable parts. That decision is, in principle, ours to make. But the conditions for exercising that agency are eroding quickly.
