With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week’s batch includes new albums from Pop Smoke, Willie Nelson, Westside Gunn, Boris, patten, and Greg Foat. Subscribe to Pitchfork’s New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.)
Pop Smoke: Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon [Victor Victor Worldwide/Republic]
After a previously shared Virgil Abloh album cover sparked controversy, the posthumous new Pop Smoke album arrives today with a new cover and a tracklist packed with features. Young Thug, Gunna, Quavo, 50 Cent, DaBaby, Future, Lil Baby, Swae Lee, and Tyga are among the guests on Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon.
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Willie Nelson: First Rose of Spring [Legacy]
First Rose of Spring is the latest in a steady stream of albums from country icon Willie Nelson. The album—which follows last year’s Ride Me Back Home—features the previously released title track, cover artwork from Nelson’s son Micah, and two songs co-written by Nelson and Buddy Cannon.
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Buy at Rough Trade
Westside Gunn: Flygod Is an Awesome God II [Griselda]
Just months after the release of Pray for Paris, Buffalo rapper Westside Gunn has dropped another full-length. The sequel to 2019’s Flygod Is an Awesome God features Griselda’s Benny the Butcher, plus Keisha Plum, Boldy James, and Daringer.
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Boris: NO [self-released]
Last week, the outre rock mainstays announced this self-released record in a statement of “renunciation”: “We hope this latest album can be a mirror that gathers and reflects people’s negative energy at a different angle, one that is positive,” they wrote. “That is the power and potential of the dark, extreme, and brutal noise music that we have experienced up to this point.” The album contains a cover of “Fundamental Error” by the Japanese hardcore punk group GUDON, as well as a “Anti-Gone,” which yesterday received a video in which a lone dancer thrashes in an empty music venue.
patten: GLOW [555-5555]
On last year’s FLEX, the inaugural LP on the UK producer’s 555-5555 imprint, patten returned to recording club music without guest vocalists. This time, he’s shorn the beats, too, for the electronic wash of GLOW. It was preceded by the single “SOFT POWER.”
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Greg Foat: Symphonie Pacifique [Strut]
The UK jazz artist summons choral textures, harp, pedal steel, and tubular bells on Symphonie Pacifique, expanding his piano-led compositions to include input from Zimbabwean drummer Sam Chagumachinyi and a tribute to the library music great Duncan Lamont. It was recorded between London, Edinburgh, and Gothenburg.
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Buy at Rough Trade