New Music Friday: Stream new projects from J Hus, Alaska Reid, Blake Mills, and more

Former FADER cover star J Hus is three years out from his sophomore album Big Conspiracy, our favorite album of 2020. A pioneer of the Afrobeats-dancehall-grime fusion known as Afroswing, J Hus takes another step to household name status with his new project. Brutal and Beautiful Yard features Drake (on the single “Who Told You“), Burna Boy, Jorja Smith, and more.

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The debut album from Montana-born songwriter, co-produced by PC Music’s A.G. Cook, is full of electronica-flecked power-pop, among other things: In this week’s episode of The FADER Interview, Reid embraced the idea of Disenchanter as a slow burn. “I like the idea of an album being like, ‘No, you need to live with this. You need to sit in it. I’m not just one thing.”

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Singer-songwriter and production virtuoso Blake Mills arrives with Jelly Road fresh off his success as the ghostwriter for the titular band in Amazon’s drama series Daisy Jones & The Six. Jelly Roll was co-written with Chris Weisman in 2022 and was announced by the gorgeous lead single “Skeleton Is Walking.”

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On the cover art for Lil Tjay’s new album 222, the New York rapper almost hesitantly displays a handful of the scars he received in a June 2022 shooting, where he was shot seven times in a New Jersey mall. The tracklist includes “Beat The Odds,” the first song he released after his brush with death, appears on the tracklist with a new guest verse from Polo G, as well as features from Summer Walker, The Kid Laroi, Fivio Foreign, and more.

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The surprise fourth album from the U.K. dance duo is their first not to be released on a major label. “This record is a celebration of us feeling liberated right now,” Guy Lawrence says. “We’re not going to tour this record. We can do whatever we like and be super creative.” Alchemy came together as Guy adjusted to married life and Howard, his brother and the other half of Disclosure, recovered from a break-up and stressful tour schedule.

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Grandson is the second posthumous album after 2022’s What It Means To Be King from Chicago rapper King Von, who was shot and killed in 2020. Lil Durk, Polo G, Moneybagg Yo, 42 Dugg, G Herbo, and more feature across the project, announced just this week with the song “Heartless” with Tee Grizzley.

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Supermodels is the pop songwriter’s second full-length album, released today via Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. Inspired by career pressures and interpersonal disappointment, Supermodels contains the songs “Wet” and “Crumbs.”

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Boots Riley’s new fantasy comedy series I’m A Virgo is one of the best shows of the year, and the soundtrack for it comes from Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner’s experimental pop project. Their music matches the whimsy and tragedy you’d expect to find in a program about a 13-foot-tall Black teenager navigating life in Oakland.

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Three years ago, Ash Gutierrez was the 15-year-old golden boy of hyperpop, finding a significant underground following with songs like “Astrid,” one of our favorite songs of 2020. Fast forward a bit, and glaive is signed to a major label and sharing tracks like “im nothing thats all i am” that feature less mayhem and more radio-ready polish.

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Ana Roxanne and DJ Python, two heavyweights in the world of underground techno, team up for the eponymous album as Natural Wonder Beauty Concept. “The project gave us a creative license of freedom,” they say in a press release. “It was an opportunity to try anything out, whatever we happened to be feeling or influenced by.” The project’s third single “Driving” was a Song You Need.

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The Nashville punk band share their debut album on Jack White’s Third Man Records. You can probably finish a cup of coffee in the time it takes to listen to the whole thing, but there are layers to the group’s bite-sized blasts of guitar noise that will have you coming back for more.

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The end of a long-standing romantic relationship and the resulting fallout helped inform the latest record from El Kempner’s Palehound project. The noisy indie rock act’s third album features multi-instrumentalist Larz Brogan across its 10 tracks.

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Sicilian producer Shapednoise delivered some of the most hellish sound design in rap this year with two new singles: “Family” featuring Armand Hammer and “Know Yourself” with ZelooperZ and Brodinski. His fourth full-length, out today, also sports a collaboration with Moor Mother.

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Rochester, New York’s Rx Papi has set his own definition for rap rawness, displaying a capability for hilarious punchlines, absurdist song structure, and finely detailed tragedies across his wildly expansive catalog.

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Lo Village, the Maryland R&B/rap trio comprising lead singer Ama, her brother Kane, and her childhood best friend Tyler (both emcees), have shared their first album in six years. The group’s extended hiatus was due to Ama’s tragic, life-derailing multipole sclerosis diagnosis, and the journey back hasn’t been easy. If anything positive can be said about the disease that stopped them in their collective tracks just when they were picking up steam, it’s that they’ve returned all the more mature for it, gaining a wisdom only intense adversity can bring.

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