Friday Five: Joni Mitchell dips into her archives, Anitta breaks into the U.S. market, and more
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Every Friday, EW's music team runs down the five best songs of the week. In today's edition, Anitta teams with Cardi B and Myke Towers, Sault return with another album-of-the-year contender, Brent Faiyaz channels the Weeknd, Joni Mitchell opens up her archives, and Busta Rhymes spits a quick-fire verse with Anderson .Paak.
"Me Gusta" — Anitta feat. Cardi B & Myke Towers
As the mainstream U.S. music market becomes more inclusive of songs performed in languages other than English, stars like Brazilian pop phenom Anitta are hoping to flourish. The Portuguese, Spanish, and English speaker is only using two thirds of her fluent tongues here to complement Cardi B's bilingual (and bisexual?) rap lyrics. Unexpectedly, hitmaker Ryan Tedder has a hand on the production side of the track, crafting the baile funk-inspired beat alongside Latin producers Mauricio Rengifo, RDD, and Andrés Torres. —Marcus Jones
"Son Shine" — Sault
It's hard to go wrong with any song off Sault's exemplary Untitled (Rise) — their second album-of-the-year contender, following June's Untitled (Black Is) — but "Son Shine" is a great place to start. The mysterious collective combines sunny Stevie Wonder grooves with a message of hope: "You know that one day/Things have to change/The missing piece, a long way." —Alex Suskind
"Dead Man Walking" — Brent Faiyaz
It's been a while since there's been an R&B artist like the Weeknd in his Trilogy era, where the music felt fast, loose, and dangerous, even when the melodies sounded sweet. But the Maryland-born singer achieves just that on this new track off the deluxe edition of F— The World, mixing foreboding strings with '90s-style ad libs as he croons about living the life of "a young stunner, till I D.I.E." —M.J.
"House of the Rising Sun" — Joni Mitchell
Before she became one of the most storied songwriters of her generation, Joni Mitchell was a young musician from Alberta, Canada. Next month, she'll reveal some of the work she recorded back then in Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967), a near-six-hour set of unreleased tracks, leading all the way up to her 1968 debut, Song to a Seagull. The first single, a bare-bones 1963 performance of "House of the Rising Sun" at a Canadian radio station, is an early showcase for Mitchell's gorgeous, warbling falsetto, and small slice of the brilliance to come. —A.S.
"Yuuu" — Busta Rhymes feat. Anderson .Paak
The second single off Busta Rhymes' forthcoming Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God, his first studio album in eight years, sees the rap icon trading spitfire verses with multi-instrumentalist Anderson .Paak. But Busta holds his cards until the final verse: "Bitch, I'm back and they don't know what to do/Best you ever saw, every metaphor, medical/Precautions will be needed, crazy like a pack of animals/Hope you all got a proper view." —A.S.
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