Friday Music Guide: New Music From The Weeknd & Future, Grupo Frontera & Bad Bunny, Kim Petras & Nicki Minaj and More

Jason Lipshutz
·4 min read
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Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.

This week, The Weeknd and Future are “Double” trouble, Bad Bunny co-signs an ascendant regional Mexican group, and Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj are not, in fact, better off alone. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

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The Weeknd & Future, “Double Fantasy”

As The Weeknd’s embattled HBO series The Idol finally premieres in June and looks to prove the doubters wrong, the superstar has preceded the fictional music-industry drama with a new single that should heat up the charts in real life: “Double Fantasy” reunites The Weeknd and frequent co-star Future, who brought Abel Tesfaye into his trap universe on past collaborations like “Low Life” and “Comin Out Strong,” and returns the favor by contributing to The Weeknd’s synth-pop fantasia here. “Double Fantasy” has plenty of double entendres built around a juicy, radio-ready chorus, but works because both A-listers sound especially engaged on the track, making a bid for another hit rather than tossing out a loose soundtrack single.

Grupo Frontera & Bad Bunny, “un x100to”

While Bad Bunny has broken barriers for Spanish-language music across the mainstream over the past year, regional Mexican music has become absolutely dominant in recent months, with multiple artists unlocking chart achievements that would have been unthinkable at the beginning of this decade. One of those artists is Grupo Frontera, who have already established a global footprint despite only forming as a group last year — and “un x100to,” a high-wattage new collaboration with Bad Bunny, will only grow their presence, as the artists share a breezy, charmingly sincere love song about using the final one percent of a phone battery to express how you really feel.

Kim Petras with Nicki Minaj, “Alone”

Alice Deejay’s timeless dance hit “Better Off Alone” gets a modern facelift thanks to Kim Petras and Nicki Minaj, who join forces for a new single that was summer-song aspirations apparent in every detail. The sample propels “Alone” forward, but Petras is steadily in the synth-pop lane of her excellent early singles, and Minaj provides some extra juice to the song in its second half — this is smartly orchestrated pop that offers both low-stakes fun for listeners as well as carries lofty commercial ambitions for its two stars.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Don’t Try This at Home 

Hip-hop’s most prolific artist is actually speeding up: a little over three months after YoungBoy Never Broke Again released the sonic left turn I Rest My Case, he’s already back with Don’t Try This at Home, a 33-song opus that offers something for every type of fan thanks in part to its gargantuan run time. The new album may be as long as a feature film, but Don’t Try This at Home never feels like a slog: YoungBoy is adept at telling gritty street stories that command the listener’s attention, and when the guests (Post Malone, Nicki Minaj, The Kid LAROI, Mariah the Scientist) show up, they agreeably switch up the album’s flavor.

Foo Fighters, “Rescued”

“It came in a flash,” Dave Grohl sings to open the new Foo Fighters single, “it came outta nowhere / It happened so fast, and then it was over.” Hearing those introductory words, one can’t help but think of the shocking death of longtime Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins last year, and how the rest of the band must be processing that loss — yet the arena rockers soldier on with “Rescued,” reaching out for help without wallowing in sorrow, and honoring Hawkins’ memory with a song that slams forward with guttural growls, crisp guitar work and, yes, righteous drum fills.

Agust D (Suga), D-Day 

With D-Day, Suga not only resumes his Agust D moniker to close out a trilogy of projects that he started in 2016 — the BTS member also grows in front of our eyes, evolving his songwriting and presentation in meaningful ways as more global fans than ever before pay attention to his solo work. Although the boisterous “HUH?!?,” featuring J-Hope, will surely please BTS fans, D-Day also contains several highlights featuring Suga on his own, from the swaying “SDL” to the percussive “Haegeum,” the latter of which boasts some of his tightest rhymes to date.

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