#New Music Friday: Stream new project from Lil Durk, Arlo Parks, Kari Faux, and more

The Chicago drill rap superstar’s eighth album is here. The album was announced two weeks ago with “All My Life,” a song stressing resilience and positivity featuring J.Cole that feels a bit like Durk’s “I Can.” Other artists on the project include Future, Rob 49, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, Juice WRLD, and (sigh) Morgan Wallen.

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Two years ago, Arlo Parks shared Collapsing Into Sunbeams, the debut album that made the 20-year-old English singer-songwriter a rising star with a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, the Mercury Prize for Album of the Year, among other accolades. Her sophomore project My Soft Machine brings back her unique cross-genre approach with a few new splashes of color, like a Phoebe Bridgers feature on “Pegasus” and the electro-poppy “Weightless.” “This record is life through my lens, through my body,” she says in a press statement. “The mid-20s anxiety, the substance abuse of friends around me, the viscera of being in love for the first time, navigating PTSD and grief and self-sabotage and joy, moving through worlds with wonder and sensitivity.” Listen to Parks’ conversation with David Renshaw on this week’s episode of The FADER Interview.

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Roiled by the pressures and assorted corruptions of the music industry, the Little Rock R&B artist regrouped in her hometown to create her new project REAL B*TCHES DON’T DIE!. “This album is my best work yet,” Faux writes, “and it’s an homage to the loved ones I’ve lost, Southern rap, and my ability to alchemize pain that would break some people.” The album was announced by “Make A Wish,” an Aquemini-influenced constellation of resilience and exhaustion.

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On his first album for Warp Records, rapper/drummer/producer Kassa Overall invites a roster of guests that reflect his jazzy, amorphous approach to music: Ishmael Butler of Shabazz Palaces, Francis and the Lights, Lil B, Wiki, Danny Brown, Laura Mvula, Vijay Iyer, and Tomoki Sanders.

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The teenage Texan singer-songwriter has taken over TikTok with songs like “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me,” tracks that were recorded on the Bandlab app and have found a place in the hearts of millions of lovesick adolescents (read his thoughts on his rise to fame in his recent GEN F profile). Those songs are two of the nine tracks on his debut EP Petals To Thorns.

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Electro wizard Chris Clark takes a daring leap forward with his tenth studio album Sus Dog, his first album to prominently feature Clark as a vocalist. Executive produced by Thom Yorke (who sports a similar, yearningly wan register as Clark), Sus Dog opens up new dimensions in Clark’s already expansive universe. Its lead single “Town Crank” was a Song You Need.

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Last year, Miya Folick followed up her 2018 debut album with an EP called 2007. Her sophomore album Roach, out today, includes the tracks from 2007 and continues to pull from the indie pop singer-songwriter’s deep emotional well in ways that are weirdly danceable and pleasurably abstract. “It’s an album about trying to get to the core of what life really is,” she says.

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Rachel Brown and Nate Amos make adventurous music that ranges from clinical experimentation to oozing emotion (as in the case of May Song You Need entry “14”). But whatever mode

they’re in on Everyone’s Crushed — whether they’re coming from a cool remove or right in the thick of it — they always manage to keep things objectively interesting and emotionally evocative.

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The new duo from Mr Eazi and DJ Edu seeks to give the South African subgenre of amapiano a breakout moment outside of the continent while providing new sonic perspectives on its longstanding history. “Mzansi Chronicles is an ode to the amapiano sound that has been the soundtrack to my parties and me going to clubs,” Mr Eazi says in a statement. “It’s me working with some of my favorite artists and capturing my interpretation of elements I love from the scene.”

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The Los Angeles-based alt-rapper (and a longtime member of FADER’s extended family) offers up a new project today, four years in the making. Khary breaks down a quarter-life crisis with honesty and style across 13 tracks.

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More Photographs (A Continuum) expands on the singer-songwriter’s 2022 project with three new versions of existing songs and six new ones. “If This Is A Photograph is a house that you have been living inside of,” Morby writes in a press statement, “then More Photographs is, perhaps, the same home just experienced differently.” Listen to Kevin Morby’s episode of The FADER Interview here.

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The new album from Nate Young and John Olson was inspired by the New York Public Library and its surrounding museums, especially an exhibit on surrealism. “While Surrealism could generate often poetic and even humorous works,” Young says, “it was also taken up as a far more serious weapon in the struggle for political, social, and personal freedom, and by many more artists around the world.” “Engaged Withdrawal,” “My Whole Life,” and “Days Decay” were shared in early May along with the album’s announcement.

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Endeavoring “to make music that was useful,” the Chicago artist created a new album of gorgeous piano compositions that refuse to stay in the background and seep into your conscious state. Margaret discussed her decision to create the album after dropping out of music school: “I really didn’t want to play in an orchestra… I really just wanted to write movie scores. Then, I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter. Romantic Piano scratched an old itch.”

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The Detroit group creates electronic music that is fun, confident, and one-of-a-kind with its permutations of juke, footwork, techno, and rap. Lead single “ZOOTED” was a Song You Need.

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Houston rapper Monaleo found TikTok virality with her tracks “Beatin Down Yo Block” and “We Not Humpin” in 2021, and shares her debut album today. The album was preceded by the single “Ass Kicker,” a sequel-in-spirit to “Block,” and “Ridgemont Baby,” a kiss-off to people taking credit to her success wrapped in a nostalgic soul sample.

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Graham Jonson shares a new EP of jazzy, cozy psych-pop created with a collection of analog instruments and DAWs. Next week he’ll begin a tour with underground rapper Quadeca.

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Liz Lehman was assisted in painting the strange new world they built for Retinal Bloom, their newest project as The Scary Jokes, by production from the massively talented Angel Marcloid (Fire-Toolz). But unlike Marcloid’s multi-polar journeys into madness, Lehman’s aesthetic is more even-toned, a subtle tapestry of synth work where every sound slides into the next. Watch the darkly funny video for mid-album standout “Elephant Foot,” which premiered on The FADER earlier this week.

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Red Hot, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting AIDS through pop culture (per its mission statement), has collaborated with experimental music scene leaders Georgia Anne Muldrow, Angel Bat Dawid, Malcolm Jiyane Tree-o, and Irreversible Entanglements for Nuclear War, a tribute to afrofuturist free jazz iconoclast Sun Ra. The hour-long homage to the late legend reinterprets Ra’s 1981 eight-minute piece in protest of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant meltdown outside Philadelphia, where his physical form resided until his return to Saturn ten years later.

Stream: Bandcamp