As anyone still wearing their Cowboy Carter or Brat hat knows, the ultimate goal of pop music is to define an entire year. For some artists, that means getting started early—and so it is that, at the dawn of 2025, we can inspect the last few months’ sprinklings of clues, teasers, and (frankly) press releases to map out a prospectus for the coming year in music. There are the festival-season floor-fillers, the bombshell comebacks, the boom-or-busts, the will-they-even-release-its (looking at you, Lana, Lorde, and LCD Soundsystem), and, of course, the most long-awaited, long-debated, and long-delayed of long players. We’ll start you off with one of the latter; read on for updates on Rosalía, Clipse, DJ Koze, the Weeknd, and many more.
A$AP Rocky: Don’t Be Dumb
A$AP Rocky had planned to release Don’t Be Dumb on August 30, but his Testing follow-up has been indefinitely delayed. As we wait for the Harlem rapper’s first project since 2018, he has released the songs “Highjack” (featuring Jessica Pratt!) and “Ruby Rosary.”
–Matthew Strauss