From GoldLink to the return of A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey, here are all the tracks we’ve had on repeat this week.
Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell (the whole fucking album)
If you hadn’t heard – Her Royal Highness, Lana Del Rey, is back to claim her stake on the best album of 2019.
This morning, our OG sad girl dropped her highly anticipated sixth studio album Norman Fucking Rockwell. As ever, its 15-tracks are packed with haunting piano melodies, dramatic orchestral interludes and hazy synths, telling stories of glamour and nostalgia, tortured love and the trials and tribulations of being a full-on femme fatale.
She also blessed us with the visuals for a sultry cover of Sublime’s “Doin’ Time”, seeing a super-size Lana wondering around a tiny little LA that’d fit – appropriately – right in the palm of her hand. Long live Sad Girl Summer.
ICYMI: A$AP Rocky is back home after being convicted of assault in Sweden earlier this year (in the words of eternal girl crush Zoe Kravitz, “welcome home flacko”…)
And just like that, the rapper’s dropped a brand new single and video. “Babushka Boi” sees him and a group of other prisoners hunted by the police (depicted as grotesque, pig-like figures), featuring one suave bank robbery, a face-off shoot-out and – plot twist – a few strings of police-pork sausages…
GoldLink – “U Say” ft. Tyler, The Creator and Jay Prince
This week DMV rapper GoldLink dropped the visuals for “U Say”, featuring Jay Prince and Tyler, The Creator, lifted from his acclaimed new album Diaspora.
Co-directed by Nigerian rapper Santi, the trippy visuals depict a glitzy, high-drama party that takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of a priest – sadly not Fleabag’s hot one – set on performing an exorcism.
From the opulent interiors to the best music video wardrobe we’ve seen in a while, take this as a mood board for the weekend…
7Chariot – “Eulogy”
Nashville-based singer Claire Wilkinson – aka 7Chariot – just bagged breakup song of the summer. Inspired by conflicting feelings over an old relationship, the 21-year-old wrote emotional track “Eulogy” as a form of therapy, ultimately deciding it’s better to look back on the whole situation with gratitude (cc. “thank u, next“).
“As I’ve gotten older I’ve realised that not all of my past relationships can be viewed as failures in a traditional sense, and that it’s easier to move forward with gratitude than with resentment,” Wilkinson says of the track. “Eulogy was written with that sentiment in mind. I choose to stitch together all the positive memories both for myself, and out of respect for the time I invested in that love. I think it’s important to grieve fully while also honouring the good parts, and that sort of duality is what inspired the song.”