Summer Albums Preview: Who Could Top Your Playlist This Summer

As the end of the school year approaches and the summer months begin, the major focus of the public is what could bring them even more joy at this time of year. One of these major factors is, of course, music. Many artists will be releasing new music this summer as it is usually the time when the majority of the major music for the year is dropped and the most streams occur. Some artists already have gotten ahead of the game, releasing their music earlier this year, such as Camilla Cabello dropping Familia, in April and the Weeknd dropping his new album, Dawn FM, the first week of the new year. So as you wait eagerly for the latest music, let’s take a deeper dive into the possible music that will be topping the charts and your playlists. 

Starting off with the May releases, Kendrick Lamar and Harry Styles are releasing earliest, yet their albums could both be the biggest of the year. Kendrick Lamar has taken a five-year hiatus from music to really take time crafting his new album, Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers, expected to release on the 13th of May. It was also revealed earlier this month that the album could be released as two different projects, after Lamar posted a photo of him holding two discs, one saying “Morale,” the other saying “Steppers.” Possible features on the album have been very hard to uncover, with only two artists, Baby Keem, and Tanna Leone, both only heavily rumored, but only because they’re signed to Lamar’s music label, PG Lang. Meanwhile, Harry Styles has given us a bit of a sneak peek of what we could possibly expect from his next album, with the release of the first single for it in April, called “As It Was.” This will be the third album Styles has dropped since the split of One Direction, with his sophomore album, Fine Line, winning several awards mainly thanks to the success of his mega-hit “Watermelon Sugar.” The thirteen track album, titled Harry’s House, will release on May 20th, although there was a bit of disappointment from fans after he announced the tracklist and there were no obvious features on it. Harry’s House will no doubt be a success due to Styles’s massive fan base, but people question whether it will live up to the massive expectations of the fans and the mainstream.  

Moving onto the early June releases with Post Malone and Lil Uzi Vert. Post Malone will be releasing his fourth studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache, on June 3rd. He has already released one of the songs set to feature on the album called One Right Now, a collaboration with The Weeknd released in November of last year, one of several collaborations that the 26-year-old is expected to have on his latest project. Photos with The Kid Laroi in the studio were released earlier in April, while completed songs with Roddy Rich and Doja Cat are set to be released after Post Malone teased snippets of them on Instagram live late last year. Lil Uzi Vert’s, The Pink Tape, is set to be released in June, although it could easily be pushed back to July or even August, with the artist and his label still yet to announce the official release date. There could be up to thirty songs featured on the album, following the rapper’s two albums he dropped in 2020, Eternal Atake and Pluto x Baby Pluto, a collaboration with fellow rapper Future. Collabs expected on the album are Lil Uzi’s song with Drake titled, “All Painted” and “Sauce,” a collaboration with Playboi Carti, with rumors circulating of other features on the album, from Dua Lipa to Juice WRLD. He previewed several songs off the album at the Rolling Loud concert in Miami at the end of last year; however, despite it looking as if the album is done, there are still fears from fans that the album could be pushed back yet again, but if it does finally drop, Lil Uzi will shoot straight to the top. 

Juice WRLD’s third posthumous album, The Party Never Ends, was originally set to release during the summer of 2021, but after the late rapper's manager, Lil Bibby, was told by HBO that they needed to drop a different album alongside the documentary of the late rapper's life titled, Into The Abyss. The project that would eventually be dropped would be called, Fighting Demons, which would release the same week as the documentary in early December of 2021. Since the start of April, the album, despite having no confirmed release date, has been the talk of social media, with Juice WRLD and one of his unreleased singles, “Off The Rip,” both trending on Twitter. Fans around the world demanded the song drop, however, after some of Juice’s songs were leaked, for about the millionth time, Lil Bibby tweeted out that the album was canceled. Something that would yet again get Juice trending on almost all social media platforms and many believed just to be a marketing strategy. Diving into the actual album, “Off The Rip'' will be the first single, with rapper Lil Durk expected to be the feature. Durk is one of up to five collabs on the album, with Miley Cyrus, Kid Cudi, Playboi Carti, and Drake all rumored to be appearing on the project. The label has to be very careful with the way they roll the album out after Fighting Demons had barely any rollout, something that frustrated loyal fans and the mainstream alike. But if Bibby and Grade A get the rollout correct, I have no doubt that Juice will yet again be posthumously breaking records, yet again proving what influence he still has on music today, nearly three years after his passing. 

So with the summer quickly approaching, have any of these albums caught your eye? In the end, it is about the music that makes you feel good, as the best music helps you forget about everything, which I believe all these albums will do, although, it will be the public’s decision which of these five albums will be the best of not only the summer but the year as a whole.

By Luke Birch