The Chronicle’s curated list of notable new music releases this month.
ReneéRapp, “Snow Angel” (Interscope)
“Sex Lives of College Girls” actress Reneé Rapp will release her debut album “Snow Angel” on Aug. 18, after months of teasing the project to fans.
Rapp revealed in an Instagram post announcing the album that a previous version of the project, complete with a lead single, was scrapped in order to make “Snow Angel” a reality. After a traumatic experience about a year ago, Rapp decided to change course, writing and recording the album’s title track and lead single “Snow Angel” over the span of two days.
“May 15th we sent it to my team. While I was prepping the previously decided single video, my manager Adam called me and told me to stop, and that we were changing everything. Other single was out, ‘Snow Angel’ was in,” Rapp said via Instagram. “They believed in the song as much as I did … That meant everything. I have never been simultaneously so proud and so scared of a song in my life.”
“Snow Angel” comes after the pop singer’s 2022 EP “Everything to Everyone” which garnered Rapp a loyal fanbase — some were fans of her previous work starring as Regina George in Broadway’s “Mean Girls,” and others who found community with the openly bisexual artist.
Rapp has already announced the accompanying “Snow Hard Feelings Tour” which will kick off in Houston on Sept. 15 and hit the Fox Theater in Oakland on Oct. 2. Alexander 23 and Towa Bird will open.
Noname, “Sundial” (self-released)
Noname, whose real name is Fatimah Nyeema Warner, makes her musical return with her third album “Sundial,” which is set to release on Aug. 17 and includes features from a range of artists, including Grammy-winning artist Common, rapper Jay Electronica and R&B vocalist Ayoni.
“Sundial” marks the artist’s first album since 2018’s “Room 25,” although she put out a slew of singles between 2019 and 2021, including“Song 33,”a supposed response to J. Cole’s “Snow on tha Bluff,” which many speculated to be about Warner.
Noname first announced the album in April, through a since-deleted Instagram post, ahead of performing at both weekends of Coachella. The artist has since announced on the platform that she has put together the Sundial Block Party to celebrate the album’s release.
“Rumor has it I’m about to drop the best rap album of the year,” the artist said via Instagram. “I need all the love I can get.”
The free event will take place in her hometown of Chicago on Aug. 17, the eve of the album’s release. Block Party guests are encouraged to donate a copy of George Jackson’s “Blood in My Eye,” Toni Morrison’s “Sula,” or works from other Black authors to her book club, Noname Book Club, to send to incarcerated book club members. The event is set to feature performances by Noname, R&B powerhouse Alex Vaughn, who opened for Ari Lennox’s tour this past spring, and Los Angeles native Navy Blue.
Burna Boy, “I Told Them …” (Spaceship/Bad Habit/Atlantic)
Burna Boy announced his seventh studio album “I Told Them…” mere weeks before its Aug. 24 release date, ushering in the new era with lead single “Big 7” and an accompanying music video.
“‘Big 7’ is a melodic tribute to embracing new heights in my musical journey,” the Nigerian-born artist said in a statement. “The title represents a symbolic aspiration to reach greater horizons, with the number seven embodying an attainable and harmonious growth.”
TheOutside Lands veteran’slast album “Love, Damini” dropped last summer and featured a number of artists including Ed Sheeran, J Balvin and Khalid. Since the release of “Love, Damini,” he’s kept busy, appearing on the “Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever” soundtrack and making history as the first African artist to sell out a U.S. stadium crowd of over 40,000 with his show at New York’sCiti Field.
Warning: The following video contains explicit content
Victoria Monét, “JaguarII” (Lovett Music/RCA)
On Aug. 25, three years after the release of “Jaguar,” Victoria Monét will release its follow-up “Jaguar II.”The singer-songwriter is known for her work with Ariana Grande, both opening up for Grande’s 2017 “Dangerous Woman” tour and helping to pen the best-selling artist’s hits like “Thank U Next” and “Be Alright.”
“We’ve waited three years, don’t let this flop,” Monét joked in an Instagram post announcing the album.
Last month, she released the album’s 11-song tracklist, which includes features from artists such as musical legends Earth, Wind & Fire and R&B/soul singer Lucky Daye. Monét has already released three singles from the project:“On My Mama,”“Party Girls” and“Smoke.”
A North American tour is set to follow the release of “Jaguar II,”kicking off on Sept. 6 in Detroit, with back-to-back shows at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Oct. 3-4.
Warning: The following video contains explicit content
Jon Batiste, “World Music Radio” (Verve/Interscope)
Academy Award winner Jon Batiste has been in the music world for decades, but onlyrecentlyhas he entered the spotlight.
His new album “World Music Radio” will be released on Aug. 18, his first full project since his 2021 project “We Are,” which won the Grammy for album of the year in 2022, prompting the artist todepartfrom his role as bandleader for “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to focus on his personal projects.
The 21-track album is set to feature high-profile artists from around the world spanning a range of genres, from Lana Del Rey’s alt-pop to Native Soul’s electronic sound. Batiste has already released three singles from the project including a collaboration with Jon Bellion, who helped to executive produce the album, and Firebow DML, known for his 2021 track “Peru,” titled“Drink Water”and“Be Who You Are”which features Atlanta-born rapper J.I.D., K-pop girl group NewJeans and Colombian singer-songwriter Camilo.
“I created this album with a feeling of liberation in my life and a renewed sense of exploration of my personhood, my craft and of the world around me unlike anything I ever felt before,” Batiste said in a statement via Instagram. “We really wanted to re-examine and redefine terms like world music as they exist in the culture.”
Neil Young, “Chrome Dreams” (Reprise)
Neil Young is dipping into the archives for the upcoming release of his lost 1977 album “Chrome Dreams.” The album, which drops Aug. 11, contains 12 tracks, each originally recorded between 1974 and 1977, many of which Young rerecorded or used elsewhere in his career.
Fans have been bootlegging the LP for decades, and Young even nodded to the lost album with the title of his 2007 release“Chrome Dreams II.”Despite the fact that most of the tracks on “Chrome Dreams” are likely familiar to Young fans, six of the 12 are presented in their original form, some with different lyrics and others with varied production.
News of the album came shortly after Young announced his first tour since before the pandemic, which made a stop inBerkeleylast month, a set that favored deep cuts over radio hits.
Hozier, “Unreal Unearth” (Rubyworks Columbia)
病人经过两年的戏弄球迷,Hoziernewest album “Unreal Unearth” finally has a release date of Aug. 18. The long-awaited album follows the artist’s 2019 project “Wasteland Baby” which earned him a spot on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.
This new release appears to maintain the artist’s poetic lyricism, but draws from a new source of inspiration: Dante’s “Inferno,” which the artist began reading during the pandemic. “Unreal Unearth” is framed around Dante’s nine circles of hell.
“I wanted to nod to the experiences of the last few years, without making it expressly a lockdown pandemic album” the artist said in aninterviewwith the Telegraph. “So the way I chose to do that, quite playfully, was to reflect on a downward journey into the nine circles of hell.”
“带我去教堂”歌手已经释放d a slew of singles from the 16-track album, some of which were included on his three-song EP “Eat Your Young” that was released on March 17, the singer’s 33rd birthday. Hozier also announced a 2023 tour to accompany the release of “Unreal Unearth” on the same day.
The “Unreal Unearth” tour will kick off in Maryland Heights, Mo., on Sept. 9 and make a stop at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on Oct. 27.
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