The 29-year-old singer/rapper blew up on TikTok with her 2019 breakthrough hit “STUPID,” joining the pantheon of defiantly bawdy, cyborgian e-girls. On her second studio album, which follows 2023’s apocalyptic *WEEDKILLER*, Ashnikko hones her pop songwriting chops while valiantly striving to kill her inner It Girl. (See “It Girl,” a decaying folk song about rejecting the allure of external validation.) On *Smoochies*, she recruits a crack team of weirdo-pop producers (longtime collaborator Slinger, plus Elvira Anderfjärd, Luka Kloser, and Tove Burman, who wrote and produced Addison Rae’s 2025 debut) for sweet, tough, and distinctly modern love songs. “I want you in my body like microplastics,” she sings on “Microplastics,” and on “Trinket,” she collects boys like Labubus and dangles them from her purse. On “Smoochie Girl,” she wonders over glitchy sugar-rush synths: “Is this too much to keep a lock of your hair in a resin ring? Is this too much? I wanna take out my IUD.”
The impish Canadian rapper got his start on SoundCloud, posting outlandish but catchy self-made tracks under the name bbnomula. Today, the 30-year-old born Alexander Gumuchian is nine albums deep with one bona fide hit under his belt (“Lalala” cracked the Top 10 of the Canadian Hot 100 in 2019), but no less committed to the bit—namely, bawdy party anthems that reject seriousness and aim mostly to amuse. On his self-titled ninth album (it’s pronounced “baby no money,” if you couldn’t tell from his fall 2025 world tour, the It’s Pronounced Baby No Money Tour), the rapper keeps things loose, light, and funky, sampling War’s “Low Rider” on “check,” channeling the titular condition on “ADD,” and referring to himself as “the Johnny Depp from Temu” on “pump it.” Try not to overthink it.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a music fan who was around for Outkast’s 2000 opus *Stankonia* and doesn’t remember that album’s impact. The *Aquemini* follow-up catapulted the Atlanta duo from their status as the foremost spokespeople for Southern hip-hop to bona fide pop-culture celebrities whose reach and influence—though still very much rooted in rap—extended far beyond a single genre. *Stankonia*’s singles were monsters, to be sure, but once you get past the apocalyptic frenzy of “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad),” the off-kilter balladering of “Ms. Jackson,” and the snap-along funk of “So Fresh, So Clean,” what do casual fans actually remember about *Stankonia*? Can they call out the alien synth warbles and fiery Killer Mike verse of “Snappin’ & Trappin’”? Do they remember the cacophonous beat switch for André 3000’s verse on “Humble Mumble”? Do they scrunch up their faces when they think of the hard-as-nails posse cut “Gangsta Sh\*t”? Would their hearts sink if you were to bring up “Toilet Tisha”? Outkast had always gone their own way, but the album that would land them a KIDZ BOP rendition also has guest verses from steely rap veterans B-Real and Khujo Goodie, a song entitled “?” where Andre alone sounds off for a single fitful verse, and “I’ll Call B4 I Cum,” featuring the queen of Memphis hip-hop Gangsta Boo. *Stankonia*’s sonics are built on fuzzy rock guitar and unendingly funky basslines directly descendent from Parliment-Funkadelic’s trippiest material, and it sounds as otherworldly decades later as it did when it was up against other chart-shaking, much more straight-ahead projects of 2000, like Nelly’s *Country Grammar*, Eminem’s *The Marshall Mathers LP*, and JAY-Z’s *The Dynasty - Roc La Familia*.
The eldest member of Big Hit boy group TOMORROW X TOGETHER (aka TXT), Korean artist Choi Yeonjun uses his solo music to break out of any boxes fourth-generation K-pop may try to put him in. With his solo debut, 2024’s “GGUM,” the idol went against expectations by releasing a quirky hip-hop track worlds away from TXT’s emo-rock/synth-pop sound. On 2025’s *NO LABELS: PART 01*, the 26-year-old continues to play against K-pop “it boy” type, infusing funk rock, electronica, and old-school hip-hop elements into his EP debut. *NO LABELS: PART 01*’s defiant themes are most explicit on “Nothin’ ’Bout Me,” a percussion-driven, brass-infused track that chafes against easy characterizations (“What you want?/I’m my own product/What you want?/Take off my label”), but they’re at their most liberatory on the bold, sexy rock lead single “Talk to You.” KATSEYE member Daniela stops by to feature on the R&B-leaning pop track “Let Me Tell You,” lending her Spanish-language skills to the love song’s seductive chorus.
