From his Belfast bedroom—where he made breakthrough single “KEHLANI”—to recording second mixtape *A Jaguar’s Dream* in Los Angeles, Jordan Adetunji has been quickly forging a path towards international stardom. Even before “KEHLANI,” an ode to the US singer-songwriter, earned him a Grammy nomination in 2024, he’d won the admiration of Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes (who helped him secure his first record deal), while Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody regularly voiced support for Adetunji on his radio show. Securing Kehlani themselves for the remix of “KEHLANI” has led to more top-tier collaborations—Lil Baby appeared on the Chase & Status-co-produced single “Options” in October 2024—and this genre-blurring mixtape arrived primed to continue his ascent. Adetunji has honed his sound from 2023’s debut mixtape *ROCK ’N’ RAVE* to make a supremely self-assured and polished follow-up full of intimate lyrics. “I feel like my sound’s advanced a lot,” he tells Apple Music. “I’ve taken so many lessons from when I made that experimental project, but now it’s a lot better. My vocal style is very R&B, but I just blend with alternative sounds, so I’d call it alternative R&B.” He’s also made the most of that voice, playing with sound to create the right vibe for each track. “I try to manipulate my voice to match certain sound frequencies whenever I’m making a song,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll speed the track up, then slow it down just to match the right frequency until it feels right. I want it to feel sonically right to me, energy-wise.” These 10 tracks were written and produced by Adetunji, who worked with global names including Take A Daytrip, Chase & Status, and Danny Casio. Collaborators Lil Baby, Bryson Tiller, and, of course, Kehlani add guest vocals. It all makes for a mixtape that is unlikely to put an end to the exciting moments when Adetunji hears his own songs in the wild. “I think it’s funny whenever I hear ‘KEHLANI’ being played in someone’s car,” he says. “When I’m in the club, I’m just in the back, low-key, and they play this song so I’m just watching people reacting to it. And I’m like, ‘No one even knows I made this.’” Read on as he talks Apple Music through *A Jaguar’s Dream*, track by track. **“KEHLANI”** “Me and the boys, like Daytrip, sat in a session in LA and went through all the songs to work out which ones flowed well into each other, but this had to be the first track. Kehlani is such an amazing person. When I was writing this song, I didn’t really think she’d call me up one day but, at the same time, I manifested it. When she called me, I was in a club and I was a bit panicky because I was looking for the file to send the song to her. She’s given me so much advice and she’s like a big sister to me in the industry, which has helped me a lot.” **“Too Many Women” (feat. kwn)** “I’d seen kwn around a couple of times and when I checked out her music, I was like, ‘This is amazing.’ She was actually on the remix shoot of the ‘KEHLANI’ video. Then I saw her again at Kehlani’s show at the Barclays Center in New York. I was like, ‘Yo, we got to do something.’ So I hit her up on Instagram. I’d put up a snippet of a demo version of ‘Too Many Women’ when I literally just had a hook. She asked for the song, so I sent it across to her. She did a verse to it and the song became what it is now, which is really exciting.” **“Break the System”** “This song has the line ‘People change, but I don’t wanna.’ I feel like whenever I’m dropping music, everyone thinks that I should do things a certain way or change things, but I just can’t. I still try things out on TikTok, but I think if something worked, why would I change it? I do read comments, but I just ignore them. I’d rather continue to do what I do. You’re all here because of something I did, so I’m going to continue in my own way. And if you rock with it, you rock with it. If you don’t, au revoir.” **“305” (feat. Bryson Tiller)** “This is one of my favorite songs on here because it came about really organically. I was in the studio with Danny Casio and Parked Up and I started mumbling the melody, then I put words to it afterwards. But it was always a manifestation about me going to Miami, because at that time I’d never been before. I wrote this two months after ‘KEHLANI,’ then I sent it to Bryson Tiller, hoping he would do something on it. I’d already shot the video in Miami when he got back to me with a verse. I was like, ‘Oh, guess we have to scrap the video.’ I met Bryson at his house in Miami and he even pulled up to the video.” **“Bitter”** “I wrote ‘Bitter’ on my own in a studio house in LA. Everyone had left the room and I was looking at this amazing view and I just started singing it. I came up with the hook really easily. The first part I wrote was only 30 seconds long, so we had it as an interlude. Then we sampled the same song to make a second part and it became something else. I love it because I felt like it’s a beautiful piece of work and it’s very experimental. A lot of the songs on this mixtape are around two minutes long. Once I’ve said what I needed to say, I don’t add more. I’m happy I’ve captured that emotion in that timeframe, so I don’t feel the need to go on.” **“Dirty Diana”** “Michael Jackson was definitely one of my biggest inspirations so I called this song ‘Dirty Diana’ for a bit of fun. I made it in Paris and revisited it months later, so it feels like a long progression of different sounds and elements, with strings, backing vocals, and big synths. Then we made it like a crescendo at the end, which feels like a long moment. It’s very, very experimental, while it has elements of ‘KEHLANI.’ So I felt like this is great to put on the album because it’s still from that world. It’s a nice closing chapter to that bit of that sound.” **“Bedroom”** “‘Bedroom’ isn’t about one person in particular. I would say it’s about many different situations that I’ve been in and how I’ve felt at those times. We did so many stacks on this track—I had all these different melody ideas and we put it together like a puzzle. I’d love people to hear that file one day, there’s a hundred takes of me doing different melodies. It was just me and Danny Casio in the room when we made it. At the start, it was pretty difficult going from my bedroom to a studio, because I wanted the familiar setup with the mic in front of the monitor. I needed everything to look like a bedroom, with my laptop and mouse. Everyone in the studio was quite confused because I would never record in the booth!” **“Attractive”** “I know I’m putting my feelings out there on this track, but I’m excited to get more in-depth. Some of my lyrics are fantasy and others are raw thoughts. If I’m feeling in love, I’m in love. If I’m feeling like, ‘Nah, I’m hurt,’ I’m not afraid to write in that mood, whether I regret it later or not. I’ve kept the same mindset from the start. I feel like I just focus, I got my plan so I stick to it and just make it happen. The universe will decide if it works or not.” **“Options” (feat. Lil Baby)** “I’m a big fan of The Weeknd and Michael Jackson, and every time you look at these guys’ careers, you see an era. That’s what I want to do—I feel like I want my audience to come along, especially people that followed me from the beginning. And I want to show that elevation through visuals and play with their perceptions. I want people to think, ‘Oh, is this his sound? Is this what he’s going to keep making?’ Because I like playing with people. And it’s just like you have no idea what’s about to happen. It’s a fun game for me. I loved working with Lil Baby—he’s amazing, he’s funny and a very smart individual. We met in London before I recorded that song and he showed me a lot of love and told me to keep going.” **“KEHLANI (REMIX)” (feat. Kehlani)** “It made sense to open and close the album with ‘KEHLANI’ and I loved what she brought to the remix. I just let her do her thing. She actually did two verses: one was more rap and the other was more melodic. I liked both of them, so I let her decide which one to use. I’m so excited we got a Grammy nomination \[for Best Melodic Rap Performance, up against Beyoncé, Future, and others\]. Honestly, I can’t wait to go. I feel like my song impacted culture. I’ve seen people do their first dance to ‘KEHLANI’ at their wedding, so I think that’s good enough for me.”
Philadelphia-hailing singer, songwriter, and producer Fridayy has been anything but short of work since performing a song-making chorus on DJ Khaled’s devotional 2022 hit “GOD DID.” Besides releasing his self-titled debut in 2023, Fridayy worked with Chris Brown, GloRilla, Polo G, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Tee Grizzley, and even Will Smith, to name but a few. Yet “GOD DID” is what the general public knows him for. It’s a powerful song with equally powerful collaborators (Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, JAY-Z, John Legend), but with *Some Days I’m Good, Some Days I’m Not*, one of hip-hop’s favorite chorus artists is out to prove there’s plenty more to love. Like the voice of Fridayy himself, *Some Days I’m Good, Some Days I’m Not* is both inherently gospel and R&B, the singer splitting his time between devotions to significant other and to higher power. You can hear how enamored he is with a particular woman’s body on “Baddest in the Room,” but then also about how grateful he is for his gifts on “Look to You.” He yearns to inspire on songs like “Sun Comes Down,” “Desert,” and “Better Days,” while tracks like “Shotgun,” “Saving My Love,” and “One Call Away” exist very clearly to make hearts flutter. The project’s 21 tracks present a surprisingly harmonious dichotomy, one that Fridayy distills on “February ’23,” when he raps, “We at the club, they shaking ass while we give God the glory.”
Skrilla raps with such urgency and desperation, he sounds like he’s got five minutes left in a therapy session with a million different stories still needing to be analyzed. Whether rapping about the horrors he’s witnessed, the girl he’s trying to court, or the cars parked in the driveway, the Philly-born MC spits like he may never get another chance to hop in front of a mic. On his 2024 album *Zombie Love Kensington Paradise*, he moves from haunting tales of the streets to a defiant need to rock head-to-toe Balenciaga in the dead of summer. Both approaches are thrilling. On the opener “Chiraq,” he admits, “I ain\'t get to see bro in the casket, my eyes bleeding/I ain\'t popped Percocets in less than four hours, but I\'m fiending.” Elsewhere, on “Blahdahdahdahdah,” he recalls a friend who abandoned the streets after finding religion. There’s a hint of envy in his voice when he raps, “Wodie got pulled over, caught a case and then he started preaching/Wodie changed his life, he went to church and then he turned to deacon.”
Two decades into his career, Jim Jones finds himself exactly where he expected to be. Back up to 2004, when Jones was riding high as a member of Cam’ron’s Dipset crew, the Bronx MC unleashed his solo debut, *On My Way to Church*. On his eighth solo album, 2025’s *At the Church Steps*, he’s finally arrived. Sure, enough time has passed between the two records to raise a human from birth to legal drinking age, but Jones sounds in vintage form. The line from his debut to its spiritual sequel is nearly straight: On opener “Jomo” he travels on back to mid-2000s Harlem, where The Diplomats made their name, cueing up a soul-heavy vocal chop courtesy of Statik Selektah. It’s a beat that would have sounded nice on *Diplomatic Immunity* from 2003. On the cut and throughout the album, he’s contemplative, celebratory, and mournful in equal doses. On that opener, he raps, “I done put so much work in, I could have died on the job.” Despite it all, the blessings remain bountiful for one of New York’s perennial rap figures.
