@Salka Guðbjartsdóttir

Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Created with FreeYourMusic.com where you can transfer playlists to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and others

Social media hasn’t just changed how we communicate, but also what we listen to and how we hear it. With that, here’s our up-to-the-minute playlist of tracks making the leap from your social channels into the broader cultural stream. 4 Non Blondes and Nicki Minaj share the spotlight with the band’s “What’s Up?” and Minaj’s “Beez in the Trap” on top now—thanks to college senior DJ Auxlord’s unlikely mashup of the two currently taking over everyone’s TikTok feeds. Play the original cuts here, and because there’s no schedule for going viral, our editors update these selections throughout the week as needed, so if you hear something you want to hang on to, add it to your library. If it’s trending there, you’ll hear it here.

Headline-grabbing flautist turned rapper and singer Lizzo has assembled this good-time summer playlist to honour her peers and heroes. “Grab your tequila,” Lizzo tells Apple Music. “And have fun at my summer house party!”

The hits and only the hits—this collection brings together great songs from the top of the charts.

A report card for Robyn Rihanna Fenty, first issued by a school back in Barbados’ Saint Michael parish and later reprinted in a giant coffee-table book called <I>RIHANNA</I>, stated, in part, that the young Fenty was positive, sure of herself. She took a leading role in group activities. Most of all, she had ideas and seemed comfortable expressing them. Fast-forward to the present day and there remains something effortless about Rihanna, a sense of confidence that transcends any one narrative or style. Though her biggest tracks have tended toward some variety of dance pop (mixed with reggae, EDM, dancehall, R&B and so on), a closer listen reveals an artist willing to try just about anything—and the uncanny grace to sound good doing it. Describing the chameleonic nature of her clothing line, Fenty—the first female-created brand for LVMH, not to mention its first luxury label run by a black woman—Rihanna said the line didn’t have any fixed look, in part because her own was always changing. She was making things up as she went along, but when she went, she went full-steam ahead.<br> Born in Barbados in 1988, she left high school to pursue music. Her 2005 debut, <I>Music of the Sun</I>, went Gold when she was just 17. By 2007’s <I>Good Girl Gone Bad</I>, she’d expanded the sunny Caribbean pop of her early work for sleek hybrids of hip-hop, R&B, club music and rock. The tracks were inescapable—“Umbrella”, “Don’t Stop the Music”, “Rude Boy”, “Work”—but also had genuine personality, not to mention a carnal sense of expressiveness that set her apart: Rihanna’s changes didn’t seem like the product of high-concept self-reinvention so much as gut feeling. After leaving Def Jam in 2014 for a spot with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, she took greater creative control for 2016’s <I>ANTI</I>, her most diverse album yet.

After self-releasing a couple of EPs in her early twenties, SZA (born Solána Rowe in 1989 in St Louis, Missouri) became the first female artist signed to Top Dawg Entertainment, joining future collaborators Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock. Her 2017 debut album, <i>Ctrl</i>, put her at the vanguard of contemporary R&B, mixing the expressivity of classic soul with a hazy, synth-heavy atmosphere and a playful sense of lyricism (“Broken Clocks”, “Garden (Say It Like Dat)”, “Tread Carefully”) that brought out Rowe’s inner monologue. Following a five-year gap, 2022’s <i>SOS</i> crystallised her status as one of the most dynamic and commercially dominant singer-songwriters of her era. Coated in an eclectic mix of hip-hop, R&B, folk, electronics and more, the sophomore LP (and its 2024 deluxe edition, with 15 new tracks) finds SZA tackling imperfect love, with tracks like the chart-topping “Kill Bill” and the Grammy-winning “Snooze” embodying the type of songwriting that can be as ironic as it is heartfelt—a trademark for artists that turn emotional chaos into idiosyncratic grace.

Rico Love was an unknown rapper when he scribbled the heartsick lyrics to Usher's soulful rock hit "Throwback". That breakthrough made him a highly sought-after songwriter, and now his forte is R&B slow burners built on downtempo beats, like Pleasure P's "Boyfriend #2". He's at his best when injecting power ballad choruses into the mix, as in Keri Hilson's soaring "Energy".

As a child growing up in Atlanta, R&B powerhouse Summer Walker would wait until her mom went to bed before recording videos of herself singing songs and playing guitar. When she posted those clips online, the reaction was immediate—she had something. Her songwriting style is both mysterious and bare-bones; the more she reveals about her heart and mind, the more captivating she becomes. “I don’t really need the pain/But I love to feel the pain,” she admits on “Deep”, from 2018’s <i>Last Day of Summer</i>. To listen is to witness Walker working it all out in real time. It didn’t take long for her to pull some of R&B’s biggest talents into her orbit; Bryson Tiller (“Playing Games”), USHER (“Come Thru”) and Drake (“Girls Need Love (Remix)”) all appeared on 2019’s <i>Over It</i>. For 2021’s <i>Still Over It</i>, she explores all the dimensions of relationship drama, whether she’s teaming up with Ari Lennox on the reflective “Unloyal” or lamenting all kinds of messiness on “Constant B******t”.