Bruno Mars went full-on elevator music with his latest album, but I'm glad he's still lending his ability to make fun pop jams to other artists, between this and "Die With A Smile" I kind of want him to exec produce a whole Gaga album. 

Back when they were mixtape-level stars in the late 2000s, Max B was the guy people were actually passionate about and French Montana was the sidekick. Then Max went to prison for 16 years, and French managed to punch above his weight level as a pretty successful mainstream rapper, but he always felt like kind of a stand-in rap star to me, even if he wasn't necessarily standing in for the career Max might have had. But I will give French a lot of credit, when Max became a free man a few months ago, French was waiting and ready to introduce him to the good life and make more music together, and they made a serious hit. Max is still kind of rough around the edges for radio rap, which is part of his charm, so it feels oddly right that Max just has this quick entertaining 23-second verse but French carries the bulk of the song. 

British Disney starlet Freya Skye is a very post-Taylor Swift pop singer, she even echoes the "too young to be messed with" line from "Dear John" in her breakthrough single "Silent Treatment." But as a vocalist she sounds more like fellow Taylor disciples Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams to me. 

I rolled my eyes a few weeks ago when Charli XCX was quoted by British Vogue as saying "I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we're making rock music" because that kind of genre-switching gamesmanship feels so played out and corny right now. But it turned out that those words are verbatim lyrics on a very tongue-in-cheek single called "Rock Music," and I'm kind of amused that people have taken it as an earnest statement of intent, it's a pretty funny, ridiculous song. 

People keep trying more and more to treat Baby Keem as a genuine star, but there hasn't been a rapper in a long time who's so thoroughly the Memphis Bleek of his generation, anything he does with his superstar mentor is always guaranteed to get ten times as much attention as anything else. "Good Flirts" sticks out as a calculated radio record on Keem's album, but it's enjoyable, one of Kendrick's funniest verses in recent memory ("shit, I gossip with my bitch like I'm Young Thug too") and Momo Boyd sounds great when she's not doing that weird faux-Lana Del Rey voice that she does on her solo material.