Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
This week, Lil Baby has more than a few outtakes, Luke Combs gets the girl dads teary-eyed, and GloRilla is eviscerating her doubters. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Lil Baby, The Leaks
The “odds and ends” release is a time-honored tradition in popular hip-hop, although Lil Baby’s The Leaks is more than just a mishmash of long-circulated songs and fleshed-out snippets: for one, “Let’s Do It” (featuring Playboi Carti and Skooly) sounds like a hard-knocking potential hit, and the opening run of solo cuts showcases why Baby remains a vital A-lister in the genre.
Luke Combs, “Giving Her Away”
Call it father-of-the-bride-country: on “Giving Her Away,” Luke Combs addresses his soon-to-be father-in-law on his own wedding day, reflecting on their overlapping misadventures and the woman who brought them together at the ceremony (“Only she could’ve got us both in suits / Only she could’ve got us out our boots,” Combs sings). “Giving Her Away” handles its lyrical slant with a full heart, and Combs communicates its message with his singular brand of Nashville grace.
GloRilla, “March”
After she served as a guest for artists ranging from Travis Scott to J-Hope to Summer Walker in 2025, GloRilla commands the spotlight on “March,” the type of end-of-year buzzer-beater brash enough to producer multiple quotable threats and exhilarating enough to push well into the new year — in Glo’s own words, “F–k January, February, get to Marchin’ ho!”
Alex Warren & Gigi Perez, “Eternity”
Along with turning their respective viral hits into months-long chart smashes, Alex Warren and Gigi Perez share an ability to meditate on bottomless grief in the span of a pop song; “Eternity,” the somber opening track to Warren’s album You’ll Be Alright, Kid, benefits from the gentle touch from the “Sailor Song” singer, who replicates the second verse and then buoys Warren’s voice in the back half of the song.
Zac Brown Band, Love & Fear
Ahead of a limited-engagement run at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Zac Brown Band have issued an eighth studio album that demonstrates how they’ve become country mainstays capable of commanding huge audiences — “Give It Away” is going to sound rollicking in a live set — while also opening up their aesthetic, from the blunts-up Snoop Dogg collaboration “Let It Run” to the stately ballad “Passenger.”
Disclosure feat. Leon Thomas, “Deeper”
Disclosure have an long history of tapping vocal collaborators around the time they’ve entered the mainstream, from Sam Smith to The Weeknd; on new single “Deeper,” “MUTT” star Leon Thomas gets a chance to croon above Guy and Howard Lawrence’s garage stylings, sounding delighted by the skittering synths and shuffling beats as he extends his infatuated syllables.
Ozuna & Beéle, Stendhal
Puerto Rican star Ozuna is closing out the year by tossing an assist, joining forces with the ascendant Colombian singer Beéle on the joint album Stendhal — a project that leans on both artists’ respective strengths, but also finds them mining intriguing new territory side-by-side, such as the Afrobeats-informed new single “Pikito” and the rhythmic, sighing “El Volcán.”
Editor’s Pick: Dove Ellis, Blizzard
Dove Ellis just wrapped a stint supporting Geese on the road, and while the Irish singer-songwriter’s folk songs sound nothing like the Brooklyn band’s bugged-out art-rock, he’s likely about to experience a similar type of indie glow-up. Debut album Blizzard is both jarring and hypnotic, the type of folk record that abides by decades-old traditions but still carves out a new, exciting niche.
