The 2025 race for the best new artist Grammy earlier this year was a heavyweight bout. In one corner was Chappell Roan, the singular superstar who had been dazzling huge festival crowds for months; in the other was Sabrina Carpenter, the former Disney Channel personality with multiple ubiquitous radio smashes. Both pop dynamos had been nominated in all of the Big Four general categories, and for best new artist, they were surrounded by potential spoilers, including Shaboozey, whose “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” had logged the most weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 in 2024; Teddy Swims, whose “Lose Control” eventually broke the Hot 100 longevity record; and other new-school stars like Benson Boone, Doechii and RAYE. Ultimately, Roan emerged victorious — and delivered an instantly memorable acceptance speech that advocated for artists’ wages and health care.

Eight months later, a fresh class of best new artist hopefuls is eager for such a moment at the 68th annual Grammys — but in a race that looks nothing like the previous one. Whereas the 2025 best new artist competition was unusually stacked, the 2026 trophy appears fully up for grabs, with very few sure-thing nominees by the time the eligibility period closed at the end of August.

Expect plenty of jockeying for votes across label groups, considering how, 60 years after The Beatles took home the award, it remains one of the industry’s most coveted co-signs of rising talent. “[Best new artist is] still a pretty strong indicator of future success,” says Joe Hadley, global head of music partnerships and audience at Spotify, which has hosted a Grammy party showcasing the best new artist nominees in recent years. Hadley cites recent winners like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo as well as ’90s icons such as Mariah Carey and Lauryn Hill. “They were [awarded] early on, in a different era, and they’re still superstars. And I genuinely believe that, if you look at the recent best new artist winners, a lot of them will still be superstars 20, 30 years from now.”

While the loaded 2025 class resulted from an onslaught of major new pop stars in 2024, over the past year, the Billboard charts have largely been run by long-established artists. At the top of the Billboard 200, major releases from Morgan Wallen, Tyler, The Creator, Bad Bunny and Playboi Carti have dominated; Kendrick Lamar and SZA topped the albums chart separately while scoring the longest-running Hot 100 No. 1 hit of 2025 so far with the collaboration “Luther.” In addition, the penthouse of the Hot 100 has been unusually stagnant over the past year, with smashes remaining in the top 10 for months on end. Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With a Smile” and Boone’s “Beautiful Things” would be major contenders at the 2026 Grammys — had they not all competed at the 2025 ceremony.

The biggest exception is “Ordinary,” the stomping shout-along from singer-songwriter Alex Warren that exploded following a live performance on the Netflix series Love Is Blind and has spent 10 total weeks ruling the Hot 100. Warren — whose debut album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, scored a top 10 debut upon its July release — could be considered a front-runner at the 2026 Grammys, especially after winning best new artist at the MTV Video Music Awards in September. Yet he’s also competing with recent history: A male artist hasn’t won best new artist since Chance the Rapper in 2017, and in the 21st century, the only other rock-adjacent male-led act to emerge victorious was Bon Iver in 2012.

None of Warren’s potential competition has a hit as big as “Ordinary,” but many have enjoyed mainstream moments. While 20-year-old alt-pop ­newcomer sombr has scored a pair of monthslong streaming smashes in “Back to Friends” and “Undressed,” neither has reached the top 10 of the Hot 100 yet. Ravyn Lenae reached the top 10 in July with her artful R&B single “Love Me Not,” although the viral track remains her only career entry on the chart. Despite featuring on Bad Bunny’s 2022 album of the year nominee, Un Verano Sin Ti, alt-pop band The Marías, who have soared this year with “No One Noticed,” are eligible for best new artist in 2026; R&B breakout Leon Thomas’ studio output prior to this eligibility year may make the “Mutt” star a question mark for the category. Other artists have had breakthrough hits in recent months — Gigi Perez with “Sailor Song,” Lola Young with “Messy,” Jessie Murph with “Blue Strips” — that they hope have endured long enough to punch their cards to the big dance.

After all, a best new artist nomination or win still matters in the streaming era, particularly for those who aren’t household names. When a left-of-center artist takes home the top prize, the effect can be transformative: After jazz artist Samara Joy won in 2023, her weekly streams skyrocketed (from 1.8 million the week before the ceremony to 6.9 million the week after, according to Luminate) and led to her most productive touring year to date.

At the 2025 ceremony, all eight best new artist nominees performed during the telecast, and seven of them earned significant streaming gains — led by Doechii, who more than doubled her weekly total (from 20.7 million to 42.7 million) thanks to her dynamic medley of “Catfish” and “Denial Is a River.” Even the figures for the heavily streamed Roan and Carpenter jumped in the week following the ceremony, by 18.8 million and 8.3 million, respectively. The field of nominees “saw a pretty significant lift in terms of consumption and general awareness,” Hadley says.

Should the Grammys decide to once again present performances by every best new artist nominee, plenty of others who may seem like long shots for the prize may have the chance to set foot on the stage of Los Angeles’ ­Crypto.com Arena. Can Addison Rae’s critically acclaimed debut album help the former influencer make the leap? Can a rising country star like Ella Langley, Megan Moroney or Zach Top take home the genre’s first win in the category since Zac Brown Band in 2010? Will any K-pop artist finally become the first to nab a nomination? Girl group HUNTR/X from the Netflix phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters has a No. 1 smash in “Golden” — and even though the act is fictional, no one can be counted out of this topsy-turvy race.

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.

“I want to write something that I can dance to.” That’s what rising soul-pop artist Olivia Dean declared earlier this year when she arrived at her East London recording studio for a session with British producer-songwriter Zach Nahome and songwriter Tobias Jesso Jr., who had just flown out from the United States. Dean was thinking about her stage show: she had spent a good chunk of 2024 on the road in the U.K. and Europe and had more tour dates booked for this spring and summer. She had been presenting the sumptuous songs from her 2023 debut Messy for growing audiences but knew that her live show could use more tempo.

“We started with the 6/8 groove,” Dean recalls today of the studio session. “I had a crush at the time. I was like, ‘Listen: talk to me!’ That initial joy when you first fancy somebody — I just wanted to channel that essence into a song.”

The result, “Man I Need,” has quickened the pace of Dean’s career: the pillowy, gospel-inflected track gave the London native her first Billboard Hot 100 hit with a No. 82 debut in early September and has shuffled upward each week since, currently sitting at No. 25. The timing of the song’s explosion couldn’t have been better for Dean: in the days leading up to the Sept. 26 release of her sophomore album, The Art of Loving, on Island Records, “Man I Need” pushed to No. 9 on the Billboard Global 200, No. 2 on the Official U.K. Singles chart and regularly appeared in the top 10 of the U.S. Spotify daily top 50 chart.

“Every day, I’m being told a new stat,” Dean says with a laugh. “I’ve never been on the charts before, and I’ve been putting out music for quite a long time, so it’s a bit of a new world for me.”

Indeed, the 26-year-old’s mainstream breakthrough has been preceded by a decade of training: raised in Highams Park in North East London, Dean was accepted to the BRIT School at the age of 15, initially studying musical theater before switching her attention to songwriting. Soon after, Emily Braham, a manager who was then working with the U.K. drum’n’bass band Rudimental, had been invited to a BRIT School original song showcase and watched Dean perform for the first time. “She walked onstage, and there was something immediately captivating about her,” recalls Braham, who signed her in 2019.

Rudimental happened to be looking for a new backing vocalist around the same time, and Braham connected her with the group. Dean earned the spotlight as the featured vocalist on the group’s single “Adrenaline” the same year and then self-released her first EP, Ok Love You Bye. (She also signed a deal with Island Records UK in 2019; by 2023, she had also joined the label for U.S. representation.)

As she worked her way toward a debut album, Dean’s solo music naturally gravitated towards elegant, jazzy neo-soul — a sound that had become mainstream during her childhood thanks to artists like Amy Winehouse, Jill Scott and Angie Stone, but had been largely out of vogue by the early 2020s. “I’ve never been somebody who has followed trends or made music because of what else was popular at the time,” she says. “I like old music, I like soul music, I like Motown. That’s what I wanted to make, and in my mind, I’m in my own lane in that way.”

Although Messy scored a top 10 debut on the Official U.K. Albums chart upon its June 2023 release and was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize (which recognizes British and Irish music), Dean says that making her debut full-length in a variety of locations and recording sessions proved to be “a bit fragmented, and I went through a lot of self-doubt in the process.” Instead of hopscotching across different studios again, Dean built her own studio setting for her sophomore album.

“I decided that what I’d really like to do is to rent a beautiful space in East London, bring my piano and the people I love to work with, and just work from there for eight weeks,” she says. That period played out last March and April, with very few breaks — “I slept there, we drank a lot of red wine, stayed up late, cried and laughed” — and The Art of Loving as the outcome.

In addition to tweaking her creative process, Dean says that touring behind Messy last year better informed how she wanted to arrange her next album in the studio. She road-tested some material from The Art of Loving, including the subtly driving lead single “Nice to Each Other” and the buttery, harmony-heavy follow-up “Lady Lady,” during a monthlong U.S. headlining tour in July and August. If not for those recent live shows, Dean points out, “Man I Need” might have not been selected as the album’s third pre-release track in mid-August. “Honestly, it wasn’t supposed to be a single,” she says. “When I got to play it with my band in rehearsals, they were like, ‘This should be a single.’ And I was like, ‘You know what? Yeah! This one is fun!’ ”

While the promotional focus for The Art of Loving will continue to center around “Man I Need” as it keeps rising, Braham says that the album was always going to elevate Dean’s profile. “With this record, she felt more powerful and more intentional,” Braham says. “She co-produced the record — she’s on the buttons, plays across the whole thing and wrote on every song. She had a really good time making this record, and I think you can hear all of those things.”

Dean plans to spend the next few months promoting The Art of Loving around the world, with scheduled visits to Australia, Europe and the U.S.; part of her time in the States will be used to support Sabrina Carpenter on a fall arena run, including five shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden in late October. Dean has been looking forward to the dates with Carpenter for months, saying that she’s “excited to watch and learn from a masterclass of a pop show.” She also acknowledges that a few more U.S. fans will recognize her at the arena shows than they would have before “Man I Need” was released.

“What’s lovely to me is that ‘Man I Need’ was made out of such a moment of joy,” Dean says. “That seems to be what it’s bringing and the feeling surrounding it. You can’t really ask for more.”

A version of this story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.

U.K. rapper Dave made a surprise announcement on Wednesday (Oct. 1) confirming the release date for his third album, The Boy Who Played the Harp.

The Streatham-born musician revealed that he would make his comeback with his new LP, his first in over four years, on Oct. 24. He also shared the album artwork, which can be seen below. No additional details or tracklist have  been made public at this time. Pre-orders are now available on Dave’s website.

The 27-year-old released his breakthrough EP, Game Over, in 2017, a year after Drake jumped on a remix of his song “Wanna Know” and brought his name to wider recognition. In 2018, his song “Question Time” won an Ivor Novello for best contemporary song, and during his performance at the 2019 BRITs, he eviscerated the U.K. government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, which killed 72 people.

His debut album. Psychodrama (2019), hit No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart and collected the year’s Mercury Prize as well as best British album at the BRITs in 2020. Its follow-up, We’re All Alone in This Together, also peaked at No. 1 on the U.K. charts, and landed at No. 10 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart.

In 2023, Dave and Central Cee broke the record for the longest-running rap No. 1 on the U.K. Singles Chart with their track “Sprinter.” The song ruled for 10 weeks and appeared on the collaborative EP Split Decision with Cench. Dave has achieved three U.K. No. 1 singles in total, including “Funky Friday” (2018) and “Starlight” (2022).

He has collaborated with Stormzy, Burna Boy, Jack Harlow, James Blake, Headie One, AJ Tracey and more throughout his career.

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In 2009, hip-hop was at an inflection point. Veterans like Eminem and Jay-Z scored Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s, Kanye West and Lil Wayne enjoyed their imperial phases, a new generation of talent began to rise through blogs — and Clipse, the Virginia-bred rap duo of brothers Pusha T and Malice, released its third album, Til the Casket Drops.

Sixteen years passed — an ­eternity by rap’s standards — as Pusha T became a successful solo artist and label executive while Malice took a hiatus from rapping to pursue his faith. But in July, Clipse reunited and finally dropped another album: Let God Sort Em Out.

Already a blockbuster hip-hop release, the project wouldn’t have been a true reunion without fellow Virginian Pharrell Williams in the mix as producer. As one-half of The Neptunes, he lent his cosmic sonic canvas to Pusha T and Malice’s coke-laced raps, poignant storytelling and opulent flexes on their three 2000s-era albums — and in the years following Til the Casket Drops, he became a household name thanks to his work in music, film, TV and fashion. This time around, Pharrell invited Clipse to Louis Vuitton headquarters in Paris, where he serves as men’s creative director, to meticulously craft their cinematic reintroduction over sessions that spanned two years. With a No. 4 bow on the Billboard 200 — Clipse’s highest mark since its 2002 debut, Lord Willin’ — the project arrived to critical acclaim and album of the year chatter. And, in the process, the trio of ’70s babies punctured the myth that rap is a young man’s sport.

“I’ve always looked at rap and other genres, rock specifically, and I’ve never liked how rap always had the age ceiling where everyone else didn’t,” Pusha T, 48, tells Billboard during a call with Malice and Pharrell as Clipse’s tour bus heads to Detroit. “I’ve personally always wanted to make it my business to crack that ceiling, and I think the Clipse album 1,000% [did it].”

“Martin Scorsese made The Irishman not too long ago,” adds Pharrell, 52, referencing the 2019 film by the now-82-year-old filmmaking legend. “You don’t stop being great. You might decide not to continue to share your gift with the world. But great is great.”

After paying seven figures in June to exit its deal with Def Jam (the act refused the label’s request to censor Kendrick Lamar’s featured verse on Let God Sort Em Out), Clipse seamlessly transitioned to Roc Nation for distribution and went on to deliver one of the more memorable rollouts in recent rap history, with KAWS-designed cover art, a Carhartt merchandise collaboration and even a runway appearance at a Louis Vuitton fashion show with Jay-Z and Beyoncé in the front row.

Amid it all, this summer, Clipse embarked on its first tour in over 15 years — and then flew to Rome to become the first hip-hop artists to perform at the Vatican, playing to a crowd of a quarter-million as part of Grace for the World, a concert co-directed by Pharrell. Next April, the act will make its Coachella debut. “This is something that you couldn’t plan for by no stretch of the imagination,” says Malice, 53.

But despite all these wins, ­Pusha T, Malice and Pharrell have their sights set on another accolade: a Grammy Award in 2026. While the decorated Pharrell has earned 13 of them, Clipse never has; the duo’s lone nomination is for featuring on Justin Timberlake’s “Like I Love You” in 2003, and Pusha T has five solo noms. Pharrell hopes Clipse can perform the tearful Let God Sort Em Out opener “The Birds Don’t Sing” at the awards and that they can honor their parents with a Grammy win. “You got people who get them and pee on them, and we ain’t doing none of that,” Pharrell jokes. “We want them for our parents.”

What’s it like hearing all the album of the year talk surrounding Let God Sort Em Out?

Malice: I like it because it’s unanimous; it’s the consensus. Everywhere we go, people keep saying it. Just that it hits everybody in that way. With that being the case, that just can’t be denied. It didn’t come from us saying it; it comes from the listener.

Pusha T: I fully agree with that. It speaks to the testament of what we put into the music. This is still art class for us, man. I was never in band or anything, but I feel like we attacked this music in such a way that it comes with that level of precision. There’s a level of expertise that is shown in the creation and displayed in the creation of this music. I’m glad that it comes across and hits people in that way. People are using “sophisticated” and “high-taste level” and all these adjectives to explain the music.

Pharrell Williams: The precision and the discipline that was exercised, I thought we would get our flowers for. But I think we got more than that. I think people are really reacting. This is what’s been so surprising to me: People are reacting to more than just the sounds, the ideas, like lyrically and song concept-wise. They responded to what the Clipse and myself put into our respective jobs. Beats and the musicality that I contributed to it and their ideas, concepts and lyrics; it’s more than that. What I see people responding to is when you wipe away all of our work, at the core of what we did that I think is different than what you get elsewhere is that we were painting not with sounds and lyrics — we were painting with feelings.

That’s where we all met up. The intersection of what I think this music is is feelings. I was playing with feelings. They were writing with feelings. And I’m not saying other people don’t feel — I’m just saying, like, you could really feel this. When these guys get into “Birds Don’t Sing,” it’s the symbolism as much as it is the lyrical acrobatics that happened there. Malice used that word earlier, “unanimous”; that’s an art form to be able to achieve that, with many people walking away feeling the same things. For me, the testament is seeing people walk away feeling s–t.

When you talk about creating with a feeling, is that different from the early years working with Clipse?

Pharrell: When we were kids, we just did the s–t because it was fun. And what we ended up doing was based on taste. Now we know we’re students. We know that we’re blessed. This was ordained. We’ve been led to this place. That’s the distinct difference between being young and arrogant, making “Momma I’m So Sorry” [from 2006’s Hell Hath No Fury] and being students and real artists who paint with emotions to make a “Birds Don’t Sing.”

They say rap’s a young man’s game, but you guys have never aged out of it, and this project felt fresh. Touch on that.

Pusha T: You started the question with the phrasing of a young man’s sport — we kind of cracked the ceiling on that. Looking at just competing in music, I’ve never felt like it was a young man’s sport. I always felt like it was a competitor’s sport. As long as you’re competing and you’re living through the times, you should be in it. You have to be in it. You can’t passively be in it. Nah, man, this is about who can compete and who can’t. Being able to compete through different eras and trends, to be able to A and B your music versus whatever’s popular. Let God Sort Em Out speaks volumes when it comes to that.

Malice: I don’t think we should slight ourselves because it is a young man’s sport until proven otherwise. I think we’ve yet to see that happen at this level. I think when making [Let God Sort Em Out], and with all the Clipse albums, you know what you’re about to release. You can also tell if you’re being mediocre. It’s good that people have seen it be achieved, and I still think people are gonna have a tough time doing it.

P, did you feel at all like, “Hey, I can make a statement here. Don’t sleep on me. I can still make a classic album”?

Pharrell: Oh, nah, I never thought that way. The thing most people forget, we are human beings. “Human” meaning flesh and “being” meaning spirit. I’m saying being is a verb. I am always being. If I stopped being, I would have been. I don’t got to be the greatest of all time. I don’t got to be none of that s–t.

Malice: But you are, though!

Pharrell: We don’t have those “still” conversations, we just are what we are. We are who we are, but we are who we are because we know what we are. We always going to be different. We’re from Virginia. We ain’t New York, we ain’t Atlanta. I love Miami, [but] we ain’t Florida, we ain’t the West Coast. We the East Coast of Virginia. When you seeing us doing what we doing, we showing you what the East Coast feel like. Not what it sound like. I’ll leave that to the really great producers. I play with feelings and emotions. If you listen to a Clipse record and you don’t feel like going to buy a coupe, we failed you.

I can’t go buy an Audi now.

Pharrell: It make you want to get your money up, don’t it?

Malice: Listen, don’t feel bad. When Jay-Z said, “We don’t drive X5s, we give ’em to baby mommas,” I had just got the X5 and I had to hang my head after that. I know the feeling.

Pharrell: We got all kinds of consumers with Clipse. We don’t begrudge nobody that can’t ride how we ride. My whole thing is, “Run at your own speed. If Audi is your speed, that’s your pace, but run it.”

Let God Sort Em Out felt like a cultural reset — even the rollout was ­incredible.

Pharrell: You know why? Because you have to sit and be honest. You have to be prepared for honesty. Honesty ain’t just what you hear and see. It’s not just an aesthetic or a sound thing. It’s also a kinesthetic and tactile emotion thing.

I’m gonna say something that’s very real right now: We grew up in an area where the coolest guy, the guy that the rappers emulated, was the pharmacist, and now we’re in the era where the coolest guy is the patient. The patient has a point of view. They want emotions, but that’s not what they’re gonna give you. They supplement when they listen to that music. And not everybody, but it’s just a very different thing. We play on the other side of the emotion. We make music that we want you to feel. Not music you listen to and you have to go supplement to feel. The music is the drug.

What do you think flipped it?

Pharrell: That’s the way it’s always been. It was like that in the ’60s when people were experimenting. It was more psychedelic, but then in the ’70s, it got real heavy, and they started getting into the heavier things. Then in the ’80s, it just goes through all these different phases. And I just think the phase that we in right now, there’s a lot of emo music and I love a lot of it, but it’s different. A lot of times, when you listen to tracks, they’re not compositions, necessarily. They’re vibes. And a lot of times they are devoid of stimulation for feelings.

Pusha T: We chose to execute the rollout how we did because we miss the nostalgia of running to a magazine and seeing who said what. Looking at an album and seeing a rating or disagreeing with everybody else — what did said magazine say? We miss that. That’s just part of that passionate purist I feel like we talk to in crafting Let God Sort Em Out. The Clipse have always been open books and open to criticism and letting people hear the music. We encourage the feedback.

Malice: I think the internet allowed anybody and everything to be a rapper, if that’s what you label yourself. I think it allotted for laziness. I think it speaks to the condition of the world. If people want to get high, you could turn on a beat and there’s so many people that can do that. I think that’s the state of the world revealing itself, and it took on a laziness. We come from that time where you had to fight to be heard and among the best. We still carry that. That’s very important.

How do you guys feel rap’s relationship with the Grammys has evolved over the years?

Pharrell: As long as they do “Birds Don’t Sing” on that stage and whatever else they want to do, that’s all I care about.

Pusha T: I’ve watched the Grammys evolve tremendously. I think that there’s been a lot of thought and efforts to at least get it right in the hip-hop space. I remember when hip-hop wasn’t televised on the Grammys. It’s evolved in a lot of different ways. To be [potentially] nominated and in the mix of that company — you want the hardware, my man, trust me. We all want the hardware. It’s nothing to even play with. I think it’s the credibility of the Grammys and the thought put into the categories and the committees. I think the Grammys been getting it right.

Pharrell: Let’s get it all the way right.

What would a Grammy win mean to you guys?

Pusha T: A well-deserved full-circle moment. That’s a Grammy win for just brotherhood.

Malice: The Grammys is definitely the high-water mark for musical achievement. And this is what you do it for. You don’t play the game just to get a participation trophy. So like, it would definitely mean a lot, for sure.

Pharrell: Our parents remember us making music. Our parents remember being confused at what we were doing in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Not New York City or L.A., where you have these huge generational artists and genres. Our parents were confused; this is for them. You have moments when it’s your time. And all I’m saying is, I’ve been knowing these guys since high school, and I’m really sorry — like, with love — I think the category would agree that this is our brothers’ time. I think their parents in heaven agree this is their time. I think my parents agree this is their time. Like I said, we ain’t gonna drink out of it, right? We just gon’ bring it home for our parents.

What’s next musically for Clipse? Could we run it back?

Pusha T: Plenty to come, man.

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.