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, Jonas Brothers go back home, Gunna keeps things efficient, and MGK finds his voice. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Jonas Brothers, Greetings From Your Hometown 

Twenty years after their debut single together, Jonas Brothers are completely different people than the precocious Disney stars that were embraced by millions of young fans — and Greetings From Your Hometown, their third album since their 2019 reunion, presents adult-leaning pop-rock workouts while reflecting on the changes, as well as the unbreakable bond between Nick, Joe and Kevin.

Gunna, The Last Wun 

Gunna’s work in popular hip-hop over the past half-decade has been tireless, but his prolific nature has never made his studio output feel overwhelming; similarly, new album The Last Wun stretches across 25 tracks and beyond the 1-hour mark, but the project flies by with machine-gun bars, complex beats that quickly evaporate and guest stars (Wizkid, Burna Boy, Offset, Asake) that never detract from Gunna’s steely focus.

MGK, Lost Americana 

Throughout his shape-shifting career, MGK has showcased a natural gift for melody that has made each of his genre explorations instantly digestible; Lost Americana, a pop-rock foray that serves as a close cousin to his pop-punk projects, contains plenty of juicy hooks as expected, but also moments of stark honesty, such as his discussion of his sobriety on the opener “Outlaw Overture.”

Laufey, “Snow White” 

“I don’t think I’m pretty, it’s not up for debate,” Laufey sings on her striking new song “Snow White,” “A woman’s best currency’s her body, not her brain.” While Laufey has subverted modern pop norms with her jazzy orchestration, she’s deploying her latest single from upcoming album A Matter of Time to upend the impossible standards of womanhood, telling a story at once both deeply personal and heartbreakingly universal.

Bailey Zimmerman, Different Night Same Rodeo 

Bailey Zimmerman has proven adept at catering to both Nashville diehards, such as on the rustic deep cuts to 2023’s Religiously. The Album., and casual country fans, with smashes like “Rock and a Hard Place” and the BigXthaPlug team-up “All the Way”; the latter song doesn’t appear on new album Different Night Same Rodeo, but there’s still plenty of country-pop appeal to Zimmerman’s twangy storytelling. Read a full review of Different Night Same Rodeo here.

Ethel Cain, Willoughy Tucker, I’ll Always Love You 

In a short time, Hayden Silas Anhedönia has turned her Ethel Cain persona into a truly original voice in modern indie music — and after her drone project Perverts detonated expectations earlier this year, Willoughy Tucker, I’ll Always Love You returns Cain to the world of her 2022 breakthrough Preacher’s Daughter as a literal prequel to that album, albeit with plenty of new ambitions (see: the 15-minute closer “Waco, Texas”). 

Bryson Tiller, The Vices

With the release of the first half of a planned double-album titled Solace & The Vices, Bryson Tiller leans into his ferocious flow and exorcises some demons while placing his R&B-heartthrob approach in the backseat for now; the stylistic separation works in his favor, and whets our appetite for the project’s more soulful second half. Read a full review of The Vices here.

Editor’s Pick: Amaarae, Black Star 

Ghanaian American singer Amaarae ostensibly makes rhythmic pop music, but classifying the songs on Black Star feels like a fool’s errand: the virtuosic new project gathers dance, hyperpop, R&B and Jersey club (among other disparate sounds) and smashes them together to create a dizzying party. Amaarae is a vocal dynamo, has impeccable taste, and is unquestionably a star in the making — get on board now, and shimmy through the end of the summer.

Jhené Aiko has joined the cast of Hey A.J.!, the upcoming Disney Jr. animated show based on a children’s books series written by retired NFL star Martellus Bennett, while Meghan Trainor will have a recurring role.

The music-filled family comedy series will follow a young girl named A.J., voiced by Amari McCoy (Marvel’s Spidey and His Amazing Friends), who “along with her stuffed bunny sidekick, uses her big imagination to make ordinary life moments extraordinary,” according to the Disney Jr. announcement.

Grammy-nominated artist Aiko will voice A.J.’s mom Siggi, while Super Bowl champion-turned-children’s author Bennett will voice A.J.’s dad Marty. Also joining the cast: Juliet Donenfeld (Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures) as A.J.’s best friend Jessie, Innocent Ekakitie (Bunk’d) as Jazz, and David Mitchell (Phineas and Ferb) as A.J.’s bunny sidekick Theo. Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Trainor will have a recurring role playing Jessie’s mom.

The casting news was announced Friday morning (Aug. 8) at the “Disney Jr. Let’s Play!” fan celebration, taking place throughout the weekend at Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim, California.

Other Disney Jr. news coming out of Friday’s fan event: The new series Cars: Lightning Racers, inspired by the Disney and Pixar Cars film series, will see Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy reprising their roles as Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater, respectively; Marvel’s Avengers: Mightiest Friends will debt as the first preschool Avengers series, following Spidey and Iron Man-specific shows; and two new Mickey & Minnie’s Holiday Songs musical specials will arrive this year timed to Halloween and Christmas.

“Our shows are often a child’s very first connection to the world of Disney, sparking the songs they sing, the characters they adore, and the adventures they want to live again and again,” Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television, said at Friday’s event. “Today’s announcements build on that leadership, expanding the worlds kids already love and introducing new multiplatform stories that will capture the hearts of the next generation.”

As fellow moms of two, Aiko and Trainor are surely no strangers to children’s television. Aiko is mom to 16-year-old Namiko (whom she shares with her R&B singer ex O’Ryan) and 2-year-old son Noah (with her rapper boyfriend Big Sean), while Trainor has 4-year-old son Riley and 2-year-old son Barry with actor husband Daryl Sabara.

Hey A.J. — produced by Surfing Giant Studios, with Bennett, Jeff “Swampy” Marsh and Michael Hodges serving as executive producers — will debut in 2026 on Disney Jr., followed by a Disney+ release.

MGK and Megan Fox may no longer be engaged, but former “twin flame” couple are still making beautiful music together. Just check the songwriting credits for rapper-turned-pop-punk-rocker Kelly, whose new album, Lost Americana, features a track titled “Orpheus” credited to co-writers Kelly and Fox.

The gentle piano and strings ballad opens with MGK sighing, “We grew a tree back in the garden/ With a celestial seed that fell down to us from the stars/ The sun rose high and killed our shadows/ There’s more to see under the light than in the dark.” The lyrics allude to the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice via lines about an undying love that cannot be.

“Somewhere in a different realm, we’re still together/ Somehow, I’ll find my way to you again/ Shipwrecked, but I hold hopes of buried treasure,” MGK sings on the song in which he vows, “I won’t let you love me, but I can’t let you leave me/ It’s a tragedy, and we’ve all seen that scene.”

In the Greek myth, musician Orpheus loses wife Eurydice to a snake bite and travels to the underworld to plead with Hades for her return. The god of the depths offers to let Eurydice return to life if Orpheus agrees not to look back at her until they’re both above ground again. When his anxiety about their return overwhelms him, Orpheus looks back and loses Eurydice forever.

Similarly, the song that appears to chronicle the on-and-off couple’s tumultuous, drama-filled love affair, which seemingly ended for good when they split just before Fox gave birth to their daughter, Saga Blade, in March of this year. It also seems to be a call back to the poem “Prove it, Orpheus” from Fox’s 2023 book of poems Pretty Boys Are Poisonous, which fans at the time suspected was about the singer.

In it, she wrote, “And when they ask you what is your biggest regret/ Don’t writ it in a song/ Cut yourself open and write it in blood.”

The “celestial seed” reference in the song also seems like a call-back to a mini-controversy that erupted around the time of the baby’s birth when MGK announced the good news by writing, “She’s finally here!! our little celestial seed.” Kelly later clarified that of course they didn’t name their daughter Celestial Seed, but it’s unclear at this point if the song writing preceded the tweet or if Kelly leaned into the misunderstanding on the track as a wink.

At press time it was also unclear if the former couple worked on the song together, or if Fox’s songwriting credit is tied to her earlier poem; a spokesperson for Kelly had not returned a request for clarification on the credit at press time.

The majority of the songs on the album were written solely by Kelly or Kelly with Emma Rosen, or the pair with LP co-producer Nick Long. However, Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins gets a co-writing credit on “Starman,” which interpolates the entire chorus to 3EB’s breakout 1997 single, “Semi-Charmed Life.”

MGK has been on a full-court press blitz for Lost Americana, with his hometown of Cleveland preparing to celebrate its favorite son with the annual MGK Day celebration this weekend. Events from Friday through Sunday (Aug. 8-10) include the XXCon gathering at Jacobs Pavilion featuring an acoustic performance, DJ set from Emo Night Brooklyn and a celebration of the album tonight. The party will continue on Saturday with a Now That’s What I Call Brunch party with music by Bobby Booshay, a street league skateboard takeover and a bar crawl. Sunday will kick off with a Harley-Davidson city ride ending at the MGK Day Community and Arts Festival and celebrity basketball game; click here for the full roster of events.

Ice Cube is standing with the immigrant families who have been targeted by the recent United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in his home city of Los Angeles.

In a clip from his radio interview on REAL 92.3 LA’s The Cruz Show posted Thursday (Aug. 7), the rapper expressed his frustration with the federal government’s “heavy-handed” crackdown on immigrant communities in the area and shared his sympathies with those in the wider Latino population who are living in fear as a result. “It hurts, because it’s all kind of different situations been going around, as far as immigration,” he began.

“To see people disrespected like that, and federal government just being too heavy-handed and disrespectful, going to churches and weddings and grabbing people out of those schools,” he continued. “It’s like, ‘Come on man, y’all just overdoing it.’”

Cube went on to theorize that the intention behind the raids isn’t just to deport people, but also to instill lasting terror in every Latinx person in the United States, regardless of their citizenship status. “Nobody’s safe, man,” the hip-hop star said. “They don’t care who they grab. It’s sad. They come in and disrespect everybody. They want to traumatize people, too.”

“It’s just sad, man,” he added. “I can’t wait ’til this period is over. I don’t know how we’re going to get to the end, but it’s crazy to see people dragged out of their spots of refuge.”

Billboard has reached out to the White House for comment.

The interview comes amid growing tensions in the L.A. area, which first erupted with protests against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts in June. They included deploying the National Guard to assist in ICE’s raids throughout the city. Cube is just the latest star to speak out about the issue, with Tyler, The Creator, Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Joe Armstrong, Kehlani and countless other artists also slamming the government’s sweeps in recent months.

But despite a federal appeals court recently upholding a federal judge’s order that blocked the Trump administration from continuing the indiscriminate immigration arrests in the city, U.S. Border Patrol agents have still been proceeding with raids. Just one day before Cube’s interview, for instance, a group of them jumped out of the back of a rented truck and made arrests at a Home Depot in L.A., a mission one official called “Operation Trojan Horse,” according to the Associated Press.

Watch Ice Cube speak on the recent ICE raids on The Cruz Show below.