Si, si, si, si, I’m dyingggg!: El Alfa feat. Cardi B, “Mi Mami” - Acolytes of Dominican dembow, the best music in the entire world (Cardi agrees), are well familiar with El Alfa El Jefe, one of the genre’s most charismatic figures who has for years lent his baby-voiced dirty missives to a string of relatively massive…

Nope: John Mayer, “I Guess I Just Feel Like” – John Mayer sighs a heavy sigh at his breakfast table, dropping his copy of the New York Times Sunday edition into his lap. His orange juice sits before him. His bowl of Wheaties barely touched. It’s another day of terrible headlines as the global world order begins to…

Y: Empress Of, Us album – Latin American indie artist Lorely Rodriguez is a musical delight, and this new album (as well as the collab below) sets her up for a win. Following her very personal debut album, Me, this sophomore collection is meant to be relatable and somewhat fun, especially in a live setting—though…

Y: Bad Bunny ft. Drake, “MIA” – Your Latino lover and Jewish ex dropped a single to quench your thirst. Drake, a rapper that Benito has proudly claimed to stan ever since he was on the come up, is now a ft. (little f) on one of his songs—which bleeds red, white and Bad Bunny. Set in a quintessential Latinx barbacoa in…

Well, it’s Mariah: Mariah Carey, “With You” - One of the most wonderful things about Mariah is her staunch refusal to be anything but 100 percent herself. Instead of just playing the generic narrator of her otherwise by-the-numbers ballad “With You,” she will have you know that she is Mariah the star: She has her…

YES!!! I’M IN THE SHA-HAAAA SHA-HAAA-LOW!: Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, “Shallow” — The full-length song and video for the record that will rule our lives until the end of time (or at least, till the end of 2018 and throughout awards season) has been released, and this is just the tip of the iceberg of a soundtrack…

A million times yes: Lana Del Rey, “Venice Bitch” - After feeling mostly indifferent toward Lana’s previous single “Mariners Apartment Complex,” I was happy to discover that “Venice Bitch” is more my speed. I knew it from the first verse, when she said she’s “fresh out of fucks forever.” She claims “Venice bitch” as a…

Love it: Mariah Carey “GTFO” (video) - Mariah’s long proven to be the best at delicate cut-downs decked in 10-cent words (here: “You left me lost and disenchanted”; “My prince was so unjustly handsome”). This, which comes with a softly filtered video of Mariah dawdling about the house in lingerie, is one of those…

I don’t: Ashlee Simpson and Evan Ross, “I Do” - At last (just kidding), the Ross couple released the duet they’ve been teasing to promote their upcoming reality show and it’s um, a song. Judging from the title, and lyrics like “this love came over me like a hurricane,” I’m taking a wild guess that it’s a shot at a…

Yes: Human People, “Jenny” - If you’re a sucker for power pop-punk that tends to reject the confines of either guitar genre and places melody above all, Brooklyn’s Human People are for you. “Jenny” is their latest, and it’s hard for me to think of a more righteous lyric this year than: “Don’t touch me/I could crush…

Y: Ozuna, Aura—In preparation for his tour this fall, Puerto Rican singer Ozuna has released his long-awaited sophomore album. It features a few songs we’ve heard and replayed over the last few months, including “La Modelo” featuring Cardi B and “Unica,” and also has a few new collaborations with popular artists like…

It’s fine: Nicki Minaj, “Ganja Burn” (video) - This music video’s first offense is the unattractive font used for the opening story exposition, which explains: once upon time “there lived a queen” and yadda-yadda-yadda she put her enemies to death. Nicki Minaj emerges from the sand, writhes about, gazes at a skull,…

Yes: Ciara “Freak Me,” feat. Tekno - Ciara seems well aware that we’re approaching the middle of August—the most stressfully humid part of summer—which means we’re in need of a lush, breezy Afrobeat tune to take us through the dog days. With this gyration-ready single and “Level Up” (which she wisely fashioned into a…

Pass: Zayn “Too Much” feat. Timbaland – The most despondent former One Direction member continues his streak of releasing songs that sound like the musical equivalent of hotboxing your friend’s car. “Too Much” is lighter, bouncier than “Sour Diesel,” with a beat that calls to mind Kanye’s “Flashing Lights,” but the…

Nah: Charli XCX, “Girls Night Out” – I’m a Charli AND a SOPHIE Stan (who produced this track) but the “no boys, no boys, no boys!” chorus and overall sound is giving me Sophia Grace flashbacks, by which I mean I’d think I’d sooner hear this on Disney radio than Zane Lowe. Sorry gals! —Hazel Cills

Nope: Macklemore, “How to Play the Flute” feat. King Draino (video) - I admit it’s easy for me to make fun of Macklemore because I don’t like his music, and so I’m going to do that again here. The good news is that I appreciate his attempt at conceptual humor and eccentricity in this video, and I could see this beat…

Deeply kooky but very enjoyable: Ariana Grande, “God Is A Woman” - Obviously, the video for Ariana Grande’s latest single opens with a shot of her hula-hooping at the center of a faraway galaxy and gets weirder from there. This is an over-the-top, bombastic, overtly symbolic Ariana like we’ve never seen before; at…

N, this shit is bad: Justin Timberlake, “Soulmate” – I hate this song. I cannot put it plainly enough. The incessant beat could be fire, but then you get JT’s languid voice over it, repeating “Let me be your soulmate............ FOR DA NITE, JUST FOR DA NITE, FOR DA NITE” with no end in sight. It’s not good. There’s…

Yes, okay, I like it: Drake, “Summer Games” - Please avert your pitchforks, I come in (biased) peace when I say Drizzy’s soft boy shit has never done much for me, and his fifth album, Scorpion—a record obsessed with the usual Drake themes, now with more absentee fathering—released Friday doesn’t do much for me either.…

Sure: Florence and the Machine, “Big God” - Florence Welch told the New York Times in an interview this month that her newest single, “Big God,” is about “obviously, an unfillable hole in the soul, but mainly about someone not replying to my text.” In other words, “Big God” is a big mood, and the video is no…