Lucky Daye Announces 'ALOUD!' for October 16
Lucky Daye is done asking permission. The Grammy-winning R&B singer has announced his fifth album, ALOUD!, arriving October 16 via Warner Records — his first project since leaving RCA. The 15-track set features Leon Thomas, Pusha T, Muni Long, Akeem Ali and Atlanta rock band The Paradox, with longtime collaborator D'Mile back in the production mix. The title plays on the tension between "allowed" and "aloud": Daye told Rated R&B, "I used to think I wasn't allowed to do what I wanted. Now I'm screaming."
The rollout is already moving. Lead single "Nowhere Fast" has climbed into the Top 20 at R&B radio, and the follow-up "Talk To Me" — co-written with Frank Brim and Dimitri McDowell over psychedelic guitar and '80s-inspired percussion — arrived October 2 with its official video. Daye previewed the album at a listening party inside New York's Aura 57, telling ESSENCE the response got "bigger and better" with every song, and he's set for the GRAMMY Museum's The Drop series in Los Angeles on October 14.
Drake Keeps the FOMO Rollout Moving With Two New Videos
Drake isn't done with the FOMO vault. On October 6, the Toronto star uploaded official videos for "Solar Eclipse" and "Cold Shoulder" — the two Don Toliver collaborations from the expanded HABIBTI (FOMO) — to DrakeVEVO, four days after the songs hit streaming on October 2. "Solar Eclipse" flips Ella Langley's country hit "Choosin' Texas" into a trap-soul record stacked with Texas shout-outs (College Station, Sugar Land, Katy, Fort Bend) and borrows from Bun B's 2005 "Get Throwed"; Langley, Miranda Lambert, Luke Dick and Joybeth Taylor hold writing credits on the interpolation. "Cold Shoulder" pairs Drake and Toliver with Yebba.
The backstory is pure Drake rollout theater: he praised Langley's pen in her Instagram comments ("Goated Pen") earlier this year, showed up at her Little Rock concert in August, previewed the record during DJ sets in Houston and Toronto, then tucked the full song inside the FOMO short film in September — briefly, before an edit removed the Langley backstage footage. Now it's official.
Quavo's QRÖMELIFE Projects at 13K — Below His Last Two Bows
The numbers are the headline Quavo didn't want. Early first-week projections from Kurrco put QRÖMELIFE at roughly 13,000 equivalent units — a figure that would keep the album out of the Billboard 200's top 10 and land well below the 32,000-unit, No. 18 debut of 2023's Rocket Power, let alone the 99,000-unit, No. 2 bow of 2018's Quavo Huncho. The projections arrive alongside a wave of fan criticism aimed at Pharrell Williams' wall-to-wall production, with some listeners comparing the beats to commercial jingles. Mid-week projections shift before final numbers land, so treat the 13K as a signal, not a sentence.
The timing stings: the album dropped October 2 on Quality Control with the full Pharrell executive-production treatment, and its rollout crossed into fashion week and the long-awaited Offset reunion on "Away." A soft first week wouldn't erase the reunion moment — but it would make the coming weeks of the rollout matter a lot more.
Filed under The Wire, MixShow Prime's music industry news desk.
