New Music Friday: The best albums out Jan. 16

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4.3 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

Ya Tseen. The Sha La Das. A mesmerizing collaboration between Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore. Stephen Thompson from NPR Music is joined by Alex Newman from KMHD in Portland to chat about the best albums out Friday, January 16.

The Starting 5

(00:00) Intro & A$AP Rocky, 'Don't Be Dumb'
(02:36) Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore, 'Tragic Magic'
(07:43) The Sha La Das, 'Your Picture'
(15:33) Ya Tseen, 'Stand On My Shoulders'
(21:53) Shaking Hand, 'Shaking Hand'
(27:43) Tyler Ramsey & Carl Broemel, 'Celestun'

The Lightning Round

• Craig Taborn, Tomeka Reid & Ches Smith, 'Dream Archives'
• Courtney Marie Andrews, 'Valentine'
• Diogo Strausz, 'Dance Para Se'
• Oxis, 'Oxis 8'
• Nate Smith, 'LIVE-ACTION (Deluxe)'

Sample the albums via our New Music Friday playlist on NPR.org.

Credits:
Host: Stephen Thompson
Guest: Alex Newman, KMHD
Audio Producer: Noah Caldwell
Digital Elle Mannion
Editor: Otis Hart
Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick note before the show, this podcast contains explicit language.
0:10.8	Happy Friday, everyone from NPR Music. It's New Music Friday. I'm Stephen Thompson here with Alex Newman of KMHD in Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the show, Alex.
0:21.2	Stephen, thank you so much for having me. It's a real blast to be here.
0:24.4	It is a pleasure to have you. So the music you are hearing up front is from the new album by
0:31.3	ASAP Rocky. It's called Don't Be Dumb. Asap Rocky having a huge cultural moment right now.
0:39.9	Not only does he have this new album dropping, he is in two movies that are central to award
0:45.5	season, highest to lowest, and if I had legs, I'd kick you.
0:49.8	This dude's everywhere.
0:51.0	He really is.
0:52.0	And I love the album title. I couldn't imagine a better album title,
0:57.8	especially in this day and age that we live in. And yeah, he's very ubiquitous. He was really
1:02.7	great, I thought. And if I had legs, I kick you. It's cool to see where he's going with the music.
1:08.2	You know, the two singles have sort of very divergent
1:11.6	ethos and points of view, but both sound exciting. It's, you know, he's not letting the
1:17.2	fame and fortune slow down his creativity.
1:20.6	We're talking about the two singles that were released prior to the record.
1:30.6	We were not given access to advanced copies of the full album.
1:34.5	Just looking at those two singles, though, it's really hard to even tell, you know,
1:39.2	what all the like common threads are that run through this record because they're so different.
1:43.6	4,500 on a hum of no gas, 89 price on a ticket. the like common threads are that run through this record because they're so different.
1:56.9	It seems to be very high energy though. That's the two commonality I sort of feel from both those tracks.
2:03.6	It's always interesting when you see like somebody who might be considered a rap artist or a hip hop artist sort of veer into
	...

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