NOTEWRTHY: 2023 Predictions

Welcome back to NOTEWRTHY, and welcome to the first blog post of 2023! I’m excited for a new year of posts, and I hope you all are too. This will be a bit of a shorter post because of classes starting up again, but I will eventually make it back to the normal length.

Today, let’s talk about my music predictions for this year. 2023 is slated to be a huge year for music, especially in hip hop. From potential and confirmed album releases, to potential changes to the culture itself — there’s a lot to talk about so lets get right into it.

First up, let’s talk about album releases, both confirmed and unconfirmed. Based off of the fact that he has begun to release some features recently, it seems entirely possible that a release from Texas-born rapper Travis Scott is on the horizon. While his albums have been met with decent critical acclaim and massive support from his fans, with the tragedy that happened at his festival Astroworld, it’s understandable that he didn’t release a project — much less any features — up until a few months ago. Nonetheless, the project known currently as Utopia was initially expected to be released in 2021, but was delayed indefinitely because of what happened. But, as I said, with him seemingly coming out of hibernation, a release definitely seems possible in the coming months.

Next up, we’ve got one of the founding members of Odd Future, Tyler, The Creator. Tyler has famously followed a bi-yearly release schedule with his albums, and with his last project coming in 2021, he’s due once again this year. However, Tyler recently took to Twitter to dispel some rumors about the name of his next album, and through those tweets he seemed to imply that he was changing things about the album, which may or may not include the release date. So while I think it’s unlikely, a deviation from his schedule could be very possible.

As far as one of the guaranteed releases, the new blink-182 album is confirmed for this year. As the first album with Tom Delong back in the band since he left, I am very excited for this release. The first single off the album, “EDGING,” gave us a pretty good idea of what we can expect from the reunited punk icons, and personally, I am very excited for it. The song gives me energy from both Enema of the State, and NINE. With a combination of both their old and new sound, I see this album being very well received, with at least 3 decent songs that I will revisit often. The band also confirmed a tour along side the album, so it will also be interesting to see how that goes as well.

Circling back to other rumored releases, there have been rumors circling about many artists releasing albums, but none of these claims seem to have enough precedent or evidence to back them up, so I’m just gonna list them here. Baby Keem is anticipated to release, along with J Cole and Lil Uzi Vert as well. Outside of hip-hop, Green Day has also been teasing new music coming soon, with them posting clips of them in the studio, but no actual full tracks, teasers or anything beyond unmastered sound clips. Also, despite his January 2022 release, The Weeknd might also release a project this year and has been quoted as saying that he has “…been inspired…” Whatever that means, I am excited to see the results.

As a little bonus, make sure you follow @press.play.radio on Instagram! I recently became a DJ for UIC Radio as well as a blogger, so make sure you tune in every Thursday morning from 8 to 9 AM!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for this post, make sure to have a good week and not fall behind on your work.