The cover of the soul album Colemine Records ships on Friday is a photograph of the band members' own parents. Thee Sinseers and Joey Quiñones release Love Stories on Friday (Sept 18), eleven tracks cut with standup bass, amplified guitars and a string section, in a revival scene that has spent the last five years chasing a cleaner and sleeker sound than this one.
The week's loudest rap news belongs to a video game soundtrack that does not arrive until November. The records that actually carry a September 18 street date come from an independent soul label, a Los Angeles rapper making his first major-label move, three men who have been rapping since the 1980s and 1990s, and a British singer releasing on an imprint built from his own initials.
Here is what carries a confirmed Friday date, verified against label announcements, pre-order pages and the artists' own materials, and what is landing on a different day entirely.
Daley Returns on an Imprint With His Own Initials
Strange Nature is ten songs, out Friday on TEXX7 Records under exclusive license to The SRG/ILS Group, and it closes the longest silence of Daley's career. Blue Lab Beats appear on the closing track, "Zone," and the album arrives with a video already cut for "Lavender." We covered the announcement when the record was revealed earlier this month, in our piece on the end of Daley's silence, alongside the guest list that runs through Robert Glasper and Marsha Ambrosius.
Daley is releasing through a label bearing his own initials with a distribution and services partner behind it, which is the structure a working singer takes when the catalog is the point rather than the advance.
Two Debuts That Did Not Come Through a Major
Love Stories is an 11-track release from Colemine Records, available on evergreen and black vinyl, CD, cassette, and digital formats. A rose-ripple vinyl pressing is limited to 1,000 copies and sold exclusively through the label. Kelly Finnigan engineered and mixed the album, while Skip Heller wrote the string arrangements. The announced lineup features Quiñones on vocals, Christopher Manjarrez on bass, and Francisco Flores and Eric Johnson. Musically, the record places upright bass and amplified guitar at the center, taking a leaner route than the plush production often associated with the recent Chicano soul revival.
Quiñones presents the album as a clear statement of the band's identity, not a side experiment. “It's a solidifying statement of where we are now. This is our style,” he said in Colemine's announcement. Flores added a strong sense of place: “We're from here. You can hear it a thousand miles away.” The label's description also avoids a tidy romance narrative, promising a record that “isn't interested in the happy ending,” but instead explores “everything that comes before it, after it, and in spite of it.”
NAJI is Kareen Lomax's debut album, released through Music is Fun, a division of Seeker Music, and produced in full by Daoud. Lomax has spent a decade writing for and working alongside Diplo, Zayn Malik, Leon Bridges, Maroon 5, Syd, Rudimental, Kavinsky and AlunaGeorge, which is a long apprenticeship for someone who has never put out a record under her own full name.
"Naji is my first name, which a lot of people don't know," she said in the album announcement. "Growing up, I went by my middle name, Kareen, but Naji always felt beside me." The record was written through grief, adoption, a move from Georgia to Los Angeles and a set of losses in her family, and she describes the two names as two working modes: "Kareen, who feels deeply, the one who grieves, loves, and tries to make sense of everything, and Naji, who is more direct, more confrontational, and less afraid to say what it is without folding." The production sits across alternative R&B, ambient soul, indie pop and electronic texture, and "OFFLINE" arrived in July as the first single.
Neither record came through a major. Lomax is releasing on a publishing company's own imprint and Thee Sinseers on an independent that has spent a decade building a soul roster, and both ship into the same Friday as a Warner debut and a sixteen-track veteran summit.
AZ Chike Makes His Warner Introduction
No Rest for The Wicked is fourteen tracks, out via Warner Records, and it is the first AZ Chike album released with major-label distribution behind it. The credits carry more weight than the guest list does. Pharrell Williams produced on it, as did Terrace Martin and Hit-Boy, a combination that puts West Coast jazz-informed production next to two of the most decorated pop and rap producers working. Tyler, The Creator appears on two tracks, "Look Like My Mama" and "The World Is Ours," and JMSN is the other credited feature.
The tracklist carries no Kendrick Lamar verse, and whether one was cut late or never recorded remains unresolved. We broke down the credits when the sequence landed on Monday, in our look at what Chike assembled, and nothing has been added since. Warner is releasing the record under exclusive license from LIYS LLC and R. Baron LLC, which means Chike did not hand over his masters to make the introduction.
Rakim, Kurupt and Masta Killa Put Two Crews on One Title
DPG WU-TANG, WU-TANG DPG -THE GODBODY LP- is sixteen tracks, released under Holy Toledo Productions, DMG Publishing and Compound Interest. Rakim produced across the record, with Nick Wiz contributing and Nick Price handling one track. The closing cut is a remix of "Halleuja" featuring Mic King.
Rakim has been explicit about why a record like this exists in 2026. "What I love about doing projects like this is it breaks down the barriers of East Coast, West Coast, the Dirty South, Midwest, wherever you're from," he told Okayplayer. He was blunter about the other barrier the record is testing: "I always hated that hip-hop felt that there was an age limit. I quietly disagreed." Pairing the Dogg Pound and Wu-Tang lineages on one title is that argument stated in the most literal possible terms, and sixteen tracks is a lot of room to make it.
Other Releases
Chaka Khan, Chakzilla
Chaka Khan's "Chakzilla" is a big, exuberant dance-pop statement built around the kind of personality only Chaka could comfortably carry. Produced by Greg Kurstin and co-written by Khan, Sia and Kurstin, the track pairs pounding rhythm, glossy synths and flashes of guitar with a vocal that still sounds commanding, playful and unmistakably hers. Sia also contributes backing vocals, but the record belongs to Chaka, who turns the “giant” metaphor into a declaration of confidence, freedom and finding someone capable of meeting her at her level. The Godzilla-inspired concept could easily have become camp for camp’s sake, yet “Chakzilla” works because Khan commits completely, making the song feel less like a nostalgia exercise and more like a colorful, self-aware reintroduction ahead of her new album of the same name, due September 18.
Jaymin, STATIC: Eleven-track EP, Warner Records, ℗ 2026 Warner Records Inc., explicit, filed R&B/Soul. Seattle singer, lead single "Rollin'" produced by Sango and Chase N. Cashe. This is the contemporary R&B release the piece is missing, and it is on the same label as AZ Chike.
MNEK, BULLDOZER!!: Eleven tracks, Muzo Music Limited under exclusive licence to Universal Music Operations. Apple files it under Dance rather than R&B, so it is a genre call rather than an automatic include.
What Is Landing on a Different Day
Travis Scott's "RHYNO" is the loudest rap release of this week and it is not a Friday record either. Rockstar Games and Atlantic announced Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album on Wednesday (Sept 17) with thirty-four original songs and a November 19 release date, opening pre-orders the same day on liquid-filled and splatter vinyl. Six singles went out alongside the announcement to carry it. Travis Scott's contribution was produced by Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk, and Yung Lean's entry brings Future and Metro Boomin. Those songs are streaming now. The album is two months out.
Friday belongs to a soul band from East Los Angeles, a first-time album artist who spent ten years writing for other people, a rapper making his major-label entrance without handing over his masters, a soul Queen, and three veterans who put the Dogg Pound and Wu-Tang on one sixteen-track title.
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