Well-known rapper and singer Post Malone released his third studio album, Hollywood’s Bleeding, on Friday, Sept. 6, immediately drawing praise from both critics and fans. The Texas rapper’s album was heavily anticipated, and comes after two previously successful releases in Beerbongs & Bentleys and Stoney. This project was accompanied by four singles, Sunflower featuring Swae Lee, from the soundtrack of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Goodbyes featuring Young Thug, Wow., and Circles. The 17-track album features a star-studded list of guest contributors, with the likes of DaBaby, Travis Scott, Ozzy Osbourne, Future, Halsey, Meek Mill, Lil Baby, and SZA all appearing. The album is already set to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with a projected 475,000-500,000 album units earned in the United States. If this approximation is correct, it would be the second-largest opening week for any album in 2019, trailing only Taylor Swift’s Lover. 

This album brought out both sides of Malone that make him so popular; he explores the dark, moody side of himself on some tracks while also unleashing some of the pop star in him in others. The 24 year-old delves into many topics over the course of the album, such as jabbing at his friends-turned-enemies in Enemies, where rising rap star DaBaby steals the show with a memorable verse. Other notable concepts he discusses are in Saint-Tropez, where he celebrates the payoff and the riches that come from hard work, and in the opening track Hollywood’s Bleeding, where he exposes the toxicity of the Hollywood lifestyle.

Malone also reasserts himself as a master of creating catchy choruses, with this trait fully on display in a number of tracks on the record. Some examples of these memorable choruses that he is able to deliver are in Staring at the Sun, a bouncy, almost Disney-channel type song where SZA absolutely crushes it, A Thousand Bad Times, I’m Gonna Be, On the Road, with Meek Mill and Lil Baby both delivering solid verses, and Die For Me, where Stoney, Future, and Halsey sing about their relationships with their previous untrustworthy significant others. 

However, one track that really stood out to me was the power ballad Take What You Want, where Malone brought together the unlikely pairing of Ozzy Osbourne and Travis Scott as features on this song. The trio of artists consider a relationship where a girl broke their hearts, with Malone calling this significant other deceitful by using clever lyrics to compare her to a snake. Osbourne never had an actual verse, but he handled the chorus extremely well, and his electric guitar riff at the end of the song felt like a separate verse of its own. Scott, like he does with seemingly every feature of his, delivered a memorable verse that accompanies Malone and Osbourne really nicely.

Overall, Malone’s third album is another chart-topping work that is loaded with songs that will be constantly streamed and replayed in the future. Hollywood’s Bleeding may just be one of the catchiest projects of 2019; with strong features, lyrics that are easy to sing along to and beats that are easy to vibe with, the pop-rap star has only solidified his status as one of the most popular musicians right now.