With "A Piece of Me," Western Australia’s Bailey Perrie offers up a pop rock grenade with the pin already pulled, cleverly disguised as a twisted love song. It thunders forward with a cinematic, arena-ready confidence that makes its raw, emotionally brutalist core all the more disarming. The effect is something like finding a tear-stained diary page taped to the side of a massive firework...

The gloves are officially off in the Ga rap community. Fast-rising hip-hop artist Keddi has delivered a direct and uncompromising message to his peers with the release of a bristling teaser for his new track, “Shele,” a potent Ga slang term for “challenge.” The strictly hip-hop record serves as Keddi’s opening gambit, a daring verbal gauntlet thrown at any rapper who claims the top spot....