The songwriter and producer is in his feelings once again

“Ultimately, I imagine this being, like, four mini-albums, but how I end up approaching that, I don’t know,” benny blanco tells Apple Music. “I might release one song one day and then six songs six months later.” Roughly 27 months passed between 2018’s FRIENDS KEEP SECRETS and its follow-up, but as promised, we have seven more star-studded collaborations in the lovelorn and angsty mould of the original. Guests this time around include soul-searching superstar Justin Bieber (“Lonely”), dearly departed emo MCs 6 Dogs (“Lost”) and Juice WRLD (“Real Shit”, “Graduation”) and bedroom-pop phenom Gracie Abrams (“Unlearn”). The seven songs of the original FRIENDS KEEP SECRETS—which feature Khalid, Calvin Harris and Ty Dolla $ign, among others—appear at the end of part 2, revealing a timelessness in a crop of songs he once said should feel “as of-this-moment as possible”.