Baauer drops third album ‘U’ on June 12 via LuckyMe, a 16-track Y2K-inspired dance record exec-produced by Hudson Mohawke. Review inside
Baauer’s third album U arrives June 12 via LuckyMe, and it is the most deliberately joyful thing he has made since “Harlem Shake” put his name in every speaker on the planet in 2012. The Grammy-nominated producer born Harrison Bauer Rodrigues has spent the years since that viral moment building a catalog, from his debut Aa in 2016 through Planet’s Mad in 2020, that leaned into darkness and sonic complexity. U goes the other direction entirely.
Sixteen continuous tracks, executive-produced by Hudson Mohawke, built as an explicit tribute to the dance music that first hooked him as a teenager growing up in London. This is the sound of someone making exactly what they want to make and nothing else.
The album’s reference pool is specific and worn in. Ibiza house, bloghouse, early 2000s BBC Radio 1 Essential Mixes, Y2K sample-digging culture, the crossover instincts of the acts that ruled dancefloors in the era between Napster and SoundCloud. Baauer has always been a producer who thrives on digging. “I truly love the process of digging to find a cool five seconds,” he explained ahead of the release. U is the album where that obsession stops being a production technique and becomes the whole aesthetic framework.
Sixteen Tracks, No Filler, One Continuous Flow
U plays like a set rather than a traditional track listing. The 16 songs run continuously with no hard stops between them, building and releasing tension the way a well-programmed club night does rather than the way an album usually does. Lead single “Better“ sets the tone: bright, disco-leaning, built for movement, pulling from that early-2000s sample-heavy energy while still sounding like a natural extension of Baauer’s club instincts. “Supersonic” operates as a sparkling beat collage.
“Calling Out For U“ delivers the big-booty drop the title promises. “Gravity/Chaos Flow” featuring KUČKA, the Australian vocalist whose work with Hudson Mohawke and LuckyMe affiliates has made her one of the most reliably excellent voices in the label ecosystem, adds the kind of emotional altitude that keeps the record from feeling like pure surface pleasure.
The featured artist roster is deliberately tight and internally coherent. Brazy appears on two tracks, including “One Last Time” alongside Aluna, whose work bridging R&B and electronic music since AlunaGeorge makes her an ideal fit for the record’s crossover instincts. Betsy appears on a reworked version of “Nothing’s Ever Real.” The presence of Supafly on “U Give Me Love” is the album’s most pointed historical nod, a direct line back to the era of filtered disco house that U is quietly in conversation with throughout.
Why U Matters Right Now
More than a decade after “Harlem Shake” turned Baauer into an involuntary pop culture phenomenon, U is the clearest statement he has made about what he actually cares about as an artist. That song’s virality was something that happened to him. U is something he built. The distinction matters and is audible in every production choice here. The record does not overthink anything. It commits to feel over concept, to momentum over meaning, to the simple fact that well-made dance music does not need to justify itself beyond making people move.
Hudson Mohawke’s executive production fingerprints are present throughout without overwhelming the record’s identity. The piano and keys from Eli Teplin, whose credits include work with Justin Bieber and Charli XCX, add a pop gloss that keeps the album accessible without flattening its club-ready energy. Additional production from Parisi rounds out a record that sounds expensive and effortless in equal measure. At 36 minutes across 16 tracks, U does not outstay its welcome by a single second. For a producer who has spent the better part of a decade proving he can make difficult, demanding electronic music, this pivot to pure, uncomplicated joy lands as something genuinely surprising.
