Posted by Katherine St Asaph on 04/09/2012 at 12:18 PM News

The Popdust Files: strange clouds, upcoming albums

Pop-rapper-but-conflicted about it B.o.B’s Strange Clouds is out May 1, and right now, the tracklisting’s out. It’s pretty standard. “Strange Clouds” is on the album, because it’d be weird for that not to be, and “So Good,” being his crossover coup, is on it; Bo Diddley-sampling, Andre 3000-featuring, commercially shrugged “Play the Guitar” is not. On the new tracks, most people you’d expect to find on the other side of a featured credit being present, like Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, and Chris Brown, who’s just going to keep getting feature credits apparently. In the Hayley Williams role is Taylor Swift. In some sort of role is Morg–actually, just scroll down to the tracklisting and we’ll get to that.

One other thing, though, first? We’re really irritated that we neglected to post about this interview, which is mostly your standard “I’m a pop-rapper damn it and I’m fine with it double damn it” explanation but contains one gem. B.o.B’s already got his “alternative phase where all I wanted to do was make rock music” out of his system. This there probably won’t be any ill-advised future Rebirth or WZRD turns. Hooray!

Tracklisting below.

1. “Bombs Away” ft. Morgan Freeman (whose pseudonymous-or-not identity has yet to be revealed; YouTube is not helpful because of its glut of terrible forumite impressions)
2. “Ray Bands”
3. “So Hard to Breathe”
4. “Both of Us” ft. Taylor Swift
5. “Strange Clouds” ft. Lil Wayne
6. “So Good”
7. “Play For Keeps”
8. “Arena” ft. Chris Brown and T.I.
9. “Out of My Mind” ft. Nicki Minaj
10. “Never Let You Go” ft. Ryan Tedder
11. “Chandelier” ft. Lauriana Mae (the one name on this list you’re least likely to know–do rectify this! It’s worth it!)
12. “Circles”
13. “Just a Sign” ft. Playboy Tre
14. “Castles” ft. Trey Songz
15. “Where Are You” (the B.o.B/Bobby Ray alter-ego confrontation thing we posted about)