Vince Staples‘ upcoming sixth studio album will find the rapper running through a creative victory lap. Dark Times, out Friday, May 24, will add 13 new songs to his catalogue while taking stock of his growth as an artist over the past decade. “Shame on the Devil,” the first release from the record, is the first exhibit in this showcase.

The song appears as the fifth track on Dark Times and arrives with an accompanying 50-second visual. “It’s me mastering some things I’ve tried before that I wasn’t great at in the beginning. It’s a testament to musical growth, song structure — all the good stuff,” Staples explained in a statement about the single, which he referred to as a “personal achievement.”

This first release finds Staples examining the endurance of unproductive and unhealthy cycles, while leaving room for grace and the courage to ask for help during the times when he feels most directionless. “Don’t leave me, please, swear I learned my lesson,” he raps on the opening verse of “Shame on the Devil,” where he also admits to yearning for love and affection. “But, I still chase thrills, I’m imperfected.”

Dark Times will mark Staples’ first full-length album release since 2022’s Ramona Park Broke My Heart. A release for the record describes it as being “a muscular and revelatory work refining elements that have been present in his catalog for the last decade: dense lyricism over lush, layered beats; wry, melancholic observations about life; finding pockets of light in an endless dark.”

Staples began teasing this new chapter of his career last week. “I’ve seen the love for the Hive verse, amongst other things, over the last few days, and I appreciate it,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter), referring to his appearance on Early Sweatshirt’s 2013 release that recently received a surge of attention online. “And I’m still on that. That said, there will be new Vince Staples music next week.”

The rapper will also embark on a brief Europe tour in June.

In between his latest musical projects, Staples made his official pivot into film and television with The Vince Staples Show, the Netflix series actualizing the beta-version he used to upload on YouTube.

“With me, it’s kind of all the same thing. I don’t have a connectivity to music or film or television or anything specifically. It’s kind of just working your way through life’s problems and progress. I have thoughts and ideas, and I’m trying to work my way through [them],” Staples told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “If I work through [them] via music or if I work through [them] via film and television, the important thing is understanding the idea.”

He added: “I’m not really too worried about how people feel when the thing comes out because I already got what I needed from it, which was the processing of that information. You just take the notes as far as what you can do better next time to help people understand where you’re coming from or help people get what they need from whatever you create.”

Dark Times tracklist:
“Close Your Eyes and Swing”
“Black & Blue”
“Government Cheese”
“Children’s Song”
“Shame On the Devil”
“Étouffée”
“Liars”
“Justin”
“‘Radio’”
“Nothing Matters”
“Little Homies”
“Freeman”
“Why Won’t the Sun Come Out?”