Justin Bieber just celebrated the birth of his first child, and now it has been revealed that the pop superstar is back in the studio. In a new interview in the New York Times, celebrated indie musician Mk.gee disclosed that he has recently been in the recording studio with Bieber, and he’s impressed with the results of their collaborations. “He’s searching,” he said. “Anything that comes out of his mouth: That’s pop music. You can really do pretty wild stuff behind that, just because it represents something.”

But Mk.gee shared that the sound he is after isn’t specifically pop music, but rather, “the promise of pop music… Experimentalism has no meaning unless it’s done on the grandest scale,” he said. “I just don’t want to join somebody else’s citadel. I want to build my own thing, my own castle with my friends, because that’s what’s needed. And if people want to come, they can come.” Bieber hasn’t released a new studio album since 2021’s Justice, while he and his wife Hailey just welcomed the arrival of their first child, a baby boy named Jack Blues, last month. (Stereogum)