It’s Ariana Grande season. Ahead of the release of her fourth studio album Sweetener, Grande performed “The Light Is Coming,” an unreleased track from the project that features her frequent collaborator Nicki Minaj.
She teased the performance on Twitter ahead of her set at iHeart Radio's Wango Tango in L.A., telling fans she would be performing something new.
That something ended up being the singer and Nicki’s third collab together, following “Side to Side” and “Bang Bang.” "We wanted to give you a little preview of it tonight,” she told the crowd on Saturday night before performing the song. “Is that okay? I'm so nervous! Let's go!"
Grande previously shared a snippet of the unreleased collab on Twitter with a video of her rapping along to Nicki’s guest verse.
In the video from Saturday’s performance, the crowd can be seen dancing along to the new single. Grande’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson is also a fan, posting a shot of the performance to his Instagram story writing “r u fucking kidding me !!??” and “so fucking lit,” complete with heart emojis.
It’s unclear when Grande plans on dropping the new single. She’s expected to release Sweetener sometime in August, with pre-orders kicking off on June 20.
In her cover story with The FADER, Grande called her new album her most personal. “I’ve always just been like a shiny, singing, 5-6-7- 8, sexy-dance…sexy thing. But now it’s like, ‘OK … issa bop—but issa message. Issa bop but also has chunks of my soul in it Here you go,” she said. Also, I cried 10 hundred times in the session writing it for you. Here is my bleeding heart, and here is a trap beat behind it.'"
