Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.
Lil Baby, ‘The Bigger Picture’
Better to just step out of the way and let the lyrics do the talking.
“I find it crazy the police’ll shoot you and know that you dead but still tell you to freeze.”
“It’s too many mothers who’s grieving, they killing us for no reason, it been going on for too long to get even.”
“I can’t lie like I don’t rap about killing and dope but I’m telling my young ’uns to vote/I did what I did ’cause I didn’t have no choice and no hope, I was forced to just jump in and go.”
“I won’t take the stand, but I’ll take a stand.”
JON CARAMANICA
Trey Songz, ‘2020 Riots: How Many Times’
Trey Songz harnesses venerable gospel chords — and at the end, a choir — to a protest that’s both historically aware and freshly impassioned: “How many more marches? How many more signs?/How many more lives? How many more times?” JON PARELES
Leon Bridges featuring Terrace Martin, ‘Sweeter’
“My sisters and my brothers sing, sing over me/And I wish I had another day,” Leon Bridges croons in this stark, measured elegy for a life cut short. With soothing keyboard chords and consoling saxophone, it could almost be a soul ballad, but a ticking, tapping programmed beat places it in the here and now. It’s not overtly topical; it doesn’t have to be. “I’m just a story repeating,” he observes. PARELES
6ix9ine featuring Nicki Minaj, ‘Trollz’
There once was a time when Nicki Minaj had a clear path to pop ubiquity. The most naturally charismatic rapper of her generation, she toyed with both rough-edged rapping and sweet-tongued singing, creating a style that felt like it could remake the pop mainstream all on its own. So it’s notable that now, more than a decade into her career and at least five years since her peak, she’s chosen to align herself with 6ix9ine. “Trollz” is his second post-prison single (he’s still on house arrest) and she is his first post-prison collaborator (following their 2018 hit “Fefe,” which went to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100). The largely listless “Trollz” is more notable as a statement of alignment than as songcraft — 6ix9ine has lately been publicly tangling with Meek Mill, who is Minaj’s ex. And it’s significant for how Minaj pivots, recalibrating herself as a villain, and recommits to the most character-driven version of herself. Or maybe she’s astute enough to understand that in the current moment, there’s no faster route to reach the most eyes and ears. Ubiquity ain’t what it used to be. CARAMANICA
John Prine, ‘I Remember Everything’
“I Remember Everything,” the last song John Prine recorded, is a kindly capstone to his trove of music: a love song, a farewell and a summing up, finding redemption in the commonplace. “Sometimes a little tenderness,” he sang, “was the best that I could do.” PARELES
Dua Saleh, ‘Bankrupt’
Dua Saleh’s voice is a tremendously flexible thing, shapeshifting between rapping that feels indebted both to the melodically curious underground rappers of the 1990s and singing that’s part cloudy art-soul, part restrained jazz. Saleh’s strikingly impressive new EP, “Rosetta” (named for Sister Rosetta Tharpe) concludes with “bankrupt,” a swinging, swaggering statement of persistence through melancholy. CARAMANICA
Raphael Saadiq, ‘If It’s Good’
The tempo stays steady for the first two and a half minutes of “If It’s Good,” but the song rarely feels that way. Raphael Saadiq makes everything bob and weave around the beat — vocals, keyboards, backup voices — as if to prove just how elastic a slow, sultry funk groove can be. Or maybe he’s taking the “if” in the song title as some existential condition. And the song’s fade-out veers someplace else entirely. This is virtuosic instability. PARELES
Daniel Carter, Matthew Ship, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver, ‘Majestic Travel Agency’
Daniel Carter’s tenor saxophone exudes both mischief and composure on “Majestic Travel Agency,” the 13-minute-long collective improvisation that kicks off the new album from Carter, the pianist Matthew Shipp, the bassist William Parker and the drummer Gerald Cleaver. All are noblemen of the New York avant-garde, and they’ve been playing together in various scenarios for decades, but this LP, “Welcome Adventure! Vol. 1,” is their first as a quartet. With Parker and Cleaver sinking into a swaying rhythm, Carter sounds deeply at home, playing with the delicate grandeur of Lester Young. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO
Brad Mehldau, ‘III. Keeping Distance’
Adjusting to quarantine in April, sheltered at home in the Netherlands with his family, the pianist Brad Mehldau wrote a suite of 12 short and beautiful pieces for — what else — solo piano. He recorded them soon after, and on Friday they were released, along with three covers, as “Suite: April 2020.” On “III. Keeping Distance,” Mehldau’s right and left hands remain far apart, and harmonically misaligned; a feeling of wary disunity pervades. Only on later tracks does a sense of togetherness and resolution set in. RUSSONELLO
Ambrose Akinmusire, ‘Yessss’
A track that starts out placid — Ambrose Akinmusire holding a series of long, steady notes on trumpet as the pianist Sam Harris offers spare accompaniment — ends with a frantic acceleration: Drums, bass, piano and trumpet tear apart from each other, and everything unravels. In between, the piece is basically split into two halves: a section of darkly gleaming, indeterminate balladry (an Akinmusire specialty) followed by a circular harmonic groove that feels almost cozy enough to curl up inside. But then, things fall apart. RUSSONELLO
Moor Mother and Nicole Mitchell, ‘Vultures Laughing’
“Do you see the vultures laughing?” Moor Mother asks, her voice alternating between a cold simmer and a hysterical peal as she conjures the pervasive terror (it can’t be called paranoia) of living in a place that puts a target on your back. Atop her hollowed-out, anarcho-futurist electronics, Nicole Mitchell runs her flute through a billow of reverb and effects, evoking those lurking birds of prey. This recording was captured live in 2018, during the first duet collaboration between Mitchell and Moor Mother, both of whom know how to balance an indictment of the past with a vision of escape. RUSSONELLO
Source: Music - nytimes.com
