Hear tracks by 4batz featuring Drake, Salt Cathedral, Swamp Dogg and others.
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.
Kamasi Washington, ‘Prologue’
“Prologue” is actually the final track on Kamasi Washington’s coming album, “Fearless Movement,” and it’s dense and bustling. Double time drumming, frenetic percussion and hyperactive keyboard counterpoint roil around a melody that rises resolutely over descending chords, while breakneck solos from Dontae Winslow on trumpet and Washington on saxophone exult in sheer agility and emotional peaks. JON PARELES
Shabazz Palaces and Lavarr the Starr, ‘Take Me to Your Leader’
Shabazz Palaces — Ishmael Butler from Digable Planets — sets up a sci-fi scenario in “Take Me to Your Leader” from his album due March 29, “Exotic Birds of Prey.” He and a guest rapper, Lavarr the Starr, have to convince a powerful, mysterious queen that “our race deserves to survive.” Amid blipping electronics and slow-pulsing bass, with voices warped by echoes and effects, they set out a strategy of gifts, philosophizing, seduction and “a steady-bumping beat she can freak with.” PARELES
Salt Cathedral, ‘Off the Walls’
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
