Aurelia Butler

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    Rico Wade and Organized Noize’s 10 Essential Songs

    The producer helped shape and boost the sound of Atlanta rap starting in the mid-1990s. His death at 52 was announced last Saturday.The Atlanta producer Rico Wade was the de facto leader of the Dungeon Family, the loose collective of rappers and musicians that coalesced around his mother’s smoke-filled Georgia basement — a.k.a. the Dungeon — in the mid-90s. Wade’s open doors and nurturing vision became the engine of Atlanta’s creative explosion, tilting the spotlight away from New York and Los Angeles and toward the homegrown sounds of artists like Outkast, Goodie Mob, Killer Mike, Janelle Monáe and eventually Wade’s younger cousin Future. Wade’s death at 52 was announced on social media last Saturday.Beyond his roles as conceptualist and deal maker, Wade served as one-third of the adventurous production team Organized Noize. The crew’s red-clay-scuffed sound was steeped in vintage ’70s soul, cutting-edge electronica, murky noise, slurping hi-hats and the warmth of live instruments. Working alongside the melodic sensibilities of Sleepy Brown and the beatmaking prowess of Ray Murray, Wade was “the mouthpiece,” Outkast’s Big Boi said in the 2016 documentary “The Art of Organized Noize.” “He was the inspiration guy; he could sell it.”Here are 10 essential productions from Rico Wade and Organized Noize, who brought the “dirty South” to the world. (Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.)Outkast, “Player’s Ball” (1993)The slow-rolling breakout moment for the Atlanta sound emerged after the LaFace Records co-founder L.A. Reid tapped the teenage duo Outkast to fill the final spot on the R&B-heavy album “A LaFace Family Christmas.” Though initially reluctant to make a Christmas record, Outkast decided to focus on lived reality instead of holiday cheer. “Just talk about how we kick it on Christmas at the Dungeon, man,” Big Boi recalled for GQ. “There ain’t no chimneys in the ghetto. We won’t be hanging no socks on no chimneys.” A slightly less Christmas-themed version was released as the group’s debut single, and the Puff Daddy-directed video was filmed in Wade’s house. (Wade convinced André 3000 to wear an Atlanta Braves jersey for the clip.) “I remember the day they played it on the radio — everybody quit they job,” Goodie Mob’s Big Gipp said in “The Art of Organized Noize,” thinking, “‘If one of us’ll get in, all of us’ll get in.’”TLC, “Waterfalls” (1994)This indelible pop smash emerged from a moment of studio serendipity. The songwriter Marqueze Ethridge sang the hook to Wade in the middle of an Outkast session. Murray played a stuttering beat on the SP-1200 and LaMarquis Jefferson improvised some slippery bass licks. They called TLC’s T-Boz to come in and do a demo and a No. 1 hit was born. “The horns in the song was live,” Wade told Complex. “As you can tell, the horns were very pop. But we were at that point in our career where we wanted to bring everything back that was analog.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Spends a Second Week at No. 1

    “Cowboy Carter” tops the Billboard 200 for a second week, boosted by physical sales of her album on CD and vinyl.Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” holds at No. 1 for a second week on the Billboard album chart, fending off new releases from J. Cole and the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together.“Cowboy Carter” stays at the top of the Billboard 200 with the equivalent of 125,500 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate. That total includes 133 million streams and 20,500 copies sold as a complete package. It is the first time Beyoncé has repeated at No. 1 since her self-titled “visual album” in 2013, which notched three consecutive times at the top and was initially available only as a download from iTunes.As in its opening week, Beyoncé’s total was helped by sales of physical copies of her album on CD and vinyl, which for the album’s first two weeks were available only through her website. Since then, retailers have started stocking “Cowboy Carter,” and — as she did with “Renaissance,” her last album, in 2022 — Beyoncé herself showed up for an in-store promo in Los Angeles, where fans could buy autographed LPs. (They quickly appeared on eBay for $2,000 and up.)“Might Delete Later,” a surprise release by the rapper J. Cole, comes in at second place with the equivalent of 115,000 sales, largely from streaming. The album got some attention for a diss track, “7 Minute Drill,” targeting Kendrick Lamar, which J. Cole promptly apologized for and removed from streaming versions of the album.Tomorrow X Together, a five-man South Korean group, opens at No. 3 with “Minisode 3: Tomorrow,” a seven-track mini album, which had 107,500 sales and was offered in 17 collectible CD editions. Also this week, Future and Metro Boomin’s joint album “We Don’t Trust You,” released three weeks ago, falls to No. 4 (a sequel, “We Still Don’t Trust You,” came out on Friday), and Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 5. More

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    How the Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt Became a Chronicler of Black Jazz History

    Inspired by the drummer Arthur Taylor’s “Notes and Tones” collection of interviews with fellow musicians, Pelt started his own book series, “Griot.”The trumpeter Jeremy Pelt was sitting on his couch, browsing YouTube, when he decided to become an author.It was 2018, and Pelt, by then a fixture on the New York jazz scene for two decades, came across a 1994 interview with the jazz drumming great Arthur Taylor, conducted by a fellow percussionist, Warren Smith. “It could have been ‘Batman,’ or something,” Pelt recalled during a recent conversation in his Harlem apartment. “It was like an hour and 45 minutes, I remember, and I just was transfixed the whole time.”Pelt was especially taken with a section where Taylor discussed “Notes and Tones,” his landmark book of musician-to-musician interviews, first self-published in 1977 and later reissued more widely. In it, giants like Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Max Roach spoke with often bracing candor about race, the music business, their feelings about the term “jazz” and more. Pelt had first come across the book more than 20 years earlier at the Berklee College of Music library.“This is way before internet and all that,” he said, so listeners had no idea what their musical heroes’ “comportment was, how they sounded, anything. So what you have is these words that gave you this peek into their personality.”Pelt often found himself wishing for a sequel. Taylor noted in the 1993 paperback edition that he had recorded more than 200 interviews and intended to publish a follow-up; two years later, he died at 65. Watching the conversation between Taylor and Smith, Pelt made a resolution: “After wondering how come somebody hasn’t done such and such, I said, you know what? I’m going to go ahead and do it.”He started conducting interviews with elders, peers and younger artists, accelerating during the pandemic, when it was easy to reach musicians via Zoom. In 2021, he self-published the first volume of “Griot,” settling on that title after seeing the term — meaning a West African storyteller-musician who passes down the oral history of a tribe — in an old social-media handle used by the bassist Buster Williams. “I looked it up, and that’s when it hit me,” Pelt, 47, said. “That’s exactly what this project is, is really passing down the culture. It’s these stories.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What to See, Eat and Do in New Haven, Conn.

    Though the academic scene continues to imbue this coastal Connecticut city with a certain gravitas, surrounding neighborhoods are showing off their own cultural capital in the realms of art, food, music and more.The 75-foot-long brontosaurus at the newly reopened Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, Conn., is the same dinosaur that the natural history museum has had on display since 1931. Yet it looks different. A fresh pose. New front ribs. The head is repositioned at a more inquisitive angle. The museum’s four-year renovation not only refreshed the nearly 100-year-old building, but also included an overhaul of the fossil mounts that research has proved to be inaccurate.Yale Peabody Museum’s four-year renovation focused not only on the physical space of the nearly 100-year-old building, but also the museum’s fossil mounts, including this brontosaurus skeleton, which has been repositioned, with some parts restored.Philip Keith for The New York TimesThe Peabody’s update — 15,000 square feet were added, creating more spacious galleries and dynamic displays — was a long time coming. Like other Yale museums, it is now free, offers more Spanish-language programming, and is inviting more voices into the conversation, with some exhibits being interpreted by students and artists, opening the lens on how visitors might respond to what they’re seeing.“We want to give the signal that there’s not just one way to react to and interpret what you’re seeing,” said the museum’s director, David Skelly.The concept of change that threads through the Peabody’s 19 galleries is symbolic of what’s happening elsewhere in the city. Over the centuries, New Haven has had chapters devoted to maritime trade, railroads, industrial manufacturing and — as home to Yale University and other institutions of higher learning — education and health care.Now, New Haven — which was among The Times’s 52 Places to Go in 2023 — is going through a chapter driven by creativity and ingenuity. Though Yale continues to imbue New Haven with a certain gravitas, the surrounding city is showing off its own cultural capital in the realms of art, food, music and more.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Prince Harry Hits the Polo Field in Front of Netflix Cameras

    The Duke of Sussex competed in a match in South Florida the day after the announcement that he will be working on a new polo-related Netflix project.In front of rolling cameras and a crowd of nearly 300 guests, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, barreled toward one end of a polo field in South Florida on Friday.“The Duke of Sussex may score a goal!” an announcer cried through a loudspeaker at the Royal Salute Polo Challenge to Benefit Sentebale, which was attended by spectators including Serena Williams and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and by film crews with Netflix. The streamer is producing a polo-related project with Harry and Meghan that was announced on Thursday and that will be filmed in Wellington, an affluent area near Palm Beach known for its equestrian scene.The announcer and many in the crowd groaned audibly when Harry missed the shot. He was wearing a blue and white jersey with the No. 2 on it, along with a logo for Sentebale, a charitable organization he founded to support children in the African countries Lesotho and Botswana, and a logo for Royal Salute, a whisky brand and a sponsor of the invitation-only charity match involving three teams.The event took place at the Grand Champions Polo Club and its organizers included Melissa and Marc Ganzi, members of Wellington’s polo community as well as the founders of the World Polo League and the owners of the Grand Champions club. The Ganzis also own the Santa Rita Polo Farm in Wellington and the Aspen Valley Polo Club in Colorado. Mr. Ganzi is the chief executive of Digital Bridge, an investment firm formerly known as Colony Capital, where he succeeded Thomas J. Barrack Jr., the chairman of former President Donald J. Trump’s inaugural committee.Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and Serena Williams were among the spectators at the event.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressHarry, 39, one of the highest-profile polo players in the world, competed in the match with other stars of the sport like the renowned Argentine player Adolfo Cambiaso; the English player Malcolm Borwick, an ambassador for Royal Salute; and Nacho Figueras, the Argentine athlete who has regularly faced off against Harry on polo fields and whose career has made him a face not only of the sport but also of Ralph Lauren, a brand that has intertwined its identity with polo.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Review: Under Manfred Honeck, the Philharmonic Becomes One

    In a program of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, a guest conductor coaxes a sumptuous sincerity from the orchestra’s musicians.In a thrilling concert of Russian staples on Friday night, the conductor Manfred Honeck unified the players of the New York Philharmonic using something we don’t often hear from the stage of David Geffen Hall: a distinct point of view.Guest conductors arrive each week through a revolving door to present concerts with the Philharmonic after just a few rehearsals with the players. Ideally, an ensemble’s music director — in this case, Jaap van Zweden — provides continuity, but with repertoire that ranges across centuries in any given season, or indeed in any given program, the Philharmonic can sometimes appear faceless. Add the challenges of calibrating its sound to the acoustics of its new auditorium and you end up with some listless performances.Enter Honeck, the music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In a program that paired Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with Rachmaninoff’s beloved Second Piano Concerto, Honeck effortlessly coaxed sweep and sweetness, breadth and refinement, from the players. The concert had startling cohesion in its musical values.A conductor known for his intense warmth in general and his rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth in particular, Honeck brought the comfort of certitude to works composed in the shadow of doubt. In his sketches, Tchaikovsky noted that his symphony contains “reproaches against xxx,” which some read as struggles with rumors and anxiety about his sexuality. The Second Piano Concerto was the first piece Rachmaninoff wrote after the fiasco of his First Symphony; he dedicated it to the doctor who treated his creative block with hypnotherapy.For an orchestra that sometimes only goes through the motions, this program was animated by an expressive meticulousness. The Philharmonic’s strings shaded melodies to make them truly sing by using a variety of dynamics within a single phrase. The woodwinds handed off phrases with snappy coordination. The brasses, which Honeck put to ominous use in the Tchaikovsky, snarled and shone, and the horns traced rainbow arcs over the stage in the Rachmaninoff.Perhaps Honeck’s neatest trick was his ability to conjure lightness and amplitude at the same time. The strings’ opening melody in the Rachmaninoff had Romantic grandeur and beguiling translucence, blanketing but not muffling the piano’s arpeggios with gauzy tone. The waltz in the third movement of the Tchaikovsky was practically airborne, its elegantly asymmetrical melody generating an unlikely aerodynamic quality despite its sumptuousness.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Civil War’ Is No. 1 at Box Office

    Alex Garland’s movie, starring Kirsten Dunst, surpassed “Godzilla x Kong,” with an estimated $25.7 million in North American ticket sales on its first weekend.Hollywood executives — not all, but most — have insisted for years that uncomfortable, thought-provoking, original movies can no longer attract big audiences at the box office.Moviegoers continue to bust that myth.Alex Garland’s dystopian “Civil War,” set in a near-immediate future when the United States is at war with itself, sold an estimated $25.7 million in tickets at North American theaters, enough to make the film a strong No. 1, surpassing the monsters sequel “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” Ticket sales for “Civil War” exceeded the prerelease expectations of some box office analysts by roughly 30 percent. IMAX screenings provided nearly 50 percent of the “Civil War” gross.More than 70 percent of the total audience was male, according to exit-polling services. PostTrak, one of those firms, said that people with “liberal” or “moderate” political views attended most heavily.“Civil War,” starring Kirsten Dunst as a journalist on a military embed, became the latest example of ticket buyers breaking with Hollywood’s conventional wisdom about what types of films are likely to pop at the box office. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, took in $968 million, wildly surpassing studio expectations. “Poor Things” collected $117 million, a solid total for a surreal art film.Garland (“Ex Machina”) wrote and directed “Civil War,” which gave A24, the specialty film company, its first No. 1 opening. (A24 was founded in New York in 2012.) The movie also cost more to make than any A24 movie to date: at least $50 million, not including tens of millions of dollars in marketing.The R-rated film benefited from a savvy release date — a time when Americans, sharply divided, are paying attention to the coming presidential election but are not yet completely worn out by it — and a marketing campaign that positioned the story as more of an action thriller than a gritty exploration of the frightening but not unthinkable.“Dystopian thrillers are generally set in futuristic worlds that look very different from contemporary life,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said in an email. “They use a lot of special effects and science fiction to tell their stories. ‘Civil War’ is doing the opposite: It looks like right now.”That storytelling choice, he added, “is bending the genre into something contemporary and relatable. The story is not directly partisan, but it’s provoking partisan feelings. It’s a fine balance to strike. Audiences are emotionally engaged, and that’s impressive.” More

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    At Carnegie Hall, Weimar Is Irresistible but Vaguely Defined

    Carnegie’s intermittently illuminating festival “Fall of the Weimar Republic” has suffered from interjections of too much standard repertory.In the middle of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s suite of incidental music for “Much Ado About Nothing,” there’s a march meant to accompany Dogberry, Shakespeare’s comic constable, and his fellow watchmen.Written in the late 1910s, and played by Ensemble Modern at Zankel Hall on Friday as part of the Carnegie Hall festival “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice,” the march stepped along crisply, with dryly officious humor. But it also had an edge of sincere sternness. Cast over the bumptious charm was a hint of the ominous, of a real (rather than satirical) military buildup.The same uneasy combination of optimistic energy and dark clouds characterized Germany during the Weimar Republic, an experiment in democracy that began in the wake of the country’s defeat in World War I, in 1918, and lasted until the Nazi takeover in 1933.Weimar has lately been seized on by many Americans who see in it parallels to our own era. (To wit: tenuously free republican institutions, mainstream conservative complicity with the far right, divisions on the left, fear of a fascist overthrow, etc.)For Election Day 2020, two former U.S. attorneys general published an opinion piece in The Washington Post, saying that images from the Weimar era were “fresh enough in memory to offer a cautionary tale.” A few months later, Foreign Policy offered “Weimar’s Lessons for Biden’s America.” This January, Bernie Sanders said that if President Biden couldn’t prove government’s efficacy to voters, “then we are the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s.”That month, Carnegie opened “Fall of the Weimar Republic,” now in its final weeks. Past Carnegie festivals have focused on South Africa, Vienna, Berlin, Venice and migrations to America, among other topics.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More