Aurelia Butler

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    Ice Spice at the Grammys: Y2K Brand Baby Phat Makes a Comeback

    A major moment at the Grammys showed how far the streetwear brand Baby Phat has come — and how it helped change what constitutes high fashion.Ice Spice was born on Jan. 1, 2000, so it seems fitting that her personal style has often involved Y2K fashion. The rapper leaned heavily into the era at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, wearing custom Baby Phat. She arrived in a fur-lined denim jacket and a matching maxi skirt that trailed behind her as she walked the red carpet.Baby Phat was started by Kimora Lee Simmons in 1999. The label, rooted in hip-hop culture, largely influenced women’s streetwear in the decade that followed. Baby Phat was worn by celebrities like Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim and Jennifer Lopez and was beloved by women and girls of color for its celebration of Black identity and style. Its items were relatively affordable yet still had an aura of glamour.But in its heyday Baby Phat never had a big presence on red carpets. The brand’s aesthetic — a mishmash of fitted denim, fur, oversize logos, chains and jewels that Ms. Simmons described as “ghetto fabulous” — was not exactly reflective of high fashion in the early 2000s.Since then, though, streetwear and hip-hop have only become more influential at even the most rarefied houses. That was on display at this year’s Grammys, where Lil Durk, Peso Pluma and Beyoncé were among the stars who wore items designed by Pharrell Williams for Louis Vuitton.Ms. Simmons developed Baby Phat as an expansion of Phat Farm, a brand owned by her ex-husband Russell Simmons, who sold both labels in 2004. Ms. Simmons, who left Baby Phat in 2010 only to buy it back almost 10 years later and install herself as chief executive, said that Ice Spice’s wearing the brand on a major red carpet was “a full circle moment” that would help Baby Phat finally get the recognition it deserves.“We don’t always get our shine,” said Ms. Simmons, 48, who is Black and Asian. “But I do it for the culture — make no mistake.” She added that Baby Phat’s Grammys appearance 25 years after the brand’s founding was a testament to its enduring appeal.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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    A Timeline of Toby Keith’s Biggest Songs and Career Moments

    The singer-songwriter was known for anthems, and political stances, that alternated between confrontation and big-tent populism.Toby Keith first drew recognition beyond country music as the artist behind the divisive post-9/11 rallying cry “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American).” But the singer-songwriter, who died Monday at the age of 62 after a battle with stomach cancer, appeared to view himself as a unifying force. “As far extreme as I seem,” he said in 2003, “I’m probably catching the average Joe in the middle better than anybody.”Keith topped the country chart 20 times with a catalog of sturdily built anthems including those that romanticized the cowboy’s life and traded on the big-tent appeal of a favorite bar and the charms of drinking beer out of a “Red Solo Cup.” His robust voice was just as adept at conveying rueful heartache as it was at carrying riled-up swagger, and his surprisingly shaded political stances showed a similar range and savvy. Here’s a look back at some of his biggest hits and most prominent moments during a three-decade career.1993‘Should’ve Been a Cowboy’Keith topped the U.S. country chart with his debut single, in which he longed for a life spent “wearing my six-shooter, riding my pony on a cattle drive,” and tipped his Stetson hat to legendary screen cowboys like Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke.” But the song was hardly the first rodeo for Keith, who had spent years playing the honky-tonk circuit in and around his native Oklahoma after high school. The 6-foot-4 musician also worked at an oil field — an experience that, he later reflected, “made a man out of me” — and played semipro football. He would come to view his winding path to success as a blessing.“If I’d come out of the box with my first No. 1 hit at 21, instead of when I was 29, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it because I wasn’t mature enough then,” he said in 2012. 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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    Poets React to Taylor Swift’s New ‘Tortured Poets Department’ Album

    The title of Taylor Swift’s next album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” spurred strong responses from a typically quiet bunch.When Taylor Swift announced the title of her next album during an acceptance speech at the Grammy Awards on Sunday, she spurred a reaction from a typically quiet bunch: the poets.The album, slated to come out April 19, she said, is called “The Tortured Poets Department.” (Sans apostrophe.)As the name caught fire on social media, questions abounded. Who were these poets? Did Ms. Swift count herself among them? Was the pop singer stealing something precious from those who write verse?“As a tortured poet, I approve,” said Christian Wiman, the editor of Poetry magazine from 2003 to 2013. “Or is she making fun of us? I guess I kind of approve of that, too.”Immediately after the album announcement, a post on Ms. Swift’s Instagram and X accounts revealed what appeared to be the album’s Lord Byron-esque artwork: a gray-scale photo of Ms. Swift, spread across a bed in luxurious anguish.The title calls to mind the Robin Williams film “Dead Poets Society” — also sans apostrophe — said Adrienne Raphel, a poet and the author of “Our Dark Academia,” who noted that the film was released in 1989, Ms. Swift’s birth year.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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    7 Grammy Winners Worth Another Spin

    Hear songs by Laufey, Jason Isbell, Samara Joy and more.Laufey performing on the Grammys preshow on Sunday.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but this year’s Grammys were … really good?The performances were almost uniformly excellent. Tracy Chapman, radiating joy and in fine voice, sang “Fast Car” publicly for the first time in ages, alongside a visibly reverent Luke Combs. (I wrote more about that moment here.) A regal Joni Mitchell sang “Both Sides Now” and made everybody cry. Billie Eilish and her collaborator brother, Finneas, absolutely nailed their performance of “What Was I Made For?” and showed everyone watching why their subsequent win in the song of the year category was so deserved.The wins were also pretty evenly spread. Yes, the universe’s current main character Taylor Swift took home the night’s top honor, album of the year, an award that she’s now won a record four times. But the person who took home the most Grammys this year (four) was someone who didn’t make it to the podium during the televised ceremony: Phoebe Bridgers, who during the preshow picked up three awards with her trio boygenius and one for a collaboration with SZA. The telecast also allowed some rising stars like Karol G, Lainey Wilson and Victoria Monét (who faithful Amplifier readers learned about in Friday’s rundown of the best new artist nominees) to make themselves known.For today’s playlist, we’re going to hear from some more of those slightly-less-than-household-name artists who took home Grammys this year. I chose two selections of my own, and I also asked my fellow Times pop critics Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica to send me a few of their picks — a mix of jazz, folk, pop, gospel and more. Listen below to tracks from Laufey, Peso Pluma and Samara Joy, and check out the Bonus Tracks for more of our Grammy coverage.Don’t wash the cast iron skillet,LindsayListen along while you read.1. Laufey: “From the Start”The Icelandic singer and songwriter Laufey (pronounced Lay-vay) won the traditional pop vocal album category with songs like “From the Start,” which she also performed on the preshow. It’s a bossa nova that confesses to “unrequited, terrifying love” with absolute poise. PARELESWe 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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    Clyde Taylor, Literary Scholar Who Elevated Black Cinema, Dies at 92

    A leading figure in the field of Black studies in the 1970s, he identified work by Black filmmakers as worthy of serious intellectual attention.Clyde Taylor, a scholar who in the 1970s and ’80s played a leading role in identifying, defining and elevating Black cinema as an art form, died on Jan. 24 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.His daughter, Rahdi Taylor, a filmmaker, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.As a young professor in the Los Angeles area in the late 1960s — first at California State University, Long Beach, and then at the University of California, Los Angeles — Dr. Taylor was at the epicenter of a push to bring the study of Black culture into academia.Black culture was not merely an appendage to white culture, he argued, but had its own logic, history and dynamics that grew out of the Black Power and Pan-African movements. And filmmaking, he said, was just as important to Black culture as literature and art.Dr. Taylor in 1958 when he was a student at Howard University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English.via Taylor familyHe was especially taken by the work of a circle of young Black filmmakers in the 1970s that he would later call the “L.A. Rebellion.” Among them were the directors Charles Burnett, Julie Dash, Haile Gerima and Billy Woodberry, all of whom went on to have immense impact on Black directors like Spike Lee and Ava DuVernay.As Dr. Taylor documented, these directors created their own, stripped-down approach to narrative and form. They borrowed from French New Wave, Italian neorealism and Brazil’s Cinema Novo to offer an unblinkered look at everyday Black life, often filming in Watts and other Black neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.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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    Where Has Tracy Chapman Been? Her Grammys Triumph Has Fans Wondering

    Her triumphant performance at the Grammy Awards left fans wondering what she has been doing since she left the music world, and whether she might return.Tracy Chapman’s rare public appearance at the Grammy Awards on Sunday night — where she practically stole the show performing her 1988 song “Fast Car” with the country singer Luke Combs — left many fans wondering why she had largely stepped away from music for more than a decade.Despite some scattered performances on television and at awards shows, Chapman, 59, has remained almost entirely absent from the music world in recent years, having released her last studio album in 2008 and done her last tour in 2009. Since she first emerged in the late 1980s, she has always been known as a reclusive and private figure.“Being in the public eye and under the glare of the spotlight was, and it still is, to some extent, uncomfortable for me,” she told The Irish Times in 2015. “There are some ways by which everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for this career. But I am bit shy.”The acclaim for her Grammys performance — Taylor Swift could be seen singing along in the crowd — was a sign of how beloved Chapman remains. Combs’s note-for-note cover of “Fast Car” went to No. 2 on Billboard’s pop singles chart last year, and after the Grammys, Chapman’s original began shooting up iTunes’s download chart.After her debut LP, “Tracy Chapman,” was released in 1988 — and went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart — she released seven more studio albums. Her last, “Our Bright Future,” came out in 2008. Jon Pareles of The New York Times described it as a collection of “morose love songs” as well as “her latest utopian vision of a world without war or greed.”Chapman performed at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2012. Kevin Wolf/Associated PressWe 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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    Keith McNally, of Balthazar, Discusses His Filmmaking Past

    Hundreds of moviegoers went to rare screenings of the New York restaurateur’s little-known 1990 film. Afterward, he treated them to half-price dinners at Balthazar and Minetta Tavern.On Thursday night at the Roxy Cinema in Lower Manhattan, a throng of scarf-bundled cinephiles attended the sold-out screening of a black-and-white psychological thriller, “End of the Night,” that was being shown for the first time in more than 30 years.The film’s obscurity wasn’t what drew the crowd: They were there because of its unlikely writer and director, Keith McNally, the downtown restaurateur who runs Balthazar, Minetta Tavern, Pastis and Morandi.Before he shaped New York’s nightlife with his brasseries, Mr. McNally had serious filmmaking ambitions. His first full-length feature, “End of the Night,” premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight showcase during the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, appearing alongside Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan.” It went on to be a minor hit in Europe before it became a cinematic footnote.In advance of the screenings at the Roxy, an 118-seat art house cinema located in a hotel in TriBeCa, Mr. McNally drummed up interest with a post on his popular Instagram account: “ANYONE WATCHING THIS FILM AT THE ROXY CAN EAT AT BALTHAZAR OR MINETTA TAVERN THAT SAME NIGHT FOR HALF-PRICE,” he wrote in his typical all-caps style.The post also quoted from a Cahiers du Cinéma review that described “End of the Night” as a “noirish tale of self-destruction” that provides an “unsettling look at a man whose life is turned upside down during his wife’s pregnancy.”Mr. McNally at his SoHo apartment. “I think my talent as a filmmaker was minimal,” he said.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesWe 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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    Robert Spano to Lead Washington National Opera as Music Director

    The veteran conductor, who won acclaim as a champion of new music at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will begin a three-year term in 2025.The conductor Robert Spano, who won acclaim as a champion of contemporary music during his two decades at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, will serve as Washington National Opera’s next music director, the company announced on Tuesday.Spano, 62, will become music director designate effectively immediately and begin a three-year term with the company in 2025, succeeding Philippe Auguin, who stepped down in 2018 after his contract was not renewed.Spano, who serves as music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas, said in an interview that he had been eager to do more opera since leaving his post as music director in Atlanta in 2021. He said that he wanted to “carry opera into the future” and that he planned to promote contemporary works, as he did in Atlanta.“New work and masterpieces — they go hand in hand,” he said. “I’ve lived my life in music feeling like the works of living composers inform our understanding of the works of the past. They keep reinvigorating our understanding of these masterpieces.”Timothy O’Leary, the general director of Washington National Opera, said in an interview that he was impressed by Spano’s experience and fresh perspective on opera.“He’s got this track record of conducting the major standard works in the opera repertoire,” he said, “but he’s also really identified with championing new music and the next generation of creators.”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