Aurelia Butler

Hear tracks by S.G. Goodman, the Lemonheads, Rihanna, Lido Pimienta and more.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.Bruce Springsteen, ‘Repo Man’While Bruce Springsteen was recording the somber songs on “The Ghost of Tom Joad” in 1995, he was also, it’s now revealed, blowing off steam with rowdy, lighthearted songs like “Repo Man,” the latest preview of his archival collection “Tracks II: The Lost Albums.” It’s a Chuck Berry-meets-Buck Owens country-rocker that has Springsteen hollering, “You shouldn’t have bought it if you couldn’t have paid!” It’s also a showcase for skidding, careening, scene-stealing solos by Marty Rifkin on pedal steel guitar, abetting Springsteen’s stunt driving as he turns class warfare into comedy.S.G. Goodman, ‘Snapping Turtle’“I grew up hard on bottom land where only crops should grow / Watched people reap what the demons sowed,” S.G. Goodman sings in “Snapping Turtle,” from an album due June 20. She’s from Kentucky, where she grew up and still lives; the cracks and scratches in her voice hark back to Appalachian roots. “Snapping Turtle” is a stoic, six-minute march, a two-chord jam with eerie resonances opening up under drums and guitars. Goodman sings about memories she can’t escape — including a friend who had “a life beat down” — and the bitter lessons of the small town “where my mind gets stuck.”Sofi Tukker featuring Liniker, ‘Intensity’Sofi Tukker — the duo of Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern — sets aside its usual electronic production on its new album, “Butter.” Instead, they visited Brazil, enlisted the producer Marcio Arantes to assemble a mostly acoustic studio band and invited Brazilian musicians like Seu Jorge as guest singers. Most of “Butter” remakes (and unplugs) songs from the duo’s 2024 album, “Bread.” But “Intensity” — with guest vocals from the Brazilian songwriter Liniker — is a new song. Over syncopated acoustic guitar and a crisply sputtering, samba-rooted beat, Hawley-Weld and Liniker celebrate a partnership that’s “way too much / It’s the right amount for me.”yeule, ‘Dudu’Named after the nonsense syllables in its hook, “Dudu” has such a blithe, shiny pop facade that the verses could easily go unnoticed. Yeule — a style-hopping, electronics-friendly songwriter and producer from Singapore — sings about unrequited love that’s turned pathological. “Overdosed from the pain / Woke up in a bed, restrained,” yeule sings. “I screamed and screamed and screamed your name.” But the vocals are so nonchalant, surrounded by whizzing synthesizers and kicked along by a robust backbeat, that the heartache almost evaporates.DannyLux, ‘Sirena’The Mexican American songwriter DannyLux has thrived by playing up his sensitive side, and “Sirena,” the single from his new album “Leyenda,” is no exception. In a waltzing corrido that updates the traditional acoustic guitars with a sheen of reverb, extra vocal harmonies and a sudden shift of texture before the second verse, he insists he’s been hypnotized forever by a woman’s beauty — though he also reminds her that “Other guys would put a price on your body, a price on your kisses.” He’s more sensitive, of course.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

The musician performed in two of the mogul’s best-known recent acts, Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money. She sued him last year, alleging threats and groping.Dawn Richard, the singer expected to take the stand as a witness at the Sean Combs trial after Casandra Ventura, was part of two of Mr. Combs’s best-known acts over the last two decades. She was in the R&B girl group Danity Kane, familiar to viewers of his MTV reality show “Making the Band,” and a trio called Diddy — Dirty Money.And like Ms. Ventura, she has accused Mr. Combs of misconduct during her time with him, alleging in a lawsuit filed last year that he threatened her, groped her and would fly into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. In response to that suit, a lawyer for Mr. Combs said in a statement that Ms. Richard had “manufactured a series of false claims all in the hopes of trying to get a payday.”Danity Kane was assembled by Mr. Combs during the third iteration of “Making the Band,” which began in 2005. On the show, 11 finalists were winnowed to a final team of five, their name inspired by a superhero character that Ms. Richard had drawn.Ms. Richard, now 41, grew up in New Orleans, and she was the subject of the premiere episode of the show’s third season, as the group visited her hometown and surveyed the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. That season ended with the quintet’s filming a video for its debut single, “Show Stopper,” which reached No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.Danity Kane opened for Christina Aguilera on tour and released two albums before going on a hiatus in 2009. Then, Ms. Richard remained in Mr. Combs’s musical tent as part of Diddy — Dirty Money, a trio that also featured Mr. Combs as well as another singer, Kalenna Harper.After one album, Mr. Combs disbanded the trio — over email — but Danity Kane reunited, releasing a third and final album in 2014. After another break, Danity Kane was active again, from 2018 to 2020.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

The first week of Sean Combs’s sex-trafficking trial was dominated by four days of searing testimony by Casandra Ventura, the singer known professionally as Cassie, who told the jury that he had raped and abused her and subjected her to degrading marathon sex sessions with male prostitutes known as “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura, who is eight and a half months pregnant, stepped down from the witness stand on Friday afternoon after a long and sometimes meandering cross-examination by lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty.Here are five takeaways:Mr. Combs’s lawyers suggested she was a willing participant in the “freak-offs.”In contrast to the prosecution’s questioning of Ms. Ventura, which traced a narrative of a troubled relationship from its origins until a painful collapse after years of abuse, the defense’s cross-examination frequently jumped back and forth in time. By zooming in on dozens of text messages from throughout her years in a relationship with Mr. Combs, his lawyers tried to paint a very different picture of the freak-offs.In many of those messages, which could be flirtatious in tone or matter-of-fact in setting up logistics, his lawyers noted, Ms. Ventura appeared to express willingness, or even excitement, about the sexual encounters.But Ms. Ventura pushed back, saying that she was just acceding to his requests. “I would say loving FOs were just words at that point,” she said, commenting on a 2017 text message chain about planning a freak-off, or “FO.”The sometimes repetitive pattern of the cross-examination led to a complaint by prosecutors. In a letter to the judge early Friday, they said that the “inefficiency of cross-examination” raised the possibility of a mistrial if Ms. Ventura went into labor before the questioning was completed. The judge urged the parties to stick to a schedule of completing Ms. Ventura’s testimony by the end of the week, and it ended midafternoon Friday.Cassie said she would gladly “give that money back if I never had to have freak-offs.”During Ms. Ventura’s testimony, she revealed that Mr. Combs had paid her $20 million to settle a bombshell lawsuit she filed against him in November 2023.Under questioning from Mr. Combs’s lawyers, she revealed a second settlement: with InterContinental, the company that owned the hotel where Mr. Combs assaulted her in 2016. She testified that she had reached an agreement with the company over the past month and that she expects to receive about $10 million.The defense used those settlement figures to suggest that Ms. Ventura had been motivated to go public with her account of abuse in the relationship because she was experiencing “financial issues,” at a time when she and her family had moved into her parents’ home in Connecticut.Ms. Ventura denied that she had been motivated by money problems. She said that she had used her parents’s home temporarily during a move to the East Coast.When the prosecutor Emily A. Johnson got a chance to question her again, she asked whether she would give the millions back if it meant never having had to participate in the sexual encounters at the center of her testimony.“I’d give that money back if I never had to have freak-offs,” Ms. Ventura said.Cassie was mostly calm, but wept a few times on the witness stand.Ms. Ventura remained largely dispassionate throughout her hours of testimony this week, speaking in a soft but firm voice as she recounted incidents like Mr. Combs’s violence and her experience of degrading incidents like being urinated on during freak-off sessions. In the witness box, she sometimes placed a hand on her belly as she shifted around or got up during breaks in testimony.On the stand, she frequently dabbed her eyes with a tissue but wept on only a few, brief occasions. She cried when saying she had considered suicide years after leaving Mr. Combs, and toward the end of her testimony on Friday, when she talked about Mr. Combs beating her during freak-offs. A defense lawyer then asked if she needed a break. “You can continue,” she said.Baby oil and drugs were found in the hotel where Mr. Combs was arrested last year.The government’s fourth witness was Yasin Binda, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, who searched Mr. Combs’s room at the Park Hyatt hotel in Manhattan, where he was arrested in September 2024.Mr. Combs had traveled to New York expecting to turn himself into the authorities. But he was arrested in the lobby. Inside his hotel room, Ms. Binda testified, she found baby oil, the lubricant Astroglide, a “mood lighting” device and two small baggies of pink powder. One tested positive for ketamine and the other for ketamine and MDMA.She also found a medication bottle for a benzodiazepine with the prescription made out to Frank Black — an alias that Ms. Ventura testified that Mr. Combs used. Ms. Binda also testified that a fanny pack with $9,000 in cash was hanging off the bed.What’s next in the case?Much of Ms. Ventura’s testimony was focused on the government’s allegations that Mr. Combs’s sex-trafficked her throughout their yearslong relationship. But the case against him is much broader than that, accusing him of running a criminal enterprise in which he and some of his employees conspired to commit a series of crimes over two decades.While questioning Ms. Ventura, the government laid the groundwork for trying to prove several of those crimes. Prosecutors also asked her to identify employees and associates of Mr. Combs who were asked to do his bidding.As the case proceeds, the prosecution is expected to try to prove that an inner circle of bodyguards and high-ranking employees helped him commit crimes, including kidnapping, arson, drug violations and sex crimes. The jury is also expected to hear from at least two other women whose accusations of sexual coercion are at the heart of the government’s case.The defense is expected to try to flesh out the argument they made in their opening statements, that Mr. Combs is a flawed and sometimes violent man but that he is not guilty of a racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking.Anusha Bayya More

The R&B singer, who has a history of violent episodes, was charged with grievous bodily harm.British prosecutors on Thursday arrested and charged Chris Brown, the R&B singer, with grievous bodily harm and are holding him in custody.Brown, 36, was charged over an assault that reportedly took place at a venue in Hanover Square in London, on Feb. 19, 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police. He remains in custody and was set to appear at Manchester Magistrates’ Court at 10 a.m. on Friday, the police said.A news release from prosecutors on Thursday gave no further details. Under British law, news outlets are not allowed to publish details of an incident that may prejudice any trial once someone has been charged.A lawyer and a talent agency that represents Brown did not immediately respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Thursday night.Brown has a history of violent episodes and has been accused of violence against women multiple times. In 2014, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault after assaulting a man outside of a hotel in Washington the previous year. In 2018, a woman sued Brown, saying he held her against her will at his Los Angeles house while a friend of his raped her; that lawsuit was settled out of court in 2020. In 2009, Brown pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, in his car. He and received a sentence of five years’ probation. He has also been accused of throwing a rock through his mother’s car window in 2013 and punching a woman at a Las Vegas nightclub in 2016.Brown’s songs have landed him 17 Billboard Top 10 hits, most of which were released between 2005 and 2015.Hank Sanders More

During cross-examination, the defense team depicted Casandra Ventura as fully engaged in staging and participating in the marathon sex sessions she says were abusive.Lawyers for Sean Combs worked on Thursday in court to portray his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, as a willing and full participant in sex marathons with prostitutes, as they sought to undermine her harrowing account of an abusive, coercive relationship riddled with violence.Ms. Ventura’s credibility is central to the government’s case, in which they have charged Mr. Combs, the music mogul, with sex trafficking and racketeering. Earlier this week she told the jury of eight men and four women of how she had suffered through hundreds of degrading sexual encounters and many injuries out of a misguided attempt to please a man she loved.But on the fourth day of Mr. Combs’s trial, the defense tried to recast Ms. Ventura, a singer known professionally as Cassie, as not nearly the victim she had portrayed herself to be. During cross-examination, Anna Estevao, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, repeatedly had her read text messages in which she expressed graphic enthusiasm for their sexual encounters, including the now famed “freak-offs” involving paid escorts.“I’m always ready to freak off lolol,” Ms. Ventura said in a message from 2009.In another exchange from around the same time, Ms. Ventura expressed her excitement in graphically sexual terms, and he told her: “I can’t wait to watch you. I want you to get real hott.”She answered: “Me too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.”Jurors gazed at the barrage of text messages, which were displayed on screens in front of them, sometimes leaning forward to get a closer look.Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his defense has argued that the government is trying to criminalize unconventional, but lawful, sexual relations between consenting adults. In her first two days on the stand, Ms. Ventura said that she might have feigned interest at times to avoid Mr. Combs’s anger, and she recited a litany of incidents in which she was beaten when she failed.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

In its cross-examination on Thursday of Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, Sean Combs’s defense team confronted her about dozens of messages between them, many explicit. His lawyers are hoping those communications will show that Ms. Ventura was a loving partner and an enthusiastic participant in the marathon sex sessions with prostitutes that Mr. Combs called “freak-offs.”Ms. Ventura is expected to return to the stand for the final time on Friday. Here are four takeaways from her third day of testimony:For the defense, confronting Ms. Ventura was a balancing act.Given the beatings she had suffered at the hands of Mr. Combs and the fact that Ms. Ventura is nearly nine months pregnant, the tone of its cross-examination was an important consideration for the defense team. The judge alluded to Ms. Ventura’s pregnancy at one point while expressing frustration with the defense when it suggested its questioning of her might extend past this week.Nonetheless, Anna Estevao, one of Mr. Combs’s lawyers, started out briskly. She skipped any extended pleasantries to the witness and jumped right into questions designed to suggest that Ms. Ventura had been a more willing, even enthusiastic, participant in the freak-offs than she had acknowledged in her direct testimony.But Ms. Estevao’s confrontations never came close to the aggression that is often seen from defense lawyers cross-examining a star witness. She even shared a few laughs with Ms. Ventura, including one moment when she remarked how beautiful and charming the witness was. “Thank you,” Ms. Ventura replied.It was not all so diplomatic, though. Ms. Estevao spent much of the day in painstaking readings of text and email messages that Ms. Ventura had shared with Mr. Combs. During one tedious recitation, the witness bluntly asked, “Do you have any questions for me?”Explicit messages between the couple were a point of emphasis.Much of Ms. Ventura’s testimony on Thursday morning was spent discussing messages — many of them explicit — that she and Mr. Combs had sent during their decade-long relationship.“I can’t wait to stare,” Ms. Ventura wrote, adding a description of genitalia, in one 2009 conversation that was shared in court.“I can’t wait to watch you,” Mr. Combs responded. “I want you to get real hott.”“Me too,” she replied. “I just want it to be uncontrollable.”The defense appeared to be emphasizing the love and passion in the early stages of their relationship, citing flirtatious messages and those in which she seemed to express eagerness for freak-offs, offering to pick up supplies at a sex shop. “I’m always ready to freak off lolol,” Ms. Ventura wrote at one point.The messages also showed that, at certain times, Ms. Ventura expressed dissatisfaction with their arrangement. She testified that she had been jealous of Kim Porter, Mr. Combs’s longtime partner, and other women that he would start relationships with.“I get nervous that i’m just becoming the girlfriend that you get your fantasies off with and that’s it,” she wrote.How jurors view Ms. Ventura’s credibility will be crucial.Mr. Combs is charged with sex-trafficking Ms. Ventura, a crime that would require the government to prove that he forced or coerced her into sex parties with male prostitutes.Over her first two days on the stand, Ms. Ventura testified to years of physical violence and sexual coercion by Mr. Combs so severe that she considered suicide. In Thursday’s cross-examination, a defense lawyer focused on a different side of their relationship.Ms. Estevao asked Ms. Ventura about dozens of pages of text and email messages between the couple. The cross-examination also highlighted Ms. Ventura’s complex relationship with freak-offs: Outwardly, she sometimes expressed enthusiasm about the encounters to Mr. Combs, but inwardly, she testified, she had a deep aversion to them.It remains to be seen how the jury will ultimately view Ms. Ventura’s testimony.The defense sought to connect Mr. Combs’s behavior to his drug use.Much of the questioning from Mr. Combs’s defense team focused on drug use and abuse, and its potential influence on the behavior of both Mr. Combs and Ms. Ventura.Ms. Ventura said both she and Mr. Combs were dependent on opiates for most of their relationship, and that he did other drugs, including Ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and GHB, in her presence.She testified that Mr. Combs overdosed on opiates in 2012, after they had gone to a sex club in the Los Angeles area and he then attended a party at the Playboy Mansion. She also said that both of them had tried to detox by using Ibogaine, a natural psychedelic, which they had obtained in Mexico; the treatment temporarily worked before relapses.Several times, Ms. Estevao asked questions about the symptoms of drug withdrawal, in a seeming attempt to connect Mr. Combs’s behavior and mood with his drug use and recovery.On Tuesday, Ms. Ventura had testified that she used drugs at freak-offs — Ecstasy, cocaine, marijuana, ketamine, mushrooms — to dissociate from the events. But under cross-examination, she also spoke about her drug use​ outside of these planned sexual encounters. Using drugs with people other than Mr. Combs made him jealous, she said​. ​She testified that an incident she described in her direct testimony — when Mr. Combs was angry at her during a trip to Cannes — was the result of him suspecting she had taken drugs from him without asking. A physical altercation with one of Ms. Ventura’s former friends was the result of Mr. Combs seeing drugs on a table that they had planned to take together.As testimony was wrapping for the day, Ms. Estevao questioned Ms. Ventura about the drugs ​s​he and Mr. Combs consumed at the freak-off related to the 2016 encounter where Mr. Combs was seen on surveillance footage assaulting her in a hotel hallway.“Do you recall the beginning of the freak-off session?” Ms. Estevao asked. Ms. Ventura said she did not, but guessed that she had taken MDMA or Ecstasy. Asked if it was a bad batch of drugs, Ms. Ventura said she had no idea. More