Music

Up for producer of the year, non-classical, on Sunday, a conservatory-trained collaborator focuses on “finding the simplicity, finding that golden chord progression.”Two very different kinds of education went into the music that has brought Rogét Chahayed a 2022 Grammy nomination for producer of the year, non-classical. One was traditional music school: the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where Chahayed studied classical music and jazz and earned a degree in piano performance. The second was a studio apprenticeship of late nights and split-second decisions: playing keyboards and building beats for the Los Angeles hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre.“The real me is a blend of classical music, jazz harmony and technique, everything together,” Chahayed said, speaking via video from his home studio in Los Angeles, where rows of electronic keyboards filled a wall of shelves, “So you’ll hear the voicings of Debussy and Ravel and stuff like that, that I really love, in my left hand, but maybe in the right hand I might be trying some Art Tatum. I love to try and see the connection between everything.”Chahayed’s huge catalog includes Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me More”; Jessie Reyez’s “Far Away”; Halsey’s “Bad at Love”; Big Sean’s “ZTFO”; Miguel’s “Sky Walker”; Kali Uchis’s “I Want War (But I Need Peace)”; Nas’s “27 Summers”; and two Grammy-nominated songs from previous years, Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later” and Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode.” His nomination on Sunday is for songs with Kali Uchis, Doja Cat and Anderson .Paak, among others.Chahayed’s studio work draws on a store of music theory and music history along with instinct, attentiveness and luck. As a producer and songwriter, he can assemble complex harmonies and subtle multitracked orchestrations, reflecting his conservatory studies.But Chahayed can also come up with skeletal, arresting, earworm riffs that he often enriches, spatially and harmonically, as a track unfolds. He doesn’t mind repeating just two or three chords. “A lot of my composer and classical instrumentalist friends might look at that as like, ‘Oh, it’s so simple,’” he said. “Actually, producing music today reminds me a lot about the way Mozart would compose. Obviously a lot of Mozart’s music is very simple and very digestible, and it’s so open that if you make a mistake, you can hear everything. The difficulty is finding the simplicity, finding that golden chord progression.”Chahayed adeptly navigates the way songs are made in the 21st century: a process that’s at once musicianly, technological, intuitive and brutally Darwinist. Hooks and beats that were recorded in a few moments can sit for months on a hard drive, to be discovered, tweaked and augmented by collaborators who have never met. All that matters is whether someone hears that a track has potential, wants to finish it and finds something that works.“I enjoy working with the artists who let me cook from scratch,” Chahayed said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“If I have a philosophy, it’s that I want to be able to execute the vision of the artist first,” Chahayed said. “But also to do it in a way that’s innovative, that’s always finding a way to push the boundaries sonically.”The Colombian American songwriter Kali Uchis has only released a few tracks with Chahayed’s production — including “Aguardiente y Limón,” cited in his Grammy nomination — but they live near each other in Los Angeles, and she often visits his studio to work on music.A Guide to the 2022 Grammy AwardsThe ceremony, originally scheduled for Jan. 31, was postponed for a second year in a row due to Covid and is now scheduled for April 3.Jon Batiste Leads the Way: The jazz pianist earned the most nominations with 11, including album and record of the year. Here’s his reaction.The Full List: Pop stars like Justin Bieber, Doja Cat and Billie Eilish were recognized in several categories. See all the nominees.Snubs and Surprises: From a big shock to smaller slights, The Times music team breaks it all down.Performers: Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, BTS and Lil Nas X are among the first performers announced for the April 3 show, which will be available on CBS and Paramount+.A Major Change: The awards will be the first since the Recording Academy ended its heavily criticized anonymous nominating committees.“He just loves to just create, create, create,” she said by telephone from Los Angeles. “Just for the pure satisfaction of making things that are unique, and not for any type of ulterior capitalistic motives. If it so happens to end up being a big song, then great. But with me and Rogét, I’ve never gotten in the studio and felt any weird pressure to go in any direction. It was alway very organic, very natural and very, just, free.”After graduating from the conservatory in 2010, Chahayed moved back to Los Angeles, where he grew up; his mother is from Argentina, his father from Syria. He played jazz and chamber-music gigs and taught piano lessons; he also found a mentor: Melvin Bradford, better known as Mel-Man, one of Dr. Dre’s main producers since the 1990s.“I’d go to his house and make five to eight beats per day. From 1 p.m. all the way to sometimes 2, 3 or 4 in the morning,” he said. “We would send countless beats to Dre every day, just in hopes that maybe something would click.”He added, “It was definitely a big difference from sitting in a class learning about Bach chorales or ear training.”Chahayed also collaborated with others, including the producer Wesley Singerman. In 2013, they sold outright some tracks they had made; their music turned up, uncredited, on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly” in “For Sale?” and “U.”In 2014, Mel-Man surprised Chahayed one day by taking him to an unmarked building. It was Dr. Dre’s studio. “This door opens, and I just see a giant S.S.L. and Dre is sitting there turning knobs with his hands,” Chahayed said, referring to a Solid State Logic recording console. “He told me that he heard I was nice on the keys and he was going to put me to the test.”He passed muster and started working on Dre’s productions. “You have a responsibility to be the best you can be all the time and constantly portray musical excellence: technique, taste, flavor, rhythm,” he said. “I’ve had Dre right there, standing over everybody saying, ‘Hey, what you got?’ And when you have the biggest, most influential producer and rapper in the world telling you that, you’ve got to act.”One of Chahayed’s first blockbuster hits was “Broccoli” by Dram (who now goes by Shelley FKA Dram), featuring Lil Yachty, which has been streamed more than a billion times. Its steady-plinking piano chords, Chahayed said, were a happy accident. He had packed up his equipment after a session with Dram, only to receive a last-minute call that Lil Yachty was on his way to the studio. He unpacked and plugged in a keyboard, playing a few chords to test the connection; those chords became the song’s central loop.One of Chahayed’s first huge hits was “Broccoli” by Dram (who now goes by Shelley FKA Dram), featuring Lil Yachty.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York Times“Where and how I find most of my success as a producer and songwriter is, you know, just showing up,” Chahayed said. “Finding a sound and coming up with the progression, or a riff, or something identifiable that catches people’s attention.”“Kiss Me More,” the hit by Doja Cat featuring SZA that is nominated for record of the year (the recorded track), song of the year (the composition) and as part of album of the year, could have ended up as one more stray computer file. Chahayed was working with Yeti Beats, Doja Cat’s longtime executive producer, at what he called “a beat cook-up session.” Yeti Beats suggested some “keywords” — “anime music” and “cuteness” — with Doja Cat in mind.“I grew up with four younger sisters, and we all bonded a lot over anime and video game stuff,” Chahayed said. “This cute jazzy vibe from a lot of games kind of seeped in. So I tapped back into that realm that specific day, and we made a few ideas.”He chose a guitar-like sound and recorded a twinkly little riff that “just kind of came naturally in the moment,” he said. “I knew there was something special about that track.” Yeti Beats repeatedly presented the riff to Doja Cat, and at one session, he sped it up; it clicked.As Chahayed’s reputation has grown, so has his control over his music. He sometimes turns down requests to use his beats for particular songs. And, whenever possible, he tries to work alongside the main artist in real time.“For most people, a general procedure is have tons of beats and melodies and ideas and things of that sort ready. A lot of artists have a different kind of attention span, and maybe react better to things that are ready-made. But I’ve adapted more to the spontaneity of just showing up with the instruments. I enjoy working with the artists who let me cook from scratch.”He’s also looking ahead. “I always have a five-to-10-year plan,” he said. “Thankfully, I have been able to hit my last five-year goal: You know, get No. 1s, get Grammy nominated, accumulate tons of record sales and charting stuff. And it’s cool, but it only fuels me to go further. My real passion is that I want to score movies. I want to do what John Williams, Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and Bernard Herrmann do. Those guys are my true heroes.”He added, “I’ll never stop producing. I’ll never stop making beats. I’ll never stop working with artists. But I would love it if you’re watching a movie and seeing ‘Music by Rogét Chahayed.’ That’s my obsession.” More

The many, many people who have applauded, criticized and otherwise taken part in what often seems like an endless discussion around Lizzo’s naked form may be surprised to learn that she does not spend quite as much time undressed as they may think.“Sometimes when I look at the internet, I have an identity crisis because I’m, like, ‘Wait, who do these people think I am?’” Lizzo (birth name, Melissa Jefferson) said recently via Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. Behind her were many awards, an amethyst crystal for good vibes, and her Baby Yoda collection. “Right now I think people just think I’m naked all the time,” she said. “That’s the one thing I see: ‘Ooohhh, there’s old Lizzo, she’s naked again, I’m shocked she got on clothes.’”Sure, she has posted some nudes online, using her own body to force a reassessment of prejudices around size and beauty. Sure, she has gone to events like Cardi B’s birthday in a sheer crystal dress over a thong and pasties and set off a viral debate.But actually she has spent a good chunk of her time in the last three years not just on her upcoming album, or her new Amazon Prime reality show, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” but also on an entirely different project. One that involves putting stuff on, rather than taking it off.It is, she teased recently on social media, “the biggest thing yet. Bigger than anything I’ve ever done.” It may also be the most controversial.Because Lizzo, champion of unfettered flesh, is making shapewear.You know, the type of underwear that traditionally has seemed the opposite of the message about loving yourself as you are, contained in such Lizzo songs as “Juice” and “Truth Hurts.” Not to mention her TV show.It’s the sort of potential contradiction that, in the social media echo chamber of personal sensitivities, can often end up viewed as a betrayal of the bond between fan and favorite. As Lizzo knows. Which is why she wants to be clear: She isn’t trying to change other people’s bodies. She’s trying to change the essence of shapewear itself.The line is called Yitty, after her childhood nickname, and it was created with Fabletics Inc., the parent company of Fabletics, the “active life wear brand” co-founded by Kate Hudson. It will be introduced this week with about 100 different pieces divided into three collections: Nearly Naked, Mesh Me and Major Label.Together, Lizzo said, they will “give everyone the opportunity to speak for themselves when it comes to how their body should look and how they should feel in their body.”“Shapewear was one of those untouched constructs in fashion people weren’t really messing with — or thinking about,” Lizzo said. ”At a certain point I started to make my own little pieces: little moments here, little moments there, little booty lift here. I wanted to share that.”YittyThe point is to do for the concept of so-called innerwear what Lizzo did for size in general, not to mention the flute, which she famously plays while twerking — what she has done for herself, really: break it out of the box where society and culture has stuck it. Get past body positive, which has become a sort of meaningless catchphrase for the mainstream, to body normative for everyone.“I’m selling that more than I’m selling thongs, more than I’m selling bodysuits or I’m selling shapewear,” Lizzo said. “I’m selling a mentality that ‘I can do what I want with my body, wear what I want and feel good while doing it.’” That whatever body you are showing off, it’s not, “‘Oh, how brave,’” she continued. “No. No more of that. Nothing to see here but a body, just like your body.”A Brief History of Shapewear“Shapewear” is a relatively new name for a very old concept (kind of like how “wellness” now encompasses “diet”) — that is, that a woman’s body should be altered via external means to make it more acceptable to the eyes of various beholders, most of them men. If that involved pain … well, such was the price of achieving society’s definition of beauty.What forms the alterations take have varied according to cultural norms; references to girdles can be found as far back as the “Iliad.” Panniers, those underskirt structures that exaggerated hips, were a 16th-century version of shapewear; so were steel or whalebone and canvas corsets. Come the mid-20th century, elasticated girdles were in vogue, which in turn gave way to pantyhose, which evolved, in 2000, into Spanx, which is what made shapewear modern-day famous.By swapping out cut-and-sew technology for Lycra knit, the Spanx founder Sara Blakely transformed Hollywood red carpets becoming a billionaire along the way.Still, Spanx, like all the corsets and girdles before it, was a kind of “foundation garment,” made to be hidden, its very existence suggesting that what was underneath was somehow not quite up to par, even as it acted as a secret weapon to allow bodies of all types access to clothes made for the few. Also, “comfort,” when it comes to shapewear, remained a relative term.In part to change that, lots of new players have entered the market, most notably, Yummie Tummie, founded in 2008 (and now rebranded as Yummie); Honeylove, created in 2016; and, above all, Skims, the Kim Kardashian brand, introduced in 2019, trumpeting comfort and a variety of skin color tones, and valued at $3.2 billion during a fund-raising round earlier this year.Allied Market Research recently issued a report predicting the global compression and shapewear market would be worth $6.95 billion by 2030.Lizzo: “The story goes that when I was born, my brother could not say ‘Melissa,’ so he would go, ‘Meyitta,’ and my Auntie Carmen would go, ‘Did he call her Yitty?’ From then on it was ‘Yitty, Yitty.’ Sadly, my auntie passed in May of 2020, and a few months later, I decided to call this Yitty in her honor. She would have loved this, she would have been so proud.”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesThough shapewear sales declined during the pandemic (who needs it when you are lounging around at home in your sweats?), Kristen Classi-Zummo, an apparel industry analyst for the NPD group, said that there has been an uptick in interest as Covid-19 protocols have relaxed and nightlife has returned.Comfort remains important, she said, but growth was most apparent in “innovation, and pieces worn to shape and be seen,” especially among consumers under 40. Cora Harrington, the founder and editor in chief of The Lingerie Addict blog and the author of “In Intimate Detail: How to Choose, Wear, and Love Lingerie,” pointed out that for younger people, “Spanx tend to be more associated with their mothers. They want something more fashionable.”“I think there is space for another brand to bubble up and control that narrative,” Ms. Harrington said. Perhaps because, despite all the advances in the sector, the overriding aesthetic has remained tied to the Barbification of the body.That’s where Yitty comes in.A Briefer History of YittyThough it may seem, in the wake of Fenty and Skims, that Lizzo, 33, is simply jumping on the celebrity shapewear bandwagon, she has actually been thinking about the sector since she was 12.That, she said, was when she was growing up in Houston (her family had moved from Detroit when she was 10) and, starting in middle school, learning to be “ashamed of my body.” Later, once she had begun to assert herself musically, she rejected that mind-set, and the undergarments that came with it, entirely. And it was only after that, when she finally started to “have fun with my body, creating shapes and allowing my body to be curvaceous, loving the rolls that you’re supposed to hide, and exploring through fashion,” that she started to think about shapewear again.“I went to a store — I won’t name the store — looking for something for a party,” she said. “And the shapewear aisle was in disarray, like someone went in there in a mad dash looking for something they couldn’t find. There were pieces on the floor, and there were only three colors — jet black, ivory white or pink, the color of my nails.”Lizzo waved her hand, with its long, pointy nails the color of ballet shoes. “No one is that color!” she said. She got serious about changing that around the time of “Truth Hurts,” when she had a handful of meetings with different brands. “I was like: ‘Guys, I’m telling you, I’m trying to revolutionize shapewear and our relationship with it and with our bodies,’ and they were like, ‘Well, you could do a capsule collection with us for X, Y and Z,’ and I was like, ‘They’re not getting the vision!’”“It was important for me when I wear it and model it, I am not looking different than I normally look,” Lizzo said. “You see my rolls and see a belly, and sometimes you see me in super-high compression. A lot of times I will do red carpets and not wear shapewear at all, or not wear a bra. It depends on how I feel. You see me as I want you to see me.”YittyShe wanted shapewear that announced itself with pride — and felt like a hug. The kind of shapewear that if you sat down and your shirt rode up or your pants pulled down, you’d be happy to show off. The kind of shapewear you could wear with nothing on top. She didn’t even want to call it “shapewear.” She wanted to call it “bodywear,” but no one knew what that meant.Then Kevin Beisler, her manager, told her he had met with the Fabletics team, who had been doing a lot of customer surveys.Those customers had said that “the No. 1 category they wanted us to start was shapewear,” said Don Ressler, who founded Fabletics Inc., along with Adam Goldenberg. Mr. Ressler had seen what can happen when you combine celebrity power and a clothing sector in which the celebrity has some personal authority. (Fabletics was previously named TechStyle Fashion Group and had produced Savage X Fenty, which it spun off in 2019.)“They get it,” Mr. Beisler told Lizzo.“Those words alone were so incredible, because I hadn’t heard them,” she said. “Nobody had believed in my wild dream.”Actually, Mr. Ressler said, “we think it’s a multibillion-dollar opportunity.”The Lizzo FactorLizzo does not think the market is saturated or that she missed the boat because there are other brands ahead of her. “There’s nothing like feeling like you’re in the right place at the right time,” she said.Yitty is “something personal to me, something for the baby version of me,” she continued. “I have been parallel with the body positive movement for a long time, and people have made my name synonymous with it, and I’m always like, body positivity belonged to the people who truly created it, the Black, brown, queer big women, my girls in the 16 plus.” As an indicator of intended audience, the ad campaign features models of all sizes, including Lizzo’s best friend, who is an extra-small, as well as Lizzo herself.Lizzo is the chief executive and co-founder of Yitty; Kristen Dykstra, the former chief marketing officer of Fabletics, is president. The lines took three years to develop and will range from XS to 6X (which is one size bigger than any of Skims’ current offerings). Prices for leggings are $69.95 to $74.95, and bras will be $49.95 to $59.95.There are two compression weights, antimicrobial fabrics so the shorts and thongs and leggings can be worn without extra underwear, bras that hold their shape without underwire, a print that looks like a butterfly wing, and recycled packaging. Lizzo named all the colors, though her favorite inventions — for a bright blue and a bright pink — are unprintable here.”I don’t want to be the only one who can enjoy autonomy with my body because I am now in privileged position where people want to make me stuff and I can afford it,” Lizzo said. “I want to help other people out in that way too, so they’re not just looking at me and thinking, ‘Damn, I wish I could afford custom thousand-dollar pieces.’”Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesShe also tried everything on. “I love a cheeky panty, I really do,” she said. “It can be tricky when you’re using compression fabric because if it’s too cheeky, it can roll up.” But, she said, many times “I’d put a panty on and say. ‘Can you slide the side up this way?’” — she mimed raising the cut of the leg — “because it makes the booty look good.”She has very strong opinions about what she likes. “I could not take off the Yitty convertible bandeau for a long time,” she said. “I’m a bandeau innovator.” As for the shaping thong: “I’m like: ‘Hello, big girls wear thongs. Let us wear thongs and give me that little love up top.’”Yitty will be sold on its own website and on the Fabletics website. It will also be sold in shop-in-shops in the 76 Fabletics stores and have its own pop-up in Los Angeles on April 12. And it will be front and center at Lizzo tours and in her videos and TV shows. As far as she’s concerned, it’s the beginning of her next stage.“I want to be a world changer,” she said. “I wasn’t just making cool music — my art always had a bigger purpose. Now I’m just taking that usefulness and making it tangible.”“This is something I’m building that can hopefully last for generations — not just the company or the product, but the mentality of Yitty,” she continued. “This idea of liberation with your body and being able to express it in different ways can go so, so far.” More

The eight-member group sold more than 100,000 copies of its new mini-album, “Oddinary,” on CD, which came in an array of collectible versions.Stray Kids, a K-pop group formed through a reality-TV show, has made its first appearance on the Billboard 200 chart a big one, opening at No. 1.“Oddinary,” a seven-track EP with lyrics mostly in Korean, had the equivalent of 110,000 sales in the United States in its first week out. The vast majority of those sales were for CDs, as the eight-man group’s “Oddinary” came out in a variety of collectible versions including stickers, posters, trading cards and other goodies. The mini-album also had 10 million streams, according to Luminate, the tracking service formerly known as MRC Data (and, before that, Nielsen Music).Lil Durk’s “7220,” last week’s chart-topper, falls to No. 2 with the equivalent of 81,000 sales, mostly from streaming, a 33 percent drop. Disney’s “Encanto” soundtrack is No. 3, and Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4.“Fighting Demons,” the second posthumous album by Juice WRLD, the singer and rapper who died at age 21 in late 2019, jumped 30 spots to No. 5 after it was rereleased in a deluxe version and also came out on physical formats like CD and vinyl LP. “Fighting Demons” had opened at No. 2 in December.The Weeknd’s compilation “The Highlights” is in sixth place, and the British pop singer and songwriter Charli XCX opens at No. 7 with “Crash,” a career high.On the singles chart, Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” a nearly two-year-old song that has become newly hot at pop radio after it became a meme on TikTok, holds at No. 1 for a fourth straight week. More

For “Legendaddy,” an album billed as his last, the reggaeton forefather surveys the shifting styles that shaped his career.Plunge into the recesses of YouTube, and you’ll find a video of Daddy Yankee performing live in his late teens, wearing a silver zip-up windbreaker and a creeping caterpillar mustache. It was 1996, and the future global ambassador of reggaeton freestyled a cappella to a crowd of hundreds. He flaunted a breathless flow with touches of Patois intonation, a signature of the time, when the genre “underground” — a predecessor to reggaeton — was flourishing. The D.J. dropped a beat, chopping drum breaks and syncopated dembow riddims. Yankee effortlessly kept up, brandishing the hyperspeed raps that would make him a superstar in the next decade.Daddy Yankee, cherub-cheeked and about 19, grew into a reggaeton kingpin, a pop star and a tycoon, helping transform a street sound into an industry cash cow. In 2004, he announced his ascent into the mainstream with a strategic and simple opening statement: “Who’s this? Da-ddy Yan-kee!” A little over a decade later, he rode the acoustic guitar strums and liquefied, popeton beat of “Despacito” into vexing, international ubiquity.But after a 32-year career, is it time for Yankee to rest on his laurels? In a sentimental video posted on March 20, the Big Boss announced his retirement from the music industry. There is one victory lap left: a final tour and an impeccably titled album, “Legendaddy.”Retirement albums can be tricky. Some artists misguidedly ride recent trends in an attempt to reproduce the aesthetics of a younger generation; others reprise the tricks that made them famous in the first place; the most successful dare to bare their souls and create new intimacy with listeners.Yankee, 45, has never really been one for profound personal vulnerability. He was, however, always honest about his youth in the Villa Kennedy caseríos, or housing projects, in San Juan, where he and DJ Playero, another reggaeton pioneer, tinkered with reggae en español and freestyling, and distributed their experiments on mixtapes in the early ’90s. When Yankee was 16, a bullet lodged in his right leg, a souvenir of crossfire outside Playero’s studio one afternoon. It forced him into over a year of recovery, closed the door on his major league baseball ambitions and refocused his energies toward music.As underground, and later reggaeton, sprawled, Yankee fine-tuned the art of merging sex and bombast in song. Harnessing street swagger and dirty talk, he leveraged his breakneck rap flows into carnal dance floor anthems, like “Latigazo” from 2002 or his 2004 smash “Gasolina.” These became the songs that taught an entire diaspora about sex and the ecstasy of a perreo sucio, the kind of grinding that involves exchanging denim dye and sweat with a dance partner.There have been sporadic moments of social commentary in Yankee’s music, as on the theatrical blockbuster album “Barrio Fino.” But after “Gasolina” engulfed the Anglo mainstream, his celebrity grew and he swapped his prurient playboy image for that of a wealthy mogul: In 2005 alone, he inked a brand partnership with Reebok to design sneakers, apparel and accessories; agreed to model for Sean Jean’s spring collection; landed an endorsement contract with Pepsi; and signed a $20 million, five-album deal with Interscope Records.While Yankee settled into his role as a reggaeton capitalist, his mid-00s success also felt like affirmation for a generation of youth of the Caribbean diaspora. Reggaeton was the first music that was fully ours — fresh, raw, exhilarating, sensual. It brought us closer to the islands that birthed us, moving us toward some wistful dream of wholeness instead of constant loss.In the early and mid-2010s, Yankee released a spate of albums, but many of them lacked dimension and verve, relying on unimaginative commercial tropes. Around 2016, he started dabbling with two ascendant sounds: the first crest of EDM-reggaeton fusions, and the nascent genre of Latin trap, in which he became an in-demand featured guest. Both allowed him to remain in the spotlight, embrace his image as an elder statesman and avoid competing with a new wave of artists who were refreshing the movement with sentimentality and grit.For “Legendaddy,” his first solo album in a decade, El Cangri has inventoried the sounds and styles that have defined his career: self-mythologizing rap, perreo, EDM and popeton. The most dynamic moments come when Yankee reaches for the magic of the past — whether indulging in boastful hubris or summoning listeners into dance floor reverie. “Uno Quitao y Otro Puesto” is a corrosively effective blast of late-career posturing, complete with gunshot accents à la “Sácala.” On “Enchuletiao,” Yankee doesn’t rap, he barks a flood of bars about his unrivaled eminence in the genre, delivered through gritted teeth. “¿Qué tú me va’ a enseñar, si yo he esta’o en to’a las era’?” he says. “What are you gonna teach me, if I’ve been in all of the eras?” It’s a reminder of his technical skills — he hasn’t sounded this electric, this deliciously abrasive in years.With their stadium-sized trumpets and vibrant piano lines, “Rumbatón” and “El Abusador del Abusador” are thrilling, nostalgic callbacks to the salsa-reggaeton fusions of the mid-00s (fittingly, Luny of the duo Luny Tunes produced “Rumbatón”). “Remix” and “Bloke” are classic reggaeton romps, harnessing the kind of sexual fantasies and salacious exchanges that once made the sound so irresistible; the first even includes a reference to the Big Boss’s 2007 track “Impacto.”Yet a good portion of the songs follow prosaic, predictable pop formats: “Para Siempre” weaves acoustic guitar textures into a bland, mid-tempo popeton ballad, while “La Ola” and “Zona del Perreo” almost sound like they were engineered for Spotify’s “Viva Latino” playlist. “Pasatiempo,” with Myke Towers, lands primarily because of its interpolation of Robyn S’s “Show Me Love.” Sampling universally beloved bangers is a method Yankee has been unafraid to employ in the past (i.e., “Con Calma”), and it works here yet again.“Legendaddy” also has some egregious missteps: two EDM fusions, the globally popular style that has recently had a grip on the Latin charts. “Bombón,” featuring Lil Jon and the dembow visionary El Alfa, is virtually unlistenable — college spring-break music, complete with “Yeah!” ad-libs from an era long gone. “Hot,” which is dominated by its Pitbull feature, is essentially a caricature of Miami nightclub fare.Yankee does leave space for one refreshing moment of adventure with “Agua.” The track, a collaboration with Nile Rodgers and the reggaeton star Rauw Alejandro, is sparkling disco pop gloss, complete with groovy guitar riffs from the Chic legend.As a farewell album, “Legendaddy” honors all the styles of Yankee’s trajectory, highlighting the superpower that has enabled him to survive as a senior figure in a young artist’s game: flexibility. And in that way, the album also mirrors the history of reggaeton itself: a sound that is now unrecognizable from its political, grass-roots beginnings, and one whose history implies constant transformation.There is always the chance that Yankee will return on some kind of comeback tour, as plenty of hip-hop giants have done after bowing out. Yankee got his flowers while he was still around, and his indelible impact cannot be understated. But “Legendaddy” also speaks volumes about what reggaeton needs more of in this moment: fresh blood, unorthodox aesthetics and storytelling world-builders seeking to inject the genre with the euphoria, fireworks and narrative depth the movement has promised since its inception. More

Watch how your favorite pop hits get made. Meet the artists, songwriters and producers as Joe Coscarelli investigates the modern music industry.Watch how your favorite pop hits get made. Meet the artists, songwriters and producers as Joe Coscarelli investigates the modern music industry. More

After two albums of roots pop, the musician returns to her own roots for “Crooked Tree,” an album that takes inspiration from her lifelong journey living with alopecia areata.The singer, songwriter and guitarist Molly Tuttle’s fingers move so quickly, she could pick your pocket without breaking stride. Though she’s only been releasing albums for three years, the sharpest ears in Americana music have taken notice.“I’ve never heard Molly Tuttle strike a single note that wasn’t completely self-assured,” said the roots music guitar master David Rawlings, half of Gillian Welch’s duo. “Molly plays with a confidence and command that only the very best guitarists ever achieve. If that could be bottled, I’d take two.”Best known as a top bluegrass guitarist, Tuttle, 29, is emerging as strikingly label-resistant. The first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Association’s guitar player of the year award (two years in a row, 2017 and 2018), she considers herself as much a singer as a player, whose light soprano packs a surprising wallop. Nor is she, strictly speaking, a bluegrass musician.“I think of bluegrass as part of what I do,” Tuttle said, settling into a chair in her publicist’s office in Manhattan. “I can switch on my bluegrass self, but it doesn’t feel like my core identity, it feels more like an outlet for something I do and that I’ve done since I was a kid.”Tuttle set about defining her own brand of roots pop in two critically acclaimed albums, “When You’re Ready” from 2019 and its 2020 follow-up, “… But I’d Rather Be With You.” While the second LP consists entirely of covers, Tuttle co-wrote every song on “Crooked Tree,” an album out Friday that is very much bluegrass. Several of its songs are written from not merely a woman’s perspective, but a feminist’s, making Tuttle an outlier in what remains a male-dominated genre.“I’d always felt a block writing bluegrass songs,” she said. “I just don’t relate to a lot of the old themes. But something clicked where I was able to write songs that felt true to who I am but still fit into bluegrass.”Tuttle grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., in a musical family. Her father taught guitar for a living, and counted his daughter and her two younger brothers as prized students. Gravitating to the guitar at 8, Tuttle soon had herself on a strict regimen (for a 10-year-old): an hour of practice after school, an hour before bedtime.A musical omnivore, Tuttle helped herself to rock, punk and rap, including the National, Neko Case and the Bay Area punk bands Operation Ivy and Rancid. (Don’t miss her irresistibly propulsive punkgrass cover of Rancid’s “Olympia WA,” her solo a machine-gun spray of 16th notes.) Tuttle played acoustic guitar and banjo in the family’s bluegrass band, but she plugged in with pickup rock groups. Her middle-school music teacher had a big CD collection, much of which found its way onto Tuttle’s iPod.“I remember taking a Rage Against the Machine album home,” she said, “and going, ‘Whoa! This is amazing!’”By her midteens, Tuttle was driving with her father to California bluegrass festivals, reveling in the camaraderie. “It was so cool,” she said, “because nobody at my school knew what bluegrass was.” “People who don’t have alopecia think, ‘Well, it’s just hair,’ or ‘You can wear a wig,’” Tuttle said. “It is a traumatic thing. It’s like losing a part of your body.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThe fellowship extended only so far. At one festival, Tuttle joined an impromptu jam in which the only musician she didn’t know was the fellow calling the tunes. When it came her turn to solo, she recalled, “He leaned right in front of me and pointed to the guy next to me, like, ‘You solo.’ He just completely skipped over me.’”Sexism’s sting empowered her: “Today I have my own band, so there’s no one who’s going to make me feel like that guy did, except me,” she said. “But there’s always times,” she added, “when you’re the only woman, so they do the song in a guy key and you can’t sing on it. Stuff like that happens a lot.”Tuttle has spent her life overcoming another hurdle: alopecia areata, an incurable autoimmune disease she contracted when she was 3 years old that results in partial, or, as in Tuttle’s case, total body hair loss.“People thought I had cancer, which made me really self-conscious,” Tuttle recalled. “First my parents got me hats” — you can see her on a YouTube video, peering out from under a sort of oversized cloche. She switched to wigs at 15, and “it was finally, like, ‘I can relax.’”Tuttle said those unaffected by alopecia rarely grasp its gravity. “People who don’t have alopecia think, ‘Well, it’s just hair,’ or ‘You can wear a wig,’” she said. “It is a traumatic thing. It’s like losing a part of your body.” While today Tuttle said she’s comfortable going without a wig, she prefers to wear one onstage. “What feels truest to myself is embracing the fluidity of ‘I can wear a wig one day and not wear a wig the next,’” she said.Learning to live with the disease remains a challenge that inspired the new album’s title song, where Tuttle tells the world, “I’d rather be a crooked tree!” Writing and performing “Crooked Tree” — giving it pride of place as the album’s title — is, for Tuttle, an act of self-acceptance and affirmation.“Growing up with it, and getting comfortable talking about it, has helped me overcome a lot of social anxiety — I’m naturally shy; everyone in my family is,” she said and laughed. “It’s helped me realize that it doesn’t matter what other people think, you can be yourself.”After majoring in guitar performance at Berklee College of Music in Boston — although she said her real tutelage was years of close listening to the singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens (“She stood up for marginalized people”), the guitarists Clarence White and David Grier, and Joni Mitchell — Tuttle arrived in Nashville.She worked with the mainstream pop producers Ryan Hewitt on her first album and Tony Berg on her second. Both surrounded Tuttle’s voice and guitar with multitextured, sometimes overly lush, soundscapes.In February, 2021, Tuttle was writing songs for what was to be a third pop album when bluegrass songs began pouring out of her, a return to her comfort zone in anxious times. Shelving the pop project for the time being, she invited some of Nashville’s top bluegrass players into the studio and asked the dobro master Jerry Douglas, a major force in contemporary bluegrass, to co-produce with her what became “Crooked Tree.”“It’s become such a loose term, anyway,” Tuttle said of bluegrass. “Today, everyone’s listening to everything and blurring things together.”Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesThe album’s first single, “She’ll Change,” co-written with Tuttle’s frequent collaborator, Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show, is a paean to strong women (“Just snaps her little fingers/And they all stand in line”) sprinkled with Tuttle’s jaw-dropping bluegrass runs.On other tracks, Tuttle doesn’t hesitate to subvert old themes. “I’ve always loved murder ballads,” she said, “I have a natural love of horror movies, and gore, and creepy stories. But some of the old ballads are really misogynist. There’s a lot of violence towards women. So I flipped the perspective to a woman’s.” In “The River Knows,” co-written with Melody Walker, it’s the guy who gets hacked to death, for a change (“Washed the proof out of my hair/Crimson streaming down my skin so fair”).“I’ll always want to come back to bluegrass,” Tuttle said, though she does play with musical convention on the new album. “It’s become such a loose term, anyway. Today, everyone’s listening to everything and blurring things together.”The genre today is indeed quite different from that of its founder, Bill Monroe. “If Bill came to a bluegrass festival today,” said the fiddler-turned-violinist and composer Mark O’Connor, another lifelong border crosser, “he would hardly recognize the genre he helped create.“Having said that,” O’Connor added, “if Bill Monroe were here today, he would hire Molly Tuttle for his Blue Grass Boys. Because she can sing the high lonesome and drive that rhythm on the flattop guitar. But then, Bill would have to consider a name change for the band.”Sitting in Manhattan, Tuttle considered the options: “The Blue Grass Persons?” she suggested. More

The group’s droll single “Chaise Longue” racked up playlist spots and star endorsements. Its debut album has more springy bass lines, jabbing guitars and sharp, observational lyrics.“Hi, we’re Wet Leg. I guess you guys know that, because you bought tickets,” Rhian Teasdale said to the sold-out crowd at Mercury Lounge, a small club on the lip of New York’s Lower East Side, one evening in December. Teasdale, who mostly sings lead vocals and plays rhythm guitar, looked over her right shoulder at Hester Chambers, who mostly sings backup and plays lead guitar. The two chuckled as they shared their latest moment of astonishment. “It’s so weird,” Teasdale said to the audience.In the last year, lots of things have been weird for Wet Leg, a band from Isle of Wight, England, that has ascended as quickly and unexpectedly as any in recent pop history. It was weird when a well-known London manager signed them in May 2020, even though they hadn’t released any music, and it was weird when Domino Records, home to alternative rock stars including Cat Power and Arctic Monkeys, made a deal with them six months later, despite having heard only four songs on a private SoundCloud.The duo’s droll and instantly catchy first song, “Chaise Longue,” arrived in June 2021, and weird things happened: Streaming services added it to prominent playlists, Elton John played it on his Apple Music radio show and Dave Grohl raved about it in an interview, saying, “There are nights when we just play that song on repeat.”“Chaise Longue” has the feel of an epochal one-off, something unrepeatable, like “Louie Louie” or “Because I Got High.” But on their self-titled album due April 8, Teasdale, 29, and Chambers, 28, deliver more smart, frisky neo-new wave songs about the challenges of being a middle-class woman in her late 20s. The lyrics are full of modern references, including wokeness, Instagram, dating apps, sexting and late-night scrolling. Work is boring, boyfriends are fickle and deserve to be mocked, as they are in “Wet Dream” and “Loving You.” Though the lyrics sometimes linger over a feeling of being adrift (“I’m almost 28, still getting off my stupid face,” Teasdale sings in “I Don’t Wanna Go Out”), the Wet Leg album is a thrashing good time.“We didn’t aspire to get signed. We thought it would not be in the cards,” Chambers said a few days after their New York debut, sitting in the lobby of the band’s Brooklyn hotel. “We just wanted to play some silly songs.”Their pessimism about success was understandable. First of all, they lived on the Isle of Wight, which can be reached most easily by boat, and, with a population of about 141,000, is hardly known as a launching pad of global talent. The bucolic island is distinguished by its chalky white cliffs and Victorian cottages, and being there is “like going back in time,” said Martin Hall, Wet Leg’s manager. “It’s very English.”In addition, Teasdale and Chambers, who met as music students at the Isle of Wight College, had been performing separately for years, with little traction. Teasdale recorded under the name Rhain from 2016 to 2018, and sang askew, fanciful songs that call to mind Björk or Perfume Genius. Chambers fronted Hester and Red Squirrel, specializing in soft-focus songs about star-crossed lovers, like Nick Drake but with lots of water imagery. “I’ve played to literally no one before. That was fun,” Chambers said dryly of her history onstage.At one show, Teasdale had a near meltdown. She’d driven four hours for a solo gig, and everyone in the festival tent where she played was eating. After two songs, “I started crying hysterically,” she said. “I’d been playing music for five years, just because it becomes so intertwined in your identity.” She decided to ask Chambers to back her up onstage, so she’d feel less lonely.Chambers, similarly, was crying and having panic attacks before her shows, and had begun apprenticing in her parents’ jewelry business. “I felt like, OK, maybe making music isn’t in my stars,” she said. “And I was pretty gutted.”Once Teasdale and Chambers discovered they had similar stories, they resolved to start a new band that felt fun, with no goal beyond maybe, if they were lucky, playing at a local festival or two. They chose the name Wet Leg, Teasdale has explained, because it’s “such a dumb name,” and serves as a reminder not to take themselves seriously.“That’s why it’s so weird,” Teasdale added, “because the moment we stopped trying to make anyone else happy and did a band for the joy of playing and hanging out, that’s when …” Her voice trailed off, but the point was clear.“It’s rare to find a band that, from the off, sounds unique, individual and identifiable,” Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches, the Scottish band that chose Wet Leg as an opening act on some December dates, wrote in an email. “Lyrically, they can be wry, but their music feels very honest and joyful. I also think it’s rare for women to be allowed to have a sense of humor in their music, which is just another thing to love about them.”On record, the two musicians boldly sing about sex (Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” was an inspiration). But in conversation, they are so soft-spoken that when a woman walked by talking loudly on her cellphone, I could barely hear their voices. They said they were still as unconfident as when they started, but as a duo, they gathered strength from one another, and from a motto that keeps them going: “Feel the fear, but do it anyway.”“We didn’t aspire to get signed,” Chambers said. “We just wanted to play some silly songs.”Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesLast August, they booked a set at the Green Man festival in Wales, and were startled to see dozens of fans waiting for them to play. Surely, they thought, all those people had come to see them by mistake. “Once we’d soundchecked our instruments,” Teasdale said, “we had a few minutes to …”“Have a nervous wee,” Chambers interjected.“The whole tent was full of expectant people who’d heard only one song at that point,” Teasdale continued. “It’s been really weird, playing to big audiences.”The effect of “Chaise Longue” was that immediate. By the time they started writing the song, Teasdale had moved to London and was working as a stylist on commercials. She came back to Isle of Wight to stay with Chambers and her partner Joshua Mobaraki, who tours with Wet Leg as a synth player and guitarist. Teasdale’s makeshift bed was a lumpy chaise longue that had belonged to Chambers’s grandparents, which inspired the three of them to write the song while taking part of the lyrics (“Is your muffin buttered?”) from a scene in “Mean Girls.”Michael Champion of the band Champs, who played bass on the song, liked it enough to contact Hall, who asked to meet them, much to their disbelief. “It’s kind of my sweet spot — the new wave indie guitar music I grew up loving,” Hall said. “They are quiet and shy people, and somewhat bemused by the success,” he added, “but there’s also a quiet ambition about them.”The video Wet Leg made themselves for “Chaise Longue” also helped fuel the phenomenon, thanks to Teasdale’s deadpan demeanor, and attire (straw sun hats, floor-length white frocks) that makes them look like 1890s frontierswomen. They’ve since made self-directed videos for “Wet Dream” and “Oh No.” “I trust their instincts,” Hall said. “They’ve got it right so far.”Older listeners might hear echoes of bands from an earlier generation, like Delta 5, Elastica or Art Brut. But Teasdale and Chambers aren’t familiar with any of those groups. Their closest compatriots are Dry Cleaning, Yard Act and Sports Team, young British bands who, despite having been born after new wave’s popularity crested, emulate the music’s springy bass lines, resolute drums and jabbing guitars as they limn the ruins of consumer culture, talk-singing in unmistakably British cadences. These bands share an ability to muster ecstatic objections out of their disgust.The camaraderie between Teasdale and Chambers feels like a pact, almost at the level of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It becomes evident when I ask them to describe one another.Chambers: “Rhian is funny and ethereal. This sounds cheesy, but when we met at uni, I knew you were going to do something really wild. You’re just a star. And you’re pretty.”Teasdale: “I’m blushing. Hester is kind and generous. You’re very quiet, and you have the smallest handwriting I’ve ever seen.”Chambers: “Thank you. That means a lot.”Teasdale: “You’re very strong, even though you think you’re not. Now I’m getting very emotional.”Chambers: “Thanks, mom.”Underneath their talk about feeling overwhelmed and overcoming fear, there’s also a resolve about how to present themselves. “A lot of the internet is saturated with images that make you feel like you’re not enough, or you don’t have enough,” Teasdale said. “I don’t want to be in a band that makes people, young girls in particular, feel like [expletive] about themselves.”True to their island background, the two offered a nautical simile that sums up the voyage so far. “We’re like two little seals surfing the wave,” Chambers said. “Two seal pups surfing along,” Teasdale responded, and the two friends laughed. More

Hard-hitting and charismatic, he was direct about his hopes for the group’s future, even after two decades. “I want to be the biggest band in the world,” he said.Taylor Hawkins, the hard-hitting, charismatic drummer for Foo Fighters, the enduring Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band that has won 12 Grammys and released seven platinum albums, has died at 50.A statement posted to the band’s social media late Friday and sent by its representative confirmed the death. According to the attorney general’s office of Colombia, Mr. Hawkins had been staying in a hotel in northern Bogotá, where the band had been scheduled to play a show Friday night. The office said that preliminary tests showed Mr. Hawkins had several substances in his system, including opioids, marijuana and benzodiazepines; the cause of death was still under investigation.pic.twitter.com/ffPHhUKRT4— Foo Fighters (@foofighters) March 26, 2022
Recognizable for his flailing limbs, surfer’s good looks and wide, childlike grin, Mr. Hawkins became a member of the band led by Dave Grohl for its third album, “There Is Nothing Left to Lose,” released in 1999, and played on the group’s subsequent seven albums. He drew on two distinct styles: the fundamentals of Roger Taylor from Queen and the intricacy of Stewart Copeland from the Police. He added the muscle of punk and metal, the precision of drum machines and a gift for explosive momentum.Foo Fighters’ most recent album, “Medicine at Midnight,” arrived last year as the group was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Hawkins was direct about his hopes for its future. “I want to be the biggest band in the world,” he said.Mr. Hawkins was born in Fort Worth on Feb. 17, 1972, and raised in Southern California. He started to play drums at age 10, and said that his mother gave him the confidence to dream big: “When I first got drums, she was the one who would watch me play. She was a big supporter and told me I’d make it,” he said in an interview last year.Attending a Queen show in 1982 confirmed that music was his passion. “After that concert, I don’t think I slept for three days,” he said in a 2021 interview with the metal magazine Kerrang. “It changed everything, and I was never the same because of it. It was the beginning of my obsession with rock ’n’ roll, and I knew that I wanted to be in a huge rock band.”After Mr. Hawkins played in a local California band called Sylvia and backing the Canadian rock vocalist Sass Jordan, his first mainstream break came in 1995, when he joined Alanis Morissette’s band as she toured behind her blockbuster album “Jagged Little Pill.” (He appeared in the video for her breakout hit “You Oughta Know,” flipping his blond mane behind the drum kit.)Foo Fighters in performance in New York last year.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMr. Grohl, then still primarily known for his role as the drummer for Nirvana, recalled meeting Mr. Hawkins backstage at a radio station concert in the 1990s and feeling an immediate kinship.“I was like, ‘Wow, you’re either my twin or my spirit animal or my best friend,’” Mr. Grohl said in an interview last year. “When it was time to look for a drummer, I kind of wished that he would do it, but I didn’t imagine he would leave Alanis Morissette, because at the time she was the biggest artist in the world.”But when Mr. Grohl called him later looking for a drummer, he recalled, Mr. Hawkins said, “I’m your guy.”“I think it had more to do with our personal relationship than anything musical,” he added. “To be honest, it still does. Our musical relationship — the foundation of that is our friendship, and that’s why when we jump up onstage and play, we’re so connected, because we’re like best friends.”Mr. Grohl, Foo Fighters’ lead singer and one of its songwriters and guitarists, had played drums on the band’s first album in 1995, and he took over again for its second, “The Colour and the Shape,” when a replacement failed to stick. In joining the band, Mr. Hawkins was charged with assuming the seat of one of contemporary rock’s most distinct, powerful and beloved drummers. His colorful flair and good humor helped him carve out his own place in the band, and he adapted to Mr. Grohl’s creative process: “He writes in rhythms, not only in melodies but in rhythms, so I have to meet him there,” Mr. Hawkins said.Recorded in a Virginia basement, far from the prying eyes of a record label, “There Is Nothing Left to Lose” went on to win the band’s first Grammy, for best rock album.Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform at this year’s Grammys, to be held on April 3. “Medicine at Midnight” is nominated for three awards, including best rock performance (for the song “Making a Fire”), best rock song (“Waiting on a War”) and best rock album.Foo Fighters were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, recognized for their “rock authenticity with infectious hooks, in-your-face guitar riffs, monster drums and boundless energy.” At the induction ceremony, Mr. Hawkins told Mr. Grohl, “Thank you for letting me be in your band.”Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters spoke when the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in October. Paul McCartney, who gave the induction speech, was behind Mr. Grohl, and Mr. Hawklns was next to Mr. McCartney.David Richard/Associated PressOn songs like “Times Like These,” the 2003 hit that has become an anthem of perseverance and renewal, Mr. Hawkins is a hard-driving force, punctuating the verses with rat-a-tat fills. On “Best of You,” another fist-pumping, heartstring-tugging signature song, his snare pounds provide the chorus’s steadily building drama. And on “Rope,” a single from the band’s 2011 album, “Wasting Light,” Mr. Hawkins’s precisely syncopated work on the verses gives way to eruptions of fills.In addition to his drumming, Mr. Hawkins went on to contribute as a songwriter to Foo Fighters albums, even singing lead vocals on occasion. Beginning in 2006, he released three albums with a side project, the cheekily named Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders. He also played in a cover band called Chevy Metal and a prog-rock band called the Birds of Satan. Last year he teamed with the guitarist Dave Navarro and the bassist Chris Chaney to form a band called NHC; the group’s debut EP, “Intakes & Outtakes,” was released in February.On recent Foo Fighters tours, Mr. Hawkins would swap places with Mr. Grohl to sing a cover of Queen’s 1981 hit with David Bowie, “Under Pressure,” or Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” emerging from behind the kit in his signature shorts to pay homage to the act that set him on his path. He’d also take the spotlight for drum solos that stretched several minutes, smiling as he became a whirl of limbs atop his riser, smashing his cymbals and bashing a timpani.Although he has been referred to as “a sideman with a frontman’s flair,” Mr. Hawkins admitted over the years to feeling some self-doubt about filling Mr. Grohl’s seat behind the drum kit. “A lot of my insecurities — which led to a lot of my drug use — had to do with me not feeling like I was good enough to be in this band, to play drums with Dave,” he told Spin in 2002.In 2001, he overdosed in London and was briefly comatose. “Everyone has their own path, and I took it too far,” Mr. Hawkins told Kerrang, adding that he once believed the “myth of live hard and fast, die young.”He added, “I’m not here to preach about not doing drugs, because I loved doing drugs, but I just got out of control for a while and it almost got me.”In a 2018 conversation with the online radio station Beats 1, Mr. Hawkins said, “There’s no happy ending with hard drugs.” But he declined to explain how he stayed sober: “I don’t really discuss how I live my life in that regard. I have my system that works for me.”Mr. Hawkins is survived by his wife, Alison, whom he married in 2005, and their three children, Oliver, Annabelle and Everleigh.Jon Pareles More