Music

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Ty, a British rapper known for a lyrically thoughtful, musically polyglot approach to hip-hop and for serving as a bridge between generations of British rap, died on May 7 in London. He was 47.His death was announced on a GoFundMe page that had been established by a family friend, Diane Laidlaw, while he was hospitalized with complications of the coronavirus. He was placed in a medically induced coma, woke from it and later died of pneumonia. In the late 1990s and 2000s, just before the early flickers of the rap-adjacent genre known as grime presaged a sound and scene with a firm British identity, Ty was among the most adventurous British M.C.s — a wordplay-focused scene-builder indebted to American movements like the Native Tongues and the New York underground. Though he received critical acclaim, including a nomination for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize in 2004, he often expressed his frustrations with how the more commercial strains of hip-hop tended to shut out unconventional voices.Ty didn’t fit neatly into any hip-hop archetypes, in England or anywhere else. “I hate the word alternative,” he told The Independent in 2008. “I hate the word off-key, I hate the word jazzy and I hate the word laid-back. I’m not a laid-back person.”But even though he was difficult to neatly categorize, Ty was widely respected for his relaxed but complex storytelling. Charlie Sloth, the British hip-hop D.J. and radio host, called him “a true foundation of UK rap” in a Twitter tribute.Ty was born Benedict Okwuchukwu Godwin Chijioke on Aug. 17, 1972, in London to parents who had emigrated from Nigeria. He was raised in the Brixton neighborhood, apart from a long spell during his younger years when his parents left him and his sister in private foster care with a white family in Jaywick, Essex, an experience that left lasting scars of identity confusion.“I learned, long way, to love who I am. To love my identity, my nationality. I learned with bloodied lips,” he told England’s Channel 4 News last year.In the 1990s, Ty worked as a sound engineer, and in 1995, he co-founded Ghetto Grammar, a London workshop series that functioned at the intersection of hip-hop and spoken word. He began recording music in the late 1990s alongside British hip-hop figures like Funky DL and Shortee Blitz. He also was a host of the Lyrical Lounge club night at the crucial venue Jazz Café.In 2001 he released his casually jaunty debut album, “Awkward,” which featured strong storytelling and had echoes of acid jazz and 1990s New York rap. His 2003 follow-up, “Upwards,” was more ambitious in its music and narrative on songs like “The Willing,” with its Afrobeat-influenced production, and “Rain,” a stark track about a nightclub shooting and the scourge of gun violence.The album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, the annual British music award (now simply the Mercury Prize). His third album, “Closer,” was full of dreamy electro-adjacent production and featured his most overt engagement with American hip-hop, including collaborations with De La Soul, Speech of Arrested Development, Bahamadia and more.But Ty always remained interested in strengthening the ties between generations of British rappers, which became even more fragmented after the ascendance of grime — the breakthrough style that drew on jungle and garage to create a more rapid, pulsing, dystopian sound that set the table for an evolution in British rapping.He appeared on a remix of Bashy’s “Black Boys,” an influential 2007 protest song, alongside the future grime star Skepta and others. The grime MC Ghetts posted a tribute to Ty on Instagram, calling him “one of the first from the older generation to embrace me and show me love.”Ty continued releasing music into the late 2010s, including with Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets and the highly regarded jazz saxophonist Soweto Kinch. He was also part of Kingdem, a cross-generational supergroup of British rap elders, which also featured Rodney P (of London Posse) and Blak Twang.Jazz Re:freshed, the label that released Ty’s final solo album, “A Work of Heart,” in 2018, said in a statement, “He had a unique vision as to where he wanted to take his music, lyrically, sonically and aesthetically, whilst trailblazing for a whole generation. He knew his mind, followed it and walked his own path.”Ty’s survivors include his mother and his sister, Maria. More

Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Aventura, ‘Bud Light Seltzer Sessions con Aventura’[embedded content]Enough with the livestreams. Seriously. They are, for the most part, a poor compensation, an unsatisfactory compression of artists still learning how to express the fullness of their gifts while on lockdown. Plus, there’s nothing worse than having an appointment to keep in a moment in which time has no edge. But this. This! I did not see this stellar acoustic Aventura concert live, but thankfully it is archived on YouTube. Few acts are as well suited to this stripped-down approach as these innovative bachata superstars. For this performance, three of the four members — Romeo Santos, the frontman; Lenny Santos on guitar; Max Santos on bass — were together on a sound stage, and the fourth, Henry Santos, was beamed in to do harmony vocals. For about 40 minutes, they played striking, poignant renditions of “Cuándo Volverás,” “Obsesión,” “Enséñame A Olvidar,” “Un Beso” and many more hits. Sprinkled throughout the show was some unconvincing shilling for Bud Light Seltzer, but that was a small price to pay for a performance this intimate and careful. The close-up shots suited the group well: You could see the dexterity of Lenny’s guitar playing, catch the flexibility of Max’s funk, and watch in awe as Romeo — an utter ham, an irrepressible sensualist, a singer of uncommon sweetness — massaged the cameras with his eyes. JON CARAMANICAJohn Legend, ‘Bigger Love’Just surrender to the meticulous catchiness of John Legend’s latest benevolent message. From its dembow-ish beat to its wholehearted chorus to all of its burnished details — the mixture of electronic and acoustic-sounding percussion, the female voice that sails alongside Legend in the last choruses, the brief bits of guitar, the synthesizer and saxophone counterpoints, the nuggets of sampled vocals that pop up all over the place — this seemingly modest ditty (credited to five songwriters and four producers) springs little delights all the way through. JON PARELESCaptain Planet and Shungudzo, ‘Big Man’Captain Planet, a D.J.-producer with an ear for world music, enlisted the Zimbabwean-American gymnast-turned-musician Shungudzo for the class-warfare song “Big Man.” West African balafons (marimbas) plink out a six-beat vamp spattered with trap percussion as Shungudzo plays the arrogant mogul: “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine,” she taunts. “You carry my load while I break your shoulders.” PARELESRoy Ayers, ‘Reaching the Highest Pleasure’Adrian Younge, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Roy Ayers, ‘Synchronize Vibration’Roy Ayers’s great recordings from the 1970s are equal parts hunger and poise. On this previously unreleased 1977 recording of “Reaching the Highest Pleasure,” the vibraphonist and fusion pioneer lives up to those principles, taking his time as he turns up the pressure over a lively, corkscrewing bass line. This week also sees the release of “Synchronize Vibration,” the lead single from an album that the 79-year-old Ayers recently recorded in collaboration with the hip-hop producers Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who have recently been making music together under the moniker Jazz Is Dead. The track has all the trappings of golden era Ayers: a chorus of wafting female vocals, gooey synths and a drum beat that steadily simmers. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOFuture featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, ‘Trillionaire’A father-son outing of hip-hop’s melancholic solipsists, “Trillionaire” unites Future, almost a decade into his sadness, and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, full of bluster seeping out of wounds. Given that, this collaboration — from the new Future album “High Off Life” — is more lively than you’d expect. YoungBoy’s hook is hopeful, and Future raps about taking care of his mother. The two sound relieved to have found each other. CARAMANICARico Nasty, ‘My Little Alien’There are bigger-name contributors to “Scoob! The Album,” the soundtrack to the new animated feature film (and extension of the Scooby-Doo universe). But there is something very right about Rico Nasty’s “My Little Alien,” which matches oddity with accessibility, chirpiness with wry knowingness — intersections at which the underappreciated rapper thrives. An upbeat theme song for the oddball children of the world. CARAMANICADijon, ‘Rock n Roll’Rock has shrunk down to a negligible cultural keepsake, a handful of trivia citations, in “Rock n Roll,” which has Dijon courting a girl who “don’t like rock ’n’ roll” even though “daddy owned a record shop,” whatever that was. The sound of the backup instruments is crumpled, distorted and lurching, while Dijon, singing like a low-fi Prince, cites the Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, “Born in the U.S.A.,” “1999,” punk-rock and, hmmm, Earth, Wind & Fire. “I just wanna see her dance around the room,” he moans, defeated. PARELESBen Harper, ‘Don’t Let Me Disappear’The possibility of hope grows ever more remote in Ben Harper’s “Don’t Let Me Disappear.” He picks an acoustic guitar, a major chord falling to its relative minor, and sings in a subdued, careworn voice as sonic voids open up around him: quiet keyboard tones that are mostly air, implacably deep drums, distorted electric guitars that only echo his despair. “Been so long since it was easy,” he sings, on the way to the final minor chord. PARELESKaitlyn Aurelia Smith, ‘The Steady Heart’“The Steady Heart,” by the electronic composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, is meditative and hyperactive at the same time, a swirl of burbling organ tones and Smith’s voice(s) singing sweetly about trust, with undertows of bass notes and drumbeats that only make the track more vertiginous on the way to a final unexpected ascent. PARELESTropos, ‘Of the Trellis’The compositions of Anthony Braxton tend to be fastidious and wily works: They are carefully, almost obsessively built, but with room to move around; the performer also becomes a composer. That feeling — of a writhing text, something almost escaping its own language — became inspiration for Tropos, a quintet of young improvisers and composers who first met as students at New England Conservatory. On their debut album, “Axioms // 75 AB,” they take inspiration from Braxton’s method; half of its tracks are his compositions, and the other half are original pieces inspired by him. One of those, “Of the Trellis,” a smoky piece by the drummer Mario Layne Fabrizio, becomes a fertile meeting ground for Laila Smith’s voice and Raef Sengupta’s alto saxophone. RUSSONELLO More

When the coronavirus outbreak was only manifesting itself in horrifying headlines from Italy and China, Nils Lofgren, the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and his wife, Amy, moved her mother into Brookdale Senior Living, a well-regarded long term care facility in Florham Park, N.J.Almost immediately, Patricia J. Landers, Mrs. Lofgren’s mother, began complaining about missing medications and lapses in supervision. The family began to notice a pattern of neglect, particularly in treating her dementia. Then, in early April, Mrs. Landers, 83, was discovered by local police officers walking aimlessly on a frigid night, three miles away from Brookdale, shivering, bruised and confused. It was her fourth escape from the facility since she arrived in January.A week later, Mrs. Landers was admitted to a hospital in Montclair, where she tested positive for Covid-19.Incensed and feeling betrayed, the Lofgrens began to explore legal options when they ran into a troubling trend: Lobbyists from nursing homes across the country were pushing for immunity protection from lawsuits during the coronavirus crisis. “It’s a pledge they made, a sacred pledge, to take care of your father, your mother, your grandparents, and they put it in writing, by the way, and now they don’t want to have any responsibilities because, why, it’s too hard?” Mr. Lofgren said. The family accelerated their efforts and filed a lawsuit against Brookdale on Wednesday.“We’re just horrified that people’s first reaction is, ‘Well we’re making a lot of money, but now let’s make sure we’re not liable for what we promised to do, in writing,’” Mr. Lofgren said. “Don’t forget, they look you in the eye and say your loved one will be cared for.”In a statement, a spokeswoman for Brookdale declined to discuss Mrs. Landers’s case specifically.“As a matter of company policy, Brookdale does not comment on or get ahead of ongoing legal proceedings,” said Heather Hunter, a public relations manager for the company. “I will say that we work hard to maintain an open and constructive dialogue with families about their loved one and the best way that we can work together to help each resident live their best life in their community.”Brookdale in Florham Park has, as of Wednesday, only 10 reported cases of coronavirus at the facility, according to the New Jersey Department of Health. No one at the facility has died from the virus. After her original diagnosis, Ms. Landers is now recovering from Covid-19.As nursing homes around the country have been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, killing more than 29,100 residents and staff members as of Wednesday, facilities have been scrambling to protect themselves from lawsuits.In April, New Jersey’s governor, Philip D. Murphy, signed a law that “provides civil and criminal immunity to certain health care professionals and health care facilities during public health emergency and state of emergency.” The intent of the law was to protect health care workers coming out of retirement or shipping in from other states from lawsuits as they dealt with the unknowns of the virus. The governor’s office said that the law would indeed cover nursing homes. More

Europe’s annual song contest would have had its final this Saturday. Its devoted followers aren’t letting its coronavirus-related cancellation slow them down. More