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      A Hip-Hop Comic Book Star Comes to Life in Steel

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      A statue of Rappin’ Max Robot is bound for Paris. But first it’s making a stop in the Bronx.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll meet a new iteration of Rappin’ Max Robot that is bound for Paris, via the Bronx. We’ll also get details on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s testimony in the court case seeking to have him removed from the November ballot in New York.Clark Ivers, Welder UndergroundRappin’ Max Robot began life as a comic book character only a few inches tall. Now he is a man of steel. He has a skin of steel plates up to an inch thick that covers an I-beam skeleton.He is on his way to Paris, to take note of breaking’s debut in the Olympics, but he will get there a little late. First he will spend some time in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop.Today an 18-foot-tall statue of Rappin’ Max Robot that was fabricated in Brooklyn will be hauled to a spot outside the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx. The museum is not scheduled to open until next year. But Marc Levin, who with his wife, Adina, runs the studio and foundry where the statue took shape, said it would be assembled for a Champagne toast on Saturday, the second day of breaking events at the Olympics.Hip-hop is a “wondrous and centerless tangle,” The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica wrote last year, so perhaps it is not surprising that the toast will not be the only hip-hop event this weekend. Sunday is the 51st anniversary of the day hip-hop is said to have gotten its start, in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, and a group that is not affiliated with the museum is planning a march from that neighborhood to Crotona Park, a couple of miles away.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge John Hodgman on the Most Iconic Beatles Album Cover

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      A couple compete to see who can be more wrong.Ben writes: My girlfriend and I were talking about the Beatles. I said the album covers for “Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” are the most recognizable images of the band. She said that’s ludicrous, and the White Album cover is easily more recognizable. I find that logic to be wild: It’s just a white cover!The correct answer is “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” So the real question is which one of you is more wrong. Your girlfriend is correct that Richard Hamilton’s blank, anti-Pepper design of “The Beatles”/The White Album is more important than John Kosh’s semi-pedestrian, high-school-yearbook layout for “Let It Be.” But Kosh’s literally pedestrian cover for “Abbey Road” is probably one of the most known images in pop culture. And it actually has the Beatles in it, so you win on points. But mostly, be happy you have a girlfriend who wants to talk about the Beatles with you. Meanwhile, if anyone was worried I might not be a white guy over 50, this column should set all doubts to rest. More

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      Gloriously Noisy Latinas Are Coming to Lincoln Center

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      The free Ruidosa Fest is a showcase for innovative female musicians that has injected its founder “with a lot of energy and love and connection.”In Spanish, “ruidosa” means noisy, loud, roaring, rumbling and attention-grabbing. The final “a” makes it a feminine adjective.It’s the name that Francisca Valenzuela, an American-born Chilean songwriter, chose when she decided to create a festival, and an organization, dedicated to getting Latina musicians heard — and defying the gender imbalance across the music business. Since 2016, Ruidosa Fests have taken place across Latin America, presenting female-led acts from multiple countries and gathering industry figures for panel discussions and strategic networking.On Saturday, New York City gets its first Ruidosa Fest, with 10 acts on multiple stages at Lincoln Center, followed by a silent disco D.J. set. At 3 p.m., before live music begins at 4:30, journalists and media executives will speak on a panel titled “Latinx to the Front: Nuestro Ruido (‘Our Noise’) Is Worldwide.” The festival is part of Lincoln Center’s Summer for the City series, and the day’s admission is free.Ruidosa’s lineup is filled with genre-stretching musicians: electronic experimenters, pop adepts and songwriters bringing new thoughts to traditional forms.In a video interview, Valenzuela said she wanted to present “artists that have sounds and careers that are very authentic and unique, and you see that there’s a point of view.”She added, “One of the things we say at Ruidosa all the time is that there’s not one way to be a woman. There’s no one way to be successful, or to be Latina identified.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Post Malone Went Country (Carefully, With a Beer in His Hand)

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      Post Malone emerged from a porta-potty on a recent Wednesday afternoon to meet his new Nashville public.The face-tattooed pop chameleon had been cruising slowly across downtown, hidden on the back of an 18-wheeler that carried just a couple of speakers, some beers, two to-go toilets and a pair of superstars. As usual, Post — born Austin Post and known as one or the other, or the cuter variation, Posty — had brought a friend along as a local emissary.So when the truck’s flatbed cover fell and the bathroom doors opened, revealing both him and the burly country hitmaker Luke Combs, everyone in sight — giddy children and grizzled grandfathers, wasted tourists and jaded locals — lost their minds as planned.“Posty, we love you!” fans shouted from cars and skateboards amid a sea of raised cellphones. Professional cameras rolled, too, the herds thickening down Broadway as the truck eased past Nudie’s Honky Tonk, Jason Aldean’s Kitchen and the Whiskey River Saloon.Like Nashville Pied Pipers, the once-unlikely duo were using the stunt to film a last-minute, lightly slapstick music video for Post’s new single featuring Combs, “Guy for That.”Post Malone theorized that the pace and over-digitalization of modern life made people crave “simpler lifestyles” and “more guitar.” “I think they miss, you know, some authenticity,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Is Found Guilty in Killing of Rapper PnB Rock

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      Prosecutors said that the man, Freddie Lee Trone, sent his teenage son into a restaurant armed with a handgun to rob the rapper.A man was found guilty on Wednesday in connection with the fatal shooting of the rapper PnB Rock at a Los Angeles restaurant in 2022 in a brazen attack that shocked his fans and the music industry.A Los Angeles County jury found the man, Freddie Lee Trone, 42, guilty of one count of felony murder, two counts of robbery and one count of conspiracy to commit robbery, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said in a news release on Wednesday.The prosecution said that Mr. Trone sent his son, who was 17 at the time, into the restaurant armed with a handgun to rob the rapper and his girlfriend, who were dining there. He then shot and killed PnB Rock, prosecutors said.PnB Rock, whose legal name was Rakim Allen, was part of a wave of rappers whose popularity and unique sound was partly built on their ability to effortlessly switch between singing and rapping. He gained fame in 2015 with his song “Fleek.” Then came “Selfish,” which peaked at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.Deannea Allen, the mother of PnB Rock, said in an interview on Wednesday evening that she was “elated” when the verdict was read.“I just said, ‘Hallelujah, thank God,’” said Ms. Allen, who said she was shaking and so elated that she wanted to scream. “Justice has been served.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift Fans Crave a Presidential Endorsement

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      Taylor Swift’s coveted support went to President Biden in 2020. A shadowy figure in an Instagram photo led some fans to make the leap that she will champion Kamala Harris.Are they just seeing things, or does that silhouette of a Taylor Swift backup dancer resemble Vice President Kamala Harris?The internet army of Swift fans often treats decoding the pop star’s Easter eggs as a part-time job, so speculation spread when some suggested that a photo Ms. Swift had posted to Instagram from her Eras Tour, which has been crisscrossing Europe this summer, could be a hint at support for a certain presidential ticket.And yet, there has been no endorsement from Ms. Swift, who has increasingly thrown her outsize influence behind progressive politics. In October 2020, her pronouncement of support for Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not leave anything up for interpretation.The photo in question, which Ms. Swift included in a post about her recent concerts in Warsaw, aligns with a standard transition from the tour in which her backup dancers — wearing pantsuits not unlike the kind that Ms. Harris happens to favor — strut offstage between songs.Despite the counterarguments, some Swifties were convinced that the post was a coded message. A liberal segment of the fandom is eager for the singer to make her allegiances known, and the leap underscores Ms. Swift’s power as someone who can influence electoral politics in a single social media post. (In 2023, one Instagram post of hers led to 35,000 new voter registrations.)A representative for Ms. Swift did not immediately respond to a question about the fandom’s reaction to the singer’s post.Ms. Swift’s Democratic leanings and her supercharged cultural prominence on N.F.L. broadcasts last season have irritated supporters of the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, some of whom have pushed conspiracy theories that her presence was meant to boost President Biden’s now-scrambled re-election. Ms. Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, named Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota her running mate on Tuesday.The chatter about Ms. Swift’s recent Instagram post revived debate over the role of a pop star in politics.“If we’re going to pay that much money as consumers, you don’t need to serve up politics for that,” Harris Faulkner, the Fox News host, said on television after the speculation about the concert photo swept the internet. “When people pay to see you, just perform.”The Eras Tour has been on its major European leg this summer. On Wednesday, three concerts in Vienna were canceled after Austrian officials announced the arrests of two men whom they accused of plotting a terrorist attack, saying that one of them had focused on several stadium shows Ms. Swift had planned for this week.Ms. Swift had begun to openly flex her electoral influence toward November’s election — but not toward any specific candidate. In March, when Mr. Biden was still at the top of the ticket, Ms. Swift encouraged her millions of Instagram followers to make a plan to vote in the presidential primaries, in a nonpartisan message that urged fans to “vote the people who most represent YOU into power.” More

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      Taylor Swift’s Vienna Concerts Are Canceled After Terror Plot Arrests

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      Three shows were called off after Austrian officials arrested two men and accused them of plotting a terrorist attack, and said that one had been focused on her upcoming stadium concerts.Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has been canceled in Austria after officials announced the arrest of two men whom they accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Vienna, with one of them focusing on several stadium shows the singer had planned for this week.An Austrian concert promoter, Barracuda Music, announced the cancellation of the three shows in a post on Instagram. Nearly 200,000 people had been expected to attend the Vienna concerts, which were to start on Thursday.“We have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone’s safety,” the Instagram post said.Officials in Austria said at a news conference on Wednesday that two men had been arrested and accused of plotting a terrorist attack. One of them, a 19-year-old Austrian citizen, had recently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State online and had focused on the Eras Tour as a potential target, said Franz Ruf, an Austrian public security official.Law enforcement carried out a raid at the man’s home in Ternitz, a town south of Vienna, and found chemical substances, Mr. Ruf said, noting that officials sent a bomb squad to the home.The other man was arrested in Vienna.“Both suspects had become radicalized on the internet and had taken concrete preparatory actions for a terrorist attack,” said a news release from the Austrian interior department.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Green Day Comes Around, Celebrating Two Album Anniversaries

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      With a raised eyebrow, a wrinkled nose and lips curled into a defiant grin, Billie Joe Armstrong looked wide-eyed into the crowd at Citi Field in Queens on Monday night and mouthed the words “I love you.” Tré Cool sat, blue-haired and snarling, at the drum kit. Mike Dirnt planted his feet firmly in a wide stance, with his bass at his knees.Green Day, the long-running California punk band, opened the full United States leg of its Saviors Tour in New York this week, with a bill featuring contemporaries (Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid) and young upstarts (the Linda Lindas). The tour, supporting the group’s latest album, coincides with the 30th anniversary of its breakout 1994 LP “Dookie” and the 20th anniversary of its acclaimed 2004 release “American Idiot.”Both albums were played in their entirety before a cross-generational crowd that became a pulsing sea of black, red and neon pink. Despite the smothering humidity, there was gelled hair as far as the eye could see. Studded belts sat atop black skinny jeans and red ties adorned black button-down shirts.Green Day’s bassist Mike Dirnt, left, and drummer Tré Cool backstage.Billie Joe Armstrong preparing for the show.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