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      Is Drake Tired of Drake?

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      Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy” just had this year’s biggest debut week, a testament to his immense staying power more than a decade into his career. But this album also reflects a slowdown in the Drake Industrial Complex: He’s pulled back on sonic innovation, and his story tropes are becoming familiar.Is the age of Drake nearing its conclusion? He has been the most influential pop star — in any genre — of the past decade, but his ideas have been widely disseminated and copied.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Drake’s habits and tics, his relationship to social media, and the long arc of the era he shaped — and whether it will ever truly come to an end.Guests:Charles Holmes, a writer and podcaster at The RingerJeff Ihaza, a senior editor at Rolling Stone More

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      Miss the Old Kanye? Try the New Kanye.

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      Kanye West’s 10th album, “Donda,” just had the biggest opening week of the year (though that mark is about to be eclipsed by Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy”). The success of “Donda” on the Billboard chart and on streaming services wasn’t guaranteed, given how West has receded from the center of hip-hop in recent years. But with an album rollout that grew increasingly rococo over several weeks, he displayed his true gift for garnering attention.Which, as it happens, isn’t much different from his old methods. Each new microgeneration is shocked anew by West’s antics, but since the beginning of his career, he has been dreaming big, speaking loudly, courting controversy and channeling all of that into music.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how West has remained steadfast in his roller-coaster approach to celebrity, and how perhaps the primary difference between West’s agitations 15 years ago and today is the financial power he is able to wield in the service of his goals.Guests:Datwon Thomas, the editor in chief of VibeJustin Charity, a staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the “Sound Only” podcast More

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      Lorde Steals Her Sunshine Back

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      Lorde’s new album “Solar Power” marks a pivot for the New Zealand singer-songwriter, away from the insular and intimate relationship tension captured on her last album, “Melodrama” from 2017, into a brighter palette and songs about embracing wellness and posi vibes.This is something that can happen when you grow up in public — a rejection of the fixed gaze that stardom imposes on you. For Lorde, it’s meant a long retreat from the spotlight, and an insistence on making music that hews to no fixed idea about what a “Lorde sound” should be.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about this sunny phase of Lorde’s career, the ways pop stardom can dull a creative person’s edges and what it means to choose to move away from the expectations of superstardom.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      How Kanye West Is Using Fashion in the 'Donda' Era

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      Kanye West may or may not be imminently releasing “Donda,” his 10th solo album, but over the course of the past few weeks, this era in his career has already established its own signature aesthetic: all black, military, asceticism on an epic scale.It’s a now familiar part of West’s album rollout strategy: clothes to match, or make, the mood. Given that nowadays he spends as much time focused on his fashion enterprises as his music (likely more), it’s unsurprising that shifts in those two creative areas move in parallel.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about West’s use of fashion as a signifier for musical evolution, the ways he has been alternately embraced and rejected by the fashion industry, and how musicians like Frank Ocean and Tyler, the Creator are walking in the path he carved.Guests:Rachel Tashjian, fashion critic at GQSteff Yotka, senior fashion news editor at Vogue More

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      The Lox, Triumphant at Verzuz

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      In early August, Verzuz — the pandemic-era staple that began on Instagram Live and within a year morphed into a multi-platform content powerhouse with artists “battling” hit for hit — held its first live, ticketed, in-person event. The night featured two of New York’s most historically vital hip-hop crews, the Lox and Dipset, facing off at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden.From a distance, it seemed like a light mismatch — Dipset, Cam’ron and his extended crew, are flashy and theatrical, and the Lox are workmanlike and relentless. But the battle took place in a boxing ring, and that set the tone: The Lox emerged triumphant.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about New York rap in the 1990s and early 2000s, the long-forgotten tension of pop crossover, and a night that brought the spirit of battle back to Verzuz, which had begun to turn into a lovefest.Guests:Jayson Rodriguez, a longtime hip-hop journalist and writer of the Backseat Freestyle newsletterJayson Buford, who writes about music for Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and others More

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      Billie Eilish’s New Pop Perspective

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      When Billie Eilish swept the biggest Grammy categories in early 2020, she was a phenomenon, yet somehow not quite a pop star. Her music tended toward the gloomy and insular, and her ravenous fan base was built online among young people, not on the radio.One pandemic later, and Eilish’s world — and worldview — has grown. Her new No. 1 album, “Happier Than Ever,” addresses her fame, and its wages, head on, with her most emotionally specific lyrics. It is an album made by someone freshly cast out of the womb.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Eilish’s musical and personal evolutions, how she has navigated growing up in public and the harsh sensation of the internet beginning to turn on one of its own.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterLindsay Zoladz, who writes about music for The New York Times and others More

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      Lil Nas X in the Pop Stratosphere

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      “Old Town Road,” remember? Were we ever so young?In just the handful of years since, Lil Nas X has become a bona fide pop star, even if his music is sometimes a step behind his persona.His recent single, “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. But he made as much noise by releasing the song in several different versions (à la “Old Town Road”) to squeeze maximum value from it, and by making easy sport of swatting down internet combatants dissatisfied with how he expresses himself, his sexuality and his art.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Lil Nas X’s unconventional path to pop success, his unconventional methods of maintaining it and his possible futures beyond it.Guest:Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times magazine staff writer and Metro reporter More

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      When Pop Music Trolls Grow Up

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      Over the past month, the Top 5 of the Billboard 200 featured debuts by Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat, two artists who, early in their careers, sometimes functioned as trolls. They are children of the internet with a taste for friction — Tyler as the leader of the raucous, parent-unsettling Odd Future crew, and Doja as an absurdist with a reckless streak.Now they’re at the center of pop, and their new albums represent different ways of maturing in the spotlight. Doja is a musical centrist, but imbues her songs with sexual friskiness and light camp. Tyler, eager to show off his gift for straight-ahead hip-hop (a world he’s still somewhat excluded from), has moved on from trolling outsiders to trolling insiders.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how these two musicians have navigated paths from the margins to the center, and about whether, in order to be an effective 2020s pop star, you need to have a little bit of troll in you after all.Guest:Justin Charity, staff writer at The Ringer and co-host of the “Sound Only” podcast More