Drake (Rapper)

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      On 'Certified Lover Boy,' Drake Seeks an Enemy Besides Himself

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      His new album “Certified Lover Boy” is full of familiar anxieties and sounds, and barbed words for Kanye West, a mentor turned nemesis.At this point in Drake’s career, there are songs about the throne, and songs about the bed. Each milieu comes with a price. The first is about hard power: Remaining at the top means outmaneuvering enemies, building up an invulnerable enterprise. The other, in Drake’s hands at least, is about soft power — most often, the path to conquest is through humility, and sometimes awe. Rarely do the two modes meet.Which is what makes the concluding verse of “Race My Mind,” from Drake’s new album “Certified Lover Boy,” such a jolt. In the first half of the song, he’s singing, but his affection is starting to curdle; it’s a serenade to a woman who’s listening to other things. Midway through, the song shifts away from sweet plea to indignation, and Drake turns to rapping.He sounds frustrated, dismissive, a little anxious: “Don’t you dare hit me back with no ‘k, sure’/Soon as I tell you that you the one I would wait for/You too saucy, too flossy, you moved in and moved off me.” The woman he’s craving is spending time with lesser competitors, and it’s scrambling Drake’s two vectors of control: “Know who you be around, I know that they teaming up/Telling you you better off leaving me in the dust.”It’s a fevered rush of affront, and by far the most alert Drake sounds on “Certified Lover Boy,” his sixth studio album, and first in three years. Historically, his approaches have been hard to argue with — he has fundamentally rewritten the template for pop music over the last decade. But on “Certified Lover Boy” they have been polished smooth, become maybe a little shopworn. This album is better in the dark. Better in the car. It demonstrates how sonically rigorous even the most casual, tossed-off Drake songs are. But its storytelling doesn’t always hold up to strict scrutiny.This is particularly true in the songs about women: the silly “Girls Want Girls” with Lil Baby, “Get Along Better” with Ty Dolla Sign, the lightly grim “___ Fans.” Rather, what really gets Drake steaming on this album are naysayers and adversaries, especially evident in the 11th-hour rhymes about Kanye West, with whom Drake has been lately — and historically, and forevermore — locked in a tangle. (More on these Oedipal shenanigans later.) “Certified Lover Boy” will make its debut at No. 1 next week with the biggest opening-week numbers for any album this year, replacing West’s “Donda,” which just did the same.Throughout his career, Drake’s nimbleness has made him one of pop’s most consistently inventive stars, willing to absorb and reinterpret any number of regional and global styles. There are sonic bright spots when he nods to Houston (the OG Ron C intro on “TSU” and the sample of Bun B’s “Get Throwed” on “N 2 Deep”) and Memphis (the sampled Project Pat verse on “Knife Talk,” its elastically chewy flow pattern ably mimicked by 21 Savage), both long-running fonts of inspiration. And sometimes Drake calls back to older versions of himself — the piano motifs at the beginning and end of “The Remorse,” the album closer, directly nod to “Marvin’s Room,” the ne plus ultra of Drake’s magnetic toxicity.But “Certified Lover Boy” is his least musically imaginative album, the one where he pushes himself the least in terms of method and pattern. Apart from the lite Afrobeats number “Fountains,” with the feathery Nigerian singer Tems, most songs here hew to the familiar narcotic synths and claustrophobic samples that underlie much of his music. This album might mark something like the beginning of the end of the Drake era, except that the Drake era is simply all of pop music now, and his innovations have become the work of, well, everyone else.Drake is aware of this, of course — no one both performs, and watches himself perform, with the same intensity. Some of this album’s sharpest lines are about how Drake, the entity, functions out in the rest of the world. “Under a picture lives some of the greatest quotes from me,” he raps on “Champagne Poetry,” about your Instagram captions. “I apologize for my absence, I know I left you without a name to drop/I don’t know how I expected you to get your clout up and get your money up,” he taunts on “Papi’s Home.”But also Drake is the primary engineer — his image is not happenstance. Which is why the video for “Way 2 Sexy” (which samples Right Said Fred) is designed for memes, though it feels halfhearted. And his deep-sigh line about being a lesbian on “Girls Want Girls” is aimed not at the progressives who have lambasted it, but those in search of a cheap wink.The way Drake steadily manicures his public image couldn’t stand in more stark contrast to how West manages his, and that’s the primary reason the current tension between them feels so asymmetric. West’s lashings — including leaking Drake’s alleged home address — have been primal, broadsides against an impertinent child. But Drake is a father, too, and there’s been something chillier and more strategic about how he’s handled the recent back and forth. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on “7am on Bridle Path,” a lightly deflated but acutely barbed accounting of learning to fall out of love with your mentor.The day after “Certified Lover Boy” was released, Drake leaked “Life of the Party,” an unheard song by West that included some ranting lines aimed at Drake. But the song, which features a majestic verse from the rarely heard Andre 3000, was something approaching spectacular, and also profoundly emotional — in trying to paint his nemesis as hubristic, Drake instead painted him as vulnerable, the good kind.The truth is that this isn’t really a battle, at least not one fellow artists feel compelled to take sides in — several appear on both “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.” And that’s not the only thing these two albums have in common: they’re summary statements of a once forward-thinking but now widely accepted worldview, not wild reinventions. Perhaps bored with battling themselves, the two superstars have turned to battling each other. But that won’t heal what’s within.Drake“Certified Lover Boy”(Republic) More

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      Drake et Kanye West, géants du rap plus rivaux que jamais

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      Leurs nouveaux albums ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ et ‘‘Donda’’, blockbusters potentiels qui viennent de sortir à cinq jours d’intervalle, relancent la vive rivalité entre les deux géants du rap.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Depuis plus de dix ans, Drake et Kanye West se livrent un duel à fleurets non mouchetés au sommet du hip-hop — collaborateurs occasionnels, rivaux amicaux puis concurrents acharnés, quand ce n’est pas les trois à la fois.Pourtant, rarement les destins musicaux de ces deux stars générationnelles n’ont été si étroitement liés que cette semaine. À cinq jours seulement d’intervalle, leurs nouveaux albums très attendus et longtemps repoussés viennent de sortir. Avec toutefois des stratégies de lancement très différentes.‘‘Certified Lover Boy”, sixième album studio de Drake, est paru vendredi peu avant une heure du matin après presque un an de teasing, de singles promotionnels et de faux départs. Le disque — dont la sortie prévue en janvier avait été évoquée indirectement dès 2019 — compte 21 titres et une batterie d’invités prestigieux tels Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Future, Young Thug, Rick Ross et Lil Wayne.Le dixième album de Kanye West, ‘‘Donda’’, est sorti 5 jours plus tôt, avec davantage de couacs, ce qui a pour le moins bénéficié à sa médiatisation. Initialement annoncé pour juillet 2020 — puis le 23 juillet, puis le 6 août de cette année -– l’album de 27 titres a été précédé de trois concerts hors-normes tenus dans des stades où West a présenté un travail en cours ; construit une réplique de sa maison d’enfance ; monté un simulacre de cérémonie de mariage avec son ex-épouse Kim Kardashian West ; invité des musiciens controversés comme DaBaby et Marilyn Manson; et refusé de prononcer le moindre mot.‘‘Donda’’ figure sa propre palette de featurings prestigieux, dont The Weeknd, Lil Baby, Pop Smoke et Roddy Ricch. Certains d’entre eux, comme Scott, Jay-Z et Young Thug, apparaissent d’ailleurs sur les deux albums. (Il y a peu de femmes parmi les invités de l’un ou de l’autre.) Leurs listes de titres pleines à craquer — une stratégie devenue courante dans l’industrie musicale pour maximiser les écoutes en streaming — pourraient être des armes clés dans la course aux meilleures ventes que vont se livrer ‘‘Donda’’ et ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’.Si Kanye West fait des thèmes culturellement sensibles une part importante de sa stratégie marketing, Drake se distingue plutôt par son recours à un sample de R. Kelly dans le morceau “TSU”. “Half on a Baby”, un titre de Kelly de 1998, s’ouvre — dans sa version intégrale, pas celle plus accessible destinée aux radios — sur un prologue au synthétiseur aux sonorités symphoniques. Drake le reprend dans “TSU”, également en guise d’ouverture.Mais Kelly fait face depuis longtemps à des accusations d’abus sexuels, et est actuellement jugé devant le tribunal fédéral de Brooklyn pour racket et violation de la loi Mann interdisant le transport d’une personne au-delà des frontières d’un État à des fins de prostitution. Sur les réseaux sociaux, nombre de voix se sont élevées pour désapprouver sa participation au projet. (John Lennon et Paul McCartney sont également crédités pour ‘‘Michelle’’ des Beatles, repris dans la chanson qui ouvre l’album, ‘‘Champagne Poetry’’.)Kanye West, qui a pris l’habitude de se couvrir le visage en public, a choisi le noir pour la pochette de son album ‘‘Donda’’. Drake, en revanche, a opté pour plus tape-à-l’oeil. ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ arbore la reproduction d’un tableau prêt à être décliné en mème, signé de l’artiste britannique Damien Hirst, constitué d’émojis de 12 femmes enceintes de différentes couleurs de peau.Mais si Kanye West a dégainé le premier, ‘‘Donda’’, du nom de la mère décédée du rappeur, n’était pas encore finalisé le matin même de sa sortie, des versions supplémentaires de plusieurs titres étant rajoutées à la liste des morceaux. Sur Instagram, West a accusé sa maison de disques d’avoir ‘‘sorti mon album sans mon approbation’’ et d’avoir initialement bloqué un morceau auquel participaient Marilyn Manson et DaBaby. (‘‘Jail Pt. 2’’ figure les deux artistes et est désormais inclus dans l’album. Def Jam, son label, n’a pas souhaité commenter.) D’autres collaborateurs pressentis pour l’album, dont Chris Brown et Soulja Boy, ont exprimé leur mécontentement devant le résultat final.En dépit de problèmes de planning, de critiques mitigées et de sa sortie inhabituelle un weekend — qui l’a privé de deux jours de ventes et d’écoutes en streaming par rapport à une sortie traditionnelle le vendredi — ‘‘Donda’’ est sur le point de prendre la tête du classement Billboard, avec une des semaines de lancement les plus rentables de l’année. Selon Def Jam, ‘‘Donda’’ a bénéficié de 180 millions écoutes sur les plateformes de streaming au cours des seules premières 24 heures.La pochette de “Certified Lover Boy”, le dernier album de Drake.Au vu de la domination de Drake sur ces plateformes — il a été le premier artiste à atteindre 50 milliards d’écoutes sur Spotify, d’après au moins un décompte — ‘‘Certified Lover Boy’’ est pratiquement assuré de devenir l’une des plus grosses sorties de l’année. Et si les ventes en première semaine de Drake ne seront connues que le 13 septembre — écartant l’éventualité d’un replay du face-à-face de 2007 entre West et 50 Cent — leurs fans sont impatients de comparer les deux nouvelles œuvres, tant du point de vue artistique que commercial, faisant écho à la longue rivalité que les deux rappeurs viennent de raviver. (Leurs maisons de disques respectives partagent une même société mère, Universal Music.)Drake a paru ironiser sur l’âge de West dans un titre de Trippie Redd où il avait un featuring le mois dernier — Drake a 34 ans, West dix de plus. Kanye West a répliqué en mettant en ligne un échange de SMS dans lequel il écrit : ‘‘Tu ne t’en remettras jamais. Je te le promets’’, accompagné d’une photo de Joaquin Phoenix en Joker. (West a également posté une capture d’écran de ce qui semble être l’adresse de Drake à Toronto, avant de la retirer. Drake a riposté, semble-t-il, avec plusieurs photos de lui en train de rire.)Vendredi, les auditeurs ont rapidement remarqué ce qui semble être un message de Drake à Kanye West. ‘‘Donne cette adresse à ton chauffeur, fais-en ta destination/Au lieu d’un simple post désespéré’’, rappe-t-il sur le morceau ‘‘7am on Bridle Path’’.Les défis lancés par titres et réseaux sociaux interposés relancent un long cycle de provocations mesquines directes et indirectes: leur relation s’est envenimée de manière semble-t-il irrémédiable suite à une querelle musicale entre Drake et Pusha-T, un protégé de Kanye West, en 2018.Depuis lors, les deux artistes ont pris des chemins séparés, même si les chamailleries continuent parfois en ligne ou par albums interposés. Kanye West a soutenu l’ancien président Donald J. Trump, s’est lancé dans une course malheureuse à l’élection présidentielle et s’est tourné vers le gospel avec ‘‘Jesus Is King”, un album sur le thème chrétien sorti en octobre 2019. Il s’est engagé à ne plus jurer dans ses titres — promesse tenue sur ‘‘Donda’’, y compris pour ses invités.Drake, quant à lui, a sorti des titres à flux régulier, même si ses apparitions se font plus rares. Au printemps 2020, après le single ‘‘Toosie Slide’’, qui a atteint la deuxième place du Billboard Hot 100, le rappeur a publié une mixtape imprévue, ‘‘Dark Lane Demo Tapes’’, compilation de titres qui avaient fuité en ligne. Il a promis de sortir un album studio cet été-là , et un premier single, ‘‘Laugh Now Cry Later’’, s’est classé numéro 2 en août. L’album n’est pas arrivé, mais un maxi de trois titres intitulé ‘‘Scary Hours 2’’, est sorti en mars, dont un des singles se classe numéro 1 (‘‘What’s Next’’).Après des mois d’allusions énigmatiques quant au statut de l’album, alors que l’été touchait à sa fin et que les deux mastodontes du rap refaisaient surface, une confrontation avec Kanye West paraissait devenir inévitable. Alors que Kany West était en tournée avec ‘‘Donda’’, toujours en cours de réalisation, Drake, lors de l’émission ‘‘SportsCenter’’ sur la chaîne ESPN, a sorti un clip bricolé et non conventionnel dans lequel il semblait annoncer une date de sortie le 3 septembre.Et sur un titre de Trippie Redd intitulé ‘‘Betrayal’’, le rappeur clamait que le tapage autour du ‘‘Donda’’ de Kanye West n’affecterait pas la date de sortie définitive de son propre album. Cette fois-ci, rappait Drake: ‘‘C’est gravé dans le marbre’’. More

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      Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' Arrives, as Chart Battle With Kanye West Continues

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      The rappers’ anticipated albums, “Certified Lover Boy” and “Donda” — both potential streaming blockbusters — arrived within five days of each other, with very different rollouts.For more than a decade, Drake and Kanye West have been locked in a dialogue at the top of the hip-hop heap — occasional collaborators turned friendly competitors turned bitter rivals, and sometimes all three at once.Yet rarely have the two generation-defining stars so closely intertwined their musical fates as this week, when they released highly anticipated, long-delayed albums within five days of each other, with very different rollout strategies.“Certified Lover Boy,” Drake’s sixth studio album, came out just before 1 a.m. Eastern time on Friday, the culmination of nearly a year of teases, promotional singles and false starts. The album — which had been scheduled for release in January but was mentioned obliquely as early as 2019 — features 21 tracks and a huge complement of guest stars, including Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Lil Baby, Future, Young Thug, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne.West’s 10th album, “Donda,” arrived on Sunday with considerably more friction, which may have only fed its hype. Originally slated for July 2020 — and then July 23 of this year, then Aug. 6 — the 27-track LP came in the wake of three stadium-size listening events, during which West played the work-in-progress; built a replica of his childhood home; staged a mock wedding ceremony with his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian West; welcomed polarizing guests like DaBaby and Marilyn Manson; and declined to speak a word.“Donda” has its own deep bench of superstar guests, including the Weeknd, Lil Baby, Pop Smoke and Roddy Ricch. A handful, like Scott, Jay-Z and Young Thug, appear on both LPs. (Few women appear on either release.) Their stuffed track lists have become a standard industry strategy to maximize streams, and may be a key weapon in the chart contest between “Donda” and “Certified Lover Boy.”While pushing cultural buttons was a significant part of West’s release strategy, Drake invited some scrutiny too, by sampling R. Kelly in his new track “TSU.” Kelly’s “Half on a Baby” (1998) — in its full version, not the more easily accessible radio edit — has a symphonic-sounding synthesizer preamble. Drake used that for “TSU,” also for an introductory segment.Kelly, who has long faced accusations of sexual abuse, is currently on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution, and many people on social media took offense. (John Lennon and Paul McCartney also have a credit, for the Beatles’ “Michelle,” which is used in the album’s opening track, “Champagne Poetry.”)West, who has taken to covering his face in public, opted for a plain black cover for “Donda,” while Drake went splashier. “Certified Lover Boy” uses readily meme-able album art from the British contemporary artist Damien Hirst that depicts emojis of 12 pregnant women of various skin tones.But even as West struck first, “Donda,” named for the rapper’s late mother, was still being updated the morning of its release, with additional versions of multiple songs added to the track list. West claimed on Instagram that his record company had “put my album out without my approval” and that it had initially blocked a track featuring Manson and DaBaby. (“Jail Pt. 2,” with appearances by both, is now included on the album. Def Jam, his label, declined to comment.) Additional collaborators slated to be on the album, including Chris Brown and Soulja Boy, expressed their own discontent with the finished product.Yet even amid the scheduling bumps, mixed reviews and nontraditional weekend release — which left West two fewer days of sales and streams than a standard Friday drop — “Donda” is on pace to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart with one of the biggest opening weeks of the year. According to Def Jam, “Donda” had 180 million streams in its first 24 hours.The cover of Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy.”Based on Drake’s streaming dominance — he was the first artist to hit 50 billion streams on Spotify, by at least one count — “Certified Lover Boy” is all but certain to reign as one of the year’s biggest releases. And although Drake’s first-week sales will not be finalized until Sept. 13, precluding a direct repeat of the West vs. 50 Cent chart face-off of 2007, fans have been eager to compare the two new works, commercially and artistically, in line with the pair’s latest stoking of their own long-simmering rivalry. (The rappers’ record labels share a parent company in Universal Music Group.)After Drake appeared to poke fun at West’s age on a guest verse for a Trippie Redd track last month — Drake is 34 and West a decade older — West posted a text exchange online in which he wrote, “You will never recover. I promise you,” and included an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. (West also uploaded a screenshot of what appeared to be Drake’s Toronto address before deleting it. Drake seemed to respond with multiple photos of himself laughing.)Listeners on Friday were quick to notice Drake’s apparent ripostes to West. “Give that address to your driver, make it your destination/’Stead of just a post out of desperation,” he raps on the track “7am on Bridle Path.”The digs, in song and on social media, continued a pattern of petty slights, direct and indirect, between the two that dates back years, with the relationship having seemingly curdled irrevocably around Drake’s musical beef with Pusha-T, a West affiliate, in 2018.In the years since, the artists’ paths diverged, even as they occasionally butted heads online and on record. West embraced former President Donald J. Trump, embarked on an ill-fated run for president and turned toward gospel, releasing a Christian-themed album, “Jesus Is King,” in October 2019. He vowed to stop cursing in his music, a promise he upheld on “Donda,” even censoring his guests.Drake, meanwhile, released a steady stream of music even as he made himself more scarce. In the spring of 2020, the rapper followed the single “Toosie Slide,” which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, with a surprise mixtape, “Dark Lane Demo Tapes,” featuring songs that had leaked online. He promised a studio album that summer, and the would-be lead single, “Laugh Now Cry Later,” hit No. 2 in August. But the album never came; another holdover, the three-song EP “Scary Hours 2,” followed in March and resulted in another No. 1 single (“What’s Next”).After months of only cryptic updates on the album’s status, a collision course with West began to seem inevitable as the summer wound down and the two A-list rappers resurfaced. As West toured a still-in-progress “Donda,” Drake appeared to stake a claim to a Sept. 3 release date late last month with a lo-fi, guerrilla-looking ad that cut in during an ESPN “SportsCenter” broadcast.And on a Trippie Redd track titled “Betrayal,” the rapper indicated that the hubbub surrounding West’s “Donda” would not affect his final release date. This time, Drake rapped, “it’s set in stone.” More

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      Taylor Swift Rejoins Her ‘Folklore’ Crew, and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Brent Faiyaz featuring Drake, J. Balvin and Skrillex, Chicano Batman and others.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.Big Red Machine featuring Taylor Swift, ‘Renegade’Big Red Machine is the project of Aaron Dessner — the guitarist in the National who was a producer on Taylor Swift’s “Folklore,” “Evermore” and her remake of “Fearless” — and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), who wrote and sang “Exile,” a high-angst duet with Swift on “Folklore.” Swift sings two songs on the Big Red Machine album due Aug. 27, and regardless of the billing, she dominates “Renegade” with her melodic sense and personality: terse, symmetrical phrases carrying a coolheaded assessment of a failing partner, as she fends off attempts to “let all your damage damage me/and carry your baggage up my street.” The Big Red Machine aspect is in the production details — multilayered drones, tendrils of electric and acoustic guitar, Vernon’s distant backing vocals — but “Renegade” would fit easily on a Swift album. JON PARELESBrent Faiyaz featuring Drake, ‘Wasting Time’The way Brent Faiyaz approaches his verses over the lush, vintage-minded Neptunes production of “Wasting Time” is airy and a little fleeting, as if he’s so absorbed in his pitch to a potential lover that he can’t quite bring himself to stick close to the beat. “If you got time to waste, waste it with me,” Faiyaz pleads, almost pulling back from the request, casting his line while averting his heart. But there’s surety in the layered chorus — a Neptunes standard — and the thumping bass line, and then in the guest verse from Drake, which strikes a sour note about what it means to give of yourself and get crickets back: “Fluent in passive aggression, that’s why you actin’ dismissive/Hearing me out for once would require you actually listen.” JON CARAMANICAJ. Balvin and Skrillex, ‘In da Getto’Credit where credit is due: The lion’s share of the block-party spirit in this song, which is perfectly designed to be blasted all summer, comes from the beat, organ hook and female vocals that the producers Skrillex and Tainy got by sampling “In De Ghetto” by David Morales and the Bad Yard Club featuring Crystal Waters and Delta, from 1994. They built on their acknowledged source, grabbing and crisping up the best moments and tossing in some sirens, while Balvin’s gruff rapping stokes the festivities. But the foundation was already there. PARELESDe Schuurman, ‘Nu Ga Je Dansen’In the late ’80s, DJ Moortje, a selector from the Dutch Antillean island of Curaçao, mistakenly played a dancehall track at the wrong speed during his set at a club in The Hague. The result was a breakneck, squeaky-voiced sound called “bubbling,” a style that would veer into a thousand new directions over the next couple of decades. A new release from the Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes is a reminder of the movement’s innovation. “Bubbling Inside” compiles previously unreleased tracks from De Schuurman, a staple of the scene a decade ago. Its standout, “Nu Ga Je Dansen” (“Now You’re Gonna Dance”), is a two-and-a-half minute club rampage. The first 30 seconds recall a late ’90s rave — all sirens and unhinged ferocity. But before long, a flood of kick drums arrives, beckoning everyone to the dance floor. ISABELIA HERRERAChicano Batman, ‘Dark Star’The musical DNA of Chicano Batman is rich with references to bygone eras: the trippy deliria of psych soul, the political ambitions of Brazilian tropicália and the concept-driven idiosyncrasies of prog-rock, among others. But the Los Angeles band has never been interested in mere nostalgia, as it reminds us on “Dark Star.” The song is arranged like a puzzle: a jagged, layered bass line (à la Madlib) clashes with serrated guitar lines, while laid-back vocals glide over the production. In the chorus, the lead singer Bardo Martinez’s voice blooms into what feels like sunny psychedelia. But blink for a second and you’ll miss the ominous undercurrent of the track: The “Dark Star” at hand is not a celestial being, but America — a somber place contending with the legacies of racial violence that still drive its everyday reality. HERRERATi Gonzi, ‘Kudzana Dzana’Tinashe Gonzara, the 28-year-old Zimbabwean rapper and singer who performs as Ti Gonzi, has been recording prolifically since 2009 and winning music awards in Zimbabwe. He has already put out an album this year, “Sendiri Two.” But his newer singles have concentrated on melody as much rapping. “Kudzana Dzana” (“Hundreds and Hundreds”) stacks up vocal harmonies over a teasing, flexible three-against-two groove of percussion and guitar picking that hints at Shona mbira (thumb-piano) traditions but also lets an electric guitar wail. “Life is a journey,” announces one of the few lyrics in English. PARELESTarrus Riley, ‘Heartbreak Anniversary’Giveon’s “Heartbreak Anniversary” is almost incomparably inconsolable. That it’s become the soundtrack for a TikTok dance trend borders on the lunatic. But perhaps that unlikely juxtaposition set the table for this cover, by the reggae star Tarrus Riley, which neatly leavens its angst. Over undulating, swinging production by Kareem Burrell and Dean Fraser, Riley sings not like a man mopping himself up off the floor, but rather one smoothly sauntering to safety. CARAMANICASarah Proctor, ‘Worse’“I know that it hurts/I know I’m going to make it a little bit worse,” Sarah Proctor tells the lover she betrayed. Piano chords toll and vocal harmonies swirl around her, making her sound reverent and contrite — except that she’s not apologizing. She’s breaking up. PARELESSquirrel Flower, ‘Iowa 146’Ella Williams, the songwriter behind the indie-rock of Squirrel Flower, doesn’t shy away from whisper-to-shout full-band crescendos on her band’s new album, “Planet (i).” But “Iowa 146” sticks with the whisper, accompanied by folky picking and all sorts of sustained near-phantom sounds, as she sings about the romance of sharing a guitar. PARELES More

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      Nicki Minaj Reunites With Lil Wayne and Drake, and 13 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Olivia Rodrigo, Tony Allen, L’Rain and others.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.Nicki Minaj with Drake and Lil Wayne, ‘Seeing Green’In honor of Nicki Minaj’s still-incendiary 2009 debut mixtape “Beam Me Up Scotty” finally arriving on streaming services, she’s organized a little YMCMB family reunion. “Seeing Green” is more of a status update than a club banger à la the trio’s classic “Truffle Butter,” but everyone is still in fine form. Wayne, as usual, plays the gonzo court jester, and he seizes the opportunity to unload all of those pandemic-related rhymes he’s been holding onto for the last year (“I put you six feet deep, I’m being socially distant”). Nicki locks back into her standard eviscerate-the-haters flow, and Drake continues to rap with a precision and bite that suggests, as did the recent “Scary Hours 2,” that whenever his promised “Certified Lover Boy” arrives, it might actually be worth the wait. “I played 48 minutes on a torn meniscus,” he boasts, “who’s subbing?” (But maybe see a doctor about that, Drake — it’s serious!) LINDSAY ZOLADZOlivia Rodrigo, ‘Good 4 U’The third single from Olivia Rodrigo’s forthcoming debut album, “Sour,” tells a story that will be familiar to anyone who’s heard her first single, “Driver’s License”: A former flame moves on too quickly after a breakup, leaving Rodrigo alone with all her feelings. But this time the 18-year-old Disney actress refracts it through a different lens and a whole new sonic palette. Though it starts off quiet, by the chorus “Good 4 U” explodes into a kind of “You Oughta Know” for the TikTok era, all righteous anger and pop-punky, primal-scream rage: “Good for you, you’re doing great out there without me — like a damn sociopath!” ZOLADZTorres, ‘Don’t Go Puttin Wishes in My Head’The new song from Mackenzie Scott — who makes brooding, searching indie-rock under the name Torres — might be the most accessible thing she’s ever released. And she knows it: She’s wryly described “Don’t Go Putting Wishes in My Head,” the first single from her forthcoming album “Thirstier,” as “my relentless arena country star moment.” More than anything, though, with its buzzing synths and soaring chorus, “Wishes” recalls the Killers at their most fist-clenchingly anthemic. “Just when I thought that it was over, it was only just beginning,” Scott sings, her voice trembling with intensity. She seems to understand that accepting joy can sometimes be an even more vulnerable act than confessing pain, but by the end of the song she sounds fearless, and ready to move toward the light. ZOLADZTony Allen, ‘Mau Mau’The drummer Tony Allen supplied the rhythmic foundation for Fela Kuti’s Nigerian Afrobeat in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing on West African traditions, jazz and funk, he built an architecture of unpredictable offbeats, unhurried but kinetic. Before his death in 2020, he had started a hip-hop project, creating beats and synthesizer bass lines and lining up vocalists. Allen’s new album, “There Is No End,” was completed posthumously by the producers Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle. “Mau Mau” features Nah Eeto, a rapper from Kenya, with multitracked vocals that calmly bounce around the syllables of her lyrics — some in English, some not — to highlight all the ways Allen could dodge the downbeat while constantly flicking the music onward. JON PARELESMaría Grand, ‘Now, Take, Your, Day’The rising tenor saxophonist María Grand wrote the tunes that appear on “Reciprocity,” her new LP, in the middle of a pregnancy, while reading spiritual texts and paying close attention to the bond she was building with her not-yet-born child. (The album’s liner notes include her written reflections on becoming a mother, and how this found its way into the music.) The album, featuring Kanoa Mendenhall on bass and Savannah Harris on drums, is also a testament to the constant regeneration that becomes possible within a close musical partnership; on track after track, Grand dances nimbly over Harris’s subtly shifting patterns, and Mendenhall stubbornly insists on never repeating herself. “Now, Take, Your, Day” begins with all three members singing the song’s title in harmony, before the rhythm section lays down a loosely funky beat and Grand introduces the song’s downward-slanting melody on saxophone. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOBella Poarch, ‘Build a Bitch’Like many TikTok stars, Bella Poarch is making a move into her own music. “Build a Bitch” comes across cute and furious. Tinkly toy-piano sounds and perky la-las accompany her as she points out that women aren’t consumer products. “You don’t get to pick and choose/Different ass and bigger boobs,” she coos. “If you need perfect, I’m not built for you.” A post-“Westworld” video set in an android factory ends, inevitably, in mayhem. PARELESSleater-Kinney, ‘Worry With You’The forthcoming, self-produced Sleater-Kinney album “Path of Wellness” will be the first the Portland band releases as a duo, since its longtime power-drummer Janet Weiss departed in 2019, and her absence certainly makes the song feel a bit muted and minor. But there’s still a familiar pleasure in hearing Carrie Brownstein’s snaking guitar riffs and staccato vocals intertwine with Corin Tucker’s, as they sing of a long-term togetherness that’s provided comfort in good times and bad: “If I’m gonna mess up,” they avow, “I’m gonna mess up with you.” ZOLADZMartin Garrix featuring Bono & The Edge, ‘We Are the People’The official 2020 UEFA European Football Championship song is exactly what you’d expect from a soccer anthem by a big-room EDM D.J. collaborating with half of U2: a grand, thumping march with pinging guitars, vast synthesizer swells and determinedly inspirational lyrics. “You’ve faith and no fear for the fight,” Bono sings, “You pull hope from defeat in the night.” The song uses familiar tools for stadium-scale uplift, but they can still work. PARELESHolly Macve, ‘You Can Do Better’Regrets and reverb both loom large on Holly Macve’s second album, “Not the Girl,” a set of country-rooted ballads that place her reedy voice — determinedly sustained through countless breaks and quavers — in wide-screen, retro arrangements. “You Can Do Better” is a stately, swaying waltz, a breakup-and-makeup scenario that builds up to dramatic questions, swirling across voices and strings: “Is it so wrong to love you?/Is it so wrong to care?” PARELESL’Rain, ‘Blame Me’L’Rain — the songwriter, musician and producer Taja Cheek — opens an ever-widening, ever more disorienting sonic vortex in “Blame Me,” from her second album, “Fatigue,” due June 25. Sparse guitars pick fragments of chords that fall, then rise, as L’Rain muses cryptically on mortality and remorse. Soon, they’re enveloped by a ghostly orchestra and distant voices intoning, “Waste away now, make my way down”; as the track ends, she’s still in a lush harmonic and emotional limbo. PARELESElaine, ‘Right Now’Elaine is from South Africa, where she already has a large audience. But her sound bespeaks international R&B ambitions, with programmed trap drum sounds and an American accent. In “Right Now,” she tries to juggle a damaged relationship against a burgeoning career. “I cannot continue carrying all your insecurities/I got more priorities,” she sings, quietly but adamantly. Her alto is low, intimate and flexible; with her priorities, she’s not about to indulge a cheating ex, even if she’s tempted. PARELESAlan Jackson, ‘Where Have You Gone’“Where Have You Gone,” the title song of Alan Jackson’s new, 21-song album, starts off like a lonely lament for someone who’s left him: “It’s been way too long since you slipped away.” But it turns out he’s lamenting the way “sweet country music” used to sound: steel guitar, fiddle, “words from the heart.” It’s the style Jackson has upheld through his career, looking back to Merle Haggard and George Jones, only to see it supplanted lately by arena-country and infiltrations of hip-hop. “The airwaves are waiting,” he insists; current country radio says otherwise. PARELESSons of Kemet featuring Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid, ‘Pick Up Your Burning Cross’Over the rough rhythmic onrush of this United Kingdom-based quartet — featuring Theon Cross’s pulsing tuba, Shabaka Hutchings’s roof-raising saxophone and the interlocked drumming of Edward Wakili-Hick and Tom Skinner — a voice hovers, singing and speaking and laughing. It belongs to Angel Bat Dawid, and it’s soon joined by that of Moor Mother, another revolutionary poet and musician from this side of the Atlantic. “I don’t think you remember me/I was in last place,” Moor Mother begins, serving notice as the band presses ahead. The piece is on “Black to the Future,” Sons of Kemet’s fourth album. RUSSONELLOErika Dohi, ‘Particle Of …’Erika Dohi, a Japanese keyboardist and composer now based in New York City, is one of the musicians affiliated with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver’s label 37d03d (“people” upside-down). “Particle Of …” comes from her new album “I, Castorpollux,” and while it was composed by Andy Akiho (who also directed her music video), it fits the album’s aesthetic of Minimalistic repetitions and startling fractures. It uses percussive, single-note patterns on piano and prepared piano, played live and then computer manipulated, equally virtuosic and digitally skewed. Chords arrive at the end, like a surprise visit from 20th-century modernism. PARELES More

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      Drake Shakes Up the Singles Chart, but Morgan Wallen’s Album Holds On

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ChartsDrake Shakes Up the Singles Chart, but Morgan Wallen’s Album Holds OnThree of the rapper’s new tracks dislodged Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” on the Hot 100, while the country star notched a ninth week atop the Billboard 200.Drake’s “What’s Next,” “Wants and Needs” and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” take the top three spots on the Hot 100.Credit…Chris Delmas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 15, 2021, 3:09 p.m. ETAfter two static months, the pop charts are finally beginning to change, at least a little.Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Drivers License” has dominated the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for eight weeks, and been a phenomenon on social media, but now it has finally given way. And not just to one song, but three: Drake takes the top three spots with “What’s Next,” “Wants and Needs” and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” — the first artist in history to do so. (Perhaps not coincidentally, those songs are the first three tracks, in order, on Drake’s recently released EP, “Scary Hours 2.”) “Drivers License” falls to No. 4.The album chart, however, has not budged. “Dangerous: The Double Album,” by the country singer-songwriter Morgan Wallen, notches a ninth week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It had the equivalent of 78,000 sales in the United States, including 98 million steams and 6,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking unit.Despite a rebuke from the industry after Wallen was caught on video casually using a racial slur, “Dangerous” has had the most weeks at No. 1 for any album in five years (since “Views,” by Drake — who else?), and is one of only four country albums in the 65-year history of the chart to spent at least nine weeks at No. 1. The others? Garth Brooks’s “Ropin’ the Wind” (1991), Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Some Gave All” (1992) and Taylor Swift’s “Fearless” (2008).Also on this week’s album chart, Pop Smoke’s “Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon” is No. 2, Pooh Shiesty’s “Shiesty Season” is No. 3, the Weeknd’s year-old “After Hours” is No. 4 and Lil Durk’s “The Voice” is No. 5.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Do Drake’s Melodramas Still Matter?

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      For his final shows before the pandemic, Bill Frisell was touring U.S. jazz clubs with his new quartet, HARMONY: Frisell on electric guitar, along with the great, dramatic singer Petra Haden, Hank Roberts on cello and Luke Bergman on baritone guitar. When I saw them in Baltimore, on the first night of March 2020, they seemed to be in a set-long mind-meld. HARMONY is a quiet group, and though each musician is masterly, their goal is to honor the concept the project is named after. Nothing is high-pitched, no instrument overwhelms the others; they play to blend. Bergman and Roberts added their own background vocals at times, and Frisell glided around all their melodies with his electric guitar, sometimes doubling Haden’s vocal parts, sometimes building drama on his own. At moments — especially when they played old songs like “Red River Valley” or “Hard Times Come Again No More” — they sounded like a chamber group gathered around a prairie campfire.

      Frisell turns 70 this month, and at this point, innovation and exploration are so fundamental to his musical identity that even a small, unflashy band where everyone sings except him still beams with his sensibility. HARMONY’s self-titled debut album — released in 2019, the guitarist’s first record as a leader for Blue Note in his 40-year career — contained the same genre-indeterminate mix of music that’s typical of Frisell: jazz standards, show tunes, old folk songs and haunting, melodic originals.
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      In Baltimore, HARMONY closed with a song the group hasn’t recorded but Frisell has played often over the past few years. It’s an uncomplicated tune with a very deep history. Musicologists have traced its origin to an 18th-century hymn, and a version of it was likely sung by enslaved laborers. It was a union song too, sung by striking workers in the ’40s, around the time Pete Seeger first heard it and helped spread it to the folk-festival audiences of the ’60s. The civil rights movement, starting with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, adopted it as an unofficial anthem, making it famous enough that President Johnson quoted its title in his 1965 call for the Voting Rights Act. In all of these cases — and also in Tiananmen Square, Soweto and the many other sites of protest where it has been heard — “We Shall Overcome” has been more a statement of collective hope than a call to arms. It is a proclamation of faith.

      Frisell told me that, musically speaking, he likes the song because of how deeply he has internalized it. “Like when you’re walking and humming or whistling, almost unconscious that you’re doing it — that’s what you want,” he says. “That’s what ‘We Shall Overcome’ is. It’s in us, the melody and the words. When I play it, the song is like a jungle gym you can play around in. The song is there, and you can take off anywhere.”

      In Baltimore, Frisell and his bandmates moved through “We Shall Overcome” with joyful purpose, Frisell improvising while all three vocalists joined together. I didn’t know it then, but this would be my last ticketed concert before venues across the country went dark. The last thing I experienced in a full club was Petra Haden raising her hands high and compelling us all — Frisell now included — to sing together for our deliverance.

      Had things gone as planned, Frisell’s next move would have been to focus on a new group, this one nominally a jazz trio, with the bassist Thomas Morgan and the drummer Rudy Royston. Things, of course, did not go as planned. Frisell’s datebook was soon filled with canceled gigs. “It’s been kind of traumatic,” he told me via Zoom, though his ever-present smile never quite wavered. But the new trio’s debut album did eventually come out, in August 2020. It closes with its own version of “We Shall Overcome” — this one instrumental, pastoral in its feeling, a soul ballad at the end of a record spent rambling around the outskirts of high-​lonesome country and spacious modern jazz.

      Royston and Morgan are well established in their own careers, but they’re both younger than Frisell, and each came up in a wide-open jazz world that Frisell helped create. In the early 1980s, Frisell began incorporating digital loops and other effects into his live and recorded playing and wound up crafting an entirely new role for the electric guitar in a jazz setting: creating atmospheres full of sparkling reverb, echoing harmonics, undulating whispers that sneak in from outside the band. As he wove those patches of sound around a trio, with the drummer Paul Motian and the saxophonist Joe Lovano, he brought a new spaciousness and pensiveness to the instrument, completely resetting its dynamic range. His quietest playing was like a distant radio; his loudest was a heavy-metal scream that could sit neatly beside, for instance, the Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid on a 1985 duet album, “Smash & Scatteration.”

      Frisell’s approach to his repertoire was just as innovative. He knew his standards but gained an early reputation for openness to pop music and just about anything else — most famously on his 1992 record “Have a Little Faith,” which features everything from a small-group orchestration of an Aaron Copland ballet score to the same band’s searing instrumental version of Madonna’s “Live to Tell.” There was a similar adventurousness in his originals: Across the ’90s, he composed for violin and horns (on “Quartet”), for bluegrass musicians (on “Nashville”), for film scores and for installation soundtracks.

      This is Frisell’s great accomplishment: He makes a guitar sound so unique that it can fit with anything. This became fully clear around the turn of this century, when his records skipped from improvised bluegrass to “The Intercontinentals” — which featured a band of Greek, Malian, American and Brazilian musicians — and then through to “Unspeakable,” a sample-based record made with the producer Hal Willner, a friend since 1980. Willner also introduced Frisell to artists like Lucinda Williams, Elvis Costello and Allen Ginsberg, three of many legends who have invited Frisell into the studio to add his signature to their recordings. Every year of this century, he has appeared on or led a new record, often several records, and yet it would be impossible for even the most obsessive fan to guess what the next one might sound like.

      Frisell has largely swapped his old dynamic range for a stylistic one: He doesn’t play as loud these days, but he plays everything, and with everyone. He is on the young side of jazz-elder-statesman status, but in the past four decades, no one else has taken the collaborative, improvisational spirit of that music to so many places.

      And now, like so many of us, he’s just at home. “I shouldn’t be complaining,” he told me, from the house in Brooklyn that he shares with his wife. “I’m healthy, I have my guitar. But my whole life has been about interacting musically with somebody else.” At one point he held up a stack of notebooks and staff-paper pads: “What am I gonna do with this stuff?” he asked. “Usually I’ll write enough, and I’ll get a group together and make a record. But that’s after like a week or two of writing. Now it’s a year or more of ideas.”

      He has played a few outdoor shows in front yards with his longtime collaborators Kenny Wollesen on drums and Tony Scherr on bass. He has played similar gigs with Morgan and Royston. He has performed streamed concerts, including a recent Tyshawn Sorey show, at the Village Vanguard, with Lovano. Frisell has mourned too: Hal Willner died from Covid-19 in April, right after the two were discussing their next collaboration. And he has practiced — as if he were back in high school, he says, working through songs from his favorite records in his bedroom. Often they’re the same ones he practiced in the mid-1960s, from Thelonious Monk to “Stardust.”

      But that is the extent of recent musical connection for a guy who describes playing guitar as his preferred method of “speech” — a guy who got a guitar in 1965 and, since joining his first garage band, has rarely gone a day without playing with somebody else.

      Frisell says he can’t remember when he first heard “We Shall Overcome,” but it would have been sometime during his school days in Denver. “I grew up in a time with a music program in public schools,” he told me. “I’m in seventh grade, and that song was coming around that time. And my English teacher, Mr. Newcomb, is playing us Bob Dylan records, because he said it was like poetry. This was 1963, ’64. On TV you see ‘Hootenanny’ along with Kennedy’s assassination. January 1964, I saw M.L.K. speak at our church. A couple weeks before that, ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’ came out. Then a couple weeks after that, the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. It was in the air.”

      The neighborhood he grew up in, he told me, was very “Leave It to Beaver” and overwhelmingly white. It was Denver East High School, and its band threw him together with a wider group of kids, including the future Earth, Wind & Fire members Andrew Woolfolk, Philip Bailey and Larry Dunn. “When Martin Luther King was killed, our high school concert band was performing and the principal came in and told everyone,” Frisell says. “It was horrible. I was in the band room, with Andrew Woolfolk, with my Japanese-American friend whose parents were in the internment camps, and we were comforting each other.” It gave him the sense that music transcended personal differences and that the camaraderie shared by collaborators was a model for other forms of strife. “From that time, I carry with me this idea that the music community is ahead of its time trying to work things out.”

      “We Shall Overcome” became a regular part of his repertoire in 2017. It’s not the first time he has gone through a phase of ruminating on a particular tune, working through it in different settings: Surely no one else has recorded so many versions of “Shenandoah,” and he played “A Change Is Gonna Come” a lot during the George W. Bush presidency. But as we moved through the past four years, he was drawn back to “We Shall Overcome,” this tune from his childhood. “I was just trying to make a small hopeful statement,” he says. He didn’t know that by the time his trio released the song on their debut, it would be the summer of the George Floyd protests and John Lewis’s death. They reminded him, he says, that “We Shall Overcome” is “one of those songs that is always relevant. That song kind of sums it up. Every time I think about giving up, there are these people like John Lewis — we owe it to them to keep going and trying.”

      Frisell appeared on at least nine albums in 2020, including his trio’s “Valentine,” records from Elvis Costello and Ron Miles and Laura Veirs, tributes to the music of T. Rex and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and “Americana,” a collaboration with the Swiss harmonica player Grégoire Maret and the French pianist Romain Collin. “Americana” is the closest to a “typical” Frisell album, meaning it features not just his languid, layered playing but also his heart-tugging sense of emotional drama. The tempos are slow, and the track list includes recognizable pop covers, such as “Wichita Lineman” and Bon Iver’s “Re: Stacks.”

      The album is improvisational, but it’s cozier and more melodic than most contemporary jazz. This is another mode that Frisell pioneered. If you watch solemn documentaries about heartland struggles or are familiar with public radio’s interstitial music, you’ve heard his influence. Younger guitarists in the cosmic-country realm, like William Tyler and Steve Gunn, also have a bit of Frisell’s unassuming lope. He’s one of the quietest guitar heroes in the instrument’s history.

      His only trick, as he explains it, is “trying to stay connected to this sense of wonder and amazement. That’s where it helps to have other people. Even just one other person. If I play by myself or write a melody, it’s one thing. But if I give it to someone else, they’re going to play it slower, faster, suddenly you’re off into the zone. Being off the edge of what you know, that’s the best place.”

      This attitude has earned him a lifetime spent on stages and records with artists that he revered and studied as a boy, jazz players like Ron Carter, Charles Lloyd and Jack DeJohnette. But now that this journey is on pause, for the first time in 55 years, it’s as though Frisell has no choice but to take stock of what he has learned from these artists and his relationship with their legacies. “It’s just overwhelming what we owe to Black people,” he said at one point in our conversation. “Our culture, we would be nothing. Nothing. But personally, too.” He recalled, again, his teenage years: “In Denver, I was always welcomed into it. It didn’t matter that I was white. I remember a great tenor player named Ron Washington. He was in a big band where you just read the charts, and I could do that and get through the gig. An agent set up those gigs, and he called me once, and I showed up, but it wasn’t the big band. It was just Ron, a drummer and me. I didn’t know any tunes at all.” He laughed again, then described something reminiscent of the second verse of “We Shall Overcome,” the one about walking hand in hand: “Ron was so cool. He just said, ‘Let’s play a blues.’ Then another. And another. He led me through.”

      John Lingan is the author of “Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend and the Last Days of a Mountaintop Honky-Tonk.” Celina Pereira is a Brazilian-American graphic designer and artist based in Los Angeles. More

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      St. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New Songs

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe PlaylistSt. Vincent’s Synth-Funk ‘Pain,’ and 9 More New SongsHear tracks by Drake featuring Rick Ross, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, Bebe Rexha and others.St. Vincent previews a new album called “Daddy’s Home” with the squelchy “Pay Your Way in Pain.”Credit…Zackery MichaelJon Pareles, Jon Caramanica and March 5, 2021Updated 4:08 p.m. ETEvery 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.St. Vincent, ‘Pay Your Way in Pain’[embedded content]St. Vincent (Annie Clark) piles artifice on artifice on the way to a digitized primal scream in “Pay Your Way in Pain,” from a new album, “Daddy’s Home,” due in May. A throwaway music-hall piano introduction cuts to fat, squelchy 1980s synthesizer tones as she sings, archly but with mounting desperation, about rejection on every front, surrounded by multiples of her own voice processed into gasping, tittering onlookers; they join her to harmonize on the words “pain” and “shame” like decades-later echoes of David Bowie singing “Fame.” It’s droll until it isn’t; at the end, she proclaims, “I want to be loved,” and that last word stretches for a rasping, breathless 17 seconds. JON PARELESNo Rome featuring Charli XCX and the 1975, ‘Spinning’Pros recognize pros. It’s telling that Charli XCX (the Id Girl of hyperpop) and Matty Healy of the 1975 (the most self-conscious yet ambitious arena-rock deconstructionist) both chose to collaborate with No Rome, a Filipino songwriter and producer who melds introversion, melody and electronics. The song ends up on Charli XCX’s turf: teasing, danceable and unstable, flaunting its pitch-shifting and digital edits. But it’s also thoroughly danceable and flirtatious: full of mindless motion. PARELESBruno Mars, Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic, ‘Leave the Door Open’Both Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars are diligent students of R&B history, especially devoted to its most opulent, funky and idealistic moments in the pre-disco 1970s. So it’s no surprise that their collaboration — Silk Sonic, though they also keep their own search-optimizing names in the billing — harks back, in “Leave the Door Open,” to the close-harmony seductions of groups like the Spinners, the Manhattans and the Stylistics; yes, kids, that’s an analog tape deck rolling as the video begins. The descending guitar glissando, the glockenspiel, the showy key changes, the contrast of grainy lead and perfectionist backup vocals, the detailed erotic invitation of the lyrics — “Come on over, I’ll adore you” — are all good things to revive. PARELESDrake featuring Rick Ross, ‘Lemon Pepper Freestyle’What’s a palate cleanse for Drake is, for most rappers, out of the reach of their ambition and skill. In between albums, he tosses off songs that focus on his tougher side, leaning in to wordy verses largely bereft of melody. “Lemon Pepper Freestyle” — from his new “Scary Hours 2” EP — is a relaxed classic of the form, full of sly rhymes delivered so offhandedly it almost obscures the technical audacity within. The song features frequent mischief buddy Rick Ross, but promptly dispenses with him so that Drake can embark upon a four-plus minute verse touching on his notary public, some wild times in Vegas, smooth co-parenting (“I send her the child support/She send me the heart emoji”), the deadening effects of too much fame, the overpriced accouterments of too much fame and the usual confession/braggadocio nexus that even after more than a decade still stings: “To be real, man, I never did one crime/But none of my brothers can caption that line.” JON CARAMANICABebe Rexha, ‘Sacrifice’New year, nü-disco. Bebe Rexha turns whispering diva on “Sacrifice” — “Wanna be the air every time you breathe/running through your veins, and the spaces in between” — on an elegant track that includes the faintest nod to Real McCoy’s mid-90s ultra-bouncey “Another Night.” CARAMANICATank, ‘Can’t Let It Show’Tank pours out his regrets and begs for reconciliation on “Can’t Let It Show”: “I should’ve been everything I promised,” he croons in an aching tenor, going on to confess, “I’ve been stupid, heartless/I’ve been useless, thoughtless.” Then, in falsetto, he answers with what’s supposed to be her side of the dialogue: a repurposed Kate Bush chorus — “I should be crying but I just can’t let it show” — that makes him think he still stands a chance because she cares. Or is it all just his wishful thinking? PARELESMaroon 5 featuring Megan Thee Stallion, ‘Beautiful Mistakes’An awkward night out in a thankless marriage between a partner barely trying to save face and a partner trying very hard to do just enough so that observers might not notice how poorly suited the pair are to each other. CARAMANICAAshe and Finneas, ‘Til Forever Falls Apart’Perhaps Finneas is a little frustrated — though well-compensated — while he keeps things quiet (but deeply ominous) when he collaborates with his sister, Billie Eilish, whose vocals tend to be melodic whispers. He goes full-scale, orchestral Wall of Sound, appropriately, to share big crescendos with Ashe on “Til Forever Falls Apart,” which starts as a vow of fidelity but turns into visions of California apocalypse. PARELESOmar Sosa, ‘Shibinda’When the prolific Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa toured East Africa with his trio in 2009, he brought along a small recording setup, and captured himself playing with leading musicians in every country he visited. Afterward, he overdubbed additional layers of percussion and piano atop the original recordings; now he has finally released these recordings as an album, “An East African Journey.” In Zambia, Sosa met Abel Ntalasha, a multi-instrumentalist and dancer, whose song “Shibinda” tells of a young man growing into adulthood and preparing to marry. Ntalasha plays the kalumbu, a single-stringed instrument, and sings the song’s central incantation. Sosa gets involved gradually, contributing vocals and percussion and rhythmic spritzes high up on the piano. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHafez Modirzadeh, ‘Facet Sorey’[embedded content]To make his new album, “Facets,” the saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh brought three leading jazz pianists into the studio. But before they arrived, he retuned many of the piano’s strings to reflect an old Persian technique of finding notes in the spaces between the tempered scale. On “Facet Sorey,” Modirzadeh doesn’t play a lick of sax; instead, the multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey handles the piece alone, conjuring up conflicted clouds of harmony, letting the piano’s slightly sour tuning create a feeling of rich uncertainty. RUSSONELLOAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More